KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

Best source of PR Measurement Knowledge

If you have any interest in PR measurement, blog measurement, social media metrics, or anything else I've ever written about in this blog -- you should be at The Measurement Summit this October in Portsmouth, NH.  The dates are October 3-5, 2007 at the Sheraton  Haborside in Portsmouth, NH.  Go here for details.

Wal-Mart generates its own consumer generated ads

But probably not the kind they had in mind. Walmartwatch has created an interesting twist on the consumer-generated ad frenzy by encouraging the anti-Wal-mart types to do their own modifications to Walmart's current TV ad campaign. You can play here:

More details on the Cymfony TNS hook up

The joining of Cymfony and TNS puts TNS in a much more powerful position in its battle with Neilsen, according to Today's Online Media.  From my perspective, it will be interesting to see how TNS balances the need for accuracy with the efficiency of an automated analysis system.  As with all automated systems, the best you can expect is about 85% accuracy, requiring significant human quality assurance above and beyond the automation. Even more interesting will be how they cope with the fact that at the moment, all the automated systems only analyze the blog bodies themselves, not the comments. If you care about comments, you still need a human being to actually read them. 

Consolidation continues -- Cymfony and TNS

This marriage should have some interesting implications for our industry. Especially since TNS also recently acquired the ever so talented John Gilfeather, fellow IPR Measurement Commission board member..  Observer has Bacons/Delahaye. TNS has Cymfony.  The giants are lining up.

More simple acts of human kindness

Watching a young man doubled over with air sickness, the man next to me reached over and handed him his soda and another woman shared her dramamine.
The woman at Starbucks gave me a new vente non-fat caramel macciato when she heard that I'd spilled the first one all over myself in the ladies room.
I mention these simple acts of kindness because I decided that if I was going to be stuck in airports and on airpanes for long periods of time, I could chose to be miserable, or I could chose to find things that make me smile. So far today, I've found two.. not too bad.
I'm heading home from three days in Hawaii -- a trip I'd looked forward  to for a long time. I love my clients there, Kamehameha Schools,  because they're smart, dedicated to their job, have a great mission and are focused on doing the right thing. I've also become very fond of Honolulu. Unfortunately, the cold I'd been fighting off for a month hit with the strength of a personal tsunami the moment I arrived, and doing three speeches in a row on Wednesday didn't help.  I spent most of my time there in bed and am now flying home with a head full of sudafed and afrin, hoping my ears don't explode on the approach to Boston.  But I've smiled twice in the last few hours.. not too bad considering how I feel.

Press release vs strategy

Linda Vandevrede gets it totally right in her piece in the Daily Dog relative to social media press releases. The big question is, how do we educate the C-Suite to realize that you can't just take 20th century tools and apply them to today's environment?  Linda's book Press Releases are not a PR Strategy is a great read for all those newbie CEO's dealing with PR for the first time, but it needs  a sequel of "Social Press Releases" are not a Social Media Strategy.  Until and unless we revamp how we think of PR we're relegating this exciting new marketplace of ideas to the doldrums of mediocrity.

It is SO time for a passengers bill of rights

Last week's Jet Blue debacle was just an accident waiting to happen. The moment the airlines realized that people had put 9/11 behind them and were willing to fly again and pay full price for it, they stopped caring about anything except their bottom line.  The mea culpa by Jet Blue's president was certainly admirable, but lets get real here. Jet Blue isn't the only airline to mistreat its customers. How about Delta, that lost my bag on the way to Honolulu, assured me it would be on the next plane out and would arrive by midnight. It is now 6 am. I have to give a speech in a few hours, and they have absolutely no idea where my bag is. And, if after 24-hours it doesn't show, I can get $25 to replace what is in it. That will go far, I'm sure at Macy's in Waikiki.  It is SO time for a Passenger's Bill of Rights because the full force of US Law is the only thing short of another recession that will make them sit up and pay attention.

Back from the Blizzard of 07

After 24 hours with no cell and no internet service, its interesting to be back in the "real" world. I spent the great Valentine's Day blizzard in Colebrook, NH -- about an hour northwest of Berlin. I was holed up at the Northern Comfort Inn, run by the very congenial and delightful Jim Kenny. While I was napping, skiing and reading, he was out shoveling and plowing all night. I got  a great ski in, courtesy of the local snowmobilers who were nice enough to break trail for me but off the trail, it was WAAY too deep to ski. What impressed me most -- beyond the wind, the amount of snow and the cold --  was the simple acts of kindness that I saw everywhere. The Dunkin Donuts staff that gave extra coffee at no charge to the snow plow drivers, the people helping each other push each other out of the snow, Jim shoveling a path from my door to my car.
Its what I've always loved about New Hampshire and its nice to know that it still exists.  And for those of you in warmer climes -- this is what a blizzard looks like:

This was the scene in Berlin  when I finally got there on Thursday morning:

And this is what the aftermath of the storm looks like:

How trying to be too cool can be bad for business

Ever since it launched, I've loved the Daily Dog from Infocom Group  and in fact it inspired us to modify the style of The Measurement Standard.  And I'm sure that their click thru rates are wonderful, but I have to wonder what their recent addition of video has done for loyalty and stickiness. I know for one that the sudden presence of  Jim Sinkinson spinnning around on my laptop is almost scary. Not that I don't love Jim, and I'm sure whatever he's promoting is a wonderful event, but  I immediately hit the mute button and got out of there as soon as I can because I'm trying to get work done here, and the last thing I want to do is to disturb anyone else who is trying to get work done.  And I know that I've been hesitant to click thru on their emails of late because I'm nervous about who is going to jump out at me next.

Measures of Social Media

There's been a flurry of activity in the world of social media measurement these days. Biz 360 launched its MediaSignal for Blogs  which is  a sophisticated (code word for expensive) service that is certainly a major breakthru in blog measurement. By combining incoming link data, link data from main stream media with traffic estimates, they come up with a better weighting system than most. The only catch is that you can only get it if you subscribe to Biz 360's BlogView service which start at $50K.