My PRgative

Angela Jeffrey, APR

Media costs have a higher correlation to business outcomes than reach, according to Angela Jeffrey, APR, vice president of editorial research at VMS.  During a recent PRSA Houston luncheon, Jeffrey discussed her perspectives on how measurement can prove the value of PR to an organization.

By definition, a correlation is a relationship between two independent variables.  Perfect correlation, achievable only in a clinical lab, is stated as r = 1.0.  An r = 0.7 is usually a good indication that there is a relationship between the media effort and business results, according to Jeffrey.  

To see an illustrative worksheet correlating paid advertising, earned media and movie theater box office results, click here:

http://www.slideshare.net/FeliciaGriffin/correlating-outcomes

“To determine actual proof, however, we’d need to move to regression analysis, which is usually done with a much larger data set by market mix modeling firms that analyze paid-media, product distribution, pricing, weather, econometrics and other factors,” Jeffrey explained.  “Even though correlations can’t give us solid proof in PR, it is far more convincing to the C-Suite to at least generate a simple correlation in an Excel spreadsheet than to present a book of media clips.”

Jeffrey’s examination of PR for a worldwide Christian charity fundraising effort illustrates her point.  Her research team analyzed the charity group’s media coverage for 31 days following the Myanmar disaster.  As the outcome measure, the amount of funds raised daily was tracked.  Each media story was analyzed for tone.  All of the negative stories were subtracted from the combined total of positive and neutral stories, resulting in a number of net positive scores per day.  

FORMULA:

positive stories + neutral stories – negative stories = net positive stories

 Jeffrey contrasted daily net positive clip counts, net positive audience impressions, and net positive media values, and correlated them to the funds raised per day.

The results:

Media Value r = 0.73

Audience Impressions r = 0.63

Clip Counts r = 0.49 

Utilizing the increased granularity of media values improved correlations to outcomes by 32 percent over audience impressions and 70 percent over story clip counts.  

What does this mean to a PR person? 

“If you are monitoring your success by clip counts or audience impressions and trying to correlate them to outcomes like sales, funds raised or survey scores, you may not see a high enough correlation to show that a relationship exists between the two,” Jeffrey said.  “Your analysis will look more like your media coverage did not work.  You will not see an accurate picture of your share.”  

Jeffrey says media costs work because the specific amount of space or time occupied by each company in a story can be parsed out and converted to an objective media cost number to which other qualitative metrics can be applied. “It just gives you more precision and objectivity.”

What do you think?  Any questions?  Post a comment below.  Then, read Part III at https://myprgative.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/measuring-prs-value-and-impact-on-business-part-3/

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