The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

Prayer as a PR Tactic?

So this morning I was reading a NYTimes article about clinical trials in medical research ("Searching for Clarity: A Primer on Medical Studies"), and how the results can somehow be counterintuitive. And the article mentions prayer as a medical intervention.

Which got me to thinking: If prayer can positively influence medical outcomes (which, to the best of my knowledge, is occasionally the case), then perhaps it would work on PR, too. Just imagine ACME Corporation holding morning prayer meetings in which employees pray for the effectiveness of the company's PR programs.

Now, I personally am not a very religious person, and I have no expertise or particular experience in the use of prayer. But, if it works, it works, and it would be a interesting thing to study. We usually think of prayer as being more appropriate when used in the realm of the compassionate or beneficent. Like praying for someone's health, or for perhaps for the positive outcome of some charitable endeavor. But, people pray for less altruistic ends, like lower gas prices. So maybe it could work on PR.

Prayer as a PR tactic (prayer used to enhance the effectiveness of PR efforts) would be very interesting to evaluate. (Would that be prayer as a tactic, or prayer as a strategy? I'm not quite sure which is correct.) If anyone out there is actually using it, please let us at KDPaine & Partners know. We'd like to talk to you about measuring it. --WTP

Phillip Dewhurst and GazProm: The New European PR Environment

Letter from Poland, Part 3

 

This is the third part of Katie Delahaye Paine's three-part report on the 4th Warsaw Congress on Public Relations.

• In Part 1, she discusses her general impressions of the conference,
• in Part 2 she reports Colin Farrington's take on trends in European public relations, and
• in Part 3 (this article), she reports on Phillip Dewhurst's view of the new European public relations environment.

You can read more about the Congress -- and see plenty of photos -- on Katie's Measurement Blog.

At the 4th Warsaw Congress on Public Relations, Phillip Dewhurst, VP of Communications for GazProm's Marketing and Trading Group, provided the corporate perspective on the new European PR environment. Three years ago, when the kerfuffle erupted between Gazprom and the Ukraine over gas supplies, Gazprom was shocked to discover how quickly the world media turned on it. As a result, Gazprom today has new leadership and a new direction that places a far greater emphasis on conversations and communications.

Publicly traded Gazprom is in a unique position because of its size and its near-monopoly hold on natural gas in eastern Europe. It is the largest company in Russia and the third largest corporation in the world. It is the world's largest extractor of natural gas, and provides about 25 percent of the European Union's gas supplies. Gazprom is the sole gas supplier to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Finland, Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova and Slovakia. Read more at Wikipedia.

Dewhurst's job is to introduce the new Gazprom to Europe and the US. For the last 35 years, Gazprom has transported gas to many European countries, but sold it at border points, rather than downstream customers. Today, as a result of the liberalization of energy markets, Gazprom is selling directly to consumers, and therefore wants to be recognized as a global energy player, not just a Russian gas company.

Dewhurst tipped his hat to the Houston-based Yanks on his team, who (thanks to hurricane Ike) were without electricity, water or air-conditioning, but still on cell phones dialing into conference calls.

I, of course, called him on his metrics. While he only used a few representative stories in his presentation, his agency is apparently measuring an initial goal of achieving more balanced media coverage. He also mentioned brand metrics being conducted by the German branch.

Their most interesting challenge will be to tie their improved reputation to their ultimate goal, which is winning new customers and forging alliances. Their key to success seems to be (like many other presenters at the Congress) a very serious commitment to community involvement. Whether it's sponsoring fund raisers in Africa or a local soccer team, they are clearly trying to be the good guys.

Like their American counterparts, Gazprom is also relying heavily on media-savvy executives, including 36 year-old CEO Vitaly Vasiliev, as well as Alexander Medvedev, Director General of Gazprom Export and Deputy Chairman of Gazprom’s management committee. He is a great communicator and did over 50 media interviews in the first six months of 2008.

Dewhurst's efforts are just the beginning of a 5-year Gazprom Export PR program that will culminate with a major presence during the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Colin Farrington's Eight Trends in European Public Relations

Letter from Warsaw, Part 2

 

This is the second part of Katie Delahaye Paine's three-part report on the 4th Warsaw Congress on Public Relations.

• In Part 1, she discusses her general impressions of the conference,
• in Part 2 (this article) she reports Colin Farrington's take on trends in European public relations, and
• in Part 3, she reports on Philip Dewhurst's view of the new European public relations environment.

You can read more about the Congress -- and see plenty of photos -- on Katie's Measurement Blog.

Colin Farrington, Director General of CIPR, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, kicked off the 4th Warsaw Congress on Public Relations by reviewing a few current trends in European PR. Most of these sound very familiar to those of us in the States...

Trend #1:
CGM is coming on strong.
As an example of the growing importance of consumer generated media in Europe, Farrington cited the story of the posh, conservative London haberdashery John Lewis. The head of communications at John Lewis had told Colin that she really wasn't into Web 2.0, because it was too difficult, too hard, and required too many resources. Then one day she found her store suddenly surrounded by 100 elderly ladies and the target of vigorous protests -- an event entirely driven by social media.

Apparently an elderly lady made her annual visit from the countryside into London to buy gloves. She always went to John Lewis because it had the largest selection. Instead of finding her usual choice of 50 styles of gloves, she found only a handful of choices. Infuriated, she went home and wrote a blog posting about it, and within days she'd attracted 100 other similarly glove-hungry and outraged ladies into the conversation. Those 100 agreed to meet and march on John Lewis to protest what they saw was an arbitrary disregard of customer wishes.

Of course, the last thing a bastion of British shopping wants is pictures of hundreds of ladies with picket signs outside the shop windows. Needless to say, John Lewis' head of communications now places a much higher priority on listening to what is being said about her brand in social media. Proving that even the most conservative environment will change.

Trend #2:
All media are social. This is something KDPaine & Partners has been emphasizing for awhile, and it's always nice when the head of CIPR agrees with you. As is true in the States, every European media outlet also has a website, and more and more have the ability to leave comments and post additional information. Colin cited radio stations providing photos, and newspapers offering video as an extension of the normal printed news.

Trend #3:
More choice of media. Here in the States, we're almost used to the explosion in the number of media outlets. But in Europe it's still a relatively new phenomenon. When Colin was a child there was one TV station, and he recalled the excitement just a decade or so ago when that ballooned to three or four. Now, more than half of households have 900 channels to chose from.

Trend #4:
Traditional messaging systems have declined in value. Advertising has declined in value in Europe, according to Farrington. It used to be that half the population would watch the same TV program, and there was a sense of community because everyone saw the same thing. Now more and more people are only watching specific channels of interest to them, so that common bond is gone and ads are correspondingly less broadly effective. So, for example, 75% of Muslim men in the UK only watch Muslim channels.

Trend #5:
Brand loyalty is becoming less important because you can find what you need more easily. As in the US, Google has replaced the Yellow Pages and advertising as the prime way people find products and services. So people, now armed with far more information regarding prices and options, are much less brand-loyal.

Trend #6:
Measurement is worthless!? Farrington declared that he felt that the vast majority of measurement is worthless, bad or meaningless. Needless to say, as someone who has been measuring PR for 22 years, I have a hard time agreeing with him.

But he has a point. He compared PR measurement to the old story of the doctor talking to a woman whose husband he had recently operated on: "The operation was brilliant but the patient has died."

Farrington and I share the view that far too often in PR measurement the wrong objective has been set, or the metrics don't line up with the objectives. He cited the example of an award program he judged in which most of the prizes were going to go to a food chain for brilliant work which had been properly planned and evaluated. They used every gimmick you can think of to effectively get the message across, but, as he tells it, "The evening before we were to present the award, the company went bankrupt." It seems that the food chain, known for selling to working class people, had made their food too expensive. While they were way ahead of the game in terms of going organic, the fundamental measures of success were wrong. Yes, they got headlines, and messages out there, but consumers weren't prepared to pay more for their product, so ultimately they lost market share and collapsed.

(Editor's Note: Wait a minute, that argument has faulty logic: You can't claim that bad business strategy proves PR measurement is useless. The measurement was not the cause of the problem. Still, it's an interesting story.)

Trend #7:
The New Europe: Diversity is more complicated than just language. In many ways the "New Europe" that Farrington described is similar to the new America -- far more culturally diverse, far more ethnic, and far more influenced by immigrants than ever before. He suggested that all European companies need an EU Communications strategy. Farrington pointed out that diversity is more complicated than just language. And one-size-fits-all communications plans don't work:

• For example, in the UK, hunting and fishing are very closely regulated, but not at all in Poland. So incoming Polish immigrants were having a great time fishing and hunting illegally. They'd been given a leaflet explaining the rules, but that didn't mean the regulations were understood.
• Another example was of a company that was expanding, and really wanted to have a conversation with community members. They held a meeting, but no one showed up. As it turns out, the vast majority of the community were Muslim, and the meeting was held at a place called "The Old Brewery Conference Center."

Trend #8:
Ethics are a problem both here and there. Another area in which major brands are stumbling as badly in Europe as they are in the US is in ethics, particularly in the area of social media. This example sounded all too familiar: A recent flogging incident involved L'Oreal cosmetics that had a blog featuring a fan who posted daily about the improvements in her skin. The blogger turned out to be a man. And, just as in the US, there are ethical issues about what you can and can't blog about from within a company.

For more on the 4th Warsaw Congress on Public Relations, read Part 3 of this report, on Philip Dewhurst's view of the new European public relations environment. Or read Katie Delahaye Paine's Measurement Blog post, complete with many photos.

The State of PR, Measurement, and Social Media in Poland

Letter from Warsaw, Part 1

Observations gleaned from the 4th Warsaw Congress on Public Relations.

This is the first part of Katie Delahaye Paine"s three-part report on the 4th Warsaw Congress on Public Relations.

• In Part 1 (this article), she discusses her general impressions of the conference,
• in Part 2 she reports Colin Farrington's take on trends in European public relations, and
• in Part 3, she reports on Philip Dewhurst's view of the new European public relations environment.

You can read more about the Congress -- and see plenty of photos -- on Katie's own measurement blog.

I've just returned from a week in Poland, most of which was at the 4th Congress on Public Relations in Warsaw, and most of which was also spent listening to the trials and tribulations of my counterparts across the pond. You'd think I'd have some earth-shattering conclusions about the differences between "us" and "them." "Us" being those wild and crazy Yanks who are all over Twitter, Second Life, Utterli, etc. "Them" being those conservative Old Europe types that are supposed to be way behind us.

Same Here, Same There

But in fact, I am reminded of the quote (from someone whose name I can't recall right now) that the average communications professional in the US has a lot more in common with his or her counterpart in France than he or she does with the auto mechanic that lives just a block away. Never has that been more true. There I was, half the world away and listening to presentation after presentation that, with the exception of the translator device in my ear, could be taking place at PRSA or IABC or BMA or any number of domestic conferences:

• The most amusing sign of this was a debate that broke out on Shel Israel's blog about where social media belongs in an organization. A similar conversation about whether PR is part of marketing or communications was carried on during every coffee break during the PR Congress in Warsaw. The differences in opinion were in no way cultural, but based on how you (or your boss) see the profession. You can read the domestic discussion here.
• In general, PR is seen much more as an enhancement to corporate reputation (and perhaps a mollifier of hostile stakeholders) than a marketing tool. But for every PR person that saw themselves on the reputation side of the fence, there was at least one person arguing that if you don't show how PR impacts sales you shouldn't be doing it.

But, There Were Some Differences

That having been said, there were a few clear differences:

Social media is bigger here. While the best guesstimates have about 15% of Fortune 1000 companies actively engaged in social media, my hunch is that the percentage in Europe is closer to 5%. None of the presentations I heard really used social media in a big way. Social media is seen more as a marketing tool, with PR professionals constantly being asked, "How many cases of beer/soap/toothpaste will it sell?"

Corporate social responsibility is bigger there. CSR as an integral part of a PR plan seems to be a much bigger deal in Europe than it is in the US.

Measurement is still in its infancy. While measurement has begun to move away from the column centimeter model (okay, terminology is another difference), our European counterparts are only beginning to use Web analytics.

Ericsson Builds Brand Ambassadors with Poetry

Ktarzyna Pak of Ericsson described her company's approach to protecting Ericsson's reputation in a crisis. Ericsson was the victim of a spam attack and Pak decided to take it as a test of the goodwill that Ericsson had built up. Like other speakers at the Congress, she stressed the importance of community relations in establishing the image of the company as socially responsible. As a measure of success she sited an annual employee survey in which positive responses and overall employee satisfaction went from 77% in 2006 to 94% in 2007.

Among the initiatives that Ericsson undertook was a major sponsorship of two yachts in the round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race. Employees competed for the opportunity to visit and tour the 70-foot boats by submitting a song and a poem about broadband, one of Ericsson's core product areas. The winner then become a candidate for a brand ambassador. Then the employees took it further, organizing an exhibition of pictures and contest entries. Now they're working with a fine arts academy, organizing a show using electronic garbage in works of art.

Aha! Moment

My biggest conference Aha! moment was realizing that traditional PR is to Social Media/Web 2.0 what Communism is to today's Poland. The Communists thought they could control things, but where are they now? Poland today is a garden of creativity and communications with thousands of new magazines, newspapers and broadcast outlets, millions of new shops and products on the shelves. There are 1,200 people from Poland on Twitter and thousands on Facebook. Proof once again of the irresistible human need to connect and communicate.

For more on the 4th Warsaw Congress on Public Relations, read Part 2 of this report, on Philip Dewhurst's view of the new European public relations environment.

The Measurement Mavens of the Month: The Brits

Doing a jolly good job of measurement.

While I don't agree with everything that researchers in the UK subscribe to, I have to admit that I am more and more impressed by the thought that goes into measurement in the UK. From Metrica's Consumer Pulse study (see here, too) and Measurement Matters blog, to the rigorous methodology that they use to determine public opinion, you can't help but be impressed by these guys.

When I asked Philip Dewhurst from Gazprom if he was tying his PR results to outcomes, he could immediately cite evidence from his German counterparts. And even though I may disagree with their content analysis methodology, I have to admit that Report International has certainly put more thought into it than most of my American colleagues. So pip pip and all that: Let's raise a pint to our cousins across the pond for doing some jolly good work. --KDP

The Measurement Menaces of the Month: The Pollsters and Media Outlets that Knowingly Produce Faulty Polls

Relying on flawed polls conducted by biased media is not the way to run a democracy.

If one accepts the premise that polling is a necessary requirement of democracy, then it is imperative that polls accurately reflect the opinion of the people. In England this is such a fundamental foundation of democracy that all polling is done door-to-door. Sadly, in America we have sacrificed accuracy for the speed of phone and Internet polls. We increasingly find the results seriously flawed, as David Moore has shown so well in The Opinion Makers. (Read our review of this excellent and recommended book here.)

But it's not just the pollsters that are to blame, it's also the media who pay for the polls. The media's job is to sell space, airtime and newspapers. And admitting that polls include the 80% of Americans who haven't yet made up their minds doesn't sell more of anything. So polls persist in asking the wrong questions, biasing results, and misleading both the public and politicians. What good is a vote if it's based on flawed data?

If ever there was the epitome of a Measurement Menace, this is it. It's time that Americans either fix the system or come up with a new one. Clearly, relying on flawed polls conducted by biased media is not the way to run a democracy. --KDP

Can Alaska's Reputation Be Saved?

Alaska is such a beautiful place and full of so much amazing goodness. But now, the vast majority of the world only knows it as the home of the US Republican Vice Presidential candidate. Given the way public opinion is formed, anyone who didn't know Alaska before, now thinks that it all looks like Wasilla, that most people there shoot wolves from airplanes, that everyone is anti-choice, and that they only care about oil and hockey.

I have two cousins that live in Alaska and they've been rolling their eyes ever since the VP candidate was named. The truth is that Alaska is a gorgeous place, full of wildlife and wilderness and wonderful people. But given the nature of political media coverage, chances are good that most people will never know. --KDP

David Moore's "The Opinion Makers" Will Make You Think Twice Before You Believe the Latest Polls

Book Review

Don't Believe the Hype

The Opinion Makers, by David Moore, Beacon Press, Boston, hardcover, 196 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0807042328. Buy it at Amazon.com.

Book Review by Katie Delahaye Paine

The Opinion Makers is one of those books that changes your entire view of the world. Seriously. Once you read it, you'll define your life in BTOM (Before The Opinion Makers) and ATOM (After The Opinion Makers).

• BTOM, you probably are worried or thrilled to see McCain's numbers go up while Obama's are going down. ATOM, you won't know what to think.
• BTOM, you probably believe what the newscasters are saying about the general public's perceptions of Sara Palin. ATOM, you'll realize you haven't a clue what people think.
• BTOM, you probably believe that most people want offshore drilling in the US. ATOM you'll believe it's all campaign hype.

David Moore -- author, pollster and former Gallup insider -- lays out an incredibly compelling case as to why you shouldn't believe any of the polls you read about in the media.

In the interest of transparency, David Moore is a fellow Granite Stater. He's been to my house, he was my hero after he wrote How to Steal an Election, and he works for the Carsey Institute which is doing some of the coolest research into rural America. So I'm a fan, and when I heard him on The Diane Rehm Show the other day, I was intrigued by the premise of his new book. But I wasn't prepared for a life changing experience.

TOM is one of those books that gets under your skin. You'll find yourself thinking about it when you listen to the news or read a paper, and your friends will soon get annoyed when you cite Moore's research and poke holes in all their political arguments.

Moore's major premise is that because most polls don't ascertain whether people have made up their minds before they ask the respondents how they feel about an issue or a candidate, they are essentially making a leap of faith that the people they are talking to will vote two months from now. The problem, he argues, is that the media companies that are paying for the polls, don't think it makes news to talk about the fact that 80% of the population is still undecided.

Most important, he argues, is that most polls do not take into account the average respondent's lack of knowledge about whatever subject it is that they're being asked about. In many of the cases he cites the level of understanding is very low, so the impact of how the poll is worded is incredibly important, and frequently skews the results.

Moore's most compelling arguments come from the comparison he makes between the results of different polls. He compares results from the leading polls -- Pew Harris, CBS /NY Times, CNN/Gallup, Roper -- and comes up with 20+ point differences, depending on how questions are asked, and what words are actually used in the poll.

In the wake of the complete failure of most polls to accurately predict voter habits in the 2008 election cycle, there have been many questions about the validity of polls. Moore addresses many of these, including:

• Cell phone usage: By the end of 2009, 40% of the US population will fall into the cell-phone-only category.
• Falling response rates, down from 80% in George Gallup's day to 20% or less today.
• The accuracy of on-line polling, which Moore calls "a dubious alternative."

Polling: A Major Threat to Democracy

Moore's most intriguing discussion is on the impact that these flawed polls are having on our democratic society. When George Gallup, Moore's former employer, first perfected the notion of polling as a way of gauging public opinion, he saw his work as a fundamentally positive contribution to democracy. Today, Moore argues, Gallup's legacy is one of the biggest threats to democracy that our society faces.

Given how easy it is to manipulate poll results, and the conflicting interests and agendas of those sponsoring the research, to draw valid conclusions about how Americans feel about an issue based on current polling methodology is an enormous mistake, says Moore. The problem is that, increasingly, politicians are doing exactly that. A shift in public opinion frequently dictates a political flip-flop or at the very least influences the way a particular politician will vote. Polls also strongly influence the wording and nature of legislation that gets introduced.

The truly scary concept is that those votes and legislation, which ultimately impact every American, are based on enormously flawed and shaky data that most researchers would not accept as valid. Unfortunately, it seems, every media outlet and politician are all too willing to accept it as gospel.

A Thrilling Inflation Chart from the New York Times

Here is a very cool interactive chart diagram: "All of Inflation's Little Parts" from the NYTimes. OK, it doesn't have much to do directly with public relations measurement, but it is a thrilling (yes, for those of us into stats and the innovative presentation of them, "thrilling" is the right word) way to present the data. Zoom in to see those little segments close up.

Why did they make it in a circle? Why isn't there a segment for savings? Isn't it amazing that gasoline is the average consumer's biggest expense, after rent or mortgage? Why have eggs gone up by 30%, but chickens by only 6%?

Maybe someone should make a chart like this for everything that goes into PR measurement. --WTP

Research Bias: Another example of why you must consider the source of research.

Biased research results can creep into even the most carefully designed and executed studies. That's why medical research is often double-blind, so, hopefully, the experimenter's bias can't affect the results. In public relations research, bias is endemic because most every measurement project may affect someone's job or budget, and every measurement vendor wants their results to justify their fees.

So here's a review of cell-phone health research to remind all of us just how bias can affect results ("Source of Funding and Results of Studies of Health Effects of Mobile Phone Use: Systematic Review of Experimental Studies" by Anke Huss, Matthias Egger, Kerstin Hug, Karin Huwiler-Müntener, and Martin Röösli.) (Or see a summary here.) It analyzed research on the biologic effects of cell phone use, and found that industry-funded studies were far less likely to identify negative consequences than studies funded by governments and non-profits. Researchers analyzed 57 studies that appeared in the academic literature between 1995 and 2005. Only a third of the industry-funded studies identified a biologic effect with possible health consequences from exposure to cell phone radio waves, while 82% of the government- or non-profits-funded studies found such effects, as did 77% of the studies whose funding source was not identified.

How can public relations measurement identify and reduce research bias? --WTP

Measuring the Transparency of Environmental Sustainability Reporting

Here is a link to the pdf of Measuring the Transparency of Environmental Sustainability Reporting by:

Brad Rawlins, Brigham Young University
Katie Paine, KDPaine & Partners, and
Peter Kowalski, KDPaine & Partners

Summary:

The websites of Fortune 50 companies were evaluated to determine the depth and detail of information presented on environmental sustainability efforts of the company. A summary measure, called the Environmental Reporting Transparency Scorecard, was used to rank the companies. Findings:

· Environmental sustainability reporting is still being used as a public relations tool to position companies favorably on environmental issues, rather than to hold companies accountable to stakeholders for environmental performance.

· The majority of the Fortune 50 are providing some kind of environmental information online, but there is room for improvement in the adoption of the interactive and integrated technology that is available for reporting and stakeholder participation within the Web medium. These technologies would enhance the transparency of the reporting process.

· There is little evidence of stakeholder involvement in the environmental sustainability reporting process. If companies are involving stakeholders in this process, the disclosure of such participation would improve the appearance of transparency.

· Involving third party groups that provide reporting standards helped organizations to be more transparent in their reporting process, as determined by the ERTS scorecard.

The NYTimes Measures the Words They Used at the Conventions

In today's New York Times there is an interesting graphic comparison of the frequency of words used by speakers at the recent American political conventions. (You will need to subscribe.)

Speeches are an interesting sort of public relations output; we can measure the words used, but speech can be so much more expressive than the printed word.

Some of the results we probably would have expected, for instance that the Democrats used the word "change" three times as much as the Republicans did, and that the Republicans used the word "god" twice as much as the Democrats. Or that Democrats (eager to focus on the issues) used "jobs," "economy," and "healthcare" twice as much as the Republicans, and that the Republicans (more eager, perhaps, to focus on the candidates than the issues) used "character" six times as much as the Democrats, and "vice president" twice as much.

Other results are more difficult to interpret. For instance, the Democrats used their opponent's name three times as much as the Republicans used their opponent's name. Interesting stuff.

We asked Peter Kowalski, KDPaine and Partners' Director of Research Strategy, for his comments:

[This kind of research] does bring to the surface different attempts at agenda setting, and efforts in framing the election / providing orienting cues to the public about how to think about the party/ election.

How is this applicable to interested, savvy PR people? If you work for a non-profit, analysis of this type can help to identify how your opponents have framed their side of the debate in the past, in order to better plan effective countermeasures and to test effective message strategies.

If you work for a business, analysis of competitor press releases, analyst quotes, and industry coverage can help to provide some competitive intelligence, and perhaps predict how the public will think about an industry in otherwise uncertain times.

Outside of formative research, this sort of word or phrase counting can be used in an evaluative sense when one is trying to shift how the media frames an issue, the attributes of an issue, or how a product, brand or company is defined (e.g. when Facebook made the shift from a site for college students to a social utility for everyone).

There is definitely some cool work that employs this. What's most important, from a research perspective, is to define well in advance what conclusions can be drawn from this data. For example, from this work we can't understand how each side is framing our current economic issues, or their solutions. All we know is that they are mentioning the economy.

Thank you, Peter. --WTP

Taking Public Relations Measurement to the Next Step

Measurement Strategy

 

Examine the events, actions, strategies and tactics that drive coverage and conversations.

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Having been at this measurement stuff for some 22 years now, I find it remarkably refreshing and rewarding that more and more communications managers are actually measuring results, as opposed to just counting clips. Yes, the vast majority of folks out there are still just counting, but more and more I'm hearing people talk about taking measurement to the next level.

For me, that next level is deriving more meaning from the data. In other words, it's not enough to just look at a trend chart and say, "There's a big spike in June." You need to look at the variables that caused that big spike, or that big slump.

The variable might be the activities that a PR department or agency has undertaken, or it might be the actions or strategies of the competition, or it might be external news events that take over the news hole or the conversation. The point is that for true measurement to occur, you need to be taking these things into account.

That doesn't mean obsess over them so much you don't act. Too often I've had clients get into "Variable Paralysis," a condition in which they are so concerned with accounting for every possible variable, that they don't measure anything.

How to Pick the Right Variables

The one things we at KDP&P have learned is that variables can be specific to the market space or industry you are in. For example:

• In the non-profit sector, the ultimate goal for communications is typically to either generate donations, recruit volunteers, build membership, or spread a message. The variables we track are typically events, -- major high visibility programs or initiatives that drive media coverage and ultimately drive Web traffic and membership or donations. What's important to remember about using events as a variable is that the competition is also doing similar events and programs, and you need to account for them as well.
• In the business-to-business space, the end result may be to change positioning or reputation. Is perception changing over time? Are more of your messages getting out there? In which case the variables are more people- and product-based. What thought leaders are being quoted? What products or programs are being discussed? And are we getting into that conversation as often as the competition? So you're not just looking at the volume of coverage, but of the visibility of that coverage, how it positions your organization, and who is framing the discussion.
• In the educational marketplace variables tend to focus on news events. Whatever is hot in the traditional news cycle tends to drive actions in academia. So when a bridge collapses in Minnesota, engineering departments around the country are tapped for their expertise. Or if alternative energy becomes a major news focus, professors and universities who have published books or papers on the topic become widely quoted. So a key variable in academia is the degree to which proactive PR efforts in response to uncontrolled media events have impacted your visibility.

The point in all of this is that we all know how to monitor and count our coverage. Many of you also know how to count and monitor conversations going on amongst your customers. But now we have to look at the events, actions, strategies and tactics that are driving those conversations.

Bulldog Reporter announces the release of audio CD recordings from Media Relations Summit 2008

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Can the Reputation of United Airlines be Saved?

Not Your Normal PR Nightmare
United pilots request the resignation or removal of CEO Glenn Tilton, and United sticks its head in the sand.

There are any number of times I've looked at crises for this column and thought of the poor PR person who just gave up any chance of a decent night's sleep for a month because of some boneheaded thing management has done. But generally, at least in the olden days of the 20th Century, those boneheaded things would be reported on by reporters whom you knew and could trust to at least throw in your side of the story.

But all bets are off in this era of consumer generated media. This isn't your normal airline company nightmare: Not just customers, but pilots are listing all the boneheaded things you've done on a website with your CEO's name on it.

That's exactly what the pilots of United Airlines did last week when they launched www.glenntilton.com to point out to the world their grievances with United CEO Glenn Tilton. The site's headline is "United Pilots Request the Resignation or Removal of Glenn Tilton." And the copy says: "This website bears the name GlennTilton.com as a daily reminder to everyone invested in a positive future for United Airlines exactly where the source of our problems lies."

First of all, shame on United for allowing the highjacking of the boss's name. If nothing else, it reveals a stunning lack of appreciation for the realities of a social media and search-dominated world. What were they thinking? (All you PR and communications managers reading this right now: Run out and register the web address of your boss's name. You never know.)

But even worse is United's canned and formulaic response. Dozens of passengers, pilots and crew members have now posted hundreds of damning diatribes on the web site that pretty much back up the pilots' argument that Tilton should go.

(And by the way, this is not the first website critical of United to be created. For example, www.untied.com began in 1996, growing from one customer's unsatisfactory experience with customer service.)

Finally, are the members of the Board of Directors so unbelievably clueless and Web un-savvy that they think they can ignore this? Don't they realize that when you now search for "United Airlines CEO," the first or second site that pops up is the Tilton Must Go site?

Thanks to this website and the nature of social media, I have no doubt that Tilton's name will go down in the annals of bad CEOs, no matter what he does from here on out.

But the far bigger issue is the long term impact on the airline's reputation and its ability to survive. At a time when you're trying to charge customers more for things like food and luggage, and when you have brands like Virgin, Southwest and Jet Blue sucking all the love out of the skies, do they really think that ignoring the pilots and letting this viral sh__tstorm of hostility proliferate thru cyberspace is the way to go?

As a Premier Exec frequent flyer with United myself, I will tell you -- having read many of the www.glenntilton.com entries --I'm a lot less likely to fly United. I can put up with a lot, but when pilots are talking safety issues, as well as efficiency issues, I tend to listen.

The reality is that companies like Southwest and JetBlue are constantly and actively listening to CGM conversations and participating in those conversations. They are the ones that will survive because they earn the trust and confidence of myself and their other customers. -- KDP