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Calculating Media Impressions

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Back in the day, we measured ROI of a public relations campaign with media impressions. We took a story in the daily newspaper and multiplied the circulation by 2.65 (the number of people we believed read a paper including pass-along rate). That’s how the total number of media impressions was calculated and how the success of a story placement or “hit” was determined.

This equation is still in force today; however, the number of people actually reading a newspaper today is lower and suspect. How can we be sure the headline and lead aren’t the only two pieces of a print story to garner attention?

The other way we measured ROI was to calculate column inches for a story to determine how much ink our placement secured.  Other ways we gauged success was to look at story content, tone, quotes, etc. These measurement tactics for traditional media relations haven’t changed, but the two PR ROI calculations for impressions and ink are archaic.

Yet in today’s Wall Street Journal, I was astonished to see “media impressions” used to describe the success of a campaign by Cricket Communications and Samsung Electronics to open new markets with the “world’s largest fully functioning cell phone, the Samsung Messenger ( 15’ x 11’ x 3’).” Not only did this stunt garner “38 million media impressions (the number of people who may have seen an article, heard something on the radio, watched something on TV, or read something on the Web),” it was entered in the Guinness Book of World Records by payment of nearly $5,000 to make the event official with a judge.

Nowhere in the story today is there mention of social media ROI to calculate campaign success; palpable.

If marketing is inviting public relations to the table to brainstorm events not yet designated world records by Guinness World Records, Ltd., shouldn’t social media as a bona fide strategy be included to calculate campaign success?

Greenpeace’s Social Media Win Has Losers

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Rainforest

If you were paying attention to social and traditional media, you will recall the Greenpeace/Nestle global crisis communications situation primarily in March and April this year. I wrote about it here; it was a fascinating study in public relations. (I would’ve liked to have been teaching a PR class when this was unfolding.)   

The issue became quite ugly quite fast when Greenpeace launched a crusade with a viral video accusing Nestle of killing orangutans in the rainforest due to its purchase of palm oil from a company in Indonesia that harvested palm oil from the rainforest and sold it to the likes of Nestle.

Nestle went on the defensive on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media hot spots and garnered thousands of hits to its page. Social media erupted against Nestle, as well, and Greenpeace watched their fireworks for weeks. In spite of Greenpeace’s social media win, the losers are still trying to uncover.

The accused Indonesian company from which Nestle and Unilever had been purchasing palm oil, PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources & Technology (SMART), ceased doing business with the two global giants as a result of the allegations. Unilever had been purchasing 47,000 tons of palm oil from SMART annually.

On August 11, 2010, this headline in the Wall Street Journal grabbed my attention, “Palm Oil Firm Rebuts Greenpeace Claim.” STAR paid to conduct a third-party audit of its estates to determine research “shows the company wasn’t responsible for cutting down forest and destroying orangutan habitat for palm cultivation.”

While I can’t corroborate the research report (Greenpeace is rebutting it), I can give you the skinny:

DAMAGE DONE, GREENPEACE “WINS.”

The public relations and social media strategy behind the Greenpeace maneuvers are amazing; and, they’ve been doing this for years.  These campaigns are the most well-orchestrated on a global scale; why? Because we live in an interconnected world where videos go viral within hours, and instantaneous, real- time, in-bound communication on social networks heightens the crisis to unmanageable proportion.

The tools are available to all the players except STAR. I have not done my research on this company’s mission, values or business philosophy (here’s a link to Business.com with some info). What I can assume is that people in Indonesia lost money and jobs because of this campaign and monkeys perhaps lost homes, too. World-wide, real-time refute via social media of the allegations by STAR were not possible, but the Wall Street Journal provided the company a solid foundation for which to air its side of the story.

As I weave this story again, I’m drawing your focus to the profound impact social media has all companies. Size Doesn’t Matter!! Word-of-mouth marketing is an amazing channel. If you watched the man in the video biting off the finger of an orangutan when he opened a Kit Kat, it’s highly likely you’ll never eat another (uh, chocolate bar).

JetBlue Flight Attendant, Social Media and Jobs

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Slater quits JetBlue after luggage lands on head

Just read the current Bloomberg Businessweek to arrive in the mail (I do like magazines). Its first story about the “Mad As Hell” JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater caught my eye and that of the rest of America, too.

To bring you up to speed, he quit his job in a flamboyant way, over the plane’s PA system to “curse a rude customer whose bag landed on his head, politely thanking other passengers, grabbing two beers from the galley before sliding down the inflatable emergency chute and sprinting toward home.”

What did America do in response? APPLAUD! And, social media erupted.

Facebook pages attracting 18,000+ fans with 211,000 likes lauded his gutsy move to quit a 20-year career in the airline industry. Others lamented their lack of nerve to do the same.

While Slater ponders a possible seven years in prison for criminal mischief and reckless endangerment, companies should ponder the entire real-life situation. Social media is not attacking JetBlue in this case; luckily the employer had nothing to do with this incident – or did they?

 I think there may be some culpability on the company’s part; however, not in a financial or legal way…here’s how.

Everyone is aware of the state of the ever-worsening economy. Those with jobs are coping with workloads overflowing and work-life balance in disarray.  Companies with a majority of frontline sales and customer service reps need to examine how they keep employees’ tempers in check when hazards of the job cause stress eruptions.

It may be easier for teleservice representatives to maintain composure, but the airline industry, retail, health care and professional services, for example, should look at new programs to de-stress frontline employees.

When was the last time you interacted with a customer service rep face to face? Was the experience professional, calm, satisfactory? Hopefully, it was because employees are not trained in social work or psychology and really don’t know how to handle other peoples’ stress beyond their own (even that’s suspect).

  • Perhaps workers who engage the public as frontline ambassadors should experience a friendly course in anger management for non-offenders.
  • Maybe employers can pop for a hotel getaway on the company to help de-stress frontline workers.
  • What about engaging a company-wide spa day? That would jolt a niche of the economy, wouldn’t it?

What do you think about Steven Slater’s decision to toss a job down the chute and contemplate prison garb in the not-too-distant future?

This is fascinating, and he, too, has hired a publicist; just like the post I wrote about Mark Hurd of H-P who has a PR firm on board to manage their celebrity.

(photo credit courtesy of Facebook)

The Last PR Frontier — Sales

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There’s not too many departments within an org chart that public relations hasn’t already touched. Methinks sales is the last frontier for public relations to influence, and it’s going to take some serious work.

My day-to-day with several clients is as a strategically aligned member of the marketing team where I blend public relations squarely into the marketing mix. The offering is much like content development, event strategy, creative brainstorming to influence lead generation and, in turn, the support of sales teams who bring in the bacon.

While logically explained, there’s no simple logic behind this mash up (PR and sales). In essence, public relations has swung so far from the sales team that we’re essentially non-existent to frontline sales. Here’s how:

  • PR has no standing among sales.
  • Sales depends on marketing.
  • Marketing beats to its leadership drum.
  • PR aligns communications strategy to business goals (which are sales goals, too).

In a perfect world, here’s what I envision a highly successful business model to look like:

  • Public relations and marketing form a cohesive team with PR feeding program strategy, content, event strategy, social media, media relations, and sales collateral into the team.
  • This marketing/PR team meets regularly with sales, and PR gets a chance to educate sales about its contribution to ROI, results.
  • Public relations attends sales meetings and even conducts trainings on what PR needs from sales to do its job.
  • Sales slowly begins to understand how PR works, and when marketing asks for customers to interview, sales will open InterAction CRM and allow PR to speak with customers for a story.
  • Sales is equipped with a message map completed by public relations so everyone says the same thing to key audiences.
  • Public relations is regarded as high value to the integrated team, and everyone wins.

Is this reality or un-reality to you?

BP, PR and The Fall

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It’s not too often public relations is visibly on the frontlines of a national crisis. When the client, BP in this case, is less than transparent and is deep into a situation (since April 10, 2010) with no immediate resolution and none foreseen until perhaps August, it is imperative public relations does everything possible to position a solution as genuine, train the spokespeople to be genuine,  and execute action-oriented and timely response.

In the June 7, 2010 Advertising Age, the story “Brunswick put to ultimate test as BP grows increasingly toxic,” references a global public relations firm that is most comfy as a financial communications agency and not an environmental- disaster crisis-communications shop.

Reporter Michael Bush references the good relationship with an early start in London 23 years ago between Brunswick and BP while suggesting the Washington D.C. office of the former is ill equipped to manage the crisis and perhaps its New York office would fare slightly better.

It was only a matter of time before the finger pointing began to swing in PR’s direction.

The work we public relations practitioners do on behalf of clients indeed includes counsel for behavior on the frontlines of a crisis. (Not sure why BP President Tony Hayward forgot his media training half of the time; was it due to pure exhaustion?)

No PR firm the size of Brunswick with HQ in London should manage a crisis of this proportion independently, regardless of the D.C. politicos on staff from the U.S. Treasury and White House who have foreign policy expertise.

This situation is similar to what happens to a past president of the United States. With all the earned expertise, he is relegated to the back burner to build a presidential library and author books rather than aid and abet the new admnistration. There are public relations agencies galore on the global scale with crisis communications expertise who can help the current situation with a fresh approach.

I am not one of these agencies nor am I a crisis communications expert who would even consider tackling a situation of this magnitude. (Levick Strategic Communications is doing a bang-up job with its own PR about this debacle; I’m seeing the firm quoted in a number of stories proffering counsel to BP on how it ought to manage this crisis.)

You can bet, however, that were I in the shoes of a Brunswick and internal BP corporate communications department, I’d scramble to invite illustrious public relations leaders to the boardroom to propose high-level solutions to this never-ending crisis.

It’s ludicrous local public relations firms in Texas at command central and the Gulf states have not been invited to the table to strategize strictly about regional people affected by this calamity who have lost their generations-old livelihood. How do you elect politicians? Karl Rove knows. You erupt the grassroots machine, one vote at a time.

Now that the pendulum has swung into anti-BP mode and it’s sticking, public relations is going to suffer trying to make change in this ever non-transparent debacle.

 For what it’s worth, BP and Brunswick, at this late date:

  • Call in the PR experts for some fresh ideas and begin to repair the damage that will take 10 times as long because your public face has been under water.
  • Invite regional PR expertise to the table to develop a Gulf States public relations campaign directed at the locals who live day to day off the sea for food and tourism.
  • Swallow your pride, cough up the dough, and tap the global PR community who work with oil companies on a daily basis. In fact, contact the Exxon-Valdez PR team for counsel on this situation. They’re still out there waiting, I’m sure.

And, if you’ve already done all this and I just don’t know about it, well, forgive me. Glad to hear it.