A Case Study in Media Relations Success
This is the fourth instalment in a series on media relations measurement.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
In the this part of my conversation with Wilma Mathews, ABC, author of Media Relations: A Practical Guide for Communicators, she provided an example of a media relations initiative that demonstrates the importance to linking behavioral outcomes to media relations inputs.
A staff writer at Arizona State University received an assignment from the archaeology department to write a news release to promote an upcoming lecture: a local attorney, as an amateur Egyptologist, was only the second person to go into an Egyptian tomb.
Wilma told me this writer often takes what many would consider to be an unusual approach to media relations. "She knows her media, so she never does follow up calls to the reporters she sends material to," Wilma explained. "She knows whether they're the right ones to get the release."
The communicator got two hits from her release. One was in a calendar listing in the local newspaper. The other was to a reporter who likes to write human interest stories.
"Without any prompting, the reporter turned this story into a front page of the Sunday leisure section, including two color photographs over three-fourths of a page," Wilma says. "A lecture that would normally bring in 25 brought in almost 200 people."
There is no AVE for this program. And the circulation numbers would be small by most media relations measurement standards, because there was only one newspaper's circulation to include.
However, in many ways, this example represents the tried and true in media relations, and the importance of measurement over evaluation. To be successful, it's important to understand the needs of reporters and only target those journalists or media outlets who would have an interest in your program, your product, your service or your candidate.
After going through that process, if your media list ends up being only five outlets — but they're the right five outlets — you can achieve success with what would be considered to be an extremely low AVE, if any AVE at all.
Wilma pointed out that the Dictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research defines impressions as "the number of people who might have had the opportunity to be exposed to a story that has appeared in the media."
"It's taken almost as a fact that if you have a million impressions there's an assumption that a million people saw it and read it," Wilma said. "You can make numbers do anything you want. But the real bottom line test is: Did your audience do what you intended them to do?
"You can have all the impressions in the world, but if nobody showed up for that dinner to raise money — and your job was to help improve attendance at that dinner — then you're just not doing your job."
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
In the this part of my conversation with Wilma Mathews, ABC, author of Media Relations: A Practical Guide for Communicators, she provided an example of a media relations initiative that demonstrates the importance to linking behavioral outcomes to media relations inputs.
A staff writer at Arizona State University received an assignment from the archaeology department to write a news release to promote an upcoming lecture: a local attorney, as an amateur Egyptologist, was only the second person to go into an Egyptian tomb.
Wilma told me this writer often takes what many would consider to be an unusual approach to media relations. "She knows her media, so she never does follow up calls to the reporters she sends material to," Wilma explained. "She knows whether they're the right ones to get the release."
The communicator got two hits from her release. One was in a calendar listing in the local newspaper. The other was to a reporter who likes to write human interest stories.
"Without any prompting, the reporter turned this story into a front page of the Sunday leisure section, including two color photographs over three-fourths of a page," Wilma says. "A lecture that would normally bring in 25 brought in almost 200 people."
There is no AVE for this program. And the circulation numbers would be small by most media relations measurement standards, because there was only one newspaper's circulation to include.
However, in many ways, this example represents the tried and true in media relations, and the importance of measurement over evaluation. To be successful, it's important to understand the needs of reporters and only target those journalists or media outlets who would have an interest in your program, your product, your service or your candidate.
After going through that process, if your media list ends up being only five outlets — but they're the right five outlets — you can achieve success with what would be considered to be an extremely low AVE, if any AVE at all.
Wilma pointed out that the Dictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research defines impressions as "the number of people who might have had the opportunity to be exposed to a story that has appeared in the media."
"It's taken almost as a fact that if you have a million impressions there's an assumption that a million people saw it and read it," Wilma said. "You can make numbers do anything you want. But the real bottom line test is: Did your audience do what you intended them to do?
"You can have all the impressions in the world, but if nobody showed up for that dinner to raise money — and your job was to help improve attendance at that dinner — then you're just not doing your job."
Linking Objectives to Outcomes
This is the third instalment in a series on media relations measurement.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
In this second part of my conversation with Wilma Mathews, ABC, I asked her where we needed to be as an industry when it comes to the strategic use of media relations.
How do we develop objectives for a media relations campaign? How do we evaluate whether we've achieved those objectives? In a perfect world, how should people approach those challenges?
Her advice was simple on the surface, but represents the complexity of media relations specifically, and organizational communication in general.
"People need to approach media relations by understanding what it is that your client needs to get done," she says. "Too often, the client's needs are misinterpreted to what we can do from a media standpoint, whether it has anything to actually do with solving the problem or not."
She says that one of the challenges that many practitioners have with measurement is that they may start with a great objective — such as increasing the number of people who participate in a weekend run for cancer research from 10,000 to 12,000 — but their evaluation focuses only on the media clippings they generate. They forget to go back and count the number of people who actually participated in the run.
This goes back to her belief that there is a clear distinction between evaluation and measurement in media relations. Counting the clippings is a form of evaluation around the process. Determining how many people participated in the run is a measurement of outcomes, and therefore success.
"You cannot claim success if you are not measuring the right thing," she says. "And this slides over into the issue of ethics."
Wilma believes that it is incredibly unethical to tell a client that a campaign was successful because it generated a million impressions when the objective was to get more people to participate in the food drive, vote for a candidate, or other potential outcome.
There are those who may try counter her argument by saying that it was the client who wanted those media relations results — such as being a guest on certain television programs or being above the fold on the front page of the business section. Therefore, according to codes of ethics governing public relations (whether PRSA, IABC, CPRS or CIPR), the media relations practitioner has done his or her job.
"If that media plan is solely about getting the boss above the fold on the front page of the business section and nothing else, then that's ok," she replies. "The objectives may be that (the client) is looking for media support for the product launch, and (the media relations practitioner) will write an objective that says they want to generate 1.5 million impressions.
"You can get impressions. That's the easy part. But those impressions may have no correlation to a bottom line."
And without bottom line measurement, the job is less than half done.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
In this second part of my conversation with Wilma Mathews, ABC, I asked her where we needed to be as an industry when it comes to the strategic use of media relations.
How do we develop objectives for a media relations campaign? How do we evaluate whether we've achieved those objectives? In a perfect world, how should people approach those challenges?
Her advice was simple on the surface, but represents the complexity of media relations specifically, and organizational communication in general.
"People need to approach media relations by understanding what it is that your client needs to get done," she says. "Too often, the client's needs are misinterpreted to what we can do from a media standpoint, whether it has anything to actually do with solving the problem or not."
She says that one of the challenges that many practitioners have with measurement is that they may start with a great objective — such as increasing the number of people who participate in a weekend run for cancer research from 10,000 to 12,000 — but their evaluation focuses only on the media clippings they generate. They forget to go back and count the number of people who actually participated in the run.
This goes back to her belief that there is a clear distinction between evaluation and measurement in media relations. Counting the clippings is a form of evaluation around the process. Determining how many people participated in the run is a measurement of outcomes, and therefore success.
"You cannot claim success if you are not measuring the right thing," she says. "And this slides over into the issue of ethics."
Wilma believes that it is incredibly unethical to tell a client that a campaign was successful because it generated a million impressions when the objective was to get more people to participate in the food drive, vote for a candidate, or other potential outcome.
There are those who may try counter her argument by saying that it was the client who wanted those media relations results — such as being a guest on certain television programs or being above the fold on the front page of the business section. Therefore, according to codes of ethics governing public relations (whether PRSA, IABC, CPRS or CIPR), the media relations practitioner has done his or her job.
"If that media plan is solely about getting the boss above the fold on the front page of the business section and nothing else, then that's ok," she replies. "The objectives may be that (the client) is looking for media support for the product launch, and (the media relations practitioner) will write an objective that says they want to generate 1.5 million impressions.
"You can get impressions. That's the easy part. But those impressions may have no correlation to a bottom line."
And without bottom line measurement, the job is less than half done.
In Praise of Pitching
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
I read with interest Andre Beaupre’s article entitled 7 Reasons why it’s time to retire ‘pitch’ and ‘pitching’ and I must respectfully disagree with his perspective. I don’t believe these words date or harm the PR industry.
The word “pitching” arises from comparisons to baseball. The pitcher is on the mound and pitches the ball to the catcher.
If you’ve ever witnessed such an event, you know that the catcher throws the ball back to the pitcher and the process repeats itself. It is, therefore, two-way by its very nature. The pitcher does not have a large bucket of balls from which he (or she) keeps throwing, without any regard for whether the catcher actually catches.
But what people unfamiliar with this exchange may not know is that the pitcher does not blindly throw fastballs, curve balls, sliders, knuckle balls or changeups to the catcher without a thought of what the receiver is expecting. The catcher first gives the pitcher a sign to indicate what he (or she) expects to receive.
Competent media relations practitioners understand what journalists need or expect to receive, and tailor their pitch accordingly. What harms us is not the word, but the behavior of exuberant individuals within our profession who keep firing pitches from their large, limitless bucket.
I don’t believe the word “pitching” damages our reputation. What is infinitely more damaging to our reputation is when we train spokespeople to keep firing the same messages from the same bucket, regardless of whether the journalist is even remotely interested or listening.
So let’s not focus on the word. Let’s focus on the approach, and make all of our exchanges with journalists two-way, with the expectation of creating win-win outcomes from which everyone benefits.
In this, I agree with Mr. Beaupre. Two-way exchanges are the foundation on which long-term relationships of lasting value can be constructed.
I read with interest Andre Beaupre’s article entitled 7 Reasons why it’s time to retire ‘pitch’ and ‘pitching’ and I must respectfully disagree with his perspective. I don’t believe these words date or harm the PR industry.
The word “pitching” arises from comparisons to baseball. The pitcher is on the mound and pitches the ball to the catcher.
If you’ve ever witnessed such an event, you know that the catcher throws the ball back to the pitcher and the process repeats itself. It is, therefore, two-way by its very nature. The pitcher does not have a large bucket of balls from which he (or she) keeps throwing, without any regard for whether the catcher actually catches.
But what people unfamiliar with this exchange may not know is that the pitcher does not blindly throw fastballs, curve balls, sliders, knuckle balls or changeups to the catcher without a thought of what the receiver is expecting. The catcher first gives the pitcher a sign to indicate what he (or she) expects to receive.
Competent media relations practitioners understand what journalists need or expect to receive, and tailor their pitch accordingly. What harms us is not the word, but the behavior of exuberant individuals within our profession who keep firing pitches from their large, limitless bucket.
I don’t believe the word “pitching” damages our reputation. What is infinitely more damaging to our reputation is when we train spokespeople to keep firing the same messages from the same bucket, regardless of whether the journalist is even remotely interested or listening.
So let’s not focus on the word. Let’s focus on the approach, and make all of our exchanges with journalists two-way, with the expectation of creating win-win outcomes from which everyone benefits.
In this, I agree with Mr. Beaupre. Two-way exchanges are the foundation on which long-term relationships of lasting value can be constructed.