KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

Recommending another old friend

Paul Gillin was probably responsible for my moving back East some 20 years ago. He'd authored a critical article about Lotus just when they were looking for a new VP of Corp. Com. During the interview they showed me the article and asked what I'd do about it. I haven't a clue what I said but it must have impressed someone since I three weeks later I was unpacking my suitcase, having moved 3000 miles across the country. Paul was then, and still is a stellar reporter and a great writer. He's writing a book and his chapter on the blogosphere is one of the best I've ever read..

Best analysis of the value of sports sponsorship

Not to make this the official Jonah Bloom fan site, but I think his analysis of the value of the world cup sponsors might be the best I've ever read.

Jonah might want to take note of the following astonishing outcome of a sponsorship. Phonak, sponsor of the US/Floyd Landis lead Tour de France Team ended its $3+ million sposorship of the team because, in part, the public mistook Phonak for a bicycle company instead of one of the world's largest makers of high-tech hearing aids. Oops.

Good reads

I met Jonah Bloom when he was starting up PR Week in New York, and was impressed by his grasp of the business. His most recent piece in Ad Age, shows that he's only gotten better over time. it's a great guide to anyone who is struggling to keep up with new media developments.

I love surprising results

When we started monitoring the blogosphere to see how the top ten PR firms were faring, I fully expected Edelman to come out on top, thanks to its CEO's blog. 
Imagine my surprise when the most frequently discussed agency was Ketchum due to its sweep of the CIPRA and Silver Anvil awards. Edelman places a distant 5th in share of blog discussion. Hill & Knowlton tops the most negative - -mostly due to its efforts years ago on behalf of Kuwait and its reputation for assisting and supporting war efforts.  The blogosphere has a very very long memory.
Stats for the first month are as follows:
1st place Ketchum has 26.72% share of discussion, Burson comes in second with 25.19% share -- mostly getting slammed for astroturf movements its started. Fleishman placed third with 23.66% share of discussion,  H&K is fourth with  14.5%, Edelman is fifth with 4.58% and Weber, Ogilvy and Porter Novelli are essentially invisible.

We're doing the study as both a demo of our CGM software and to learn more about what drives discussion, so I'll have more data and a full report as the weeks go by.

Why blogs are replacing newspapers

I came across a The Campbell Scoop,a great local blog written by my friend Scott. And if nothing else it's a great name, almost as good as the name of his company "Buzz on a budget."  Now I also get my local newspaper on line. I glance at the headlines and delete it. I spent the better part of this morning on Scott's blog, and learned more about what's going on in my area than reading the paper every day for the last six months.  That's the problem with traditional media (or for that matter traditional anything.) They cover what they can in the way they always have. They have rules and formats and processes that have been in place for years and changing them is nigh on impossible.

Scott writes about what he finds interesting, and since we have similar tastes, its interesting to me as well. But more importantly, he writes about it with a refreshing honesty.  So yes, the business model for old fashioned media is broken, but to a large extent the fault lies with an inability to "think different" as Apple used to say.

I've often said that the best thing that ever happened to me was that when I sold my last company, I was prohibited from doing any of the same things the same way again. So I had to "think different." In essence, I had to completely reinvent my business. In doing so, I came up with ways to do exactly what we were doing before, but much faster, much more efficiently and at about a 40% cost savings.  That's why upstarts win.

 

Great insight into the future of ad measurement

We've been telling people for a while that technology is revolutionizing the way people measure marekting success. My prediction is that in five years we'll laugh at the notion of counting eyeballs or column inches. Today, the world is ruled by interaction between the prospect and the product, and the easiest way to measure that is thru web  analytics. Any PR person who isn't tracking web analytics in conjunction with eyeballs and messages is way behind the times.  Michael Applebaum in Brand Week, makes this point beautifully.

This is a baby step, not a giant leap forward

The industry is greeting the new "commercial ratings" as a new holy grail. The idea that TV stations will be able to report on who is actually watching commercials rather than fast forwarding thru those ads is a step forward. But as this editorial in Adweek points out, it's only a baby step.

Ratings only a building block

Published: July 17, 2006

It took some 65 years to come around, made the front page of The Wall Street Journal and was heralded in these very pages as nothing less than a sea change for the TV business. But all the crowing over commercial ratings only serves to underscore just how behind the times the advertising industry is.

Don't get us wrong: Measuring viewers of commercials, rather than simply the programming that surrounds it, is a quantum leap. We agree with Mike Shaw, ABC sales and marketing president, when he says it has "huge implications for the industry, based on return on investment and return on equity."

Of course, the networks will start out losing money, and there will be squabbling over how best to measure commercial ratings. Already, there is dispute over whether the standard will be average ratings by break or the average of all breaks. And some argue Nielsen may not even be able to pull it off. Still, as TargetCast TCM's Gary Carr said, it's a start.

But the fact that the industry is only starting to tackle the issue is unsettling. Pure measurement should be the building block upon which other metrics, such as engagement, are layered. In this age of interactivity, where video-on-demand and click-to-buy technologies can actually measure sales results and purchase behavior that result from marketing, knowing who is watching your commercial isn't nearly enough. What marketers need to know-and are willing to pay for-is what motivates them to buy.

Pundits love to predict the demise of TV, which may never happen and certainly won't happen anytime soon, considering the $9.05 billion reaped in the just-concluded upfront. But only a fool could fail to see emerging media steadily chipping away at TV's hold on the advertising dollar as highly measurable digital and other technologies take root.

So yes, commercial ratings are history-making. But instead of patting itself on the back, the industry should look ahead and focus on new technology that would make commercial ratings ancient history.

Will things ever change?

ROI is still an amazing elusive goal, as indicated by the results of yet another recent survey that says that no one is happy with ROI metrics. From this morning's AdWeek:

Some 50% Aren't Satisfied; Most Leery of Shops' Help

By Lisa Sanders

Published: July 17, 2006

It's considered the most important metric in marketing today, yet not even half of America's top marketers are satisfied with their companies' ability to measure return on investment. And of those successfully blazing the path to ROI measurement, most are doing so on their own: Fearing a "fox in the henhouse," only 36% rely on their agencies for help.

Those are some findings from the Association of National Advertisers' third annual Marketing Accountability survey, conducted with Marketing Management Analytics. The survey of 101 senior-level marketers conducted between April and May found one-third satisfied with their ability to measure and act on ROI, up from 19% one year ago. Still, 20% reported that although they are making rapid progress, they haven't completed the process. For the remaining half, ROI measurement remains a conundrum.

"A lot of effort's required to collect and clean the data," said survey respondent Stephen Dull, VP-strategy at VF Corp., which has in the past several years made understanding marketing ROI a high priority. "It is a massive task."

Like most respondents with successful programs, VF did not rely substantially on its agency partners to determine marketing accountability. Only 36% of that group had their agencies involved. "The survey didn't ask why," said MMA Chief Client Officer John Nardone, "but our experience is that marketers view agencies as biased. Do you want the fox in the henhouse?"

Data we need

There's a student, Debra Berthard-Caplick,  at the University of Maryland who has put together a great survey on PR measurement. If you want to fill it out -- here it is..

Download MeasurementSurvey.doc

I can't wait to see the results.

The Measurement Summit

If you care about what's happening in the field of PR and communications measurement, which you must or you wouldn't be reading this blog, you HAVE to make plans to be at the 4th annual Summit on Measurement.  It's a great gathering of measurement mavens and gurus. I'll be doing our usual "PR Measurement 101" session with Dr Don Stacks and Dr. Brad Rawlins, along with David Geddes from Fleishman. And if you thought France vs Portugal in the World Cup  was exciting, that's nothing compared to the battle of the minds between the "Team Measurement" and "The Metricsexuals"  scheduled to take place Friday morning. And, or course, you haven't lived until you've been up to your elbows in butter and clam broth  and you've sprayed your largest client  with lobster juice at the clambake at Shankhassick Farm.  As an added bonus, if you've ever used, or thought about using our DIY Dashboard software you'll definitely want to join us for our user group meeting on the Tuesday before the Summit (September 24).