For example, from a PR point of view its notable that keyword ads on search engines are lower down on the trust level.  But they can still work well for advertisers.  On the other hand, brand web sites and sponsorships were high up next to consumer opinions and editorial content.  I’ve seen PR use a lot of brand material/web sites and sponsorships (e.g., CSR, trade sponsorships in the B2B world) for getting the information.  It’s may be interesting to note that the trust level of those sources is at the same level of editorial content.  

The research looked at 100,000 Facebook users as well as the location 4,500 e-mail messages received.  As noted by the chart below, the more local the sender-receiver, the higher the density of messages. 

This is consistent with what I’ve seen in every day life.  People connect online with those they know offline – and people tend to know people locally.  Not to say there are not global benefits as the tale of lower density of messages may reflect that valuable global reach we did not two decades ago.  However, this type of data is an important reminder that when reaching many audiences, having a local, geographic focus is an important part of being targeting the demographic.

We recently conducted a series of polls on LinkedIn to determine how professionals read news.  You can download the full report here.  The key findings showed that while news sites continued to dominate, search engines and aggregators were a major source of news.  On the mobile side, news specific mobile applications (such as the WSJ app on the iPhone) were even more important than a mobile web browser.    Our bottom line finding, based on these polls and third part research such as Hitwise’s list of top news web sites (which found both news sites and search engines in the top ten), is that major news sites along with search engines and aggregators still need to lead the way in distributing information.  Social media then provides a measurement of how well the news was received as well as an amplification effect.  Key findings included the following:

Today’s Carl Bialik column in the Wall Street Journal (read it here and in his blog- subscription required until Rupert Murdoch says otherwise) shows how candidates need to pay more attention as well (incidentially, the political consultants/pr pros in politics are, I believe, the biggest over-spinners).   Sites such Factcheck.org and Politicfact.com are now checking the accuracy of candidates statements.  

Reading this reminded me of the key difference between business and political reporting (my subjective view as a reader).  Political reporters seem to focus on reporting a candidate’s position and key messages so that audiences can decide for themselves.  Business reporters focus on what a company says, and then research the facts and reports that research so readers can decide the future of a company’s market position.

Imagine if political reporters were more like business reporters.  They would report not only on what candidate says but how also research its factual basis.  Like business reporters, they would note on an ongoing basis how accurate the facts out of a campaign were and the full context of those facts (e.g., Romney implied that military spending was cut under Clinton…how many reporters noted the spending level cut took place under Regan?…and no, I have not fact checked this fact check).  Or, as many have asked, what if the news media had focused not only reporting but qualifying the facts the Bush administration put forward to justify the Iraq war just as business reporters research the facts put foward in a company’s earnings reports. 

This comparison also reminds me of one of the great ironies of the non-political public relations industry – that PR gets the blame for turning fact into fiction.  In fact, while a few bad apples certainly help shape this reputation, I often find that it’s non-PR executives pushing the fact-based envelope and it’s the PR professional or agency providing warnings on how messages that can’t be backed with facts can backfire.  However, like lawyers, counsel is what we provide and, even more than lawyers, our counsel is often ignored (probably due to the punishment not including jail time…usually).

The article’s direct implication is that a business may directly invests in and manages its reputation.   While a business does invest in reputation, it only does so indirectly, by identifying and investing in the components, such as higher quality products or superior customer service, that boost reputation.   The public relations function should best focus on identifying and recommending the business decisions that drive reputation, communicate any resulting action to the public, and then measure the shift in reputation through surveys.    In other words, don’t look to the public relations function to add an intangible value to a company, look to it to highlight where the company has added a tangible value to itself.

This is an ongoing problem with the public relations function.  Too often it focuses on the tactical  (how do I get into Business  Week) instead of the truly business strategic (how will changes to the business and the communications of those changes affect reputation).  Those public relations professionals that properly focus on the latter, the truly business strategic, will find senior management seeking out their counsel.  Those that focus on Business Week will find senior management only seeking them out on how to get into Business Week.

So how does a corporate communications, or other PR oriented function, shift to a business focus?  The full answer is more like a book and less like a blog post but a good starting point is taking a research and planning approach that starts not with how to communicate business changes, but with what changes a business would make.  In other words… 

1. Identify how different business moves may trigger action and affect reputations;
2. Understand how to best communicate the moves that are made (this step is where most PR pros start); and
3. Know how to benchmark (hint: forget the media, ask your audience).

Think of it this way, before a business decision a lawyer will advice on the legal impact of that decision, an accounting on the earnings impact and marketing on the sales impact.   How often is your corporate communications department advising on the reputation impact before the decision is made.

The survey company sent a letter of apology and two dollars as a small gift.  The letter did say they would try calling again at a better time for me.  I loved it.

For the first time, a cold caller didn’t simply mark me as rude (yes, I am when calling too late), but apologized.  The gift may have been small but it was something on top of the apology and, since it’s cash, at least I can get a quick soda on them.

The company: Scarborough Surveys.  I would highly recommend you use them.  Not only do I think far better of them, but I’ll think better of any company they represent…and may even take the time to do a survey (Scarborough, if you’re reading, just once in a long while please).

As a public relations professional, I’ve done a fair number of surveys over the years.  I would certainly want to give my business to a company that would best represent my clients.   Every phone call made by this company is not just a survey opportunity, it’s a chance to  add or subtract from their client’s reputation.  Scarborough, nicely done.

1. Shoppers just don’t care about corporate reputation.  People buy because they like the product and trust the store they buy from.  Just about all the attacks on Wal-Mart (e.g., by watch dog groups, unions) were unrelated to these core areas of consumer interest.  We hear about the terrible behavior of diamond companies but still buy plenty of diamonds.  Basically, unless the product is  overpriced, broken or comes with terrible service, shoppers are less likely to shift their habits.

2. Wal-Mart aggressively got it’s story out.  After being attacked on core issues like health care and wages, Wal-Mart showed they were far better than average on these two issues than most other companies.  Maybe they weren’t the best, but they were far from worse.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of conscientious shoppers made note of these facts.

3. Wal-Mart had their employees tell their story.  Instead of corporate spokespeople, Wal-Mart had employees talk about how they liked working for the company in commercials.  This is one of the fastest ways to neutralize the opposition.  Show how at least some of the audience they claim to speak for is on your side.  It immediately questions how much support they really have.  I once worked on a campaign where we faced the teachers union.  We ran commercials featuring teachers speaking out against the teachers union messages.  We saw an immediate shift of support to our side of the issue.

So does this mean all that negative publicity doesn’t matter?  Absolutely not.  Overtime, I still believe corporate level negative publicity can erode both shopper and investor confidence as well as lost politicy support (as Wal-Mart has already seen).   I think survey’s like this show that it’s not necessarily an immediate effect and may also be a sign of success of Wal-Marts communications program to defend against attacks.

 

 

I often point to political campaigns as the best example of successful public relations campaigns.  Being a zero sum game, these PR campaigns can’t afford to focus on awareness, media measurement or other indicators of tatical success.  They either impact the opinion and behavior of their audience (i.e., get their votes) or they don’t.  To track how well they are doing during the campaign they don’t sit around and measure articles, they do opinion polls.

For those PR people that don’t follow political campaigns, the methodology can be (over)simplified as follows:

1. Ask people what they think of the company or product before a campaign.
2. Ask them during and at the conclusion of the campaign.
3. If the campagin was successful then it will show in this opinion survey. 
4. If you need tactical measurement, then you can ask what messages, media articles, speeches etc had an impact.

So why don’t more public relations teams do this?  I would suggest several reasons:

• Meaningful reputation changes come with meaningful business change.  PR teams usally just try and communicate around changes already made.  Some more business smarts and a little speaking up might give public relations executives a role in determining business moves such as product packaging, customer service scripts, product offerings, CEO compensation and other public actions that drive reputation.  See the recent Toyota post as a good example.
• To be able to offer business advice the public relations function must have a complete operational and financial understanding of the business as well as be completely audience researched based.  Two areas that are often weaknesses.  Instead, we offer counsel mostly based on our opinion and business understanding tends to be superficial at best (how often do you see business advice counsel offered along with the operational and financial impact).
• To have a true impact, public relations must be a truly integrated discipline that makes strong (read: big spend) use of tools like advertising.  Yes, advertising is still one of the most effective ways of hammering a message and position into an audiences head. 

If public relations ever wants truly business leadership success, it will need to stop presenting senior executives with tactical output like so-called share of voice and media analysis.  Senior management cares about one thing – business success.  They want to know what reputation will get them there, how to get that reputation and, along the road, if they are gaining that reputation.  And, for the most part, they want this based on research, not opinion.  If you’re not convinced, just take a look at what goes into those billion dollar ad campaigns.

The basic concept is to focus not on the reach , or how many people could have seen a media placement, but on the impact, which is how many people actually saw the placement and took action (change of opinion, purchase of a product etc).  That can be a very big difference.  Granted, many executives just want to see big, ego-stroking numbers internally, but many also want to truly understand the impact of their investment in public relations activities.

The formula in paper breaks down not only how many people see the message (as oppposed to simply being exposed to it – or reach), but the different affects it could have.   For example, a placement in a magazine with 500,000 readers might break down as follows in the chart to the left.

Depending on the program, numbers 2-4 may all be important – especially if it’s not a well known company or issue that simply needs to first raise awareness.  For a well known company or issue, the focus is probably on 3-5 (comprehension, attitude and behaviour).  With these numbers, PR can then go after that holy grail and do a direct comparison to advertising by measuring how many people see an ad in a magazine and what effect it has. 

What I like best about this approach is that it completely skips over reach, deeming it irrelevant.  Who cares how many people an article reached if only a fraction of them actually read it.  Of course, becuase there is so much pressure to deliver big impression numbers, many measurement systems rely first and foremost on reach (using words like circulation or impressions).   In my experience, much, if not most, of this direction comes not from public relations, but from marketing though public relations often does not do enough push back.  But that’s for another post…