I note from the Institute for Public Relations site that they have bitten the bullet on multipliers.
There are some limited and highly specialist areas of our work where long experience shows there is a statistical correlation between and out-take and outcome. It is rare. I have no evidence to support this but have friends who say they have.
This week's Conversations column introduces a new paper (free on the Institute website) by Mark Weiner, president of Delahaye, and Don Bartholomew, senior vice president of MWW Group. In "Dispelling the Myth of PR Multipliers and Other Inflationary Audience Measures," the authors describe the ways in which multipliers are used by public relations professionals to report total impressions and value.
Multipliers are fake figures. Having evaluated millions of press clips - yes MILLIONS, I have no evidence to show there is a consistent multiplier.
The agencies who apply fiddle factor are conning their clients....
Very interesting post and paper. Even more interesting, perhaps, is your evaluation of millions of articles.
ReplyDeletePlease write about that. I'd love to see the methodology and results. Was this for a study (or studies) or are we talking about your reading habits over time?
Thanks.
Robert, I founded Media Measurement, one of the first press relations evaluation companies in the 1980's.
ReplyDeleteWe processed millions of clips.
Methodologically, the approach is written up in a number of published (academic) papers and some of the early results are published in my book 'Evaluating Press Coverage' - Kogan Page.
In addition, some 20 years on I now have a wonderful software tool that allows me to identify the concepts (tags, keywords) that drive content in massive copus.
It is this tool that I use to search and evaluate content for inclusion in this blog. It saves several hours per day.