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By Knight Kiplinger

The Kiplinger Washington Editors

July 2, 2009

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I just attended a franchise seminar. The speaker represents a few hundred franchises that (he says) are hand picked. He has the prospect (aka victim?) answer some questions about themselves then he makes recomendations - based on your personality, capital situation, etc.. If you pick a franchise, then he does some due dilligence for you. If you both decide it's a good idea, he helps you get started. He says he offers this service free of charge, which means he gets a commission if he's able to sell you a franchise. Has anyone done this? Successfully? Unsuccessfully?

-- fender

Are Your PR Efforts Working?

Companies spend a lot of money and time on public relations but often have little idea of whether the effort was worth it. There are ways to tell.

July 2008

Katharine Delahaye Paine

KDPaine & Partners LLC

Katharine Delahaye Paine is the founder of KDPaine & Partners LLC, which specializes in PR and social media measurement. Her book Measuring Success, the Data-Driven Communicator’s Guide to Measuring Public Relationships was published in 2007.

The Institute for Public Relations, founded in 1956, supports PR research and education.

Pauline Draper

Millward Brown Precis

Pauline Draper is senior vice president, Millward Brown Precis, the division of Millward Brown that specializes in analysis of media output on a quantitative and qualitative basis. Draper was one of the founders of Precis and heads up the division in the Americas. She has extensive experience in working with major corporations, both nationally and internationally.

Angela C. Jeffrey

VMS

Angela C. Jeffrey, is vice president of editorial research for VMS (for video monitoring service), and a member of the Commission on Public Relations Measurement & Evaluation.

Katharine Delahaye Paine, Pauline Draper and Angela C. Jeffrey.
The Institute for Public Relations

Public relations efforts have different goals and purposes. When a company introduces a big new product, it usually plans a big PR campaign to go with it -- throwing lavish launch parties for local and industry specific media and big clients, having company officials make personal appearances and trying to get reviews by influential media and blogs. Some companies seek to heighten their profiles and display their expertise by getting key employees cited in articles and interviewed on programs likely to be seen by potential clients.

You know that none of this is easy or cheap, but do you have any real idea of whether your firm is getting results commensurate with the cost and effort? Odds are, you don’t. People savor press clippings and are happy if there are a reasonable number. But do they reflect the message being aimed for? Three experts in measuring and evaluating PR efforts, Katie Delahaye Paine, Pauline Draper and Angela C. Jeffrey, explain in a paper for the Institute for Public Relations how to size up a campaign or other PR efforts.

The primary purpose of PR is to support the various goals of the company -- corporate growth, market share, sales, corporate reputation, innovation and so on. Once those goals are identified, PR efforts should be tailored to back them by making sure they serve very specific purposes that can be objectively evaluated. Two of those very specific objectives, for example, are being specific ("Who do I want to affect with what?" and being measurable ("What measurements should I consider to establish success? ... Different objectives need different types of metrics").

The authors use case studies to illustrate their approach. One is Lotus, which showed off new software with a relatively inexpensive press tour and with a costly, high-profile launch effort, including expensive parties. When it was clear that no one really knew how effective either of these approaches was, company officials went back and studied the resulting stories. The $350,000 launch effort and the $15,000 media tour both generated substantial coverage, but articles spawned by the costly launch contained few key messages that Lotus wanted conveyed, while the other coverage had "far greater inclusion of key messages," the authors write. "On a cost-per-message-communicated basis, the press tour delivered about 10 times the value following the launch."

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