CorpComms Magazine

The issue of who measures how media evaluation firms assess the performance of corporate communications functions may at first seem a little like that old question about why there used to be only one Monopolies Commission.

However, it is of particular relevance to media relations professionals during a recession, when budgets are being cut and departments have to justify their returns on capital.

It is easy therefore to agree with the view of Dionne Parker, head of global corporate communications at confectionery group Cadbury. 'Media evaluation is the holy grail,' she says. 'It's the only way we've got of proving what we do a lot of the time.'

It's not a universal perspective, however. Take Christina Mills, global practice leader for media relations at minerals and mining group Rio Tinto.

'I don't think that media evaluation is important at all,' she says. 'All these people do is produce encyclopaedic reports once a month. It is very expensive - equal to or more than the cost of having a press cuttings service - and there are a number of different ways of doing the metrics. I don't think it's of any value whatsoever.'

STANDARD MEASURES

So what do corporate communicators receive from media evaluation firms? What do they actually need and what would they like?

These are questions that, predictably, arouse a wide range of opinions but there seems to be a strong consensus among corporate communicators on that ironic conundrum about how to measure the measurers.

'Once you're doing it, you really have to keep using the same firm because otherwise the data gets skewed as media evaluation firms all operate in a different way, using different metrics,' says Parker. 'What you really need is a standard measurement system but there isn't one.'

There have been attempts to create such a thing. Indeed, the Assoc-iation for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) was founded in London 13 years ago with such a mission in mind.

A global trade body and professional institute for agencies and practitioners who provide media evaluation and communication research, AMEC has grown from just seven members in 1996 to now boast members in 26 countries with combined evaluation revenues of more than £40 million a year

Its stated purpose is to define and develop the media evaluation industry on an international scale with better professional standards for both companies and individuals but few in the industry expect a national UK standard, let alone a global version, to emerge any time soon.

In the meantime, the diversity of approaches breeds scepticism about whether media evaluation is worth the sums that corporations and public sector bodies pay for it.

NEED FOR CONSISTENCY

For Mills, it is a key thing that's wrong with the industry. 'Websites can measure the hits that they get and telephone systems can log the calls they receive but you have all these firms that use all these different calculation methods for media evaluation,' she says.

'The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) have tried to come up with a single metric that could be accepted but it would be artificial; a figure plucked out of the air. You can make comparisons between two types of coverage but you cannot definitively say that they are worth a certain amount.'

That is still how some media evaluation agencies do the calculations, however. The Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) system of measurement has long been in use, assigning a value to positive press coverage on the basis of how much it would have cost to proclaim the same message in an advert.

This is then multiplied by the degree to which it is felt public relations is more powerful than advertising - traditionally, a factor of three has been applied.

There are obvious gaps with such a system that the media evaluation industry itself acknowledges. Giselle Bodie, managing director at media evaluation agency Cision UK, points out that it automatically devalues public relations in recessionary times when advertising rates fall dramatically.

'If you use advertising rates in that way, it will prove that PR is in decline because the value that you are getting back for the same page is less than it was,' she says.

'Some companies have used factors of five or even ten but there is no empirical evidence that PR is worth a certain multiple of advertising.'

Not surprisingly, given that problem, myriad systems have developed to measure the output of corporate communications in different ways.

'These days, it is judged more of the share of presence within the media and whether or not competitors are mentioned as well as use of positive images and logos and mentions of the website,' reports Parker.

Indeed, most systems assess the number of positive, neutral and negative press mentions, ascribe a score of some kind and regularly monitor its progress.

'It depends on what you are trying to evaluate,' says Tim Johns, vice president of global media relations at Unilever. 'If it's a brand campaign, you have to be able to measure the effectiveness of public relations compared to other channels such as advert-ising, marketing and direct marketing.

'You're looking at what might have an effect on customer behaviour. If you're running a campaign on a certain issue, however, you're also looking at share of voice.'

Unilever, he says, is a big fan of comparative data, sourcing scores from media evaluation firms and comparing itself not only to its industry peers but to other companies in the FTSE 100 index to determine how its net positive coverage (a measure derived from subtracting negative mentions from positive ones) ranks.

'The key issue is: are you getting the coverage that you deserve?' he says. 'My view is that you always should be getting that but what we need is a comparative methodology.

'If you have a positive article about your company on page 27 of The Daily Telegraph, is it worth less than a page one article saying the same thing in the Sun ? Or is it worth more because the Telegraph has a different ABC demographic?'

There are other failings, according to in-house corporate communicators. Parker says that very often people don't set the key performance indicators enough in advance which makes evaluation difficult.

MEASURING SILENCE

Lindsay Walls, head of corporate and financial media relations at BAE Systems, says media evaluation techniques that rely on quantifying press coverage also fail to take account of all the different types of elements of the job of a corporate communicator.

'Media evaluation can only measure outputs, so managing an issue so well that it never gets reported is not captured in the data or the score,' she says. 'It's probably impossible to measure.'

Mills says Rio Tinto's corporate communications department does not use media evaluation firms at all, relying instead on a press cuttings and media monitoring service, some comparative analysis with industry and other peers and an excellent relationship with its board, which knows the efforts the public relations team is making.

'I think boards are willing to listen to their advisers, both in-house and external,' she says. 'From a corporate perspective, media evaluation is a very blunt instrument used by a third party that doesn't know the complexity of the issue.'

Philip Lynch, director of media evaluation at market research group TNS, believes that the media evaluation industry must tackle such criticism head on.

'It's not just an issue of the credibility of media evaluation,' he says. 'It's really about the credibility of public relations itself. If you're sitting in the boardroom, the finance director has the profit and loss account which is an audited record of whether the company is winning or losing.

'The sales director has his sales figures, which give a clear picture in black and white of how his department is doing. When it comes to the corporate communications department, making an argument that what you do can't properly be measured is not really credible.

'It becomes very difficult if the head of PR is just making a judgment on copy flow. You have to be able to present a credible media audit that will sit alongside the records of the sales and finance directors.'

Marcus Gault, managing director of the evaluation and insight division of media intelligence company Precise, agrees, saying corporate communicators should view media evaluation firms as allies in internal corporate battles. 'We're finding that the focus of our work during these recessionary times is on demonstrating the value and return on investment of PR and communications to aid the defence of communications budgets,' he says.

'Clients and agencies are looking for credible third party analysis that they can present to financial directors to show the value of PR, often in the context of other marketing activity and their competitors.'

Indeed, a survey released by the PRCA in March found that 84 per cent of PR agency heads believe evaluation to be very important to the credibility of PR.

The cost of the exercise also measured up well with three quarters of respondents saying media evaluation accounts for only one per cent to five per cent of their PR budget.

Francis Ingham, director general of PRCA, says: 'Evaluation is crucial to the credibility of PR. In spite of the challenging economic conditions, less than a third are reducing the proportion of budgets spent on evaluation. The best way to fight budget cuts is to demonstrate the value you are adding.'

Barry Leggetter, director of AMEC and chairman of Bite Communications, adds: 'In a recession, evaluation is already playing a more important part in PR campaigns as clients demand proof that the programme is working.'

VITAL TOOL

This argument does have believers in the corporate communications world. Matt Young, director of communications at high street bank Abbey, believes media evaluation has been a vital tool that has helped its Spanish owners Banco Santander measure the progress made under its ownership.

'As a corporate communications function, we're heavily involved in media evaluation and our bonus structure is actually set in relation to it,' he says.

'We benchmark our media performance against our competition in the shape of 4,000 financial services companies in a monthly survey. It drives what we do here. We have to present a media evaluation report to our board every month so they see the progress.

'We take it very seriously. We know that some people view public relations as a witches' coven and a black art but, for us, having media evaluation helps us to show where we make a difference.'

Media evaluation is also becoming increasingly sophisticated in its range, depth and frequency, according to John Gaylor, digital products manager at media planning, monitoring and evaluation agency Durrants.

He says that the firm does have a measure based on AVE that it uses to determine the value of PR coverage but other measures are used too. Durrants, for example, has a 'real-time' service where he says clients can 'interrogate analysed content on a daily basis'.

'There are 18 different daily graphical tools, covering volume, tone, favourability, input sources and other data,' he says. 'We offer an in-depth benchmarking and time-based report.'

Media evalution is clearly moving on from print to also monitor other media. Gaylor says Durrants is launching a broadcast monitoring service that measures and classifies mentions of clients on TV. Media evaluation companies are also looking at blogs and social networking.

MONITORING OBJECTIVES

Michael Blowers, principal researcher at Media Evaluation Research, says: 'I think social media measurement has a crucial role. It's an area that's growing very fast. I suspect that online media at the moment accounts for about one-third of everything that media evaluation firms monitor but it is clearly going to dominate.

'It's going to increase the need for a single means of measurement because people are going to want to compare mentions on Twitter with those on Facebook and other media.'

 'It has to start with the objectives of the corporate communications department,' says Bodie. 'Companies set out their programmes but if they are clear about what they are trying to achieve with their PR, it becomes much easier to measure it through media evaluation.

'You are trying to deliver a certain message to a certain audience so the question is: is that message getting across, whether it be through print or broadcast media or through blogs or Twitter.'

The net result, she says, should be that corporate communication departments have evidence to prove that they are delivering results.

Clearly, this becomes even more vital in a recession when budgets are being cut and departments jostling for position, Young, however, is adamant that the downturn should make no difference to his department's work.

'Our job should be sustained through the entire economic cycle,' he says. 'You see people under pressure in a recession but if it's only at that point that they're running to evaluation firms to justify their existence, they have probably left it too late to come to the party.' 

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