Has it not been debated before? Yes, it has been. Have we not wasted enough cups of coffee arguing over it? Yes, we have. So, are we ready to bury and tombstone the topic? No, not in the near future.

The debate over what a client says he wants and what he really wants will live for as long as the marketing communications and, more specifically, the PR industry lives and thrives. The briefs will always be brief and the expectations will mean ‘under promise, over deliver’ (the mantra that all PR managers chant around their mentees). I would have never brought this up but for an incident that spewed out the rotting question – should I believe what the client wants or am I looking in the wrong direction?

Picture this – the Chairman of a large and well-respected real-estate major briefs a PR team about what is expected from the PR campaign. Brand image, reputations, lineage, forthcoming IPO: almost everything is discussed. The expectations are clear – the company is to be projected as the leading real estate player in India. Everything sounds positive. The agency has bagged the account and is eager, satisfied and very comfortable in the extra soft, leather sofa. The old man seems a decent bloke. “No sweat, Mr. Chairman; your will be done.”

The team steps out of the suite on the 10^th floor and is immediately ensconced by the till-now reticent Corp Comm manager. Two things are made clear. The cheque will be signed after the press coverage report is received. Whatever the Chairman said was gas. The success of the campaign would be directly proportional to the thickness of the media coverage report, which should start thickening as soon as the team leaves the client’s office.

Now, wait a minute! Where exactly do brand strategy, image management, PR policy figure in this dry and very hollow scheme of things?

We can’t deny that there are more opportunities for PR professionals in India than ever before. Companies have started valuing the importance of public relations for their business. But when it comes to measuring its success it is still how thick a press coverage report looks. Building relationships with the target audience, nurturing a public image, paying attention to the demands of that ever important ingredient to your success called Press – these concepts will still take some time to bloom. So when a new luxury store is opened, the thrust is not on the years the brand will spend in India and how it should be perceived by the niche consumers. Sadly it’s on how many video cameras are seen at the launch and how many press clips appear after the hackneyed P3 party.

But we should not be complaining too much. There was a time when PR meant going on media rounds with bad photocopies and even worse media lists. Press coverage was really about cutting every single newspaper snippet and admiring it with the zest of a mother looking at a new-born baby. Things have changed a bit and the same things are now done with much more style…

In hind sight, the days when more and more companies would expect agencies to walk the talk and do some real PR wizardry are round the corner. A few of us need to get out of the complacent mode and be willing to do things differently. If the ‘MNC culture’ (another cliché awaiting burial) has survived and thrived, we can be sure that more professional understanding between PR agencies and companies can’t be far behind. Till then the debate will continue and many more words will be wasted. But only briefly…

This is the second part of the series on PR Measurement by Deepak Aneja,  communications research professional at a leading global media analytics company and a reader of the India PR Blog. The views here are his. Read on…

Before I get straight into the technicalities of Impressions, let me explain what these metrics are meant for. Media Impressions - the number of people who might have had the opportunity to be exposed to a story that has appeared in the media - usually refers to the total audited circulation of a publication or the audience reach of a broadcast vehicle. I am considering the multipliers such as PR or readership factors here; we can have a separate discussion on multipliers

Identify the media, first.

All media publications are not equal in value for delivering your message, nor are the media publications with the biggest circulations necessarily the best. It depends on your message type and the target audiences. The credibility of the publication needs to be assessed, as does its ability to reach your target audiences. For instance, if a company wants to tell its customers about the benefits of herbal diet supplement meant for low middle class people, it will not like to have its coverage in mainline or business publications that have the largest circulations in the target region. For its herbal diet supplement product, which is meant for low middle class people, the right media would perhaps be the regional / local / language newspaper that might not have the largest circulation but is being read by middle class families.

Beyond Impressions

Does it make any sense for a communicator or a company to know the numbers or the reach of their message? - No. Only Impression number won’t help gauge the effectiveness of a communication. You have to consider the overall positioning of the story or the key message, which takes following factors into account:

1. Placement *
2. Dominance *
3. Headlines mentions *
4. Extent of Mention *
5. Visual Presence *
6. Tonality *
7. Spokesperson quotes * 

* Impact Score can be positive or negative

Where is the key message?

It takes a lot to develop key messages for brands or products, but what if media doesn’t carry the key message, then it becomes a wasted effort.

To measure the effectiveness of your communication, it is essential to set up an assessment method. If one is constantly communicating the correct messages but it is not being reflected in media, it could indicate there are some issues or discrepancies in the media’s perception of the company or its products or services.

Key message: A proposition – in the form of a statement or phrase – that a company wishes to communicate to its target audience via media coverage. There is no tone associated with key messages.

Key Message Penetration - It represents the percentage of total news items including one or more Key Messages.

Key Message Reach: It represents the total potential audience – measured by Impressions – produced by each Key Message appearing in a news item.

Note: If there is no key message in coverage there is no impact.

Let’s simplify it:

Considering, a well written piece on major cola brand in leading business newspaper, say Business Line, has these values on measurement metrics –

Summary: +78.3% or +65353 of Business Line’s readers have been positively exposed by this article, and are likely to recall the details of the story.

Normally, we only consider exact impressions numbers in PR Measurement reports, which is not the right measure as it will only give you a reach. Multiplying Impact score with audited circulation figure will give an exact figure of people exposed to the key message positively or negatively.

Let’s consider this table for a particular story:

You can easily notice only the story has generated 53,00,160 impressions but only 61.65 % of total audiences have been exposed positively.

Media Content Analysis is a important measure to gauge to overall reputation of the company and to know the factors those are contributing to the reputation, negatively or positively.

It would be important to consider Reputation Audit or On-ground research to actually know the change in behavior. This will help company to associate On-ground research results with Media Measurement outcomes. This will definitely prove that PR, influences and has a major role to play.

This is a guest article by Deepak Aneja, a communications research professional at a leading global media analytics company and a reader of the India PR Blog. Deepak will write a series of posts here on PR measurement. The views here are his. Read on…

PR Measurement has been under tremendous pressure by marketing professionals to prove its contribution in business outcomes. Now there are techniques and tools that can show a direct link between PR and business outcomes, for example: correlation between volumes of coverage and sales. These advances in PR measurement techniques are helping prove spending on PR programs and justifying PR’s role in marketing mix.

Most PR measurement programs are traditionally focused around its media generation role. Typically most measurement programs seek to analyze media exposure - which is similar to the traditional advertising approach that marketing and brand managers are familiar, and comfortable, with.

First Level – Reach, This will cover number of media, number of readers, key message delivery, placement and the tone. Basically, the facts, what came out?

Second Level – Benchmarking, This measures the equivalent of the traditional advertising ‘share of voice’ approach tracks the corporate media coverage vis-à-vis its competitors. It provides the advantage of knowing how much media coverage and of what type it obtained relative to its competitors. In a very competitive business environment, it’s essential for organisations to be serious about their PR. Combined with the first level it provides good evaluation approach.

Third Level – Now measurement techniques at the second level can be correlated with sales patterns. And this has been named by ‘Share of Discussion’.

The theory about Share of Discussion is that if,
- PR can increase the amount of public (principally media driven) discussion about a topic, It can gain the majority share (or dominance) for its client or product, then It is likely that there will be a consequent increase in sales for that product/competitor after a period of time.

There are several case studies that directly - and scientifically - provide a link between peak periods of discussion to increased sales. However I would like to add that the time lapse between activity and action varies according to the type of product or service.

It must be recognized that these studies are related to unpaid media coverage i.e. that which is generated through PR. It supports other studies that report that consumers are much more influenced by editorial comment and coverage which they perceive as being independent and credible.

Accordingly, (for example), if mobile phones are very much an item of discussion in the media, the mobile phone brand which gains the greatest exposure stands to reap the greatest sales benefit. Please refer to the figures below:

Share of Discussion based on story counts…

Here the articles have been collected for the period of 2004-05 for Ist table and 2003-04 for IInd table from Factiva for India region, which covers all financial, mainlines newspapers and top business & telecom magazines. Articles are more or less exclusive on brands and are not being analyzed for tonality.

Correlation- During both the periods Sales to Share of Discussion (Volume of articles mentioning mobile handset brand names) were highly correlated. During 2004-05 correlation was r=0.97 and during 2003-04 it was r=.98.

The table above illustrates the correlations between the client’s (Nokia) own media coverage / count and its competitor’s with regards to the sales figures. Of course, it may be argued that marketers have always intuitively known this anyway. However, what makes this different is that this is showing the potency of unpaid media exposure - and that’s PR.

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Will be covered in part - II

More meaningful & in-depth measurement can be done based on media values and based on impressions.