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10 case histories of how measurement has made
a
difference
First of all, let's get my views right out in the open. Here are the
WORST things people have done with a measurement report:
1. Threaten an
editor or publisher
2. Fire someone
3. Use it as a coaster
4. Justify a program that may look good but doesn't deliver business
value
5. File it away
6. Line the litter box
Now you get the idea. The point of measurement and evaluation is to
help you make better, more informed decisions. A measurement report
should help your business first, enhance your career second, and
justify your existence third. If you focus on the first goal-improving
your business-you will always get funding for the next research
program.
Here are 10 stories of how some of America's most admired
companies have improved their business results with the help of a
measurement program.
1. The case of the missing sales
In my earlier days in the measurement world, one of my clients called
us to double check some of our results for their media analysis. A
product manager had come to her in distress, saying "We need more PR,
the product isn't selling." As frequently happens when something
doesn't work, he was looking to publicity and communications for the
answer. The problem was that our report showed that his product had
received more and better press coverage over the last year than any
other product the company had. I double checked our numbers, and the
results were the same. His launch had outstripped all others by a
factor of four. So why wasn't his product selling? Turns out that it
was a Macintosh-based software program, and none of the sales offices
or sales reps even had a Macintosh in their offices. Once the sales
reps had Macs with which to demo the product, the product took off.
2. The case of the disappearing market share
A leading manufacturer in
the
consumer electronics field was concerned that their market share among
small business and home office users (SOHO) was declining. They
commissioned a study to analyze media coverage in the top 25
publications most frequently read by SOHO buyers. As it turned out, the
firm was mentioned in about half the coverage of consumer electronics
in those key publications. Not bad, and very much in line for what you
would expect for a company with 60% market share. However, when we
looked at just the negative press, the firm received 89% of all the
negative coverage. And when the press recommended products, or wrote
favorably about these products, the firm was only capturing about 30%,
i.e., two out of three articles recommended a competing product.
Separate research had shown that trade press coverage was a major
influence on purchasing decisions, so we knew this was a critical
weakness for the firm. We also knew that the factors most likely to
influence purchasing were things like "being rated best in class,"
"being rated a good buy/value," "being the best technology." When we
looked at how the media positioned the firm on those specific issues,
the firm was frequently second or third after the competition by a
significant margin. The only positioning that the firm clearly owned
was "market leader," a positioning that testing had shown had little
impact on buying decisions for this category. By refocusing their
messages, the client was able to regain their lost market share.
3. The
case of the wrong positioning
A major health insurance
company
conducted its first ever competitive positioning analysis-interviewing
both subscribers and business decision makers who actually made the
final decision on which health insurance company to go with. They were
asked what was most important to them when it came to making a decision
and how the company ranked on those issues. They were also asked what
came to mind when they heard the name of the firm and the competition.
The results were dreadful. The company came in dead last on every
important issue except choice of physician. Of all the "words" used to
describe the various companies, 66% of the ones describing the firm
were negative, compared to 30% or less for the competition. With some
trepidation (as a messenger I've been shot many times), I walked them
through the results. After quite a lot of blustering and defensiveness,
the CEO said, "All I can offer is more excuses." Shortly thereafter,
the company revamped its entire marketing program and added a marketing
expert to their board of directors. They reworked their ad campaign to
focus on choice (even using "Choice" in the name of a new product). By
the end of the year, for the first time in five years, the company had
stopped losing market share and was finally gaining on the competition.
4. Press tour triumphs over shrimp
I actually started my first company
as a result of one chart. While I was director of corporate
communications at Lotus Development, a product manager came to me and
said, "I want to launch my product with the same kind of party that you
had for 'Manuscript:'" (a launch so successful, that few people today
have ever heard of the product). I asked him why, and he said,
"Everyone was there, and the shrimp were great." I knew that most of
the people in attendance were employees of Lotus, and that in fact it
was all a huge waste of time and money. But it wasn't until I pulled
out a chart that showed him how the media covered a variety of
different launches that he actually got it. My chart showed that for
the manuscript launch, half of all coverage incorrectly positioned the
product and only one in four said anything we wanted to say about the
product. The chart had similar statistics for the other ten launches we
had done, and I pointed to the one for "One Source." One Source was
launched with a press tour, the total cost of which was somewhere
around $15,000. On a cost-per-message basis, the press tour was about
10 times better than the party.
5. Helping the board make better decisions
A major insurance firm had been using Advertising Value Equivalency as
a standard measure for their PR program for some time. It showed that
every month they received a little more coverage and that meant an
increase in the "Ad Value." In order to better understand what was
really happening, the company asked me to do a complete competitive
analysis of their media image. The results showed that most of the
increase in coverage was negative, resulting from a number of lawsuits
brought by angry customers. The communications group took the
information to the Board of Directors and for the first time could
clearly show the impact their decisions were having on the company's
reputation. Furthermore, the study showed that by sponsoring a major
community relationship program, the competition had outstripped them on
the "market leader" and "responsible corporate citizen" positioning.
The board began making better decisions immediately.
6. Saving a program that works
Country Music Television (CMT) had initiated a program of a traveling
country music show that could be transported in an 18-wheeler and
quickly set up in a parking lot. The goal was to increase the number of
cable operators carrying the program, by encouraging people to call
their local cable providers and say, "I want my CMT!" They had teamed
up with Wal-mart to secure the parking lots and had done one season's
worth of shows. The problem was they didn't know whether they should
continue with the program or not. The only gauge of success was the
word of the truck drivers, whose reports were considered with some
skepticism because of the inherent bias. Surveys were conducted of
attendees to determine the degree to which attendees were influenced by
the shows. A stunning 90% of all attendees said that they would contact
the cable companies. Another 60% said that they would encourage a
friend to do the same thing. What made the research even more valuable
was factoring in costs. They could tell on a location-by-location basis
which sites persuaded more people for less money-a calculation we
called "Cost per persuasion." Going forward, that research helped them
make better decisions relative to how many trucks to lease and how many
cities to plan for. They could use the "Cost per persuasion" in
conjunction with demographic and population data to determine where the
return on investment would be the greatest.
7. Help establish leadership positioning
Long before most athletes had even begun to step up their training for
the 1992 Olympics, a major technology company had signed on as a
sponsor and was starting to leverage their investment. With almost a
year to go before the date, their PR staff and their agency began to
seed the press with stories positioning the company as a leader in high
technology. To check their progress, a monthly media positioning study
was done to compare the number of times the firm had been mentioned in
key media as a "technology leader" compared to the two other technology
sponsors. Each month, in reviewing the report, the staff and agency
would sit down and evaluate their progress, determining which editors
and reporters were missing the message, which ones hadn't covered the
topic at all, and what groups of media should be targeted going
forward. As a result, the client's positioning as a technology leader
increased steadily each month, easily trumping the competition by a
factor of two and occasionally three. While other sponsors received
scant mention before the games actually opened, the firm had amassed
some 500 articles-all of which positioned the company as a technology
leader-by the time the games began.
8. More effectively
allocate
resources
For years, AT&T has been spending a fortune in advertising,
trying to get us to believe that the company is good to do business
with. In fact, they've been doing it for so long, they can predict how
many people they'll persuade before they even place a single ad. The
trouble is that they're not always right. In fact, when managers at
AT&T were recently going over some numbers, they discovered a
significant gap between predicted behavior and actual behavior. While
they were scratching their heads looking for a reason, someone noticed
that the times when customer loyalty was lower than predicted happened
to coincide with times when they were getting pummeled in the media for
"slamming" . Conversely, loyalty numbers were significantly higher when
their CEO was featured prominently and positively for his role on the
President's council on volunteerism. After integrating all the consumer
and PR data, trend studies showed that they could dial back their
advertising significantly during times of heavy, favorable press
coverage. They also found out that when negative press fills the pages,
there's absolutely no point in trying to promote your products, it just
makes people madder. The money they saved on advertising more than
covered the cost of the research.
9. Manage your agencies better
An international company was in the process of getting its marketing
efforts off the ground in Europe. It had just moved and cut the ribbon
on a beautiful new office facility in Germany. It gathered its four
European agencies around the table and showed them the results of the
latest media analysis. While coverage was steadily increasing in all
countries, the percentage of articles that contained a key message was
minimal. The agencies were clearly told: "Go forth and communicate
messages, for this is how you will be measured." Six months later the
same agencies gathered around the same table to review the latest
results. Message communication had increased 300% and overall coverage
had doubled. By far the greatest gains were in Spain. Even more
interesting, the greatest sales increases, as well as the largest
increases in market share, were also in Spain.
10. Getting to say "I" told you so."
My client at a major semiconductor company is much too
polite to say "neiner, neiner, neiner" when she's delivering a research
report, but she will confess to thinking it once or twice. She
understands that measuring things that don't work is far more valuable
than measuring the stuff that does work. Especially when some other
department has railroaded PR into changing the timing of a major launch
or when budgets have forced odd bedfellows to be announced in a joint
event. More than once she has been able to clearly demonstrate the
downside of such actions. Downsides including fewer messages
communicated, less positive press, and incorrect positioning. Several
clients have compared the results of different launches. One launch was
conducted via press tour, one was a major press conference at corporate
headquarters. Research showed that the press tour yielded nearly twice
as much positive press and communicated twice as many company messages.
Another client was able to demonstrate that when a launch was moved
forward by a week due to an unforeseen leak, 30% fewer messages were
communicated than in a normally handled release. Additionally, press
coverage was significantly lower than for other releases. All of these
studies gave the clients plenty of practice in "I told you so."
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