Download Can Industrial Product Publicity Be Measured?

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.