• 26 Nov 2009

          Don't believe what you read - even The Times?

          Peter Smith

          Reading The Times online today, my eye was caught by an article about faster trans-European rail travel being enabled from next January as a result of the EU’s meddling (sorry, of course I really meant ‘passing of worthy legislation that will benefit all citizens in it’s tireless mission to bring harmony to Europe’).

          It was only after reading most of the article that I spotted numerous references to Railteam, followed by  the realisation that the banner ads were all for the same company.

          The rest of the articles in the section bore a similar level of endorsement of Railteams’ member companies,  who are several of Europe’s train operators, so unless I’m very much mistaken,  I was reading an advertorial, or ‘sponsored feature’ in the online Times.

          Of course Mr. Murdoch and other publishers have been doing this sort of thing since Guttenberg. Indeed I used to do it in my days at Reed, but the disturbing thing about this set of articles is that there was absolutely no way that this content was differentiated form the mainstream editorial.

          The PPA has quite firm rules about advertising masquerading as editorial, the broadcast authorities prevent newsreaders from doing voice overs in the programmes they are broadcasting, but the web has absolutely no such control imposed upon it.

          This raises a number of issues about credibility and trust in publishers’ web output. Not the least of these is the potential threat to the editorial authority of mainstream publishers whose content, at least for now, is broadly believed to be authoritative, (a) because of its freedom from financial pressure from advertisers, and (b) because of the power of their hard copy publications’ brands.

          The thin end of this particular wedge, if driven on, could ultimately reduce the major publishers’ authority to an equal level with Joe Blogger. At which point it would be very hard for any of us to justify paying Mr. M for his content, or even to believe a word he publishes.

          I’m almost tempted to thank Heaven for the BBC.

          Comments as ever most welcome.

        • 17 Nov 2009

          So has the COI killed off AVE?

          Peter Smith

          Last week’s PR Week carried a report that the COI is demanding much more qualitative evaluation of PR from its agencies, which is music to our ears, because we’ve been banging this particular drum for nearly 15 years.

          Back in the mid ’90s, when we were a pure PR business, we knew that the whole AVE/ PEV calculation was deeply flawed. In a previous role I was involved in research by magazine publishers to  track the relative ‘eye-traffic’ levels of different parts of publications to try and justify position premiums.

          The research didn’t prove its aims as well as had been hoped, so got buried, but did find that the least-read editorial page enjoyed over 10 times the traffic of the best-read ad pages.

          Coming into PR and finding people  quoting the value of a clipping as 3x the paper’s ad rate for equivalent space was something of an eye-opener, so we set up our own research into how people actually consume media, and how it leaves an effect upon them.

          We printed a series of 24 page magazines digitally, substituting different pieces of editorial on four different subjects that varied the length, design and content,  then invited a panel of 110 readers, half male and half female, to read the magazines and answer a set of questions to identify their recall levels, and their impressions from the editorial.

          The first, and most disruptive, finding of the research, was that the size of the editorial mention was of far less importance to the overall recall and impact than had been previously believed, and certainly not directly proportional.

          This flew in the face of the established, and widely used, metrics of advertising equivalent value ( AEV / AVE), and threatened to derail the whole project’s validity. Indeed the majority of clients when approached with this finding chose to dismiss it at first!

          However, the full results were too compelling to be ignored, especially as we were able to demonstrate the different levels of impact created by the relevance of the publication, the position, tone, content and illustration, and quantify their effect on the value of a piece.

          Having worked out a very quick and easy way of carrying out this evaluation, using some database software we built in-house,  we used it in business pitches and clients  loved it.

          Its a very powerful way of gaining a true insight into the value of coverage, which is wholly independent of ad rates. It works just as well for web and broadcast.

          The daft thing is that you’d think that the rest of the PR world would be biting our arms off to get hold of this ‘silver bullet’. Certainly we did, enough to set up a separate company to commercialise the technology, but we found that 99% 0f PR agencies see detailed evaluation as a chore to be avoided if at all possible,  rather than something they should do as a matter of course.

          Even those that did agree, would rather work their staff to 9.00 pm each night, than invest a couple of hundred a month in software that would make their lives easier and drive up client satisfaction.

          As Maggie Thatcher famously said leaving 10 Downing St. -”It’s a funny old world.”

        • 10 Nov 2009

          PR agencies and survival

          Peter Smith

          The news that the CIPR is finding itself a bit cash strapped is an interesting reflection on the fate of industry as a whole. Desparate times and all that!

          We’ve drawn up our own view of how PR agencies need to rebuild their business model to survive the downturn, because despite the green shoots, we know that the underlying trend among a lot of companies in the sector is not healthy.

          So this is our manifesto for the ‘tenties’:

          1) Do away with retainers

          Taking money from clients every month to then spend over two thirds of your time proving that they should love you, despite your general lack of coverage on their behalf is really no longer sustainable. Agree a budget for every activity and help the client get best value. If your cash flow can’t survive without retainers, then you need to look seriously at how well your business model works.

          2) Understand your client’s business

          Before you even attempt to float a story in the press, try writing up a case study or two from some of your client’s customers to get a good understanding of what the heck you are going to try and sell to the media. If you can’t write, then change jobs, because you’re in the communications business, dealing with professional communicators and need to be on their wavelength to truly understand what they need from you.

          3) Be honest about costs

          PR agencies aren’t charities and clients aren’t fools – they know you need to run their account profitably, so be upfront about what it’s going to cost them and what they’ll get. Agree your service levels, define your deliverables, then make sure you deliver, and make sure you don’t oversell your abilities to your client or they’ll just end up disappointed and you’ll get fired.

          4) Bin the pitching team

          The whole idea of an agency  ‘new business team’ is an anathema – It’s a bit like sending the high school prom queen on a first date, then following up with Ugly Betty. If you want a proper, long-lasting honest relationship, then you should send in the account team that will do the work to sell your services – the people who win the business should be the people who do it.

          5) Set reasonable expectations

           

          The average agency client relationship lasts just 18 months because 99% of agency pitches are dishonest – you may have a good insight, but you can’t guarantee press coverage. However you cut it, ‘advertorial’ is just another form of paid advertising, and showing acres of web coverage is hardly a fair indication of your ability to get consistently into the  Tier 1 press.

          You can’t deliver the earth on a shoestring, so don’t promise it. Nor should you promise ‘risk free’ or ‘money back’ introductions – Clients aren’t stupid – they know you’ll more than get back the fees you subsidised in the introduction period  when they do sign the retainer.

          6) Hire decent staff and look after them

          The PR agency is riddled with examples of agencies that burn and churn their people. Clients don’t want that – they want consistency, creativity, excellence and you’re not going to be able to deliver it if your team is made up of overstressed AEs working every hour of the day and night. Manage your processes, streamline your admin and make use of the best technology available to let your people focus on delivering results.

          7) Plan and manage your business effectively

          Media relations should not be reactive – it’s a function of marketing, which is process-led, timetabled and structured. If you plan activities effectively, build opportunities to raise coverage and manage your business efficiently you’ll deliver the results your clients need, and not have to waste both your time, and the client’s, justifying your existence.

           

          8 ) Don’t mass mail press releases

          The average journalist’s inbox receives over 500 emails a day – that’s why mass mails and ‘selling in’ have such an abysmal success rate. If you have a relevant story, you should know which journalists are going to write about it, and target them directly. The more you do this effectively, the more they will trust you, and the more you will get published.

          If you don’t have a relevant story, then help the client to build one – there’s always some opportunity to do something that will raise press interest – but it has to be relevant.

          9) Look after your press contacts

          Like any business you have customers – the media, and you’re selling them something – in this case the raw material to make stories for their readers. Treat your journalists well, and they will ‘buy’ regularly from you. That will raise your value to your clients, and make your business more successful.

          10) Widen your service portfolio

          The days of the stand-alone PR agency are dead and gone – you need to help your clients execute integrated campaigns that leverage direct marketing, eshots, events, internal comms, and guerrilla tactics. Not only will this enhance the power of your campaigns, it will save the client money.

        • 5 Nov 2009

          Don't be fooled by the myth of SEO

          Peter Smith

          In just the last month we’ve been appointed by three new clients for whom we’re building new websites, all of whom have been stung by the SEO myth.

          They all fell for the hype of getting into the top rankings of Google and the subsequent expectation of masses of phone calls, new business leads and cash flowing electronically into their coffers, but it wasn’t long after the web designer / SEO company had pocketed their hard-earned cash that they realised that actually they’d been done.

          Don’t get me wrong, of course your website has to be interesting, informative, compelling, absorbing and all that other good stuff – just the same as any other marketing colateral, but it isn’t the be all and end all of marketing, which the webistas would have us believe.

          There are also way too many people out there selling a website fantasy – the truth is you can’t create a good website in a few minutes, or get taken seriously by flowing text in to a readymade template, and despite the hype there really is no such thing as a ‘Google Magnet’.

          One of my contacts on the West Coast made this interesting observation in an email to me yesterday: “Now that sales guys have started to believe that there is a mechanism whereby they can get people coming to their website and pretty much writing the cheque before they even put in a call, they are putting relentless pressure on marketing to devote every cent of their effort into capturing this reactive opportunity.

          “What they conveniently forget is that there are only so many top ten rankings, and unless you do stuff to drive people to your website, like DM, eshots, advertising, PR, events and such, then you’re not really marketing, or selling for that matter, – You’re just finding more ways to open the windows wide enough for the business to blow in.”

          If you’re Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Virgin, GM, BA, or a hundred or so other global businesses with buckets of brand equity and recognition, then you cannot but get good SEO rankings, and your web presence will account for a large percentage of the way that your customers and stakeholders build their perception of your business. However, if you’re a local company, or one of a hundred or more in your country doing largely the same thing, then you cannot rely on SEO as your marketing foundation.

          Regardless of your size or speciality, you’re the  same as every other business in the world, SEO is just one tool in your marketing armoury, and you should use it in conjunction with the rest of your marketing toolbox.

          And for those of you who think I’m stating the blooming obvious, talk to the people you do business with socially – plumbers, builders, kitchen shops, small retailers and the like – and you’ll be amazed at how many of them will have been ripped off by Snake Oil SEO Salesmen, so it’s not obvious to them, and they account for around 60% of the GDP in the first world.

          It is often said that a lot of people have made a fortune out of the internet – I wonder how many have actually made their stack out of preying on the gullibility of people who don’t know better?