I’m not the first to comment on the abusive use of ad values to measure PR effectiveness, but I saw two articles on the topic relatively close to each other that explored the issue.
First, the Institute for Public Relations took a “strong stand against using Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) as a measure of value in public relations. In the field of communications and media relations, AVE suggests that the space and time occupied byearned media generated through public relations is equivalent to the same space and time of paid media when purchased as advertising.”
Among its recommendations for PR measurement:
- First and foremost, the IPR Commission encourages measurement and evaluation practices that demonstrate the degree to which public relations efforts contribute to organizational goals. Ultimately, outcome-based measures – such as awareness, understanding, attitudes and behaviours – provide a better way to demonstrate public relations’ unique impact.
- Advertising cost isn’t a meaningful metric. Advertisers don’t use the cost of placing their advertisements as an outcome. It’s a cost of achieving the outcome of increasing sales or brand awareness. So, it makes no sense for public relations to compare its outcome to the cost of achieving advertising outcomes. Publicity isn’t the outcome, it’s part of the process of reaching a more meaningful outcome, such as protecting reputation or increasing awareness of responsible behaviors.”
- Advertising is purchased and affords complete control to the advertiser for content, placement and frequency and is almost always positive. In contrast, publicity, or earned media, is only semi-controllable after ceding the final output to the medium that may result in positive, neutral or negative messages.
More about IPR’s study and findings can be found on its website.
Then I saw this come across my screen: Top 10 global brands based on media value. Which brands won the most valuable press in the third quarter?
This came from Ragan PR’s PR Junkie newsletter, “The list is based on mentions in traditional and new media outlets and the positive vs. negative sentiments of those mentions. Those mentions are assigned a dollar value, which are noted.)”
The top 10 were 1. Apple – $1,489,558 2. Google – $925,976 3. Microsoft – $625,672 4. Yahoo – $433,107 5. Hewlett-Packard – $260,723 6. Intel – $253,174 7. eBay – $156,819 8. Oracle – $155,113 9. Nokia – $137,630 10. Ford – $130,833
So to recap last week. HP selected its new CEO and was criticized for the choice, while suing Oracle for its hiring of former HP CEP Mark Hurd. Nokia continues to be an embattled after it announced earnings and Intel received alot of attention for its record earnings. Apple is Apple and Google is Google. They are who we thought they were. And of course there would be a lot of chatter and media stories about the two hyper-successful brands.
If I go back to the IPR’s findings, “it makes no sense for public relations to compare its outcome to the cost of achieving advertising outcomes. Publicity isn’t the outcome, it’s part of the process of reaching a more meaningful outcome, such as protecting reputation or increasing awareness of responsible behaviors.”
Could you put a price on your reputation? Could you put a price on the negative stories that weren’t told. And if they did make the news, would you want your corporate reputation measured favorably for it?
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