Join CARMA for a Webinar on June 5th!

CARMA International is hosting a webinar at 2:00 pm EST on June 5th to discuss how to link your media coverage to business outcomes. Interested? Send your name, company/organization, and email address to webinar@carma.com to register. Hope to see you there!

Data Can Be Big, But Keep In Mind That It is Still Yours

Defining, collecting, and analyzing data can be massive undertakings but the current data buzzword is “big data.” “Big data” has been getting quite a bit of media attention and can be described as dynamic sets of information that require non-traditional tools for analysis. However, most methods (and often the capacity) for analyzing “big data” are unclear or still in the early stages of development. Photo via The IBM Curiosity Shop 
What is clear is the value of harnessing big data, including making information more valuable, improving performance, and sparking growth in multiple business sectors.

Also clear is that finding a path to understanding that data ultimately is up to people, whether it is the PR pro looking to show the results of his or her campaign or analysts here at CARMA. To illustrate the human element in analyzing data, I liked the author’s following point made in this O’Reilly piece:

“Of course, data are just a collection of facts; bits of information that are only given context — assigned meaning and importance — by human minds. It's not until we do something with the data that any of it matters.”

It’s been pointed out that by 2018, the U.S. could face a “shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data.” So with data sets growing and analysis capabilities limited, it’s no wonder that weeding through big data can be a challenge.

Just keep in mind your end goal with your analysis. If you don’t have the capacity to crunch terabytes of coverage, you may not need to. Taking a representative sample might be a better option for your particular needs. Remember that the data you're analyzing is ultimately yours and you know it best, and make sure to reach out to other pros in the measurement world if you need help. 

Just Try It

Photo Credit: Mike Licht

By Elizabeth Ballard, Director

“Just try it,” Peggy Olsen repeated in the most recent episode of AMC's Mad Men, flubbing what was supposed to be the new Cool Whip catch phrase. Don’s frustration was palpable as Peggy continued to botch the line. It’s “just taste it” Peggy! Everyone in the room was aware of the importance of the tag line. “Just try it” would go nowhere. Just TASTE it, however, could be a smash hit.

Crafting the right message for your brand or product can be tricky, but it is absolutely necessary. Messaging is a critical factor in positioning your brand or product among the hundreds out there. It can take weeks to come up with what seems to be the right messaging for your brand. Once perfected, you unleash it to the world, send out press releases, schedule interviews, start an advertising campaign, the works. Then what? How do you know if you have the right message?

You measure its impact and resonance. Is your earned media coverage conveying this message? How frequently? Who’s getting the message out? Does it appear alongside negative discussion of your brand or company? Is new, organic messaging popping up together with your crafted messaging? Is there evidence suggesting that this message is helping to increase sales, improve brand awareness, or heighten web traffic? Media measurement can help you answer all of these questions and reveal if your messaging is resonating with the intended audience. It can help you adapt and restructure your outreach efforts to ensure you are getting the most out of your resources.

Just try it.

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.