Public Relations Measurement and Ad Value Equivalents

By: Dan

The Wall Street Journal’s recent piece on the “value of buzz” addressed public relations measurement and the long-standing issue of Ad Value Equivalents, or valuing earned media by comparing it to the cost of an equivalent advertising spot.

Many clients lean on ad equivalencies for public relations campaign measurement. The client may have a very metric-driven culture or simply a desire to quantify the results of their investment in public relations. The problem with this approach is the assumption that the value of an article and the value of ads are equivalent, and that calculating the value in this way gives you an accurate measure of ROI.

Courtesy of Louise Docker

As an advertiser, you have complete control of the ad’s message and its placement. And it’s fair to assume that you’d publicize your company’s positive attributes. In public relations, we publicize our mostly B2B clients’ positive attributes, and we consider placement as well, weighing the sophistication of our clients’ customers, which publications are most likely to influence customer decisions and what type of story would deliver our client’s message in a decision-influencing context.

The message in an article and an ad may wind up being the same, but there are fundamental differences in who is delivering the message and how it is received. The major difference is that a successful PR placement is delivered through a story that carries the implicit, independent endorsement of an outlet, editor and author trusted by the reader. Reducing ROI to an ad value equivalent fails to capture this difference and thus the true value of earned media. What is the alternative then?

Effective measurement of public relations requires clear program objectives as well as research and customer engagement before, during and after an initiative. What are your communications objectives? How aware are customers and potential customers of your messages around these objectives? How well do they understand what you are trying to say? How does their awareness, attitude and understanding change between the start and end of an initiative? It is also important to link PR back to business outcomes. What impact has the initiative had on sales, subscriptions, client engagements and/or enrollment compared to pre-campaign benchmarks?

Are answering these questions and providing a broader view of a campaign’s effectiveness as easy as scratching out some ad equivalency calculations? Certainly not. Companies often cite a lack of time and resources necessary to research and mine data to gauge the effectiveness of a campaign. Also, the results do not yield that desirable apples-to-apples comparison of ad, marketing and PR spend.

However, what this approach lacks in simplicity it makes up for in a truer understanding of program effectiveness and insight into how campaign’s can be improved moving forward.

When Media Interviews Go Awry

By: Dan

To paraphrase Robert Burn, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”  As it relates to corporate public relations, Research in Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis’ recent BBC interview offers an example.

BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones spoke with Lazaridis about the firm’s new Playbook tablet. After seeing the device put through its paces, Cellan-Jones shifted gears, inquiring about RIM’s recent disputes with India and some Middle Eastern countries, referring to the “problems you’ve had in terms of security” over the countries’ desire for RIM to grant them network monitoring access. We see a visibly uncomfortable Lazaridis call the question unfair, stating that this is a “national security issue” not a question of RIM’s security, before declaring the interview over and getting up to leave.

Reaction in traditional media and the blogosphere hammered the way Lazaridis dealt with the situation, some suggesting that his days with RIM are numbered.

When talking to the media, spokespeople need to consider more than their agenda and prepare accordingly. Without having messages and strategies in place to handle difficult questions, spokespeople run the risk of appearing evasive and possibly amplifying negative messages.

Was the BBC being unfair as Lazaridis suggested?  Did it warrant ending the interview on the spot?

Few instances warrant bringing an interview to an abrupt end. And, while Cellan-Jones’ phrasing may not have accurately captured the India/Middle East issue, Blackberry’s ubiquity in this region makes it a topic of note for existing and potential customers. Should they buy the new Playbook tablet if RIM’s service is going to be compromised or shut down?

Questions on the topic, while not comfortable or welcome, should not be a surprise, and Lazaridis should have been prepared with the techniques and crisis management messaging to address the issue. For instance, security stands as one of RIM’s core principles. Many consider its hyper-secure network as the gold standard when it comes to mobile enterprise email. Lazaridis squandered a great opportunity to sidestep the sticky India/Middle East question and reinforce RIM’s high security standards.

What can Lazaridis do now?

  • Explain why he was upset by elaborating on the notion that this is a national security issue in these countries, NOT a security issue for RIM.
  • Reinforce the fact that the RIM network’s unimpeachable security remains the standard to which others are compared.
  • Offer an olive branch to the countries by noting that RIM understands the security challenges they face and is committed to finding a mutually beneficial solution.

While we can never fully prevent things from going awry, we can try to anticipate and prepare for times when they do.