Can PR measurement save companies?

I had an interesting conversation with a client this week about the role of PR measurement within his corporation. While it started as a dialogue about how we demonstrate ROI and justify our program dollars, we quickly moved on to a much more interesting chat about how we could leverage our measurement program in a much more meaningful way.

His concern was less about measurement as an evaluative tool but more appropriately centered around using PR measurement as a means to surface real challenges to the brand and its ability to connect with customers and prospects. The idea is to move from a reactive position relative to the program to truly using PR measurement to look "around the corner" and anticipate issues that not only impact the communications function but, potentially the whole organization.

As PR professionals, we frequently are the first responders to emerging trends in our organizations thanks to the breadth of conversations we have with editors, reporters, stakeholders, etc. about all facets of our market. For example, Walmart PR first encountered the environmental movement long before the company began adopting green business practices.

A confidential 2004 report, prepared by McKinsey & Company for Wal-Mart, found that 2 percent to 8 percent of Wal-Mart consumers surveyed had ceased shopping at the chain because of “negative press they have heard.” Wal-Mart executives and Wall Street analysts began referring to the problem as “headline risk.”

I can count numerous occasions throughout my career when I or my colleagues were forecasting major business shifts prior to their realization. When we were representing Rio MP3 players in 2000, Apple suddenly entered the market with a hardware, software and services offering called iPod and iTunes. At the time, Rio had successfully fought off challenges from larger competitors like Sony, Samsung and others to keep a majority of the market share but it was immediately clear that Apple's entry was a game changer because of how it solved many of the pain points for consumers, pain points that the media surfaced long before the iPod hit the market.

Could PR measurement have saved Rio by highlighting these issues before Apple's market entry? Probably not, but the point is we're often the first to spot game changing competitive threats, emerging issues like the growing environmental consciousness of consumers, or changes in behavior that may lead to new opportunities. How often have we taken that info beyond our communications fiefdom to the broader organization?

The difference between then and now is that PR didn't have the seat at the executive table or the near real time tools to measure these shifts and use them to move the core business. With the relative influence of our brethren in advertising on the wane thanks to the current economic decline and the opportunity to surface real consumer insights (or at least a reasonable proxy that could point to areas for further examination) through social media channels, now is the time for PR to elevate itself as a true vehicle for change within the larger organizations.

3 Tips for Public Speaking

Last week, in the space of 24 hours, I had three unrelated experiences and each one reminded me of key elements of powerful public speaking and verbal communication.

Brevity
I attended a panel session with several reporters discussing the current crisis in the newspaper business. All were very articulate and made great points about the state of the industry and the direction it was headed. One week later, I remember three things, all of them quotes by one of the panelists.

"Blogging is just beat reporting."
"Investigative journalism is prize driven."
"The press pass is overrated."

The panelist went on to expand on all of those points but the brevity of those statements gave me a mental hook that I could remember (and have been quoting since).

Providing these brief, colorful declarative statements is critical if you hope to have your audience remember the content of your speech days, weeks and months after the fact.

Story telling
My wife Amy has been taking classes to improve her public speaking and she asked me to act as her audience the other night. She is smart and articulate and had a well structured presentation but she kept freezing up when she had to deliver. After a bit of trial and error, we discovered the problem was in her transitions. She was struggling with how to move the conversation from one point to the next. She ended up writing the first four or five words of each transition statement on her card which helped her smoothly move from one thought to the next in her presentation.

What she was really struggling with was story telling - how do I keep this presentation moving in a compelling way instead of reciting a string of unconnected information? Good story telling is critical to keeping an audience engaged, especially in an age where mobile devices can easily distract.

Imagery
I am working with the endowment committee of my parish grade school to create a compelling video to share with the school community explaining the importance of a gift to the endowment. While we could explain the technical details, we were struggling to find a compelling way to reach people on an emotional level. We were trying to link endowment gifts with their historical antecedent - the work of religious orders who literally subsidized the school with their labor. The decline in religious orders (in part) has led to the rise of endowments.

One of the committee members shared with the group the Prayer of St. Teresa of Avila (which she had heard at a grade school prayer meeting the day before) which says "Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours."
We instantly knew this was the connective tissue that we'd been searching for. Another member suggested having the video start with images of children reciting the prayer. From there, the video built itself.

Compelling imagery can activate the heart and passion of audiences to take a presentation beyond a cerebral level. Much of the compelling oratory in history has been centered on strong imagery.

What else do you have to add? Comment below.

Nation of Hypocrites? Shrinking the National "Service Gap"

A week ago, President Barack Obama called for a new era of personal responsibility and national service to overcome the current challenges facing America. Today, Porter Novelli released some interesting research that shows how far we have to go.

Porter Novelli's study shows a significant "service gap," the difference between the number of people who claim specific causes are important to them and those who actually have donated time to the cause.

For high profile categories like health research and environmental causes, the gap is over 60 percentage points. The smallest gap was volunteer care giving at 34 percentage points, but that was largely due to less interest in the cause, not more participation. When we do get involved, it's often on behalf of our children. Improving schools and mentoring youth had the highest engagement at 17 percent.

The good news is that the data comes from a survey conducted in June 2008 and we've seen signs that Americans are making a renewed commitment to service.

If this positive trend is to continue, organizations are going to have to prepare themselves for different levels of engagement. With increasing unemployment, there certainly will be a number of committed volunteers on which to build programs. But there also needs to be a move to tap those who have less available time and fewer resources in unique and interesting ways.

The way to do that seems to be bringing these problems "home" for Americans. The categories that have the highest level of participation are those that personally impact us through our loved ones - caring for our children, parents and disabled relatives. Helping connect us on a personal level with systemic social problems like homelessness, poverty, starvation, literacy and health research will be a key challenge for closing the "Service Gap."

Strategic PR or PR spam?

I read a nice post by Veronica Belmont on how journalists treat press release spam.

From the agency side, I can testify to this being a problem that all agencies face as we counsel our clients. It's a symptom of a larger problem: a lack of strategic direction and understanding of the true business challenge that the communication program is trying to solve and how that plan unfolds over time. Sometimes this problem is on the agency side, sometimes on the company side (especially when PR Managers don't have a seat at the executive table).

Press release spammers are so focused on "getting coverage" (a short-term goal) that they've forgotten (or don't understand) the audience they are trying to reach. Reporters know who their audience is and they write for the people reading their publications.

But "spammers" don't seem to recognize that BusinessWeek's audience might not be the group they need to reach to drive a business forward, especially in an iterative way. Sure, every business would eventually like to be on the cover of BusinessWeek but they probably don't need to be to meet the current business goal.

Typically spammers are focused on generating any coverage they can to "get results" for their clients or internal stakeholders to justify their jobs. Often times it is a result of having a media list that is hundreds of names long that no one has taken the time to map back to actual target audiences for the company.

I would argue that if you have so many names on your media list that you can't personalize each mail, you haven't done enough strategic planning or you are trying to accomplish too much too fast. Proper strategic planning creates long-term communications efforts focused on gradual change in a target audience before migrating to other challenges. Being too narrowly-focused on a desire to get "quick hits" without any real understanding of what long-term change you are trying to affect leads to misguided efforts like Veronica describes.

Social Media: Liberator of PR

Kara Swisher over at AllThingsDigital posted an interesting piece on whether social media is killing PR?.

In some ways the answer is yes but I think the reason is a self-delusion that marketing and PR professionals have held for many years that social media is laying bare.

Essentially, PR folk have felt like they "controlled" the public perception of the brand because they could look at coverage of the brand and evaluate how it was being represented in the media.

What social media has revealed is the conversation that has always been held informally and privately - the word of mouth that more closely reflects how consumers, customers, etc. truly feel about a brand. This conversation was hard to measure prior to the emergence of social media. Consumer/customer surveys never did a very good job capturing the nuance inherent in people's opinions.

So, in that sense, social media has killed the perception of control that PR folks had. But, for those who can adapt to a new conversational model, social media opens a whole new opportunity, as Kara rightly points out.

And, in fact, with all the social tools PR folks now have, it is easier than ever for them and companies to go right around the gatekeepers of the media directly to customers.

I'd also add that PR is best positioned to do this among the marketing disciplines because of the longstanding dialogue we've had with the media. Unlike most other marketing disciplines that excel at creating one-way message delivery platforms, PR knows how to have a conversation about an industry, brand, etc.

If Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington are fed up with PR people, wait until they hear from folks who only know how to force feed messages to the public.

We're not apes!

Rafe Needleman, who's Pro PR Tips blog should be required reading for all folks new to the business, shared an interesting piece this morning on a media company's misguided attempt to highlight its benefits over CNET (Rafe writes for CNET's Webware site).

Clearly this company wants to reach tech marketers that are reading CNET and let them know the huge traffic they are generating for their advertisers. However, a much more deft hand is required to get CNET to publish a story that directs their advertisers away from their own ad hungry pages. The pitch claims forthcoming comScore data will show they have overtaken other tech media properties, including CNET.

A better approach would have been waiting for the actual comScore rankings to be released and following up with a pitch on what those rankings reveal about shifting consumer attitudes toward all technology sites. A quick scan of CNET's coverage of comScore releases would have provided some guidance to how the editors/reporters approach these announcements.

Instead of self-serving platitudes like "NetShelter will become the #1 property for reaching technology audiences worldwide," a pitch that highlights commonalities among multiple properties that experienced growth in comScore's rankings would more likely grab a reporter's attention.

PR practioners get pushed by marketing and executives to make these type of "We're #1" announcements all the time. The problem is most of these people deal with direct communication to the customer and can "get away with" making claims like this (In fact, CNET and others have made a cottage business out of selling licenses to use "Editor's Choice" designations on packaging, marketing collateral, etc.). PR has to work through a filter that is looking for stories that are relevant to more than one company's customers.

While beating your chest and roaring your supremacy might be good for apes, PR professionals need to be more highly evolved.

What is Roots PR?

Roots PR is my small attempt to help raise the standards of the PR profession by addressing what I believe is the fundamental challenge facing us - the complete undermining of the foundational elements of our business. Among the causes:

- Agency leadership that fails to invest in their #1 asset - their staff
- Corporate managers that refuse to engage in communications
- Talking heads that bemoan the problems in the industry but provide no tactical advice to solve them
- Holier than thou reporters and editors who fail to understand the role PR plays
- On-the-ground staff who cower in fear instead of pushing forward with confidence.

I believe that we all occassionally exhibit these qualities and generally it is not due to malice but more often a result of frustration, stress, lack of communication and inability to correct the problems - all of which are inherent in the symbiotic relationship between the media and companies.

I love both the media and the PR profession and so I blog.

Roots PR is also an outgrowth of my personal frustration with the mispronunciation of my last name by telemarketers. I'll share my favorites occassionally thoughout my posts (the correct pronunciation is mic-MUR-tree)