As Canada goes.. .. well maybe not

In response to David Jone's comments and invitation, I' ve had a chance to poke around a bit in the new Media Relations Points web site -- the proposed standard currently being pushed by the Canadian Public Relations Society and I kind of like it --  as far as it goes. It's simple, relatively customizable to an organizations specific needs and you can't argue with a template that is free. The circ data provided by Canadian News is provided at a good discount. The rejection of multipliers and the emphasis on standardized methods of counting eyeballs is laudable and you  can' t quibble about the price when something is free.
While I don't take back any of my rant against the simplification of PR measurement to media terms, if you want to measure media, this isn't a bad way to do it --IF (and that's with a very big IF) you're a Canadian organization. As one of my fellow measurement commission members just pointed out to me --the number of different publications in Canada is a tiny fraction of what it is in the US, never mind the rapidly growing influence of on-line publications and blogs for which we really don't have good numbers yet at all. So don't expect a US version of the MRP standard anytime soon. That having been said, there are several standard metrics in the MRP that we've been using for years and would love it if everyone adopted them.
We thank the CPRS and all the people involved for doing this and adding to the measurement conversation. Now what are we going to do about standards for on-line eyeballs?

Comments

[David Phillips]

Katie, I just have a problem with rating points. How one can imagine editorial as being other than editorial is beyond belief.

And some editorial is awful and some respected and so on and on and on.

The research says that regular readers of publications have an attachment that is compelling. Advertising is easily recognised and dismissed by readers unless the get a buzz from it. All this researched by Guy Consterdine a dozen years ago. Today we even have neuro-psychology to support the view.

And 'tone' stuff. Its all very subjective. Its like ice cream in Arizona nice but don't bet your life on it when push comes to shove and these days PR has to do a lot of shoving. It ain't dainty anymore.

I did not see references to things like inter-coder reliability or replicability tests or even pre-analysis testing. All of which are about as basic as it comes.

The small media universe in Canada works for them in so far as, to use a Walt Lindenman expression, the editorial can be seen 'to moved the needle' with greater clarity. But such measures are not about 'rating points'.

The other thing is this drive for ROI (is this discounted? If not, how valid is it). Lets get this straight, in most US (Canadian and British) companies more than 50% of the total worth is predicated on a guess. In many companies the assets are so few that you can put them in a fright container. The 'intangible assets' tend to be big and growing as a proportion. My question is, which assets does the client want a return on... the physical or the IP? If physical then count it with money (fire sale value). If its Intellectual Property there is much less that is measurable as an asset (some routines, a trademark and some patents).

In addition, I am not sure how Canadians, any more than Britons, can ignore where a large number of people read their news. A rather large number read global news delivered by those very friendly paperboys – Google, MSN and Yahoo.

I think a lot of this media evaluation stuff is just not worth the effort. It is being done for people who, because of their very demand for it, will be disintermediated out of a job in a few months.

Focusing on the value and loyalty created among stakeholders is much more powerful useful that an iffy rating point.

[David Jones]

Thanks for taking a close look Katie. It's so true that we have a much smaller media universe...but it's amazing how hard it has been to get consistent data.

We've tried to point out that the MRP isabout coming up with some consistent numbers and methodologies for measuring media coverage. It's a key first step for us. Getting sophisticated and determining what those clippings actually accomplish is something we'll continue to grapple with.