Social Media Debate: Setting Goals or Being Where our Stakeholders Are

I mentioned in an earlier blog an IABC Networking Nine dinner I attended November 16th.

These dinners include about nine people who know something about a specific topic. The topic for the November 16th dinner was blogging. This quickly became social media in general.

It was interesting to me that while we all agreed on many things, there seemed to be two camps on what might motivate an organization to participate in social media.

A number of participants seemed to have jumped into social media simply because it is happening. Their argument is they need to be where their stakeholders are. Since a number of these folks work for large technology companies, this is a good argument. Their stakeholders are almost certainly online, and at least dabble in social media.

However, just being where stakeholders are doesn't strike me as enough. This brings us to the other main point of view, which is all corporate communications activities, including social media, should have a behavioral goal driving them. That is, in the long run, social media communications should be intended to increase the likelihood of some behavioral goal. Such goals might include increasing:

• Employee engagement and reducing turnover
• Customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Shareholder likelihood to buy and hold stock
• Regulator and legislator likelihood to include the organization's point of view in drafting legislation and regulations
• Community willingness to have a company facility sited in their neighborhood

and so forth.

Organizations will always need to prioritize activities and resource allocation to thrive and even survive. The way they do this is by setting goals and screening activities and allocations by how much they contribute to achieving those goals.

So, I agree that it's a good idea to be where your stakeholders are. But I still want to know what you are doing there and why.

What do you think?

PRSA Has Its MBA Initiative Backwards

In the Spring issue of PRSA's The Public Relations Strategist there is an article by Ray Crockett, APR, and Anthony D'Angelo, APR, entitled "PRSA's MBA Initiative." The gist of the article is PRSA is trying to get MBA programs to include "strategic communications" in their curricula. They want MBA students to "appreciate the benefits -- and the perils -- of communicating or not communicating to key stakeholders." An additional benefit they propose is "future generations of executives who will better appreciate PR people and what the profession can accomplish...."

While this is, perhaps, a noble effort, I think they've got it backwards. They should be working to ensure that anyone who works in public relations has a basic understanding of business principles. And if PRSA wants its accreditation program (APR) to be meaningful, it should include a full unit that addresses the different parts of an organization that come together to create its business model.

By way of disclosure, I am very biased on this topic. I have an MBA. I also have been a member of PRSA for many years. I served on the Chicago chapter board of directors and have provided pro bono research support to both the Chicago and San Francisco chapters. However, I am not APR (or ABC).

PRSA's APR Study Guide offers all sorts of great information on the practice of PR, including a rather nice chapter on research. However, when it comes to business understanding, the guide offers a "Business Literacy Scavenger Hunt" in which the authors ask a number of questions regarding the organization for which the student works. This is a nice start, but it doesn't really get at what the components of a business are and how they work together to create the overall business model.

Instead of a scavenger hunt, the curriculum should include a unit on:

1. Business strategy and policy
2. Accounting and finance
3. Research and development
4. Organization behavior and/or human resources
5. Marketing
6. Production
7. How these all fit together to make a successful organization

What initially provoked this entry is an underlying concept that comes from marketing, which was one of my majors when I was getting my MBA: The job of marketing is not so much to educate a target audience about what the organization offers, as it is to understand the target so the organization can develop and offer the products and services the target wants and needs. Even if the organization's product or service is immutable (which suggests the organization will not survive), the goal then should be to find the target audience that wants or needs it.

So it's great that PRSA thinks it should get MBAs to learn about communications. But if PR wants the influential seat at the table we talk about so much, PR people need to understand business and help business managers achieve business goals.

The problem is not MBAs who don't understand communicators, it is communicators who don't understand MBAs.

The conversational medium

About a week ago I enjoyed a very stimulating discussion with some of my colleagues from the Institute for PR's Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation. We were talking about social media and how it is challenging to comment on in a way that is useful to the PR practitioner community, because it morphs so rapidly.

It occurred to me that what morphs rapidly in social media is technology, but the technology is not what makes social media important to us.

The history of the communications industry, as we know it, has been primarily one-sided. Yes, the PR masters of old all recommended research and understanding publics before communicating with them, and advertising agencies have done this kind of research for years. But we in public relations, for the most part, have ignored the advice and the practice. We've considered communications to be one way. We send to our target audiences the information we want them to have. Generally there has not been, nor have we actively sought, a feedback loop.

What is new about social media is our target audiences have found their voices. We can, and many do, use social media for one-way messaging. But that's the same thing advertisers did in the 1950s when they sponsored a television show. What is new is we now can listen and, what is more, engage in conversations. Even if we did research in the past, we couldn't really engage in conversations the way we can now through social media. The research became a static document that told us something about a group of people at the time we did the research. Social media gives us a window into what our stakeholders want and need today, and it will give us a window into any changes in these wants and needs tomorrow.

So, in my mind, the real change engendered by social media is this ability to engage in conversations. We're still learning how to use these conversations, but they are what's new. Certainly, the technology is enabling, but it is not the big story, the conversation and what we can make of them is.

Still, the conversations our employers and corporate clients have with interested parties is not the whole story. These people talk to each other as well, and, if they think they need a community, they develop one, and these have their own lives and live by their own rules. They are not like the old media in any way except that they can be widely read by anyone who has access to a computer. Still, it's the conversation that's new, and in my mind, that's what we must learn to manage.

Building Influence through Opposition (and Other) Research

Running Business Like a Political Campaign
Since my last entry, I've been collecting information from colleagues to determine whether they ever have used "Opposition Research" or heard of its use in their work. Some of these folks think my topic really is competitive research. I agree, except I would say "opposition research" is a refined kind of competitive research. As Rick Murray, president, Edelman Digital wrote:

Bottom line, if you run your brand, business or initiative like a political campaign, it’s a lot easier to identify and activate your allies, and identify and develop counter-strategies for your detractors [if you use an "Opposition Research" approach].

Game Theory
A number of colleagues also noted the link between opposition research and game theory. One area of business practice that employs a great deal of gamesmanship is mergers and acquisitions. Kirk Brewer, CEO, Core Communications Partners, has worked extensively in this area. According to Kirk:

Opposition research is done all the time in hostile (and even some friendly) merger and acquisition situations, as well as proxy fights and other challenges to board authority. It's been a part of those "control campaigns" for 40 years or more.

The purposes, Kirk noted, include trying to get the share price up (for the acquisition candidate) or down (for the acquirer).

In another case Kirk cited, potential acquirer "A" was competing with potential acquirer "B" for the same target. "A" used opposition research to find information about "B" demonstrating "B" was not as appealing as an acquisition partner. "A" shared with target shareholders information, in the form of full-page newspaper advertisements, about missteps "B" had made. Meanwhile the target took advantage of the rivalry between "A" and "B" to push the target share price up.

Assumptions and Secondary Research
One preconception I brought to the "Opposition Research" discussion was that it was, for the most part, secondary research -- looking at web sites, analyst reports, news reports, executive speeches, online discussions, etc. These definitely are the first places to look for information. As Matt Heinz, principal & chief marketer at Heinz Marketing, said:

Don't assume that something sitting on a competitor's Web site has already been read, consumed and/or analyzed by your client or business. More often than not, your discovery and unique analysis of what you've found (as well as the opportunity for your business) will be fresh and welcome.

My own experience has shown this time and time again. Some of the most obvious and simple research projects can yield tremendous benefits in the eyes of your client.

Primary Research
However, secondary research should not necessarily be the whole story. David Geddes, SVP and Partner at Fleishman Hillard, and a member of IPR's Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation* noted that he sees primary research as important, too. He says F-H does "target audience awareness, attitude, and perception research. We use surveys in this case."

The Bottom Line: Insight
To me the real bottom line is still the insight that we can pull from the data. This requires not only finding information about competitors, but making sense of it. Taking that information and projecting what the competing company is likely to do as a result. Going further and putting that in the context of your client's business goals and objectives.

Mark Heisten, senior business leader, head of commercial product marketing at Visa Inc. recalled working at a company with a dedicated competitive intelligence function:

[The competitive intelligence] team did a fantastic job not only researching, but acting like internal experts [on] the competitive offerings. As a result, they knew their relative strengths and weaknesses. Sales benefited from it; ... they were able to counter the competitive sales pitches. Product benefited from it; ... they better understood how the competitive products worked. Marketing and communications benefited; ... they understood how to message our solutions appropriately.

Knowledge as the Key to Influence
Mark's example demonstrates well done research going well beyond communications to support and drive better business decisions for the entire organization. One of the nice things about research is that frequently it is commissioned by communications people. But, when designed and used correctly, it can give these communications folks organizational knowledge and influence that reaches to the C-suite.

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I work with organizations going through a change in strategic direction (merger, acquisition, building program, new product launch, change program, etc.) and that are concerned about what will happen with their relationships with key stakeholders (customers, employees, investors) if they send out the wrong, or confusing, messages. After working with me, my clients have a clear understanding of what their messages should be. I also provide them recommendations on other actions they can take to enhance their relationships with stakeholders.

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*The Institute for Public Relations, (IPR) is dedicated to the "science beneath the art" of PR. It focuses on PR research and education. If you are interested in the topics I write about, you will almost certainly be interested in IPR. You can find it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/. While you're there, check out the Essential Knowledge Project at http://www.instituteforpr.org/essential_knowledge/.

Best wishes,

Forrest

Forrest W. Anderson
Founding Member
Institute for Public Relations
Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation

Projecting the Value of a Marketing PR Campaign

If you find these monthly e-letters from me useful, please forward them to anyone you know whom you think might be interested and suggest they subscribe using the form after the article.

Thanks very much for your support.

And now to this month’s article …

Projecting the Value of a Marketing PR Campaign

By Forrest W. Anderson

A few days ago a colleague asked how to determine how much more effective a marketing communications program would be, if it included a celebrity spokesperson. This question translates into: How many more dollars in sales would the program generate if it had the celebrity than if it did not?

My response was there is no way to determine this in advance, but she could make projections. The way to do this would be to project the effectiveness of the program without the celebrity and then to add the celebrity as a variable.

Developing the base projection

We make a set of assumptions whenever we do a communications program. The first assumption is: We will communicate to a target audience. The last assumption is: Members of the target audience will do something we want them to do. In this case that would be buy a service or product. However, there are a number of assumptions we make in between the first and last. For the purpose of this example, let’s assume we are proposing a print media marketing PR campaign.

Our assumptions

A more complete list of our assumptions is:

1. If we contact (e-mail, snail mail, telephone) the media with our story (news release, case history, press kit, etc.), some subset of the contacted media will run the story and the story will carry some of the messages we’ve included in our media materials.

2. If some subset of the media runs the story, some subset of our target audience will see, read and comprehend the story.

3. If this happens, some subset of those that saw and read will either be introduced to the product for the first time (become aware) or become more favorably disposed (develop a positive attitude) toward our product.

4. And, if this happens some subset of those will actually purchase.

Actually more assumptions are involved here, such as those regarding the number of members of the target audience at the purchase stage rather than in the information collecting stage, but to keep things simple, we’ll ignore those.

Playing the numbers

Going back to our set of assumptions, you can see that we’re looking at a numbers game. Our end sales will depend on the number of people who get past the series of gates implied by our assumptions.

1. How many media outlets will carry the story, and, more important, how many members of our target audience do those media reach? (Again, for simplicity, let’s ignore frequency.)

2. Of those reached, how many will see, read and comprehend the story?

3. Of those who read and comprehend, how many will become (more) aware and/or (more) positively inclined toward the product?

4. And, finally, of these, how many will buy?

Adding the variable

Assuming we have some idea of each of these numbers, our question now is: How much would each number change if you used the celebrity?

How much more likely would the media be to run the story, if it had the celebrity? How much more likely would the target audience be to read the story? And so forth.

But wait a minute, I don’t have those numbers!

Right now, you may well be saying to yourself, this is useless. I don’t have those numbers, and I don’t know where to get them. So I could never go through this exercise.

You probably can get some of the numbers, and you don’t really need all of them. You just need to be able to make an educated guess.

Media numbers

If the media you pitch sell advertising, they will have rate cards that list the number of members of different target audiences they reach. However, you may need to work with the data a bit.

For example, your target might be defined as homeowners, and while do-it-yourself publications might list the number of homeowners they reach, other publications may not. But these other publications may list age groups and household income levels, and you could look at other data bases to identify what age and income levels tend to describe homeowners. Combining these numbers, you probably could wiggle your way into an estimate for homeowners based on those demographics.

Add up these homeowner numbers for the publications you think you can successfully pitch, and you’ll have an overstated number for the homeowners you could potentially reach. The number will be overstated because some people in your target will read more than one of the publications. So these people will be counted more than once. Advertising media planners have ways to get around this. If you have a business relationship with an advertising agency, their media planners can help you with all of this. If you do not have such a relationship, you can hire a freelance media planner.

Target audience conversion numbers

Now we’ve got the media numbers. What about the numbers covering target audience conversion to purchasers?

Unless you’ve done programs similar to the one you are proposing, you will probably have no idea what numbers should be plugged into those questions. But unless you take a stab at it, you never will. So estimate. You could talk with sales people in your client organization and ask them what they believe the conversion rates might be.

Once you have the estimates in place, you have a model. (You can lay out the equation in Excel.)

Media Reach X %Readership/Comprehension X %Change in Awareness/Attitude X %Actual Purchasers X Dollar Value of Purchase = Value of Program

One of the beauties of this kind of model is you can change the estimates. So if you present the estimate and management disagrees, show them the model and ask them what assumptions they would be comfortable with. If you’ve laid the equation out correctly, you can change the assumption they differ with, and the new value will appear under “Value of Program.”

The celebrity factor

So we have the base numbers. The next question is: How much do the base numbers go up (or down) if you use the celebrity?

The first link in your chain is the media. So you might call some of your contacts, whom you think might run the story, and ask them how much more (or less) likely they would be to run it, if it included the celebrity. At this point, you’ll need to have real celebrities in mind, because your contact’s response likely will depend on the specific celebrity.

You might follow this with a survey of members of your target audience asking them how much more (or less) likely they would be to read an article, be positively disposed toward or even buy the product, if it were endorsed by the celebrity.

With the answers to these questions, you could then revise your base model numbers upward or downward. And the difference between the base projection and the projection with the celebrity would be the projected value of using the celebrity.

I would be very reluctant to simply guess on the celebrity numbers. Even if you could only talk to some of your media contacts and on average they said their likelihood of running the story would increase by 10%, that, alone, would increase your end sales projection by 10%. And when you go to management with numbers you’ve developed with some research of this kind, they will be unlikely to challenge you, because you have an information base for your numbers. And unless they have experience with celebrity programs themselves, they do not.

If you’d like to make some projections like these, and would like help setting them up, give me a call.

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If you would like to make any comments regarding this E-Letter, please visit my blog at http://forrestwanderson.blogspot.com/ and comment there. I’d love to hear from you.

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I work with organizations that are going through a change in strategic direction (merger, acquisition, building program, new product launch, change program) and that are concerned about what will happen with their relationships with key stakeholder (customers, employees, investors) if they send out the wrong or confusing messages. After working with me, they have a clear understanding of what their message strategy should be, and also recommendations on other actions they can take to enhance their relationships with stakeholders.

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The Institute for Public Relations (IPR) is dedicated to the “science beneath the art” of PR. It focuses on PR research and education. If you are interested in the topics I write about, you will almost certainly be interested in IPR. You can find it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/. While you’re there, check out the Essential Knowledge Project at http://www.instituteforpr.org/essential_knowledge/.

Best wishes,

Forrest

How Much Should You Spend on Media Evaluation?

PRSA-SF Presentation
For those of you in the Bay Area, I will be giving a presentation on Developing Messages at PRSASF’s luncheon meeting April 24th. If you are interested, here is the link: http://www.prsasf.org/phoenix.zhtml?c=200502&p=irol-monthlyProgram.

How Much Should You Spend on Media Evaluation?
I recently received this question from a colleague: How much should a Fortune 200 company spend on media analysis?

This is a really good question. Having been asked it many times in my career, my experience is that those asking generally expect me to say 5% or 10% of the PR budget.

I never do.

It is an easy answer, but not the right one. The way to determine how much to spend to evaluate media relations, or even the entire PR department is to determine what you intend to do with it and, as a byproduct, how much the information is worth. This is a business-based approach. Your organization makes an investment in communications based on the assumption that it gains some value from that investment.

So, to answer how much to spend on content analysis, it depends on what your company spends on media relations and how it values the media results your efforts generate. (I say media relations, not PR, because content analysis looks only at media coverage, and not at all the other things you might be doing in PR.)

Media Relations as an Investment
Looking only at how much your company spends, you could consider that amount as an investment. If the organization “invests” $1 million in media relations, the question is how much is it worth to ensure that investment is being well spent?

First, I'll explore what well spent might mean. If we make the following assumptions:

• The purpose of media relations is to communicate messages about the company or its products and services
• You already have tested your messages with your target audiences, so you know they have the desired effect, when the target audience receives the messages

Then your media relations evaluation should look at:

• How close the messages that actually appear in the media are to those you intend to deliver
• How many members of the desired target audience the media reaches and how frequently
• What is the overall tone of the coverage pertaining to your company and its products and services
• What is the amount and tone of the coverage members of your competitive set received during the same time period

These last two points are important, because even if your messages appear word for word in the media, and you are reaching a high proportion of your target, your competitors may be completely overwhelming your message with theirs. How effective your efforts are is relative to how effective your competition's efforts are.

If you think of your media relations as an investment in this way, and you invest $1 million, perhaps it is worth 5%, or $50,000 to insure this investment. Perhaps more, perhaps less. But that's the way to think about it.

Media Relations as a Strategic Tool
Some organizations use media relations as a strategic tool. They use it to understand different strategic topics or discussions, how much coverage they and competitors get in these discussions, what percentage of their coverage and their competitors’ coverage is positive or negative and so on. Then they use this information to position their company positively and deposition their competition. The value to the organization of media relations done this way might be much higher than the $1 million invested.

In this second case, what you pay for when you do media analysis is an instrument that not only enables you to evaluate, but also to make decisions and design communications programs that will improve your organization’s relative position going forward.

If you look at it this way, the question becomes: how much is it worth to your company to be able to run its media relations as a tool to position the organization strategically in the media? How much might this stronger media position contribute to increase sales or share price. How much might it reduce the costs of recruiting talent? When you look at it this way, the contribution of media relations may be worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. In this case, spending $1 million for very sensitive media evaluation that provides insights into developing discussions and competitive positions might be a no-brainer.

How much should you spend? I can’t answer that for you, in this article. However, if you don’t know how to make these assumptions about the value of media relations to your organization and calculate them yourself, you probably can find someone who can help in your strategic planning department. If your company doesn’t have a planning department, the person in charge of finance can probably help. You also can get in touch with me.

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If you would like to make any comments regarding this E-Letter, please visit my blog at http://forrestwanderson.blogspot.com/ and comment there. I’d love to hear from you.

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If you’d like to receive ideas like this from me monthly, please subscribe to my E-Letter at: http://www.forrestwanderson.com/E-LetterSubscriptionForm.html. And if you know someone you think would like to read this, please pass it along.

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Forrest W. Anderson works with organizations that are going through a change in strategic direction (merger, acquisition, building program, new product launch, change program) and that are concerned about what will happen with their relationships with key stakeholder (customers, employees, investors) if they send out the wrong or confusing messages. After working with Forrest, they have a clear understanding of what their message strategy should be, but also recommendations on other actions they can take to enhance their relationships with stakeholders.

# # #

The Institute for Public Relations (IPR) is dedicated to the “science beneath the art” of PR. It focuses on PR research and education. If you are interested in the topics I write about, you will almost certainly be interested in IPR. You can find it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/. While you’re there, check out the Essential Knowledge Project at http://www.instituteforpr.org/essential_knowledge/.