Great post and there are some valuable lessons for brands, although as Neil has pointed out at the end this might just have been a 'staged social media saga'.
Re: the sentiment boost experienced, it looks like at best it has been a short term boost (in this case a day or two only) which might be good, but the key would be to find out if the positive sentiment is reflected after a month or a quarter or more.
Also would be nice to understand the y-axis of the sentiment graph by Marketing sentinel - is it the number of positive/negative comments?? or something else?
Thanks Nicholas. Understand and agree about not being easily able to determine ROI for PR.
However, at Media Monitors our endeavour is to make it easy for clients to gauge the effectiveness of their PR strategies and we have been successful in many areas.
Agree with Ian that social media is imperattive these days but I still think Robles comments and critique are valid. These may also have been influenced partly on the way Horrocks has issued the 'mandate'.
Saying things such as "......I’m afraid you’re not doing your job if you can’t do those things.." is possibly not the best of PR the most reputed media company can get.
Instead Horrocks could have said "We will train everyone and make sure everyone is comfiortable with technology and how and where it should be used effectively ......" or at least ensured this mesage was reported in media alongwith what he said presumably.
Very thought provoking article on the value of PR activity to the marketing function. And agree with Nicholas when he talks about the two different levels that PR operates for business i.e sales support and corporate objectives.
However, there are two aspects that might need a bit more explanation
1. In my opinion, marketing is also supposed to operate on various levels. Apart from just helping 'sell' products and services and build brands, marketing role goes (or should go) further i.e in building a strong image for the company in the minds of its customers and potential customers. lLet's take a simple example why this is important.
When a customer actually decides to buy a product and cannot differentiate between products on basis of features (assuming they offer same benefits) then he/she can easily make a decision based on the image each company has left on his/her mind. And this can be affected by marketing and advertising and is measurable to an extent at least a change in company or corporate image is measurable, on several attributes, through surveys etc
Various activities such as corporate advertising, corporate sponsorships etc are marketing activities that are indirectly related to selling products or services and measuring the impact of these is sometimes as difficult as measuring the impact of PR.
2. This takes us to the other aspect that Nicholas has touched upon i.e measuring the impact of PR . Agreed there is no guarantee that companies will get coverage (or air-time or nowadays a part of the 'social pie'), but there is no need to just rely on judgement alone to decide if PR has added any value. (Note this is not suggesting judgement or gut feel isn't important).
There are now several different ways that the impact of PR can be measured or as they say nowadays ROI can be calculated. e.g by measuring how many releases or story ideas actually found their way into the media - this is very easy to do with media (and social media) monitoring companies originating by the dozen these days.
And to find out if the PR was effective i.e whether the right story was published or right messages were mentioned, analysis of media reports (e.g sentiment analysis) can be done so that next time PR folks draft a press release they can learn from past efforts and come up with something more enagaging for the media houses to publish.
Metrics can be tracked over time and even ROI can be calculated, the return being measured not just in terms of sales but targets achieved in terms of improvement in company's overall image as compared to its competition
So in a nutshell, I feel that managing the corporate image and objectives is as much the role of marketing as it is of PR and the measures might sometimes have to be indirect i.e not related to sales. Infact for many activities it may not be possible to separate marketing and PR as distinct efforts/departments/functions e.g is developing, maintaining and communicating a strong corporate identity or corporate or umbrella brand (CI) a marketing or PR function or both ?
My view is 'both', having been part of a huge CI exercise almost 15 years back but I welcome further comments and thoughts.
My answers
Great post and there are some valuable lessons for brands, although as Neil has pointed out at the end this might just have been a 'staged social media saga'.
Re: the sentiment boost experienced, it looks like at best it has been a short term boost (in this case a day or two only) which might be good, but the key would be to find out if the positive sentiment is reflected after a month or a quarter or more.
Also would be nice to understand the y-axis of the sentiment graph by Marketing sentinel - is it the number of positive/negative comments?? or something else?
Regards,
Sanjay Khanna
Thanks Nicholas. Understand and agree about not being easily able to determine ROI for PR.
However, at Media Monitors our endeavour is to make it easy for clients to gauge the effectiveness of their PR strategies and we have been successful in many areas.
http://www.mediamonitors.com.au/ContentPage.aspx?pageContentId=102
Interesting article and look forward to reading your book soon.
-- Sanjay
Agree with Ian that social media is imperattive these days but I still think Robles comments and critique are valid. These may also have been influenced partly on the way Horrocks has issued the 'mandate'.
Saying things such as "......I’m afraid you’re not doing your job if you can’t do those things.." is possibly not the best of PR the most reputed media company can get.
Instead Horrocks could have said "We will train everyone and make sure everyone is comfiortable with technology and how and where it should be used effectively ......" or at least ensured this mesage was reported in media alongwith what he said presumably.
-- Sanjay Khanna
Very thought provoking article on the value of PR activity to the marketing function. And agree with Nicholas when he talks about the two different levels that PR operates for business i.e sales support and corporate objectives.
However, there are two aspects that might need a bit more explanation
1. In my opinion, marketing is also supposed to operate on various levels. Apart from just helping 'sell' products and services and build brands, marketing role goes (or should go) further i.e in building a strong image for the company in the minds of its customers and potential customers. lLet's take a simple example why this is important.
When a customer actually decides to buy a product and cannot differentiate between products on basis of features (assuming they offer same benefits) then he/she can easily make a decision based on the image each company has left on his/her mind. And this can be affected by marketing and advertising and is measurable to an extent at least a change in company or corporate image is measurable, on several attributes, through surveys etc
Various activities such as corporate advertising, corporate sponsorships etc are marketing activities that are indirectly related to selling products or services and measuring the impact of these is sometimes as difficult as measuring the impact of PR.
2. This takes us to the other aspect that Nicholas has touched upon i.e measuring the impact of PR . Agreed there is no guarantee that companies will get coverage (or air-time or nowadays a part of the 'social pie'), but there is no need to just rely on judgement alone to decide if PR has added any value. (Note this is not suggesting judgement or gut feel isn't important).
There are now several different ways that the impact of PR can be measured or as they say nowadays ROI can be calculated. e.g by measuring how many releases or story ideas actually found their way into the media - this is very easy to do with media (and social media) monitoring companies originating by the dozen these days.
And to find out if the PR was effective i.e whether the right story was published or right messages were mentioned, analysis of media reports (e.g sentiment analysis) can be done so that next time PR folks draft a press release they can learn from past efforts and come up with something more enagaging for the media houses to publish.
Metrics can be tracked over time and even ROI can be calculated, the return being measured not just in terms of sales but targets achieved in terms of improvement in company's overall image as compared to its competition
So in a nutshell, I feel that managing the corporate image and objectives is as much the role of marketing as it is of PR and the measures might sometimes have to be indirect i.e not related to sales. Infact for many activities it may not be possible to separate marketing and PR as distinct efforts/departments/functions e.g is developing, maintaining and communicating a strong corporate identity or corporate or umbrella brand (CI) a marketing or PR function or both ?
My view is 'both', having been part of a huge CI exercise almost 15 years back but I welcome further comments and thoughts.
-- Sanjay Khanna