Shopping Measurement

By Katie Eickhoff, Analyst

During my time at CARMA I’ve come to appreciate that useful data can be found everywhere. At CARMA, we look at how words are used in all mediums -- print, online, and broadcast and in traditional and social media -- and we see reams of data. 

Retailers look at consumer behavior in their stores and they see reams of data as well. For example, grocery stores track shoppers’ movements through their aisles. Anthropologie analyzed what their customers want to shop for and how they want to do it, and then used this information to make itself into one of the most valuable brands in the United States.  Many consumers became acutely aware of how effective such techniques are after reading the New York Times Magazine article a few weeks ago on how Target tracks customer shopping habits. And no consumer was more amazed and shocked by the power of Target's data collection efforts than that poor, anonymous father.

Photo by laverrue via FlickrIf you want to learn more about how retailers track consumer behavior in stores and online, you can look at sites like The Common Data project. And for some interesting reading, spend some good ‘ole Googling time on topics related to human-computer interaction (i.e. “parasocial presence” and “experiential association”) and online marketing by examining the works of Andreas Kitzmann and Stephen M. Engel.

The retail sector can be a useful example for PR and measurement professionals on the need to tie their measurements back to their organization’s bottom line results. Just as retailers track consumer behavior to improve their shopping experiences, PR professionals can compare their media output data against tangible business results to help understand what PR tactics and strategies are most effective at improving their organization’s bottom line. 

The Importance of Measuring PR Failures

By Kate Bowen, Director

In January, McDonald’s became the latest and most notable victim of hashtag hijacking, when its #McDStories Twitter campaign, intended for fans and customers to share positive McDonald’s experiences, became a vehicle for the restaurant’s opposition to voice various criticisms. Within hours, McDonald’s stopped the campaign, but the damage was done – and #McFail came to fruition.

This fiasco got me thinking about the need to use PR measurement to uncover both PR successes and PR failures. While most PR practitioners seem to value media measurement the most as a means to demonstrate their successes, I think media analysis actually is most valuable for uncovering and explaining PR failures. 

In the case of #McDStories, the campaign's failure was obvious from the start and measuring the campaign's results would have shown what was already widely known.  But for many PR campaigns, success or failure will not be evident, and careful media content analysis is required to make such determinations.  And when such campaigns are not successes, media analysis and measurement can help unearth why they failed. 

For instance, media analysis can reveal which of your key messages resonated the least with the media and which journalists or media outlets you targeted had the least impactful coverage. From there, media measurement enables you to examine why those certain messages failed or why those certain journalists or media outlets were not as receptive to your outreach efforts. 

Above all, media measurement allows you to avoid the biggest mistake of them all:  failing to learn and improve from your past failures. To me, this is the biggest benefit of media measurement and analysis, as it enables PR practitioners to learn lessons from past failures and incorporate these findings into improving and refining their media outreach efforts.

I'd love to hear from you readers about how you used media measurement to identify your campaign failures and how you learned from them to improve and refine your media outreach strategies and tactics. 

Re-evaluating the ROPEs

By Jillian Baronoff, Analyst

The success or failure of a PR campaign often depends on a four-part process called ROPE: Research, Objectives, Programming, and Evaluation. 

• Research: Identify the opportunity, problem, or issue faced by an organization and its targeted audience. 
• Objectives: Establish specific and measurable actions that support an organization’s communications goals. 
• Programming: Plan and implement activities derived from an organization’s objectives. 
• Evaluation: Define outcomes, impact, and effectiveness of a PR Program.

While all parts of ROPE are vital, PR practitionerPhoto credit: stock.xchngs often make the critical mistake of overlooking the evaluation phase or solely quantifying PR outputs in terms of impressions and advertising value equivalency. Or, too often, the evaluation phase is thought about after the implementation phase is completed rather than at the beginning of the process. When PR evaluation methods are not discussed before the onset of a campaign and are not used during the campaign, organizations cannot effectively determine the impact of PR programs on objectives in real-time. This causes organizations to miss out on opportunities to adjust the campaign’s strategies and tactics, and, as a result, organizations are limited in how they can adapt to issues that arise during a PR campaign life cycle. 

To enable PR practitioners to react to unforeseen circumstances of a PR campaign, organizations must put in place procedures for ongoing evaluation during a campaign’s timeline. One such method that is often overlooked by PR professionals is content analysis. At CARMA, we use content analysis to measure PR outputs by determining whether the key issues and messages disseminated by PR practitioners receive media exposure. This process of ongoing conversation measurement allows PR teams to listen, adapt, and tailor messages to effectively meet communications objectives and goals. 

Although content analysis is underutilized in the PR industry, the results are undeniable. Public relations professionals can use this method to maximize the effect of communications programs and receive quality insight into their overall “media health.” As a result, organizations can gain an advantage in the communication space by anticipating road blocks throughout a PR campaign’s life cycle.

CARMA at the PRSA NCC Measurement Panel

Thanks to PRSA's National Capital Chapter for hosting yesterday's panel discussion on the latest measurement trends and practices, with a focus on how PR professionals can better analyze, interpret, and understand their media performances in the increasingly blurred social media landscape. Featured panelists included Barbara Coons of Edelman/StrategyOne (@StrategyOne), Johna Burke of BurrellesLuce (@GoJohnaB), Scott Arenson of Golin Harris (@scottarenson), and CARMA's own Alan Chumley (@alanchumley). A couple of key takeaways from the panel:

- Don't go into media measurement blind: As Coons said in her piece focused on public affairs "craft metrics specific to the end objectives." Burke had another great insight that "until 'busy' is a metric, we need to go by our organizational objectives."

- Go beyond the data and numbers: Per Coons, this is necessary to "see the insights the data presented."

- Related to the above, make sure humans stay involved: Burke stressed that "you still need the human approach to figure out what it [the data] means," while Arenson characterized the person who evaluates the data as "the opinion leader."

Alan also emphasized thinking about ROI vs. roi in his presentation, "Think Bigger, Integrate, Correlate," which focused on the quickly eroding dividing lines between PR, marketing, and advertising. Theorizing that because these fields are becoming a cross-discipline, cross-disciplined measurement is necessary. The takeaway here was considering analytics in terms of value, integrating multiple disciplines into PR strategies, and using a broader range of methods for analysis (topics also discussed in CARMA's white paper, "The 7Cs of Social Media Measurement").

Some of the panelists' presentations are already available online. Find Barbara Coons' slides here and Alan Chumley's slides here (or the video of his presentation).

So how did discussion of the media measurement panel fare on Twitter? Here's our look at some graphics speaking to the nature of the conversation during the event:  

Aside from the obvious attention on the panel itself, StrategyOne's Beltway Barometer (a research product that targets the most politically elite, influential, and engaged citizens living in Washington, DC and the immediate suburbs) displayed a decidedly strong showing in the Twittersphere. Below, the word cloud hits on speaker topics with quite a few links to photos/presentations thrown in there for good measure.

 

These word clouds of Extracted Entities and Popular Phrases reflect general information on yesterday's panel as well as the overarching theme of social media measurement strategies.

The full Twitter analysis on the #prsa_ncc hashtag from this morning is available here.

CARMA USA's Paper on Social Media Measurement

We've blogged before--though in brief only--about the 7Cs of social media measurement and the 5Ps of influence. 

Here is an expanded piece that we've been tinkering with and we'd welcome feedback on. 

It articulates the 7Cs, the 5Ps, UPPERCASE ROI vs. lowercase roi, the need for a multi-method aproach, and some high level for now thinking on layers of an 'index' of sorts.