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.

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.

• 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.

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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!

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

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!

Although mobile adverts are usually associated with consumer advertising (all the demos Apple gave were of consumer ads and in-game advertising is probably the going to be the biggest user of the format), I think the new format could have a significant impact on our industry, and many other technical B2B markets. Here’s why:

Trade press publishers are increasingly looking towards digital distribution, and many are talking of iPhone/iPad reader applications. iAds presents an opportunity to charge a premium for rich media advertising at a time when most marketing managers view adverts on digital copies as less valuable than print.

iAds will allow more control, allowing advertisers to be sure that their advert has been seen. This will overcome the concern of many advertisers that people will not view the page on which their advert is placed (a situation that is analogous to placing ads in a print copy, but one that appears to concern marketing managers more in this age of measurable digital marketing).

iAds will present a revenue opportunity to the companies providing the digital magazine technology. As competition hots up in the digital space, I expect the cost of publishing digitally to drop dramatically (in fact it’s pretty cheap already), and any way of increasing revenue will be jumped on by the likes of Nxtbook, Ceros and the many other players in this market.

iAds will allow a pay-per-impression approach for advertising associated with digital magazines. In one stroke the question of digital magazine readership disappears, making advertisers more comfortable about advertising in digital copies.

Recently I saw an article on the Folio website about a new survey called "The Case of Advertising in Interactive Digital Magazines," by Josh Gordon, founder of Smarter Media Sales. The research, which had a respectable sample of more than 5000 respondents suggests that digital magazines may be a better vehicle for advertising than websites. Some of the key findings include:

• 70% were less likely to ignore display ads in digital editions than on Web sites
• 71% said ads on digital editions were “less intrusive” than Web sites
• 79% said ads in digital editions were “more credible” than on Web sites
• 82% believed that digital magazines were "more engaging" than Web sites with similar content
• 71% said that digital titles were “more trustworthy” than websites
• 85% said digital magazines were more easy to read than websites

Although I don’t see any publishers throwing away their website to concentrate on digital magazines. Although digital magazines typically hold the readers attention for 3 to 4 x the average time spent on a single website, in most markets websites generate more impressions. It will also be interesting to see if the results are due to a honeymoon effect, with readers excited about the new format. Despite these reservations, I believe that the results are a real endorsement of digital magazines and hope that it encourages publishes to sell digital titles with confidence.

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!