This is the question posed time and again by clients and potential clients. It is the question posed by clients, marketers and PR practitioners around the world. The obvious answer is that it`s impossible to quantify how much it`s worth. In this sense it is truly priceless.
You cannot - and you must not try to see - the value of PR in column centimetres.
Various people have tried to quantify the value of PR. They have got it consistently wrong because there are so many variables outside the equation. One often-used equation is to count up the number of column centimetres (or minutes of air time), multiply them by the advertising rate of the publication or radio station and multiply the quotient again by six to reflect the greater value attached to publicity.
Marketing people and management accept this method of PR value measurement because they have no other way of proving its value; and the reason is that they are still trying to correlate value with cost, and they have not created a seamless value proposition around the PR process.
Here are the key reasons you cannot measure the value of PR:
Would you have necessarily advertised in the publications in which the PR appears? Your PR can gain access to many publications, which would not necessarily be your target market for advertising; after all, budgetary constraints mean you can only advertise in so many publications. But your PR company can reach anywhere, any time, if its media relationships are good and solid.
As an adjunct, only PR can give you an even spread of your message across all readership profiles. Your advertising budget just can`t spread that far.
The concept of cognitive dissonance. No amount of PR can unmake a negative perception. Our bank tells us time and again in advertising how important we are to it. But its systems are so fragmented, so shattered that it is all it can do to provide us with a basic service. So what do we think when we see and hear the bank`s advertising? We feel scorn, contempt and frustration, and we want to switch brands. For an established brand, publicity is about reinforcing feelings, not creating new ones. If the market has gone cold on you - as it has with Brainware or Rainbow Chickens, for example - you are simply throwing good money after bad with PR. Now, try and measure value in column centimetres; you might as well measure the value of bricks added to the dyke as the sea washes over it.
If the company`s go-to-market model is right, then strategically placed PR will more often than not see the share price leap and investors will queue for equity. We had an example recently where a client`s market cap leapt R140 million in 15 minutes due to the placement of a really good article in the right media. Now, try and measure that value back to column centimetres.
The impact it can have on your business. One of our clients recently put together a seriously good black empowerment deal. The market bought the deal in a big way when we announced it, to the extent that the black empowerment entity was appointed to the State Information Technology Agency, was named black empowerment company of the year, and we are about to secure the ongoing services of this company. In addition, the black empowerment company was a member of the winning State Lottery consortium, and there is evidence to indicate we played a part in the awareness and credibility that led to the granting of the lottery tender to this consortium. Put a value to that if you must.
Disproportionate reach. Try and measure the value of a placement in the snippets column on the top left-hand side in the companies and markets section of Business Day by traditional means. The cost is insignificant, but we know every time we get a good one in Business Day for a client, their value leaps. Yet that much space is equivalent in cost to a smallish ad in a channel publication. The one placement saw our client`s business change fundamentally; the other would be discarded as irrelevant. But it all gets lost in the wash of assessed column centimetres.
Finally, every relationship in life is based on both parties gaining equal value. If the client is gaining R1.5 million in value - as we showed one client it was obtaining at a ratio of R15 for every rand invested - then the value equation is skewed. We then showed the client we could easily bump this figure up to R30 or R40 for every rand invested. Would they like to double, treble, quadruple our fee? Clearly, one party was benefiting excessively. The issue has never been raised again.
Feel it in your bones
There are many other spurious ways to try and measure the value of PR. They are all based on the assumption that value equates to cost. Please ignore them all.
With great PR you feel the difference in your company. You feel things move; you feel it in your own step, in the way your people walk a little taller. You see it in your share price; in the way your salespeople close deals more easily.
But you cannot - and you must not try to see - the value of PR in column centimetres.
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