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Transcript
Can Industrial Product Publicity Be Measured? HY DOES the measurement of industrial advertising efW fectiveness get so much attention and the measurement of industrial publicity effectiveness so little? Both of these activities WILLIAM M. DOMIN and JACK FREYMULLER There is no letup in attempts to measure the effectiveness of advertising. But what about attempts to measure the effects of industrial product publicity? The authors of this article assess this important question, and describe an approach to publicity measurement which offers quantitative data for comparison purposes. Journal of Marketing. 1965), p p . 54-57. Vol. 29 (July, are considered to be important communications methods in the modern concept of total marketing. The plain truth is that the results of industrial publicity are many times more difficult to measure than industrial advertising. Also, the cost of obtaining detailed measurements of publicity effectiveness, equal in sophistication to the measurements now being obtained for industrial advertising, would be so expensive as to be absurd. The problem lies in sheer weight of numbers. For example, a typical industrial advertiser with a $100,000 space appropriation may decide that a total of 120 insertions in 20 business publications would constitute an adequate advertising program for a given year. Probably no more than 20 new ads would be prepared to make all the required insertions. Basically this industrial advertiser need only measure the results of a maximum of 120 insertions in order to have a comprehensive measurement of space advertising effectiveness. In actual practice, it is more common to measure only one insertion of a specific advertisement in each publication in which it appears. If this same standard is applied to measuring the results of publicity, then every appearance of a publicity item in a business publication should be considered to be the same as an individual insertion of a new advertisement. This is the key to the problem. It is virtually impossible to measure the individual communications power of hundreds or maybe thousands of publicity items and to relate this to the cost of each item. Obviously, then, publicity results cannot be measured by the same standards applied to advertising. But these results can be measured with some degree of success if a set of criteria is developed specifically for industrial product publicity. Publicity Defined Industrial publicity is ". . . the arm of sales and management activity responsible for securing editorial space, as divorced from paid space, in all media read, viewed, or heard by a company's customers and prospects, for the specific purpose of adding to company prestige and assisting in the meeting of sales goals."^ George Black, Planned Industrial Publicity (Chicago: Putnam Publishing Company, 1952), p. 3. 54 Can Industrial Product Publicity Be Measured? Industrial publicity does involve television, newspapers, and radio; but business publications are the most important media in industrial communication programs. Accordingly, only publicity in business publications is considered in this article. Although more than 3,000 business publications are now in existence, there are still only a limited number of publications serving a particular industry, group, or segment. These publications have a fixed number of issues a year containing a certain amount of white space. This white space is divided into a fixed proportion of editorial material to advertisements. Publicity's Role To communicate with customers and prospects who read these publications, companies must buy space for advertisements, earn space in the editorial sections, or do some of both. If earning space is included in the total communications program, the company faces intense competition from other companies also trying to get their messages included in the editorial sections. Also, because so many journals are largely staff-written, only a small proportion of editorial pages contains material supplied by companies through news releases and contributed articles. Publicity is not, and cannot be, as selective as advertising. An industrial advertisement is prepared in a specified size for a selected appearance date in a specific number of publications which have a recognized audience exposure potential. Often, a premium is paid for a certain location in a publication because this location is considered to be seen more readily. On the other hand, a publicity release may be sent to a large number of publications. The publicity material is picked up according to each editor's judgment, condensed or enlarged to whatever size he wishes, and placed in a location of an issue of his choosing. Measurement Methods The usual argument against developing a quantitative method for measuring the performance of a publicity program is that there are too many variables at work. Nevertheless, various quantitative methods have been and are being used to demonstrate the relative effectiveness of an industrial publicity program. These approaches can be classified into three categories: 1. Determination of amount obtained 2. Determination of cost per unit of publicity obtained 3. Relationship of publicity unit costs to unit costs of other phases of the total communications program. 55 Measuring the Amount First of all, a system has to be devised to locate and then count the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of publicity items which appear in business publications throughout the period of a year. Most companies use the services of a clipping bureau which searches hundreds of publications looking for clients' publicity items. As thorough as these agencies are, they cannot possibly subscribe to and search all publications. In their coverage of business publications, they probably are about 85% efficient. Most companies total the number of clippings received each year and then convert the number of clippings into more meaningful column inches. For conversion, only photos and copy which have been printed as a result of definite publicity activity are considered. Many firms prefer to present the total column inches of publicity received each year in terms of an equivalent number of pages. This conversion is made by dividing the total column inches by 30, the number of column inches to a standard 7 x 10 business-publication page. Another method for presenting the amount of published publicity obtained during the year is to work out a total audience exposure figure. The total audience exposure (sometimes referred to as sales contacts) is the sum of the net circulations of each magazine in which an item was published. If one magazine prints two or more different items, its circulation is multiplied accordingly. For example, if one item or clipping is published in 25 publications, each having a net circulation of 20,000, the total audience exposure figure for that item would be 500,000. If it is assumed that only 10% of the circulation of a magazine saw • ABOUT THE AUTHORS. William M. Domin is Manager of Marketing Services for Mil+on Roy Company, St. Petersburg, Florida, manufacturer of chemical instrumentation systems and controlled volume pumps. He was formerly Assistant Advertising Manager of Koppers Company, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jack Freymuller is Director of Public Relafions for the Harry P. Bridge Company, Philadelphia advertising and public relations agency. His industrial publicity experience includes advertising agencies, small to medium-siie clients, and most of the basic industries. 56 the clippings,- the corrected audience exposure figure would be 50,000. These calculations, however, are theoretical. Figures for total or corrected audience exposure of a publicity item do not consider the effect of size, location in publication, or other similar factors which may have influenced readership. Also, such figures cannot provide for special instances of above-average readership occasioned by high news value, unusual photography, or distinctive writing quality. Still another method is the tabulation of inquiries resulting from publicity. This approach is applicable if the primary objective of the publicity program is to obtain inquiries for sales followup. Generally, inquiries are received for announcements of new literature or new products, rather than for contributed articles. A company can realistically divide its review into two parts: (1) product and literature to obtain inquiries; (2) feature material for which inquiries were not a primary goal. Tabulation of the inquiries can be made by publicity release, publication, industry, geographical distribution, sales districts, product, or any number of similar classifications as a guide to measuring the effectiveness of a publicity program. Measuring Unit Cost A simple tabulation of inquiries or a calculated total audience exposure figure takes on more significance as a measuring tool when the results are related to costs. Probably because industrial product publicity is relatively young as a phase of marketing, more effort is put forth to obtain cost data which justify the value of this communications tool, rather than to obtain data to measure its performance. A cost-per-column inch figure must be obtained if further evaluation of a program is to be made. This figure is arrived at by dividing the publicity budget by total column inches obtained in a period, usually a year. A cost-per-page figure can be obtained by multiplying this figure by the number of column inches to a page. In most business publications, a 7 X 10 page of 3-coIumn format contains 30 column inches. If an audience exposure figure is tabulated, the amount of the budget is again divided by this figure to obtain a cost-per-sales contact. In most cases, this figure is a minute fraction of a penny. The term "sales contact" is misleading since every reader may not have been a prospect. Thus, the number of readers is considered to be the number of "sales contacts." The true cost per genuine 2 James A. Gilruth, interviewed by Terry Armstrong, "Technical Publicity: A Pattern For Its Control and Evaluation," Sales Management, Vol. 64 (April, 1950), pp. 100-104, at p. 104. Journal of Marketing, July, 1965 sales contact cannot be determined readily by this method. If inquiries, and not sales contacts, are used to measure the amount of publicity, a similar procedure is followed to obtained a cost-per-inquiry figure. The total publicity budget is divided by the number of inquiries obtained. Again, some correction figure is used to obtain a more realistic appraisal in situations where inquiry production is only one of several publicity objectives. One company determines its cost-per-inquiry by using 33% of its budget. It is not clear why this percentage figure was selected, except that this program is divided into literature announcements and feature material. The literature announcements are used specifically to obtain inquiries; and it is assumed that the 33% is the amount of the budget used in the literature announcement portion of the program. Measuring Relative Costs Industrial product publicity is an arm of sales; but traditionally product publicity has been a minor ingredient in the total sales communication mix. One obstacle in its development has been the fact that there is no method to demonstrate by quantitative means the effectiveness of product publicity in relation to paid advertising, the more widely used tool for communicating by print media. Recognizing this problem, the authors have developed a formula for determining an index of performance for publicity.^ The basic approach used in the measurement method is to consider the amount of white space which becomes available in a given year to a company for communicating with its present and prospective customers. In other words, how does the cost of obtaining a certain amount of earned space (published publicity) compare with the cost of purchased space (paid advertising)? The index of publicity performance is the ratio of the estimated worth of business publication publicity (measured in terms of paid space) to the net cost of the program. This proposition can be stated in the form of an equation: / = 5 D in which / is the calculated return on each publicity dollar spent for a given year; E is the estimated worth of a column inch of publicity; 2X is the total number of inches obtained; and B is the amount spent to carry out the program. It is assumed here that product publicity and advertising, although two distinctly different activities, have an equivalent potential in communica•*"Five Ways To Gain Publicity While Holding Down Costs," Industrial Marketing, Vol. 48 (October, X963), pp. 130-132. Can Industrial Product Publicity Be Measured? tions. Therefore, the average page rate for purchased space can be taken as the estimated worth of a full page of publicity. Thus, at 30 column inches to the page, the worth of earned space in column inches is calculated. Of course, advertising and product publicity differ greatly in sales directness, display, believability, and other factors. It is true that a publicity item does not carry the sales Impact of an advertisement. On the other hand, an advertisement does not have the believability of editorial material. If it can be accepted for evaluating purposes that one factor equalizes the other, the estimated column inch figure is valid. Using the Index An example of how this publicity index might be applied to a publicity program can be provided by a company which obtained 50 full pages of product publicity in 1964. This would amount to 1,500 column inches. The publicity budget (excluding overhead) for that year was $9,000.00. Since the cost of purchased space (excluding overhead) was approximately $1,000.00 a page, or $33.00 a column inch, the estimated worth of a column inch of publicity would be $33.00. Substituting these figures in the equation £? $33.00 X 1500 would b e / = B $9,000.00 or / = $5.50 worth of column inches for each publicity dollar spent. The publicity index can be used in several ways to evaluate and demonstrate the performance of a product publicity program. First, the index is an aid in comparing one year's performance with that of previous years, taking into consideration the factors of budget, total output, and changing costs of white space. Also, the index can help determine the stability of cost to output in cases where a significant budget adjustment resulted 57 in a substantial change in the amount of earned space. If full realization of its limitations is taken into consideration, the index also can be a basis in determining the contribution of product publicity to a communications program as compared with the industrial advertising campaign. Some Limitations None of the measuring methods being applied to product publicity makes it possible to evaluate the impact of a publicity program on a program area or an audience group. There are indirect methods used to determine if a product publicity campaign has achieved its stated goals, but each of these is questionable in its reliability and validity. Recognition studies are often used to measure the performance of the campaign when a publicity program has as its principal objective the improved image of the company's products among a special audience or industry. But more than likely other communication tools were also being used at the time, and it is not possible to determine accurately the contribution made by the publicity program. The number and quality of inquiries which can be directly traced to publicity are sometimes used to indicate the effectiveness of a publicity program. But many readers might be favorably infiuenced by a publicity campaign and never send in an inquiry. On the other hand, a large number of inquiries from chronic literature gatherers hardly indicates the effectiveness of a campaign. In spite of the frustrations that inevitably accompany attempts to measure the results of industrial publicity, the efforts go on at companies from year to year. Even if it is generally conceded that a company is enjoying "a good press," management still looks for a dollars and cents justification of industrial publicity. •MARKETING MEMO Overview of New Product Research By an Old Hand . . . As of 1964, there is a strange scramble of attitudes toward market research. A few teachers and a small number of design practitioners either advocate market and consumer research or attempt to do some research and apply their findings to the solution of design problems; the large majority of industrial designers thoroughly distrust both the idea of market research and the businessman who makes use of it. In the highly competitive field of packaged consumer goods, nearly all designers sooner or later have their ideas thoroughly researched by experts in the field of packaging design, and they are learning to depend on the findings of the research group. —Dilman M. K. Smith. How To Avoid Mistakes When Introducing New Products (New York. N. Y.: Vantage Press, Inc., 1964), p. 15.