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In the 24 hours after Michael Jackson’s death, search engine, Google was inundated with hits to its website by internet users searching for information on the pop star. Likewise, Twitter, which like Google was also overwhelmed by the millions of users trying to access it, so much so that the site actually crashed. Upon hearing these facts it got me thinking about how the way we consume our news, when it comes to major world events, has changed so rapidly over a short space of time.
During the first Gulf War in 1991 there was no internet, and cable television had not yet reached Australian shores [for those of us living there at the time]. As a news junkie I recall the thrill of being able to switch channels between our four free-to-air stations who were televising ‘special’ round the clock broadcasts from CNN, BBC and Sky News.
Then, in 1997 when Princess Diana died the internet had already been in existence for a few years and most of the national papers had online versions which were being up dated regularly. And yes, by this time we did have cable television in Australia.
Moving on to the events of September 11, and by this point in time we were watching the news live as world events unfolded so that we could feel as if we were there ourselves. Many of us can remember the horrific scenes of watching the second plane hit the World Trade Centre. It was also at the same time when the concept of citizen journalism was introduced whereby the news we consumed was generated by bystanders thanks to the technology of mobile phones.
As you can see, the way, and even the instantaneous nature in which we consume our news has changed and manifested itself into many shapes and sizes. Today, in 2009, we are faced with an abundance of choice as to how we choose to receive our news: Twitter, RSS feeds, text messaging services and the like. So, by the time another milestone or big event takes place, it does make me wonder what advances will have taken place given the constantly changing media landscape.
This week PR Week published an article on how the Central Office of Information (COI) is turning the spotlight on PR evaluation. This is Metrica's response to the article which has also been sent to the magazine and its website. Dear Sir,
As MD of Metrica, one of the COI's 5 roster agencies that you refer to in your article "Central Office of Information turns spotlight on evaluation", we welcome the debate created by the COI's recent evaluation supplier comparison. Your article clearly highlights the problems with using differing measurement techniques and the confusion that they can cause. This is an area that we too have been campaigning on for a number of years.
I was a little surprised however by the angle of your article. Particularly so as I was in the audience at AMEC's recent European PR Measurement Summit at which Neil Martinson presented the information to which you refer.
Neil was at pains to explain that the numbers that he quoted were not to be directly compared to each other but rather were reflections on the different methodologies that different measurement agencies use. We all have different methods of measuring PR which explains why the COI has a roster of a number of agencies - the COI's clients are able to choose which agency with which methodology is most appropriate to their needs.
So, favourability ratings, impact scores and audience exposure metrics are not done in the same way and are not comparable from one agency to another. For example, the 93 million figure that you quote is clearly not an audience reach figure in terms of actual number of people but will instead be an OTS (opportunity to see) figure preferred by one of the other agencies on the roster. Metrica enables our clients to look at audience exposure in a similar manner as the ad agencies do - we disaggregate reading, viewing and listening habits to provide an actual number of people reached and in the target audience and the frequency of exposure. In this particular case, Metrica quoted a figure of 24.6 million adults reached with an average exposure to the coverage of 3.6 times.
Neil also has explained that the main thrust of the COI's work here is not a call for a magic bullet but to ensure that the measurement companies standardise some key areas of data collection - like the auditing bodies (e.g. JICREG, RAJAR, ABC etc) from where we all source our data. This is also something that Metrica supports.
In answer to Ali Gee of 3 Monkeys well made points about behavioural change, there is reassuring news. Metrica, and many other AMEC members, also offer additional metrics to go beyond measuring outputs (e.g. standard media analysis metrics like tone and messages) to outcomes - what was the effect on sales, share price, reputation etc. Via econometric modelling we are also able to demonstrate how statistically likely it was that the PR work had been responsible for the changes. Measurement of outcomes was not asked for in the COI's brief on this occasion to its roster agencies, hence it was not supplied.
The call for an industry magic bullet to PR measurement has been ongoing for the 14 years that I have worked in the evaluation industry. It is fraught with danger and has not happened because the PR world needs to become more sophisticated and transparent as it faces the challenges of measuring its communication to new communities (as opposed to audiences) via social media and online networks, not less sophisticated.
More than ever the most important thing to do is to to focus on making sure that PR metrics are tied to PR and business objectives at the outset of the campaign and to move focus on outcomes rather than outputs. This will take better education and understanding in the industry, something that Neil's work highlights, AMEC is working hard to provide, and an area that PR Week has a key role to play.
Yours sincerely, Richard Bagnall
A few days ago, I read an article citing a
recently published study by the Harvard Business School which concluded that only
ten per cent of Twitter’s six million
subscribers are active posters. This led many commentators to muse that influence amongst typical Twitter users is extremely top heavy and concentrated in
the hands of a few users. However, the influence of infrequent users, or weak
links to use network analysis terminology, was dramatically brought to the fore
in the widespread protests over the Iranian elections yesterday.
The unique power of Twitter to provide real-time information from vast numbers of people including activists, demonstrators and journalists on the
ground was astonishing.
Reports indicated that certain hash tags, including #iranelection and #gr88 generated over 30 Tweets per minute at its apogee.
Watching the vast number of Tweets emerge
on my TweetDeck yesterday, I could not help but think that perhaps the findings of the Harvard study
needed to be questioned. The study, which polled over 300,000 users,
concluded, amongst other things, that the top ten per cent of “prolific Twitter users accounted for over
90% of tweets. On a typical social network, the top 10% of users accounted for
30% of all production”. Significant social events such as the G20 riots and
the Mumbai terrorist attacks, when vast numbers of people used the service to
both disseminate and receive information, surely demonstrated that there is no such
thing as a “typical” Twitter user and, more importantly, that the
categorisation of "influential" users on this social network platform needs
to be reconsidered.
Having helped companies and organisations
both create and implement their social media and online stakeholder engagement
programmes for some years now, one of the first things I stress is the need
to adapt to the constantly shifting social media landscape. Stakeholder
communities change very quickly, as seen above, and companies that understand
and adapt their online communications strategies accordingly more often than not reap benefits. Looking for some examples of that point, I was
impressed by the social media strategies of the US Army
and US Air Force, which have yielded demonstrable returns on investment such as increases in
recruits and better relations with their stakeholders. When taking the time to
understand the composition of their online stakeholders, both organisations
devised social media strategies which focused on building relationships with various communities.
If Twitter and the Iranian election reminded me that online groups and communities are not static, but dynamic and
ever-changing, these organisations highlighted that a bottom-up approach to PR using conversational media which focuses on
adaptation and engagement, can yield success.
The opening day of AMEC’s first European Summit on PR Evaluation got off to a storming start today with some hotly debated issues around the licensing of press and online content. As more and more of us go to the web to source our news and the ever decreasing circles of shrinking readerships and declining advertising budgets lead to newspaper revenues falling, it seems that the newspapers and associated copyright bodies are keener than ever to target users of online news sources to top up their coffers.
The financial burden of this through the levying of fees for using content will of course put PCA’s (media monitoring companies), evaluation consultancies and ultimately our clients directly in the firing line. As the debate warmed up gasps were drawn as tables were banged and polarised opinions came to the fore. Who’d have thought it…?
Maren Heltsche, Martin Wettergren and particularly Katie Paine started the afternoon session with some great insights into the measurement of social media. Normalise it guys; don’t be afraid and be aware that it should always be analysed in the context of the wider media environment seemed to be consistent threads. Happily, this advice sits comfortably in line with the Metrica approach.
The debate about attributing influence (as well as the level of influence and how to quantify it) came up and is clearly going to be a hot topic for years to come. What I found interesting was how almost exclusively the case studies always seem to result in “… and then when it got into the traditional media, the issue really took off!”. If social media itself is not enough to change hearts and minds then does that make the analysis of it simply an early warning system to what might happen in the “real” media…? Probably not, but it does mean that although CGM is part of the communications mix, it does need alternative metrics in place to understand its effect. I’m sure the debate will be fascinating as we discuss what those metrics should be.
Later in the day Neil Wholey from Westminster City Council reminded us all that the measurement of communications is not all about media evaluation (let's not forget that AMEC itself changed it’s name from the Association of Media Evaluation Companies to the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication) . Increasingly it has to involve market research and the correlation of communications activities with business outcomes. Whether you are a public body or a commercial organisation proving that your communication strategy has had a positive effect on sales, clicks, behaviours or visitors seems to me to be the future of evaluation. As luck would have it the closing debate on Friday is asking just that question… what will our industry look like in years to come?
Let’s hope the answers not AVE..!
Do look out for tweets from the conference - the hash tag is #BMS09 and myself and my colleague Richard Bagnall will be tweeting regularly - find us here: Richard Bagnall and Jason Weekes.
We have just finished compiling Metrica’s latest Charity Radar benchmarking report for May 2009, and it makes for very interesting reading. As usual, various news stories shaped this month’s coverage from hugely popular events such as the Chelsea Flower Show to the more niche, but just as enjoyable, cheese rolling contest in Gloucestershire, where the St John Ambulance were on hand to aid any casualties.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes was the most mentioned public figure across coverage, boosted by news that he reached the summit of Mount Everest in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care. This was made all the more remarkable by the fact that he was of pensionable age at 65 when he finally, in his own words, ‘plodded’ to the top. (Well done Sir Ranulph!)
A special mention should also go to Major Phil Packer, who completed the London Marathon and reached his target of raising £1 million for Help for Heroes. His next challenge will be to pull himself 1,800ft up the sheer rock face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in the US in June - the equivalent of 4,254 pull-ups. I’m sure he will be making another appearance in next month’s report!
In terms of companies, Marks & Spencer overtook Tesco to become the most featured company/organisation this month, boosted by their work with Oxfam and their Clothes Exchange campaign.
So, to the main result. Which charity featured most heavily across the 26,799 articles that we tracked this month? It was the RNLI, who were mentioned in almost 2,000 articles. As you may imagine, much of this was news of dramatic rescues as the summer months approach, but for May an additional driver of their press was the Duke of Kent visiting the RNLI in Cornwall in his role as president of the charity.
On a not so separate note, we were invited to take part in a pub quiz in aid of the RNLI last week. Alas, despite amassing many a random fact about the RNLI and their work, (did you know that RNLI lifeboats rescue an average of 21 people a day?) we managed to come joint second. A mighty effort. Although we didn’t know who invented the Atomic Bomb (J. Robert Oppenheimer if you were wondering), we do know that they raised almost £800 over the course of the night for a great cause – and the Metrica team had a great night too.
How many colleagues do you count as friends on Facebook? I’m friends with quite a few of Metrica PR Measurement staffers – at least 15 at last count, including three Directors, one Senior Account Manager and two Managers. So, should I be watching my words when I update my status or post on other walls?
There are plenty of horror stories about employees losing their jobs following “inappropriate” activity on social networking sites, such as being caught using Facebook when supposedly ill or even for calling work “boring” in a status update. A recent survey conducted by Deloitte found that 60% of business executives believe they have the right to know how their employees portray themselves and their organisations on social networking sites. Unsurprisingly, employees disagree, with more than half of workers saying their social networking pages should not be their employer’s concern.
According to the Deloitte survey, one-third of employees don’t consider what their boss or customers might think before they post material online. I myself am one of the 33%, as it never occurs to me to vet what I say before I update my status. However, I do have the benefit of 1) liking my job and therefore being unlikely to complain about it in general, not just on Facebook or Twitter and 2) reserving my status updates for important stories, such as “Ria went to the UK premiere of Star Trek last night”. Yet, if I ever did want to complain about, is it not my right to do so on my personal Facebook page, no matter who I’m friends with?
Of course, if I ever did discuss my company negatively, it’s not just employers or clients who could be affected. If third parties can see “I hate Company X” in status updates, opinions can be affected, potential new business can be compromised and/or reputations can be damaged. For PR professionals, what kind of systems are put into place – is it the remit of the PR team or the HR team to monitor what staff are saying? If, indeed, this should be monitored in the first place?
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Blog Directory ID: 3908
Blog URL: http://www.metrica.net/measurementmatters
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Blog Description: Measurement Matters is a blog written by the team at Metrica, one of the world's leading PR Measurement agencies. The blog covers all issues to do with traditional PR measurement and PR planning techniques - such as media analysis and media evaluation - but it pays particular attention to the new media world and shares ideas and tips for helping organisations to participate in the consumer generated media space and to implement appropriate social media measurement programmes
Blog Category: Public Relations Blogs
Blog Owner: Richard Bagnall
Blog Added: August 08, 2008 03:31:40 PM
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