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Archive for the ‘Public Relations’ Category

You’ve just reviewed the final results of your last pro-active media campaign to launch that new product or service. The numbers look pretty good: media impressions were in the millions; coverage was evenly split between broadcast and print; and a leading national paper ran three stories on the launch-pretty impressive. But could it have been better?

Analyze this
Analyzing issues or campaigns is the first big step in truly understanding any communications success or failure. With busy schedules and/or tight client budgets, more often than not, media analysis isn’t always carried out. A big investment is being made on gathering the media content, but not on measuring and analyzing the trends, successes, and areas for improvement. Stories are often filed away immediately or distributed to a limited group, never to be looked at again or analyzed at all.

If you’re already conducting ongoing media analysis half the battle is won. But if not, you can bet your client or director will demand it soon. New analysis technologies combined with increased expectations to determine communications ROI (Return on Investment) are making analysis a must, not a should.

Once you’ve determined the need or importance of analysis, what’s next? This is where the confusion can set in. As can be expected, everyone has their own definition of how media content should be analyzed based on their own experiences. And usually the issue of PR standards and formulas arise…and that is when things often can come to a stand-still.

But before you get into how you are going to analyze, you must first determine what you’re interested in analyzing. Here are a few considerations:

Track success in key publications and mediums based on demographic suitability
Evaluate key message penetration in media stories
Track quality – not just quantity – of coverage
Determine success vs. competitors
Success of spokesperson pick-up
Determine campaign ROI
Measure advertising equivalency (if you must!)
Monitor regional penetration comparisons
Tabulate media impressions/audience numbers
Compare key issues and/or product penetration
Resulting editorial or other media commentary/letters to the editor
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In the past few years, the anti-corporate movement (including those opposed to globalization) has gained a bit of steam.

What many people in the movement promote now is called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the idea that corporations should be responsible to all of society and the environment, as well as to shareholders.

It’s a shame they’ve gained momentum. After all, without modern corporations we would all be poorer, and in particular, few of us could expect to retire comfortably. More than anything else, modern corporations exist to provide pension income.

Sure, corporations used to be owned by a few, extremely rich people. But, with the widespread adoption of pension funds and mutual funds, corporations now belong mostly to working people.

While it’s true the average working person has far, far less wealth than the average billionaire, there are many, many times more working people. That means company and government pension plans can invest vast sums of money into capital stock, making working class people the largest shareholders of many corporations.

From a communication perspective, I’m interested in knowing why Corporate Social Responsibility gets such good media coverage and so much attention. I’m also interested in knowing what we, as communicators, can learn from them.
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Rien ne serait plus simple que de se rendre chez un connaisseur habilite et diplome en la matiere. Or, ces derniers ne se comptent que sur les doigts d’une main et les nombreux pretendants au titre ne repondent pas toujours a vos attentes. Attendez-vous donc a devoir partir en voyage et d’investir en temps et en argent afin de trouver le seminaire adequat par excellence que vous attendez tant.

Preparez avant tout votre presentation. L’ideal serait de se mettre a la place de votre auditoire, compose essentiellement de personnes surchargees de mails et de coups de telephones et qui, parmi leur quinzaine de rendez-vous professionnels et leur rendez-vous familiaux, esperent que votre presentation ne sera que de courte duree et passionnante. Pour cela, ecrivez un resume de votre discours ne tenant que sur une page, ce qui donnera le sentiment que vous ma?triser parfaitement le sujet et non le besoin de lire vos notes.

L’autre point essentiel qui devra ?tre aborde lors de ce seminaire porte donc sur la maniere de capter l’attention du public mais surtout d’eviter les pieges type. Parler de vous personnellement n’interesse que tres peu de personnes et savoir s’adresser aux gens n’est qu’une infime partie de votre succes prochain. Votre enseignant devra donc vous inculquer comment faire de votre auditoire une star, comment intercaler lors de vos discours votre presentation et s’adresser a eux en leurs posant les questions opportunes, et gerer votre temps de parole et leur temps de reponse. En les questionnant, leur esprit de competition se voit decupler et enthousiasmer.

Toujours dans ce contexte, laissez a votre public le temps d’achever votre phrase. Cela est essentiel. Attention toutefois de ne pas en faire trop et d’utiliser des phrases a double sens. Utilisez de preference des phrases types dont tout le monde conna?t deja la fin. Vous serez incroyablement surpris de voir combien votre public sera attentionne a vos paroles et ne risqueront pas de vous oublier.
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The world of PR is benefiting from dramatic changes in the way media coverage is being delivered electronically to your computer desktop or PDA of choice. Perhaps the nuisance of ink on your fingers is being replaced by a bad case of “BlackBerry thumb” — but nevertheless getting your media coverage electronically has never been easier or more mobile.

These changes now drive the development of new tools from content providers, and new software programs to help better manage and analyze media coverage. The automation occurring at the database level and through the real-time delivery of organizational news, to internal and external stakeholders, is now almost taken for granted. And the holy grail of PR — to automate media analysis and measurement — is already under way; but where should software stop to make way for human analysis?.

Media analysis programs can save countless hours quantifying and sorting media coverage in an unlimited number of ways, including by circulation, region, ad equivalency, company programs and services, and competitive brands. However, do you really want a computer program qualifying how each story affects your organization? It’s a gamble with little upside.

Just Say No

The automation of tone and sentiment has already been incorporated into some software programs, but how accurate can it be? Every story, across every medium, will have a dramatically different meaning or impact for various organizations and their stakeholders. Behind the news emerge both winner and losers.

For instance, if a negative story breaks about a strike at one bottling plant it will be a boon for its competitors. The ability to determine which companies are negatively affected by the news is very limited. Furthermore, understanding the actual tone or possible ongoing bias of the reporter on an issue is impossible to automate. News is as much about delivering the facts, as it is provoking a reaction or emotion from the reader. Media analysis solutions can certainly help decipher the facts, but the rest should be left to a team of communications professionals.

Too Subjective?

The argument against toning media coverage has often been it is too subjective — if the news can be interpreted differently by each individual, won’t this skew the results in the end? True enough — but this can easily be solved with the introduction of a tone standardized ‘scorecard’ that is consistently applied to each story.

These scorecards can really vary, depending on the type of analysis you want to deliver in the end. Many organizations will chose to tone stories by ranking them as positive, neutral or negative.

The use of these 3 words alone is where subjectivity problems can creep in. Along with team brainstorming and training sessions on how tone can be applied, one quick fix is to use the C.B.S. Scorecard instead:

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