Rocket Science

A couple of weeks I hooked up with a friend from college (T. ). Before moving over to the ‘Dark Side’ of PR we even worked for the same newspaper. Sitting in the sun enjoying a fabulous mojito he told me a story that completely baffled me.

He had written an article about a large enterprise in the mobile industry. For a couple of months now there are rumors that the company would have to shrink it’s workforce, but everyone involved denies the plans. However, T. managed to find a union delegate that says things are going wrong in the company. If T. guaranteed he would never disclose his source he could write an article about it. When the article appeared everyone was shocked. An anonymous union delegate that says:”We could do the same work with half the workforce.”, is huge news.

things got ugly

People were concerned about their future for quite some time already, as soon as they read the article they stopped working and there was a strike. A normal reaction if you consider the circumstances. The unions started a manhunt to find the T.’s source. They called him and threatened with law-suits, but T. didn’t comply. Unions tried to blame each other saying the source could not possibly be one of their members. Even posters were hanged and tensions between rose to a climax. T. stood his ground, and warned the legal department about the situation.

and then they got dirty

In the mean time things had gotten a bit worse. The unions had find out that one of their colleagues was in fact T.’s father-in-law. T. told me his father-in-law is one of the most loyal employees of the company. Whenever there is a strike, he would be the guy to climb over the fence to go to work. Of course the poor man wasn’t happy with the article T. wrote. But of course he didn’t have anything to do with it.

T. received a union phone call, saying that they had find out his father-in-law was one of their colleagues. They asked him to reconsider and to say who his source was… In other words, they were threatening him. Pure and simple blackmail.

destroy your media relations with one call

Of course I feel bad about T. and the fact that they try to get him through his family. It’s something you just don’t do. But from a PR point of view I don’t understand it either.

Let’s assume rumors are true, and plans are being made to reduce human capital. As a union you would need to put your case high up the agenda. Politician, media, public everyone should support your case. Now why would you go threatening a journalist that writes for the most popular newspaper in your region? PR is not rocket science, or is it?

SEC releases new guidelines on public disclosure

Some important news for publicly quoted companies came out recently. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released a speech that they are planning to issue guidance on how companies can use their web sites to provide information to investors in compliance with the federal securities laws. This is great news for quoted companies who are spending lots of money in getting their investor news out through news wire services under the SEC's Fair Disclosure Regulation. Under certain criteria the SEC will permit these companies to disclose news only through their websites including blogs and social media! This could potentially by the tipping point for corporate websites and blogs as a tool to communicate with investors. The SEC began studying the issue in late 2006 after Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz called the news release requirements an “anachronism.”

The interpretive guidance addresses four main topics:

1. When information posted on a company web site is “public” for purposes of the applicability of Regulation FD;

2. Company liability for information on company web sites – including previously posted information, third-party hyperlinks, summary information and the content of interactive web sites;

3. The types of controls and procedures advisable with respect to such information; and

4. The format of information presented on a company web site, with the focus on readability, not printability.

The 4th point is actually very interesting, as most investor relations websites currently just publish information in a form that resembles the printable forms they use for releasing to PR news wires (usually in the form of downloadable PDF's). It will be interesting to see how investor relations websites and blogs will change now that the SEC has said that the form of this information has to focus on readability and not printability. The SEC has not yet released full details yet.

Measuring PR Share of Voice

A nice way for measuring PR results is to calculate your company’s share of voice as compared to your main competitors. However to get meaningful data there are some things to consider. A short guideline to measuring share of voice:

1. Work with a good analysis company
Be sure to select an analysis company that really monitors all media and websites that are relevant to your market. Beware that there are a lot of service providers who claim to monitor European media, but have a strong focus on UK. The best way to tackle this is to ask for a full list of publications being monitored per country and have your local PR in each country look at it.

2. Don’t select too many competitors
The more competitors you select, the smaller your share of voice will be and the more difficult it will be to monitor in- or decreased share of voice. If you select 100 competitors, your share of voice may only increase from 5.0 to 5.1 per cent. This is not motivating for local PR and frankly does not recognize the good local work. Limit the amount of competitors to a maximum of 4-6 and make sure there are some local market players included per country.

3. Refine overlapping competitors as much as possible
If you are a niche software vendor, and IBM is in your space as a competitor, IBM wil definitely have a great share ofvoice. But their share of voice may not totally be concerning the space you are in, because IBM is messaging on software, hardware, services and so on. Try to refine competitor monitoring to your specific space as much as possible.

4. Measure long term
So what happens if you launch a great new mobile phone and get some great coverage out of it, but at the same time Apple decided to launch their newest iPhone? Although you have done great work, your share of voice is likely to decrease. Alternatively if you get caught up in a high profile lawsuit, your share of voice may go up dramatically for the wrong reasons. These ‘incididents’ happen every now and should be leveled out over a longer period of measurement. Do look at short term results where they can be attributed to great PR (of your company or your competitor), but also look at results year by year.

Good luck! And remember: share of voice is just one of many measurement tools ;-)