Defining the goal of any public relations program is in and of itself a large portion of the work. Not doing so wastes time, effort and that elusive commodity we all once had in better times: money. Recall the familiar, episode-closing exhortation of G.I. Joe: “Knowing is half the battle.” With media changing so quickly, G.I. Joe’s wisdom today is, if anything, an understatement.
I often marvel that many major firms still place such an emphasis on media impressions. Media impressions are the supposed number of people who may or may not have bought(?); seen(?); read(?); skimmed through(?); ignored or otherwise discarded(?) a specific physical or non-physical media entity over the course of some period of time.
If this definition seems imprecise, that’s because imprecision is precisely the charm of this outdated form of media measurement. In fact, if you ask how many media impressions a certain story received, no two publicists will give you the same answer. I’ve actually seen the range of answers to a specific media impressions question vary by the millions.
This frustration is why I was particularly impressed by Katie Paine and a media measurement panel I attended earlier this week at the Media Relations Summit in New York (#MRS09). My two most important takeaways were:
1. The utility of a measurement metric depends on the client’s goals, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
2. A media campaign’s flaw isn’t reporting low levels of exposure; it’s not reporting on exposure at all.
Let’s call these utility and transparency, respectively.
Regarding the utility of media measurement, the most useful analyses generally account for both qualitative and quantitative factors. Here’s a very simple example. In the case of how well Company X responded to a recall of its flawed widget, we might consider positive versus negative feedback.
By simply identifying the tone of a story or comment as generally positive or negative, we can then compare positive vs. negative quantitatively. This is a lot more useful than saying, “Last week, we got 1.5 million media impressions about Company X’s recall. Aren’t we swell publicists?”
The difficulty determining relevant media numbers is often cited as a reason for ignoring them. In fact, the opposite is the case. With the quickly changing nature of media, it’s difficult to know a particular program is working or not without directly examining the effort. Hence the importance of transparency.
Let’s say that 85% of Company X’s recall coverage was generally negative while 15% was generally positive? This might seem like a bad report—and it might, in fact, be a bad report—but this is where the human rather than automated analytics comes into play. Knowing is only half the battle; understanding is the rest.
Perhaps the vast majority of the negative coverage was on competitors’ blogs that nobody reads, while the positive coverage came from major outlets that your clients and potential clients consult and trust. A more sophisticated mode of analysis is necessary.
Even if the ultimate outlook suggests that the client’s goals are not being met under the current gameplan, transparency is often the best way of avoiding a shoot-the-messenger response.
Who knows? You might even get your PR budget doubled to chart a newer, bolder public relations course.
Right?
