KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

More on Lovemarks

In case anyone missed it (a likely scenario, given that this ran on the BBC World Service at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday morning) Peter Day of the BBC's World Business Report did a wonderful, very in-depth interview with Kevin Roberts, author of Lovemarks and CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi. If anyone still wants to debate the fact that Lovemarks and Cluetrain are essentially saying the same thing, this interview should persuade you that Roberts really does understand that the customer is now in charge. Listen to it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/global_business.shtml

He took the words right out of my mouth

I was just about to start a rant about GM's stupidity in attempting to threaten the media by pulling their ads, when a friend sent along this wonderful piece by Alex Beam at the Boston Globe. All I can say is Alex, you just took the words out of my mouth.

My other favorite line of the week:  In comments about the differences between British English and American English, a local comic recently noted...

---For instance, Americans say "elevator" and we say "lift."

Americans say "President" and we say "psychotic nutcase."---

Just what the world doesn't need

The research conglomerate Taylor Nelson Sofres is announcing this week yet another PR measurement service. Details on the announcement were sparse but surprise surprise its "real time" "comprehensive" and will solve all the problems of the world. But more surprising and disappointing is that its main features is that it delivers Advertising Value Equivalents. This is the PR research equivalent of an announcement for home delivery of crack to a half-way house.  For a company that describes itself as a "research" outfit, the notion that they are bragging about delivering a metric that is based on absolutely no scientific evidence or research whatsoever is mind-boggling.  I was a partner with several TNS companies a number of years ago and was impressed at the time with the quality of its work. Clearly its standards have gone seriously down hill in the mean time.  Do NOT encourage these people! Let's ignore this announcement and get on with the business of putting real value on the business of public relations.

This is not the end, it's the beginning

For those who haven't read all of Jon Gertner's enormous NYTimes Magazine piece on the future of communications measurement called, "Watching What you Watch" here's a synopsis:

Measurement is about to get a lot more accurate. And despite On The Media's "End of the world as we know it" advanced blurbs for their show on the topic,  I would argue that "It's not the end, its the beginning" to quote a line from Pat Donohue's song.

My takeaway from the piece is that Nielsen has finally woken up to the clamoring that I hear every day for more accurate measurement of exactly what people are watching and hearing. The premise of the piece is that Arbitron has invented something called the Portable People Meter (PPM) that Nielsen has bought into and that is currently being tested in Texas. Unlike traditional Nielsen methodology that measures the TV set, the PPM measures the people. Which of course is what organizations care about. It essentially tracks, records and sends back to Nielsen and Arbitron a record of everything the person wearing the PPM has heard during the day. It even knows if you hit the loo during the commercial since it knows when the sound stops. Now don't get paranoid, carrying the PPM is a voluntary act, so Arbitron hopes to recruit some 70,000 people to carry them around. The great thing about them is that it is obviously a far more accurate form of measurement, since it tracks not just what you watch sitting in your TV room, but what you listen to at work, in a hotel, on the street, etc. They're even experimenting with adding GPS so you could track billboard viewing. The interesting (I'm not reading to call it bad) news is of course the huge social implications that this technology has. Nielsen ratings have for years determined what we get to watch on television. The problem is that fewer and fewer people are watching television. More and more people are getting their news via the Internet, and their entertainment via their computer and/or their iPod. So as the numbers from the PPM roll in, chances are that advertisers will reallocate their dollars away from television and focus them on other forms of media. This could be great for word of mouth marketing, PR and the web, if, as we assume, the PPM data shows just how much more influential it is. However, any major shift in audience will also mean that advertisers will begin shoving products at us via whatever new medium ends up on top. It also, as On The Media correctly pointed out, will mean the end of many stations, outlets and other news and entertainment sources that are currently relying on Nielsen ratings for their revenue stream.

Net net, I welcome PPMs or the equally interesting scheme that ErinMeida is promoting of monitoring cable feeds for improving the accuracy of measurement over all. And if the road to better measurement is paved with the bodies of main stream media moguls, all the better.

Dinosaurs vs Future leaders

The more I fume about the anti-measurement dinosaurs I encountered this week, the more I started thinking about the difference between dinosaurs and what we'll call for want of a better title "Future Leaders. "  Here are a few ideas, I'd love some more..

1. Dinosaurs make decisions based on gut feelings and common wisdom.  Future leaders base their decisions on data and proof.
2. Dinosaurs maintain relationships with clients through the strength of their personalities. Future leaders maintain clients by proving statistically that they are helping the client succeed.
3. Dinosaurs, if they measure at all, measure clips. Future leaders measure relationships.
4. Dinosaurs define success as a front page headline in the Wall Street Journal. Future leaders define success by the strength of their messaging, the degree to which they are positioned better than the competition, improved relationships and behaviors that contribute to the corporate goal. 
5. Dinosaurs fear measurement because it could reveal failure. Future leaders measure failure on a regular basis.
6. Dinosaurs don’t measure because they don’t want to take money away from programs. Future leaders measure results so that they CAN take money away from programs that aren’t working and apply it to programs that will make them more successful.
7. Dinosaurs only measure when they have to. Future leaders measure so that they can lead more effectively.

Other thoughts?

Cluetrain vs. Lovemarks

Just finished reading Lovemarks and I fail to see what this whole Cluetrain vs Lovemarks kerfuffle is all about.

Most of what Kevin Roberts talks about is exactly what Cluetrain says -- the consumer is in charge. Or as I put it ten years ago during my first speech at an Internet conference "the lunatics have already taken control of the asylum."  Not to imply that all of us bloggers are lunatics, but we all have our own perspectives and we are in charge of the conversations. Roberts premise that "Lovemarks are created by the people who love them"  is just another way of saying that companies have to pay attention to their relationships not just their products and services. And, no Roberts is not the first person to discover the importance of relationships in marketing -- public relations people have been talking about it for years and the Grunigs' have been measuring it for years.

Those folks who are so fearful of the dark side to all of this -- corporations manipulating us via blogs or other consumer generated media -- get over it. The whole point of Lovemarks is that today's consumer can spot that kind of garbage for what it is. That's the beauty of the blogosphere, for every opinion there is an equal and opposite opinion. 

Some people just refuse to be accountable

"I hate measurement"  was not what I expected to hear at a meeting yesterday that included a number of well known PR pros. When asked what specific topics they thought should be covered less frequently by a well known  PR trade publication, three of the assembled heads of PR agencies specifically called out PR measurement. Their reasons ranged from "I don't think any of it works" to "I don't think you can measure PR" were what I used to hear two decades ago when I started my business. Before Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and Sarbanes Oxley. Before the cost of measurement became cheaper than the cost of NOT being accountable.

I'm really sorry I didn't have a tape recorder. I would have loved to play it back to the board and CFO of their largest clients -- Can't you just see it, "Oh Mr. CFO, here's the head of your PR agency saying that he really doesn't want to be accountable or measure results." And its not like these guys have little clients that aren't under a microscope from their shareholders.. they are companies like Sprint, Nabisco, Johnson and Johnson, Comcast etc etc. Given the scrutiny that PR contracts have just gone through with the LA Water Department and the Department of Education, can similar investigations within corporate America be far behind? CFOs and auditors don't care how you feel about measurement, they demand proof that you are helping the bottom line. And without measurement, there is no proof. 

The good news in all of this is that it's only a matter of time before natural evolutionary processes take over and agencies like these will go the way of the dinosaurs, replaced by a new generation of PR professionals who have moved up in the business by being accountable, measuring their success and making decisions based on data not just gut feeling.

Progress? maybe

Ketchum's Ray Kotcher recently sent out an email updating us on the latest in the Armstrong Williams kerfuffle. While they still need to learn how to speak in plain English, (go back and reread The Cluetrain Manifesto, Ray) at least they've taken steps to improve their transparency and reach out to the community.

Now if we could only do something about the media picking up on research studies that aren't based on anything close to a valid sample. Kudos to Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal for pointing out the insidious practice of advocacy groups sponsoring research and then only releasing those numbers that support the cause. Too often, the media fails to mention who sponsored a study or the reasons behind it. Even more damaging, however, is when the statistics that are trumpeted in the press release are based on best guestimates or on ridiculously small sample sizes. You can read more on this issue at www.wsj.com/NumbersGuy.