Mediatrack Research is moving on up

We are currently making the final plans for our office move after 19 years in Westbury on Trym. Our new home is to be the iconic Colston Tower from 16th March and as we look to expand our range of services this move marks the beginning of some exciting plans for the future of Mediatrack. It will also give us a nice view of the centre of Bristol as we will be up on the 10th floor! We have secured 1,381 sq ft of this recently refurbished building on a five year term. Chairman Nick commented on the move:

“Global news systems and consumer media are changing dramatically, and we’re changing ahead of them. As Europe emerges from recession, accurate reputation measurement and profile management are critical business performance issues. This move gives us a much higher, brighter and better outlook as we look to our markets right across Britain and the rest of the world.”

Mediatrack Research is the only company of its kind in the south west, located in Bristol which has a thriving media community. Besides evaluation, we offer a range of services for communications professionals including journalist audits, polling, focus groups, internal communications analysis and social media expertise.

Cardiff CIPR

To Cardiff to speak as their first guest of 2010 for their Rise n Shine breakfast briefings. An impressive 50+ attendees to hear my thoughts on the future of evaluation, current best practice and of course what Mediatrack was advising in regard to social media. Judging from the questions the challenges of twitter, blogs, etc are at the forefront of minds. I hope that by giving our view on how to make the interaction manageable we may have helped a few people appreciate that there are straightforward measures that when taken can prevent information overload.

End of an era for Twitter?

As a New Year emerges, many have added to their resolution list the decision to quit Twitter and return to the real world. Stephen Fry has had a rocky relationship with the micro-blogging site during the past year and whilst he claims it is only a temporary parting, he acknowledges it is necessary in order to get some real work done. Similarly before Christmas, Lily Allen admitted an addiction with the site and announced that she is going cold turkey when it comes to technology.

If 2009 was the boom year for Twitter, it seems we are on the brink of its demise and Chris Hughes’ SocialTrance this evening, his attempt at mass hypnosis, reveals a more sinister side to the site which makes scenes from Doctor Who not seem so far from reality. A recent article from PC World stated that 2010’s top security threats include Facebook and Twitter so even if the site remains popular for some time to come, there are various risks involved which could warrant it some bad press.

Google have recently added Twitter to their search engine in an attempt to keep up with the speed of breaking news, yet this blends a search engine full of useful information with a blogging site which contains a lot of pointless comments so this could be a dubious marriage.

What does this all mean for those undertaking PR evaluation? Nielsen reported that growth on Twitter reached a peak in May 2009 before leveling off, though it did report that the greatest demographic was 35 - 49 and that it could become important within marketing strategies amid the unstable economic conditions. However, they demonstrated that when researching a new purchase online, blogs garnered more trust amongst consumers than Twitter or Facebook, suggesting that blogs are a more effective means of communication for maintaining a brand. Whilst there is a lot of talk about measuring Twitter, and a number of tools with which to do so, many of our clients choose only to measure influential blogs in depth when considering social media, though it can be useful to see how much ‘noise’ is created in other sites. Essentially though, as we begin a new decade traditional media is still valued as trustworthy and some social media sites may become old news before long.

Whistle-blowing: How to get it wrong

Listened with interest last night to the reports on the sale of data by T-Mobile. The first reports were followed with denials by all the leading players and a no comment from T-Mobile, the clear implication being that this was the 'guilty' party. Only later were we to learn that it was indeed T-Mobile who had drawn the attention of the authorities to the situation - surely at some point it might have been considered wise to have a statement prepared which could have been released in a timely fashion when the news entered the public domain. It could conceivably have turned this negative in to a positive.

Interested to know if T-Mobile has some crisis comms evaluation in place.

PR Evaluation Award

If you are “into” PR research and measurement, and have used it extensively in one of your PR campaigns this past year, you might want to consider entering the Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award for Excellence in PR Measurement and Evaluation. Entries of all types are welcome – including research using social media! The award recognizes superb examples of research used to support public relations practice. Winners are feted at the Institute for Public Relations Summit on Measurement in October in Portsmouth, NH, and it’s quite a big deal. But hurry! Entries are due August 15th. Here’s How to Enter, and see these terrific examples of previous winners’ entries: Padilla Speer Beardsley's Winning Entry 2007 or Shell's Award Winning Entry 2008 for ideas – and there are more on the site.

The fear of flu

The growing debate surrounding Swine Flu, or should I say Influenza A, or even H1N1, has turned to the media handling of this event, causing many to argue that it has been overhyped. So as consumers of media become more analytical and savvy, how do we know which media to trust and will this become a case of crying wolf? Many argue that other viruses such as SARS were hyped so the news is now falling on deaf ears. We’ve had the credit crunch spreading through the papers for months now; this is something new.

Maureen Taylor, previously the national medical reporter for CBC Television News, gave some timely advice to journalists in a recent article in which she advises against predicting outcomes. Radio 2 recently discussed the ‘worst case scenario’ and the Guardian ran the headline ‘Up to 1.2 million could be hospitalized in Britain in event of pandemic’. Hardly reassuring news and it is speculation not fact, as we continuously hear of the ‘possible’ pandemic. Thomas Abraham, spokesman for the WHO added: ‘We have consistently said a pandemic is imminent’ but the outcome is about as uncertain as the name we are meant to use for the virus, so why does the British media assume the worst? The fact is it makes a more dramatic story than the news that 27 people in Britain have the virus and seem to be okay.

The US government are now saying that it will be ‘less severe than feared’ yet despite having fewer cases and no deaths, we in Britain remain more cautious with Sir Liam Donaldson calling this ‘premature’. Perhaps it’s a cultural difference that we prefer to focus on the negative. Maureen writes that she doesn’t feel the Canadian media hyped SARS and it would be interesting to compare this with the reporting in the UK.

Our media industry analysis at Mediatrack for clients around the globe often calls for a comparison of markets and how the media report international events. What is clear about Swine Flu is that readers are losing a degree of faith and trust in the media they read, posing a bigger threat to the future of public relations, which is not to be sneezed at.

The value of evaluation

In the words of Francis Ingham, PRCA director general: “the best way to fight budget cuts is to demonstrate the value you are adding.” It is certainly encouraging to see that as the PR industry matures, more MDs are recognising the need for evaluation; a survey complied by the PRCA revealed that 84 per cent consider it “very important to the credibility of PR”. We couldn’t agree more.

You would be forgiven for thinking, we would say that. Yet we are finding that as the recession overshadows business it is ever more crucial to be aware of factors affecting reputation. Many organizations are fighting a crisis in confidence so it is key to send out the right signals to your audience.

Media industry analysis will soon tell you which areas of your strategy are working, as well as identifying those that aren’t. It might be that you choose to condense your source list to the titles that really matter to your audiences because targeted, quality measurement is more relevant. It’s also crucial to hone your messages and channel resources effectively to weather the storm.