The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

Gartner's Latest On The Hype Cycle

Gartner's latest update on the Hype Cycle. (Thanks to Debbie Weil's blog, 'cause that's how I heard about it.) --WTP

Measuring Our Happiness by the Words We Use

Some words are happy, some words are not so happy. If we use happy words, then we're probably happy, right? That's the research strategy explained in this article in the NYTimes: "Does a Nation's Mood Lurk in Its Songs and Blogs?" 

A intriguing way to use the data. A valid measure of societal happiness? Could be.  --WTP

Public Relations Measurement To Become Sexy

"I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians. And I’m not kidding."
HAL VARIAN, chief economist at Google. From today's NYTimes. 

For those of us in public relations research, this is such old news. At least ten years old. Way more than ten years old. --Bill Paarlberg

Research on How People Ignore (or not) Online Ads

An interesting article in today's NYTimes: "Lab Watches Web Surfers to See Which Ads Work." In a effort to determine which ads work and which do not, the researchers are using eye movement, heart-rate monitors, skin temperature readings and probes on facial muscles (to measure expressions) It would be exciting if public relations research did this sort of thing to find out what PR works and what doesn't. Does anyone do this for PR?

One ad that definitely did not work -- at least for me -- was the intro ad that played just before the Times' article came up on the web page. I clicked immediately on the "Skip this ad" link.  --Bill Paarlberg

Time to Enter the 2009 Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award

The 2009 Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award, created by the Commission on Public Relations Measurement & Evaluation, is open for entry on the Institute’s website. Entry deadline is Aug. 15, 2009. The award recognizes superb examples of research used to support public relations practice. 

In addition to the Golden Ruler, the judges may also make silver and merit awards. The Institute for Public Relations publishes the winners as case studies on its website. Winners will receive their awards at the Summit on Measurement held in October in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (USA).

PR News is the award program’s media partner. The award is named for Jack Felton, who served as President and CEO of the Institute and was instrumental in founding the Commission.

“Any PR practitioner, researcher or academic who has conducted meaningful research that meets the award criteria should enter this competition,” said David Kistle, adjunct professor, Webster University and a previous winner of the award who now chairs the judging team. “Past winners have inspired others to pursue research methods and findings that are innovative, groundbreaking, and contribute to the practice of public relations.”

In addition to Kistle, the judges include: Pauline Draper Watts, Millward Brown Precis; James Scofield O’Rourke IV, University of Notre Dame; Don W. Stacks, University of Miami; and Louis C. Williams, Chairman, L.C. Williams & Associates

Conquer All Media

We're working on a new sales strategy here at KDPaine & Partners. Today I saw the Shepard Fairey show at the ICA in Boston, and got inspired:

What do you think? --Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard

Counting Words (Hey, isn't that what PR measurement does?)

In today's NYTimes there is an article about word counting ("He Counts Your Words (Even Those Pronouns)"), and what the frequency of use of different types of words can imply about their author.

Maybe this analysis could be applied to PR measurement. If increased use of causal words indicates health improvements in individual people, then perhaps companies could tailor the subtle subtext of their press releases by using more or less of them.

The article includes a word use analysis of the political candidates that has some counterintuitive results, to my thinking: The Democrats' use is "concrete and restrained," whereas the Repuplicans' is "cheerfully unrestrained, future-focused." Very interesting. --Bill Paarlberg

Pornography, Public Relations Measurement and Anytown, USA

There are few things in life as exciting as solving a measurement problem with the innovative use of some new source of data. Followers of this blog and The Measurement Standard newsletter probably share our enthusiasm about Freakonomics (see our review here, and another example on beauty premiums here), and know how much we enjoy coming up with new ways of gaining insight from data. (Heck, it is in large part the theme of Katie Delahaye Paine's new book Measuring Public Relationships, and is the topic of a couple of her recent blog posts: "Another alternative to the Ad Value nightmare" and her Optimum Content Score proposal for media measurement. [She is the publisher of The Measurement Standard.])

So we encourage you to head right over and read an article in today's NY Times about using Google Trends data to demonstrate community standards in a pornography trial: "What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer." It seems that these legal proceedings often face difficulty in establishing just what is or isn't obscene. And, wouldn't you know, Google has data on that: if Anytown, USA, searches as often for "orgy" as it does for "apple pie," then maybe some conclusions can be made about community standards. Or maybe not. Read the article. --Bill Paarlberg, editor

NYTimes: Freakonomics on Beauty Premiums and Getting Your Teeth Cleaned

Regular readers of The Measurement Standard will recall that we are big fans of Freakonomics, the book in which Steven D. Levitt and Stephan J. Dubne draw surprising conclusions from various odd bits of research. Well, today's NYTimes has, as part of their regular Freakonomics column, a piece on teeth, height good looks and other human physical attributes that, when better looking than other peoples', can lead to a "beauty premium" in earnings. This kind of creative use of data and research is often the key to effective public relations measurement.

NYTimes' Minute Waltz: Temporal Measurement

I have always found Harper's Index fascinating, so it was fun to find this list of temporal measures in today's NYTimes: Minute Waltz. --Bill Paarlberg