The PR industry got very excited about the recent 2nd European Summit on Measurement in Barcelona. As we’re now well into the quiet summer months for the European Electronics media, I thought it might be worth commenting on the seven key principles of evaluation that the summit produced. They were:

1. Goal setting and measurement are important
2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality
3. AVEs are not the Value of Public Relations
- Do not measure the value of PR or future activity
- Where comparisons are made validated metrics should be used
- Multipliers should never be applied unless proven to exist
4. Social media can and should be measured
5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results (outputs)
6. Organisational results and outcomes should be measured whenever possible
7. Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement

If you’re not heavily into PR, most of these ideas probably seem like basic common sense – set goals, define success in terms of the impact on the business/organisation, be transparent, etc. Whenever you get PR people to talk about measurement, you’ll also always have a furious attack on AVE, and those at Barcelona didn’t disappoint. Quite why AVE has to be picked out from the many different, flawed measurement approaches being used today, I’m never sure. Personally I’ve never seen AVE as inherently evil: it’s just a lazy, thoughtless and somewhat irrelevant measure. At least the declaration makes it clear that PR performs a different function from advertising – something I strongly agree with.

What does the declaration mean for marketing professionals in the electronics industry? Probably very little – it’s unlikely to affect anything you do tomorrow, even though the goal of achieving better measurement of PR campaign is something that agencies and clients would both love to achieve.

At Napier we work on many payment-by-results (PBR) projects. I appreciate that many other agencies don’t “approve” of PBR, but there is one reason we love it. When money is at stake, clients give us very clear, specific and measurable goals. We don’t get asked to “issue x releases per year”, we get told “I must get coverage in publication y” or “product z must be described in the trade press as the fastest/biggest/smallest”. I know that PBR isn’t for everyone (some of our clients choose not to use it), but perhaps if everyone imagines that the fee level depends upon hitting the metrics, we will all define better and clearer measurement for our campaigns.

Tags: Misc Marketing

In the last week I’ve been sent information about Elektronik’s ARM special and discussed the custom publishing projects that IML has recently completed. Although the magazine industry is still surrounded by clouds of doom and gloom, this highly unscientific sample makes me wonder whether how important custom publishing will be to the European electronics media. (I know that the Elektronik ARM special isn’t technically custom publishing, but I think it is a good example of the growth of vendor-specific publications).

With the availability of tools that mean anyone can self-publish a magazine, perhaps the media companies offer something that is really valuable – [relatively] independent journalists. When coupled with the publishers database that let them reach huge number of potential readers, this gives publishers a real opportunity to generate significant business from custom publishing.

Although custom publishing can be an excellent marketing vehicle, with ARM possibly offering the best example of a company that depends upon a vibrant ecosystem for its success, I do wonder whether it’s all good news.

Marketers have no problems making sweeping statements, such as “print is dead”, despite new launches providing clear contrary evidence. Personally I think that the marketing industry is increasingly looking for the “magic silver bullet” that will achieve great ROI and clear measurement, whilst requiring minimum effort. Perhaps some of the enthusiasm for custom publishing is a result of people searching for the “one big thing” that will really make a difference?

It will be interesting to see whether custom publishing does grow in our industry. I definitely do believe that there is a place for it – the ARM special is clearly a great move for vendor, partners and publishers. However, I hope marketing managers don’t lose sight of the importance of frequency and simple hard work that will generate the most sustained returns in the long term.

Tags: Elektronik, EPD, Germany, Misc Marketing, UK

Some interesting stats from CorpComms magazine article about the use of social media by the top 100 companies listed in the UK. The Group conducted the original research:

• Two thirds of FTSE 100 companies have an official Twitter account, but only 40 per cent use this channel actively (the others just  registered an account, branded their Twitter page and linked it back to the corporate website)
• At least 42 FTSE 100 companies have had their company names hijacked on YouTube, yet only 43 have their own YouTube channel
• One in five FTSE 100 companies have an external blog
• 90 FTSE 100 companies that have a presence on Facebook, partly as a direct result of Facebook pulling in Wikipedia descriptions of most of the FTSE 100. In practice only one quarter of FTSE 100 companies have a coordinated and coherent Facebook strategy

Given that many of the largest companies in the UK are marketing to consumers, the stats surprise me. Although I believe that social media will always be more important in a consumer environment, clearly many companies don’t believe it’s worth the (pretty minimal) effort. Perhaps the biggest issue for consumer companies is the hijacking of brands – for example @BPGlobalPR – and whilst this will drive more activity in the consumer space, we’ve yet to see much of a problem with hijacking for B2B companies.

.

Tags: Misc Marketing

Google Insights for Search is an interesting tool that allows you to compare the level of “interest” (which in Google’s world equates to the number of searches) in particular terms.

For example you can compare the volume of searches for 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit, which shows 8-bit interest beginning to fall off at the start of 2005, whilst searches for 32 bit are increasing. Perhaps you could also say that the fall in the graph for 16-bit supports the view of some analysts that many 8-bit users will chose to move directly to 32-bit, skipping 16-bit platforms.

Another example – probably best suited to people with no English heritage or those used to losing [I support Ipswich!] – is an analysis of the search terms England football and Fabio Capello. “England Football” peaks every two years (for the World Cup and European Championships), apart from 2008 [football fans will know why]. I’d suspect that the recent surge of interest in Mr. Capello is probably one of the exceptions to the “no publicity is bad publicity” rule!

Tags: Misc Marketing

Although the economy is beginning to pick up, advertising budgets are lagging somewhat. This makes it tough on publishers, many of whom continue to struggle to make money. I’m not going to delve too deeply into the well-worn publishers argument that says if you believe PR works in a particular publication then you should also invest in advertising, although it is fundamentally true that if we don’t have sufficient advertising investment then there won’t be any publications to carry PR.

So what can publishers do? Well many are becoming increasingly aggressive to companies that don’t advertise. One [high quality] publication has said that they will “act appropriately when considering editorial coverage” for a client who has advertised with them in the relatively recent past, but doesn’t have them on the schedule this year. Another publication (not in the electronics industry) has sent out a PowerPoint presentation that can only be described as a crude, over-the-top hatchet job on its competitors. This presentation “analysed” a competitive title and included the comment “Perhaps charging for a subscription is a sign they are getting less support from their advertisers?” It promptly claimed on the next slide that their own paid-for circulation represented high quality readers!

What’s the solution? I hope that both sides will step back and become more reasonable. Good advertising campaigns work. Good news stories benefit the publication and the readers as well as the company being promoted. I just hope that we don’t end up either having to negotiate editorial coverage when we place advertising schedules and equally that trade publications don’t end up being a footnote in the Wikipedia article on the tragedy of the commons

Tags: Digital Magazines and Print Publications, Misc Marketing

I was interested to see that Ingram Micro, an IT distributor, is planning a show that will span two venues: the London Eye and London Film Museum. Exhibitors will get the chance to host a “mini exhibition” in one of the London Eye Pods, guaranteeing a captive audience!

I love creative approaches to venues for events and shows: in fact we held a press conference in the London Eye a few years ago. We were lucky to have beautiful weather – in fact it was so lovely that one magazine decided to Photoshop a cloud into the picture they used!

Tags: Misc Marketing

People that know me won’t be surprised that finding good food is one of my top priorities when travelling on business. When you’re in an unfamiliar place, nothing beats a recommendation from someone you can trust, so I’m happy to give a plug to the online guide to good restaurants from well-known industry figure Freddy Santamaria. Visit his “Gourmet Corner” for guides to New Zealand’s Invercargill, Christchurch & Burma, Tasmania & The Devil, Melbourne & The Asiana, Western Samoa, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.

If you are marketing in the UK, you should know that the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) will soon have a remit that addresses more online marketing channels. Proposed changes to the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) Code will extend the remit of the ASA beyond paid online ads to all other online marketing communications. Clickz reports that the new code is likely to be in force by September, and:

As a result, claims from marketers on their own Web sites and third-party sites like social networks will now be subject to ASA scrutiny, as they are in TV, print, and other forms of online advertising.

Although the changes are likely to have the biggest impact on highly regulated industries such as alcohol, gambling, and the financial sector. However the regulation can impact on our industry: I once got a competitor to pull a misleading advert and the threat of the ASA intervening was enough to ensure a very quick response!

Tags: Advertising, Misc Marketing

I’m not a big fan of unnecessarily making-up words: the half million or so words in the Oxford English Dictionary, plus the many technical terms that don’t make it into the dictionary are enough for me. Despite this prejudice, I couldn’t resist playing with Wordiod, an online word generator. It’s fun, and now I’m wondering if I could use “napierced” – one of the new words it created for me!

Tags: Misc Marketing

It’s frustrating to be told that the counts you need for a direct marketing campaign will take a day or two because getting counts is “not that easy”. Well credit to Findlay Direct Marketing, whose new website will give you immediate counts based upon your criteria, which can include job title, products specified, location, and other demographic information. By speeding up the process of getting counts, and making it very easy to see the criteria that can be used to segment their data (and the impact of applying the criteria), Findlay makes DM campaign planning a breeze, and I’m sure they’ll win some extra business simply because they provide the fastest and most flexible service.

Tags: Direct marketing, Findlay, UK

The German association of data protection authorities have ruled that tracking using IP addresses breaches German law. The ruling and the implications for marketers are covered on the Marketing Law website, which highlights that:

IP-addresses are considered personal data.
The storage of IP-addresses will be found non-compliant with German data protection.
The use of web analytics tools based on IP-addresses will be found illegal and can be sanctioned with a fine up to €50.000.

Tags: Germany, Misc Marketing, UK

The Marketing Law website does a great job of highlighting the issues of running international marketing campaigns based on parody. Although parody is protected in countries such as France, Germany, Australia and the USA, the UK Government has chosen not to exempt it from copyright law in the UK. The site warns that “marketeers need to take care when using parody, caricature or pastiche in advertising, packaging or branding in the UK”. We are not amused!

Tags: Advertising, France, Germany, Misc Marketing, UK, USA