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| Vol.
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Your Measurement Reading List
2006, International Association of Business Communicators, 248 pps. Buy it here. Review by Katie Delahaye Paine This book is a great 250-page argument for research and measurement in PR. I hope lots of people buy it. In fact, I hope lots of people buy it and give it to their bosses. I'm not quite sure just what, in fact, is "contrarian" about it, or what is being "unleashed," but hey, if it sells more books, that's good for the profession. Seriously though, if you don't know anything about measurement or PR it's a good place to get started on the right foot. It's published in conjunction with the International Association of Business Communicators so it's very much a trade publication, with some useful sample surveys in the back. The book is built around a number of case studies taken from work that Delahaye (the company I began about 20 years ago) has done over the years. Weiner's premise is that now you can and should prove the value of PR relative to other marketing tactics, and that research can strengthen that value. He has some nifty statistics that make for great charts. Here's one from an AT&T study: The cost per acquisition via PR and news is $15; the cost per acquisition via targeted inbound telemarketing at $103. The P&G study that got so much publicity last year showed that the net return from PR is substantially higher than from other forms of marketing. But if you buy this book thinking you'll be able to replicate it, you better have lots of cash. The marketing mix modeling that P&G conducted is an expensive proposition and requires tons of historical data. In a nutshell, they used a combination of visibility of placement, extent and dominance of mention, tone and presence of key messages to weight articles and come up with an "Impact Score." This was then multiplied by the reach (circulation figures or what we call Opportunities To See) to get a "Net Effect." This score was used in conjunction with other marketing research to determine the relative impact of PR compared to other marketing tactics. The exact weighting is "a trade secret" according to Weiner. (But to my way of thinking, every organization needs to come up with its own weighting based on what drives its customers to purchase.) Weiner has an excellent section on media and defining what media you should be analyzing. His appendix on demographic audits is very useful. Of course, you have to be a Delahaye customer in order to get their demographic audit, but again, if you have the money it's a great tool. My only real complaint about the book concerns sloppy editing. It includes typos and factual errors that any good editor should have caught. For instance, the Hazelnut Council example:"This year's best of the best Gold Quill Award" program yielded dramatic results in terms of new hazelnut products on the market. As proof, Weiner cites data from 2003 and 2004. But how can a PR program conducted in 2006 yield results three years earlier? Okay, I'm being a research geek, but this stuff bothers me. Nonetheless,
if you're working for a Fortune 500 company, this is the book to
give to your new boss if he or she is clueless about PR and research.
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