The perils of PR(economist.com)
economist.com
The perils of PR
https://www.economist.com/business/2021/07/03/the-perils-of-pr
25 comments
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As an engineer, I have always wanted to quantify the effect of PR. The PR people I spoke to often says it is hard to measure, occupying mindshare, "upper" funnel, yada yada. Some may offer number of publicity as a measuring stick. Would love to learn what other "more useful" metrics are out there.
You might be interested in Media Mix Modeling — a regression-based approach to finding relationships between marketing spend and sales performance.
A good primer is here: https://github.com/mecommerce/ThirdLove-Tech-Blog/blob/maste...
And https://www.vexpower.com/ is an early but very promising educational tool in the space.
A good primer is here: https://github.com/mecommerce/ThirdLove-Tech-Blog/blob/maste...
And https://www.vexpower.com/ is an early but very promising educational tool in the space.
Media mix modeling is well-intentioned but in reality a huge overpromise and highly profitable way for data scientists to snow/fleece their advertiser clients.
(More detail.. it's a bit like the Fed's inflation data: when you can manipulate the constants at will, introduce fake data as proxy for missing data, etc.. the ways and means to force a desired result are endless)
(More detail.. it's a bit like the Fed's inflation data: when you can manipulate the constants at will, introduce fake data as proxy for missing data, etc.. the ways and means to force a desired result are endless)
There’s a lot of truth to that. When done in house, though, it can be a useful additional check on spend allocation. Of course it still becomes political if channel owners feel like their career progression depends on growing share of budget.
Read a classic: "Ogilvie on Advertising" (1985).
The only metric that matters is: did your sales go up? Ogilvie understood that. The ads that other PR and advertising people admire aren't necessarily the ones that work.
The only metric that matters is: did your sales go up? Ogilvie understood that. The ads that other PR and advertising people admire aren't necessarily the ones that work.
Thanks so much for suggesting Ogilvy. Definitely going to read it. As of increase of sales, I think all business activities ultimately lead to either increase of revenue or improvement of margin (lower cost). The question is, is it first order effect or higher order effect.
Online banners charging "per impression" is second order effect, by occupying "mind share" while charging "per conversion" is first order effect. IMO most measurements are on the first order side and we have less visibility on the second order effect
Online banners charging "per impression" is second order effect, by occupying "mind share" while charging "per conversion" is first order effect. IMO most measurements are on the first order side and we have less visibility on the second order effect
Pedantic correction: "Ogilvy".
While the only metric that matters is sales (I fully agree), you need other metrics to understand how those sales happened. This is the dangerous thing.
I've worked at companies where people were evaluated based on very specific metrics, like web traffic or social media engagement. The problem with that is you end up focusing on improving those numbers rather than improving sales.
But if you only focus on sales, you can't tell which activities made a difference (or in which direction). You need other data to understand what's happening.
A better book than Ogilvy on Advertising, in this regards, is Claude C. Hopkins' Scientific Advertising. It lays out all the principles for testing ads, back when we didn't have any concept of analytics. The basic method was: Try different things in different markets to see what works best. Keep doing it indefinitely, so that your ads only ever get better.
There's no reason the same approach can't be taken with public relations. If you're working for a national brand, try assigning some PR folks to exclusively work the media in one given region. Then see what the difference is.
(Obviously, you have to do a lot of work to "control the variables", but any data scientist -- or any scientist at all, actually -- should be able to figure that out in their sleep.)
It's not rocket science. These methods have been around for a very long time.
Honestly, I think we've just gotten lazy. Setting up market tests is a lot of work, whereas creating an A/B test in AdWords is easy. But there's no such thing as an unmeasurable publicity tactic (whether it's advertising or public relations). You just gotta be willing to do the work.
While the only metric that matters is sales (I fully agree), you need other metrics to understand how those sales happened. This is the dangerous thing.
I've worked at companies where people were evaluated based on very specific metrics, like web traffic or social media engagement. The problem with that is you end up focusing on improving those numbers rather than improving sales.
But if you only focus on sales, you can't tell which activities made a difference (or in which direction). You need other data to understand what's happening.
A better book than Ogilvy on Advertising, in this regards, is Claude C. Hopkins' Scientific Advertising. It lays out all the principles for testing ads, back when we didn't have any concept of analytics. The basic method was: Try different things in different markets to see what works best. Keep doing it indefinitely, so that your ads only ever get better.
There's no reason the same approach can't be taken with public relations. If you're working for a national brand, try assigning some PR folks to exclusively work the media in one given region. Then see what the difference is.
(Obviously, you have to do a lot of work to "control the variables", but any data scientist -- or any scientist at all, actually -- should be able to figure that out in their sleep.)
It's not rocket science. These methods have been around for a very long time.
Honestly, I think we've just gotten lazy. Setting up market tests is a lot of work, whereas creating an A/B test in AdWords is easy. But there's no such thing as an unmeasurable publicity tactic (whether it's advertising or public relations). You just gotta be willing to do the work.
Great message.
A famous quote from an executive (not one in advertising):
"I know half my advertising budget is wasted. I'm just not sure which half."
A famous quote from an executive (not one in advertising):
"I know half my advertising budget is wasted. I'm just not sure which half."
John Wanamaker said it, I believe. Both Ogilvy and Hopkins quoted him as well :-)
With PR, the effects of a failed test can take down a company (or, the existing c-suite at least). That's why people tend to stick to a "tried and true" playbook.
That's true of any test of any kind... Don't try stupid things.
"Tried and true" means doing things the same way everyone else is doing it, i.e. following the crowd. The whole point of marketing/advertising/publicity/PR/other-words-for-the-same-thing is to stand out from the crowd.
So while I agree that people tend to stick to the "tried and true", that's also why most of it doesn't work. You can't both stand out from the crowd and follow that same crowd. They're contradictions and mutually exclusive.
But that doesn't mean you should lose your head and do stupid things just for the sake of doing something different. Small changes, implemented incrementally, are the best ways to enact long-lasting change. You have to go into every test fully prepared for it to fail. If failure would be catastrophic, that's a stupid test.
"Tried and true" means doing things the same way everyone else is doing it, i.e. following the crowd. The whole point of marketing/advertising/publicity/PR/other-words-for-the-same-thing is to stand out from the crowd.
So while I agree that people tend to stick to the "tried and true", that's also why most of it doesn't work. You can't both stand out from the crowd and follow that same crowd. They're contradictions and mutually exclusive.
But that doesn't mean you should lose your head and do stupid things just for the sake of doing something different. Small changes, implemented incrementally, are the best ways to enact long-lasting change. You have to go into every test fully prepared for it to fail. If failure would be catastrophic, that's a stupid test.
> You can't both stand out from the crowd and follow that same crowd.
I agree - but PR is about so much more than just standing out from the crowd. If you are talking about PR in the marketing sense - sure, but things like crisis management, investor relations and internal communications are different ball games.
I agree - but PR is about so much more than just standing out from the crowd. If you are talking about PR in the marketing sense - sure, but things like crisis management, investor relations and internal communications are different ball games.
That's true, but those things apply mainly when the company's attained a certain level of success.
I was in two startups, and for both of those, 99% of the PR person's job was to get the company favorable press coverage.
I was in two startups, and for both of those, 99% of the PR person's job was to get the company favorable press coverage.
One of the challenges is that the most obvious numerical measures are mostly relevant to crappy PR, i.e. the spray and pray types that often seem to fill my inbox. The better PR people I know are much more about targeted relationships and their output metrics are probably something more along the lines of coverage in "good" (a word doing a lot of work here) outlets.
I believe that those emails would be considered marketing, not PR.
https://www.themuse.com/amp/advice/the-difference-between-ma...
https://www.themuse.com/amp/advice/the-difference-between-ma...
It's a mix. Yes, I get a ton of "nurture" emails for webinars and the like. I also get a ton of PR pitches that want me to write about something or interview some "expert" about a topic. (I have a blog, a podcast, and write or have written for various online pubs so I'm on a ton of mailing lists.)
I was just talking to someone about this topic (can't read the paywalled article, but I think I get the drift).
Brand-reinforcement is the Philosopher's Stone, these days. It explains a lot of decisions made by corporations, that don't seem to make sense to empirical animals, like us engineers.
I worked for a corporation that had an incredibly valuable brand, and was constantly frustrated by the decisions they made, in an effort to reinforce their brands.
A brand is a very "fuzzy" concept. It basically starts with a "persona," like an actor's part, and everything the company does, needs to reinforce that persona.
It works very well, and is very difficult to quantify.
Brand-reinforcement is the Philosopher's Stone, these days. It explains a lot of decisions made by corporations, that don't seem to make sense to empirical animals, like us engineers.
I worked for a corporation that had an incredibly valuable brand, and was constantly frustrated by the decisions they made, in an effort to reinforce their brands.
A brand is a very "fuzzy" concept. It basically starts with a "persona," like an actor's part, and everything the company does, needs to reinforce that persona.
It works very well, and is very difficult to quantify.
Which makes sense. The point of branding is to enable a faceless assemblage of processes and relationships (otherwise known as a "company") to engage and interact with potential consumers. Branding is an interface between the human and inhuman, and it's always going to be at least as complex as any person-to-people parasocial relationship would be, and probably more so on average.
I read on and on to find where the interesting, eye-opening, mind-boggling part started. Then the article ended.
I for one am happy that not every article of journalism has to have an eye opening or mind boggling component.
It is The Economist, par for the course.
At the strategy and budget levels, PR is being eaten by marketing. We also have a quality problem -- there's virtually no barrier to market entry and many clients don't know what they need. The combination means there's a lot of relatively ineffective work being done.
Practitioners, particularly on the agency side, are too invested in doing leading-edge, breakthrough work when most clients, most of the time, need consistently good-enough work that is repeatable and measurable against KPIs. It's our equivalent (well, one of our equivalents) of chasing shiny objects.
The ice floe is melting. We used to be the gatekeepers to the media gatekeepers. Then earned media lost a lot of its power, and we became content strategists and producers. Now content is becoming largely commoditized so our production of it gets edged out in favor of paying influencers and their audiences for a slice of attention. You can build a business out of that (many, many have) but it's not PR. And that makes it harder to defend as a separate need/discipline.