Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Hi Chris,

I have worked for India's largest PR firm for technology company for a year. Our company was using a visibility index technique to quantify to our clients the amount of work done.

Firstly every client has a fixed number of target clips he wants us to deliver. This is the total number of reasonable media hits received in the month ( reasonable here means that it should not just be a mere mention in an industry story or a line but atleast a paragraph in an industry story in any daily/ trade magazine) This minimum target number is decided after joint discussion between the client and the PR agency.

Now aside from delivering the required number of hits, the company measures what is known as the visibility index value. Now here's how you measure it.

First you calculate the base value - For this you measure the article size and multiply it with the advertising rate of the publication in which it has appeared. This takes in to account the article size and by using the ad rate you can bring in the publication's circulation and relevance. For example the most widely circulated dailies and trade magazines have higher ad rates. Now you might argue that some magazines' ad rates might not be reflective of their circulation figures but that's not the point. Because many magazines and dailies exaggerate their readership figures but the ad rates they set will be more realistic to their true worth and hence they are a better measure. Also the end figure allows you to measure and evaluate your PR budget vis' a vis your ad budget. But more on that later...

Also note that if there is a paragraph about your company in a larger industry story then you will only measure the size of the paragraph. Also different pages of a newspaper or magazine have different rates so you will take the ad rate of the page in which the story has appeared.

Once you have calculated the base value then you multiply it with a credibility factor of 3 which is to signify that an editorial is generally 3 times more credible to the consumer than a normal ad.

After that you multiply this figure (i know that is getting long and complex but that means that those who have devised it have given it some thought so bear with me) with a positivity factor. This is different depending on the tone of the story. The positivity factor is 1 for a positive story, 1.5 for a positive story with the name in the headline, .75 for a neutral story and -1 for a negative story.

This is your final figure called the Total Visibility (Phew!)
This procedure can be used to measure your print stories as well as television stories. Just use the ad rates for the channel for the time slot in which the story has appeared, rest remains the same

Also to make sure the agency is not getting the numbers through irrelevant publications, the client identifies an umbrella list of all print publications and t.v. channels relevant for the company to appear in. Also it can identify it's top 3 in each segment(business dailies, trade publications and general dailies each segment to have 3 each) to which it assigns an 'A' grade. Generally there has to a set no. of A catg. hits every month. (This is generally set at 1 A to every 2 non A)

Now for comparison with the competition, similar procedure is followed for measuring visibility of the clients' competitors and final figures are compared. There are other standards and ways of measurements PR value delivered as well but believe it or not, this is amongst the simplest and most widely accepted ones. Specially in Asia and Europe.

Hope that helped!

Jayesh

You say, "I want to develop a framework or tool of some kind to measure the PR media activity undertaken on behalf of a firm, and the effects of the activity."

If I'm reading this right, it seems to me there may be three categories being addressed:
1) PR activities undertaken (work you do) on behalf of a firm
2) Measuring resulting exposure and free media generated
3) Measuring business results (e.g. leads generated)

Folks above have addressed #2 and #3, so I'll take a shot at #1.

As a pay for service marketing guy, I need to document my level of effort on behalf of a client. The way I do this with is by using ACT!, and by preparing a weekly or biweekly activity report, as well as occasional spreadsheets describing status of target accounts.

The client sees a record of each phone call made, each email sent, research done, and so forth. They can clearly see just how hard I'm working for them - which is important because I'm not at their facility.

A similar report which details each time you send a press release, documents each call you make to an editor, and which also indicates your success in receiving free publicity might help you demonstrate that you really are working hard on behalf of your clients.

One really nice thing about ACT! is that you can set up the software in such a way that the information is collected automatically, so that creating the report takes only a few minutes. (And I'm sure the same is true of many similar programs).

A spreadsheet which lists key publications and indicates the status (e.g. key contacts identified, call placed to editor, discussion with editor, free publicity received...) as well as the priority (e.g. circulation, expense of display advertising, importance or relevance to your client) could help show that you have a clear objective and plan in place.

Hope this helps.