The next level of measuring PR effectiveness is whether the target audience groups received the messages directed to them. Have they they retained and understood the message that was intended too. Walter Lindenmann labels this level as Outgrowths.

This level of success of public relations campaign will depend on immediate reaction that you will receive or you desired to receive from target audience. The best example is getting our event listed in the events and listings section. A press conference would not be a ideal event to be listed in this section. Listing would be recommended for a children’s workshop in a book store. The outgrowth would be the number of participants for the workshop. Event participation would be the measurement tool.

The other forms of Outgrowths are:

Dip stick study: A dip stick study in the form of the recall of the particular brand, corporate or spokesperson vis-a-vis the competition. Which is the top of mind brand recall for the media in a particular industry? It should be the brand that you are working on, if it isn’t then you need to work harder.

Call ins: If there is a particular interview that is being broadcasted on the radio and the floor is open for call-in interviews with the celebrity. The number of callers would be the measured as a success rate.

Contest Entries: If we are promoting a particular contest, the number of contest entries. A corollary to this would be the number of SMS received as votes for the winning contestant - Indian Idol, Nach Baliye.

Focus Groups: A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their attitude towards a product, service, concept or advertisement, immediately after they have been exposed to the messages of the particular element.

The other would be candidates appearing for walk-in interviews after reading the classified section in the newspaper. The number of visitors to the company website increasing after the company has made a new announcement. Case in Point would be the launch of the Tata Nano and the number of visitors to the website that were increased due to the announcement. Another observation was Tata Nano, Tata Motors, $2500 car being the top 25 searched keywords on Google as on January 10, 2008.

My next article will highlight success based on the other measurement techniques under Outcomes!!

(This is the second in the three part series on measuring the success of a Public Relations Campaign)

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india

We as Public Relations or corporate communications professionals are incessantly asked about the ROI (return on investment) on a particular initiative. What I’ve put together below could be a way to answer to that crucial question. We could actually look at it as three different aspects or phases of measuring the success of a particular public relations campaign.

Three levels of measuring public relations effectiveness have been identified by Dr. Walter K. Lindenmann, Senior Vice President and Director of Research at Ketchum Public Relations. He labels the basic level “outputs”, the intermediate level “outgrowths” and the advanced level “outcomes”.

1. Outputs measures message transmission and the initiative response
2. Outgrowths measures message reception with immediate reaction
3. Outcomes measures attitude and behavioral change

Outputs

Outputs of a particular PR campaign will be with respect to the initiative that was undertaken; like that of a press release announcing a product launch being sent out and ‘x+1′ number of publications carrying it. A direct impact of the proposed plan of targeting ‘x’ number of publications. The client is quite satisfied since we send him the scanned copies of clips as well as the detailed status on the achieved media coverage. This is termed as Target Media Reach. Few more ways to measure the output and the success of the campaign are:

Circulation – provide the circulation figures in case of print media. Similarly, providing TRP for television on real time basis and listenership for radio, this is revised on a weekly basis. The possibility of the total potential exposure to the message in the feature or the news article can be hence calculated.

Target Audience Reach – have you targeted the right media to reach your target audience? Case in point would be a cornflakes company targeting parents highlighting the nutritional value. In such a case, it is imperative to include niche magazines like Parenting, Prevention and other vertical publications in our media plan. One challenge here, that could be faced, is that of periodicity of the magazine. We could look at creating and including customized initiatives around the vertical magazines to gain mileage and required publicity. This will surely help in reaching out to the desired target audience with the desired, customized messaging, rather than merely relying on coverage through a press release being sent to them.

Impressions – the number of times an article has appeared in a particular publication should also be calculated. These articles should be checked for all the right messages. Then, these articles then should be multiplied with circulations figures.

Delivery of Message Points – We are in the profession to form the right impression. For that, we need to create the right messages, in the right media and to the right audience. If all the messages that were designated (or desired) to be published, are published, we would be successful in our campaign?

Competitive Analysis – All the above mentioned parameters can be used similarly for the competing brands and evaluated and compared to our brand. From a tactical perspective, this helps in gauging the competitor’s media presence in terms of media type and frequency, which helps us implement our own media plan much more efficiently and effectively.

My next article will highlight success based on the other measurement techniques under Outgrowths and Outcomes!! Let me know if you want to add any other parameter to Outputs.

(This is the first in the three part series on measuring the success of a Public Relations Campaign)

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india

Do you measure your PR efforts for your clients? If yes, how do you do it? Do you measure each media clip obtained by the ad value of the size of the clip and present it to the client as the amount of money they have saved? Or do you compare your PR results with the objectives you have set earlier? How do you measure PR? We have heard of a lot of books but practically what are we doing right now, here in India, by the PR agencies?

This is a comment on PR measurement in India from measure wizard, reader of India PR Blog, on one of the earlier posts. I thought it might be good to post it here as well. Maybe we can share our thoughts. Also he has provided his opinions as a user of the various PR measurement service providers in India.

Here it goes -

Does measuring clips translate into PR measurement?

PR measurement should not be confused with measuring clips per column cms - it is like comparing a MF Hussain painting with one generated by Computer Graphics. Firstly, we should understand what the published material is;and why it is being published/ aired about the company in the media domain:

- How effective it is? Whether messages intended by the company are being;highlighted or not?
- How receptive the media is about the issue or the company?
- What is a prominence of the story/ how it is placed in the media?
- Which functional area of the company is getting more attention- ultimately it forms the ‘public opinion’?
- How the company is placed against its competitors?

Once we are ready to find answers to such questions above, then only we can think about analysing our communication/PR campaigns properly.

Thoughts on some measurement service providers:

1. Cirrus - It will be foolish to call Cirrus, a PR Measurement/ Analysis setup. It’s more of just an intelligent media monitoring service. Finding keywords in articles and mapping ‘tone’ is not analysis. The manpower at Cirrus… many undergratuates/ part time workers can be a concern.

2. BIU (Business Intelligence Unit, Vaishnavi) - Better than Cirrus in terms of reach, technology, and manpower. BIU has a future here, but they need to tune their offerings a little bit….see web 2.0 is waiting to be analysed.

However, I have seen couple of reports by BIU and Cirrus but I am sorry to say that I could not get any idea what these reports suggest or where my client company stands in the media domain?

3. EIKONA PR TRACK - Promising, mainly BPO work for MML,UK. The company has a brand (TAM) behind it. Customized research are possible.

4. CARMA - Provide customized research, have good global accounts but in India it is not doing well that primarily could be because of its manpower…mostly fresh graduates. They need to understand the media, corporate sector and the industry better than PR people.

5. IMPACT (Genesis) (Update: Please see comments)- Quick, fast but only charts. Yes mostly quantitative interpretation. Their report hardly suggest any interrelation between PR/ messaging with ‘what comes out’ in the media.

(The above are the reader’s personal opinions)

I have seen some of the biggest PR agencies in India, and have seen PR executives working together with many global agencies for various clients. One thing I noticed is that everywhere, at the end of the month, we provide our clients monthly dossiers of the media coverage we achieved for them. I often wondered if these dossiers are for the clients’ records, or is it rather to show them our achievement. While providing thick dossiers of media cuttings might look impressive, I think we shouldn’t let the clients mistake them for our deliverables.

How many of us believe that media coverage is all the measure of the success of any PR campaign? As we are in the business of public relations, shouldn’t the ‘publics’ be what we should have our focus on? The media is just the tool to reach out to the ‘publics’.

So shouldn’t there be some kind of measurement that shows how much influence we have been able to make on the target audience? It shouldn’t matter so much which medium we use to reach out to them - be it the media, events, newsletters, direct interaction programmes, or whatever.

Our client meetings sometimes start and end discussing on which newspapers could be targeted. Shouldn’t we rather be discussing how to reach out to the target audience and what all we can do to reach out? I think as long as we restrict ourselves as agencies for facilitating media coverage, clients can never see value in us as consultants who can help them in making their communications programmes, and PR as a profession will be seen as a mere press cuttings generator.