Measuring PR Results with Clips
Press clippings are a greatly under utilized resource for measurement of public relations results. Historically, clips have been analyzed in terms of column inches and in “numbers of impressions” – a notion we borrowed from our colleagues in advertising. Impressions simply means the circulation of the publication. Neither of these metrics provides any clue to the real impact of the public relations program, but clips do contain a wealth of information if properly analyzed.
Business demands that every investment bring a return, but public relations is a tough thing to justify. Its real return is a change in the perceptions and behaviors of the target audience. Since this change takes place inside the skulls of human beings, measuring the results is a challenge.
When it is too costly or difficult to perform statistically valid research on the target audience, we have to make some assumptions in order to measure PR results. The first assumption is that the attitudes and perceptions of the press and analyst communities reflect with reasonable accuracy the attitudes and perceptions of their constituencies. The validity of this assumption is based on the fact that the target audience receives much of its information from these sources and will be strongly influenced by them. Asking the press and analysts about their perceptions ought to yield a fair approximation of target audience perception.
This graph shows how the client’s coverage compares to competitors in terms of numbers of clips and the general tone of the coverage for a given time period.
Next, we assume that the material produced by the press has embedded in it certain clues to perceptions. Here are some of the assumptions we make about editorial content:
- The company’s name in the headline indicates that the journalist believes the company is important.
- The company’s name or product in the first third of the article indicates that the journalist believes the company/product is important.
- The more times the company/product name is repeated, the more likely it is that the reader will remember it.
- It is more valuable to be mentioned in media designated as top tier for that company (top tier is determined by the focus of the magazine’s demographics).
- The most valuable type of coverage is that which focuses exclusively (or nearly so) on the company or its product. Company profiles, focused news, company-contributed articles, reviews, etc., are examples.
Tone of the coverage is also important, but requires a subjective judgment on the part of the person performing the analysis. Most coverage will be written in a neutral tone, as that is the preferred voice of professional journalists. However, negative or positive comparisons, reporting of negative news, or the rare word of praise can be rated outside of this neutral zone. At Oak Ridge, we rate negative tone a 1, neutral a 2 and positive a 3. We average the tone for clips over a given period of time to arrive at an overall rating.
The data gleaned from clips becomes more meaningful when it is compared to coverage of competitors. When the same analysis is done with competitive clips and compared to the company’s coverage, it becomes easier to evaluate how the press (and through the press, the target audience) views the company and its products in the context of the greater marketplace.
Finally, content analysis can provide a wealth of information about perception-and mis-perception. For example, in a recent analysis for one of Oak Ridge’s clients, it became apparent that the press did not understand the product category that the client (and competitors) were playing in. Our recommendation was to step up efforts to educate the press not just about the client’s product, but about the product category, and the role it played in emerging new systems.
This type of detailed clipping analysis is most useful when it is repeated on a regular basis. As with benchmark surveys, clipping analysis shows how perceptions and understanding change over time, providing excellent feedback on the success of a public relations program.