If PR/marketing campaigns are only as good as the news they generate, then news retrieval is only as effective as the clipping services used. But the task of ferreting through the expanding world of these services for product/company news coverage is quickly becoming an exercise in knowing exactly how you want your campaign tracked.
Now the name of the game is mastering a juggling act of seemingly paradoxical coverage goals: mass news retrieval but targeted analysis, real time (online) monitoring as well as weeksold original clips. To meet the growing qualitative demands of these coverage goals, more and more companies and PR firms are finding that conventional clipping services alone just don't cut it anymore.
"Publicity by the pound isn't enough these days," said Jeremy Jacob, senior VP at New Yorkbased Manning, Selvage and Lee. "Clients want to know whether the right messages are being delivered." To this end, in addition to the standard Luce (Mesa, Ariz.) and Burrelle's (Livingston, NJ) clipping services Manning's consumer group uses for its 12 clients, it also uses the Pittsburghbased News Analysis Institute to evaluate, research and rank the clips that have been generated for campaigns that require more sophisticated analysis.
For clients like Absolut and Nabisco, who expect "marquee coverage," and want more quantitative and qualitative campaign coverage results, the Institute is ideal. For an additional $600 to $800/month, clients can get general statistical information on their campaigns like advertising value, market penetration and circulation.
The more involved reports like message analyses (positive vs. negative) and competitive evaluations, command higher fees of $2,000 to $4,000. "This type of analysis impacts the campaign because companies can determine what components are most successful," said Colleen Rogers, VP of the News Analysis Institute.
These reports allow Manning to showcase how targeted and impactful their campaigns were through weekly and monthly coverage highlights and brochures that are merchandised internally and to their clients.
For Karin Timpone, director of communications and public relations at Seagram Americas (New York), such sophisticated reports are not necessary. But achieving modified evaluations of its Distilled Spirits' projects and campaigns is absolutely essential. Since Seagram uses about five PR agencies for its major new product launches, Timpone's group concentrates on other crossbrand promotions and projects. A small internal evaluation team is the first point of contact for its standard clipping services which generate about 650 clips/month along with an electronic video monitoring service.
As with most PR departments, the biggest problem with standard clipping services is the lag in time involved with getting clips (usually a few weeks to two months).
Therefore, the team relies on media colleagues for breaking news stories and builds the time delay into its evaluation system. However, clipping services will continue to be a staple for their tracking efforts because having the original glossy fourcolor clips are invaluable to filtering out the best examples of coverage.
In-House Tracking
The timing problem of standard clipping services has spawned a number of in-house tracking departments at PR agencies and companies alike which are exclusively devoted to tracking news coverage on the Web. Since certain industries like banking, healthcare and electronics thrive on breaking news, having your finger on the pulse of the coverage - before it happens and shortly after - is crucial.
For BursonMarsteller (New York), its eight year old in-house monitoring department tracks the Web for about 105 clients across a multitude of industries for a flat fee. Five years ago, the department started using the Bostonbased Desktop Data's News Edge online system with a database of 33 newswires for realtime coverage and delivery capabilities in a user friendly Windows environment.
The department's sole responsibility is to sift through about 2,000 stories a day that are pumped into the in house network system for pertinent client news content and then communicate them to the appropriate clients via fax or internal email throughout their national and international offices.
If you're only concerned about the highend electronic coverage your campaign received, primarily relying on the Net is the answer, according to Tyler Yates, information systems communications manager for Novell Inc (Orem, Utah).Yates, who said he used Luce four years ago for Word Perfect campaigns, found the service good but the coverage too massive and untimely.
Because Novell is only interested in the select coverage it receives from eight industry publications like Info Week, Network World and Lan Times, Yates eventually found himself becoming a oneman clipping service for Novell's corporate news. Between himself and his boss, Blaine Homer, technical manager of strategic communications, who handles Novell's electronic monitoring service provided by Burlington, Mass. based Individual, Inc., the company's corporate news is tracked. Through key word searches, Homer surfs the Net for company coverage and downloads it to appropriate Novell employees via company email. Yates, who devotes 20 percent of his time tracking and analyzing industry magazines, scans in the relevant articles and sends them to internal Web sites and sometimes the marketing department.
But it is rare that a company or client will completely replace a clipping service with an online monitoring service, according to Robert C. Wagoner, president and CEO of New York based Burrelle's Information Services.
Recognizing the huge demand of online news retrieval, standard services have jumped on the online bandwagon. Burrelle's answer to realtime immediacy is News Alert, an electronic clipping service that monitors electronic editions of newspapers, newswires, newspaper syndication, as well as network and local broadcast news for about $450 to $1,000/month. Still, the bottom line for successful monitoring is clear and wellspelled out direction from the client, according to Wagoner. "Clients must identify exactly what they want: the type of clipping and the type of publications, if we are to do our jobs effectively."
For companies like AnheuserBusch and AT&T, which have a number of ethnic based campaigns, measuring their effectiveness requires even more fine tuning.
That's where specialized monitoring services like the Los Angeles based Asian News Service comes in. "Companies want to have a foothold into the Asian market to understand their concerns, needs and views," said Soo Song, media coordinator at the Asian News Service.
This service also pitches press releases to its more than 100 national news publications nationwide.
(Manning,Salvage & Lee, 212/2130909; News Analysis Institute, 412/4719411; Burrelle's, 201/9926600; Seagram Americas, 212/5727000; BursonMarsteller, 212/6144000; Desktop Data, 800/2553343; Novell, 801/2285020; Individual, Inc., 617/2736000; Asian News Service, 213/6226513)