Media Monitors - Singapore

Integrated Marketing Communications in Indonesia, 26 - 27 April 2012, Jakarta

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:00:00 GMT

I had the privilege to attend this event held in Jakarta last week which was organised by Pacific Conferences, and here are some important insights gained from the conference:

Based on the survey conducted by TNS Indonesia in 2009 involving eight cities presented by Mahesh Agarwal, Executive Director of TNS Indonesia, the number one media in which people spent most of their time was television. This was followed by newspapers, radio, magazines, internet, and cinema. In 2011, television remains first while internet growth has superseded newspapers and took second place. As the survey was only held in eight cities, it might not represent the total population of Indonesia.

In 2011, there were 34 million internet users in Indonesia representing a 14% internet penetration rate in the country (Source: BBH Asia Pacific). Indonesia is made up of 17,508 islands and in many rural areas, internet connection is still not to be found. Traditional media such as newspapers and television remains an important role in these localities.

Agarwal continued to present that Indonesia internet users are active users and not merely viewers. The bulk of internet usage is for communications purpose and secondarily for entertainment. There are already consumer-generated content created by Indonesian users - videos, photos, blogs, comments in Twitter, Facebook, circles, etc. The average number of friends that a typical Indonesian Facebook user has is 457; but 80% of friends added are without active conversations. Additionally, fellow speaker Chris J. Reed, the Regional Partnerships Director of Partnership Marketing (Asia Pacific), reported that there are 600 million people worldwide that have downloaded the Angry Bird application, and Indonesia has the highest number of downloads.

Consumer-generated content is more trusted in Indonesia than company / branding propaganda as it affects consumer purchase decisions. 56% of those surveyed agree that just a single comment would affect their purchase; even a comment from a stranger would also give impact.

Many companies are now advocating brand awareness by launching various marketing campaigns via social media platforms. However, gaining trust from the public is important as stories that are not true will not be tolerated. With these marketing campaigns launched via the various social media platforms, there comes a need also for companies to monitor the buzz or conversations about them which may grow viral. Brand and business online intelligence, such as those provided by Brandtology, will greatly help companies in monitoring the effectiveness of their campaigns as well as to keep track of public sentiment.

Another interesting insight presented by Henry Manampiring, Brand and Corporate Strategist of Indopacific Edelman, is the majority of the public trust news that are delivered on three to five different articles. The most trusted person is an academic expert such as a professor, second most trusted is a technical expert in a company, and the third is an ordinary person. The least trusted person is a government official. This data came from an online survey done by approximately 1,000 respondents, mostly from Java Island.

There are also barriers to purchase decisions such as location, price, size, colour, etc. “Desire to purchase does not correlate with actual purchase. If the percentage of desire to purchase deducted by those barriers, it will be more correlated with the percentage of actual purchase, and that is the formula for brand equity,” said Robby Susatyo, the Chairman of IPSOS Indonesia. In store promotion plays an important role to determine the public’s interest to purchase a product. A solution called Synovate can help retailers countercheck how many shoppers visit their store, engage, and interact with the product. This can provide insight as to whether a location or a product in a store is frequently viewed or not.

The conference taught us that 360-degree marketing involves not only humanization, but also storytelling, word of mouth, in-store promotion, and TV commercials; not forgetting public and media relations, as concluded by Dian Firlia MK, the Former Head of Corporate Communication of LG Electronics Indonesia. It concluded that the cost of investing in public / media relations is much less than investing in advertisements.

Image (BeckyCortino) courtesy of BeckyCortino on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing.

On Breaking Talons and Growing Teeth

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 02:00:00 GMT

Sipping tea after lunch with the ladies of Godiva - Doris Yau and Peony Yeung, I had the extraordinary privilege of hearing the eagle rebirth myth, as we watched three eagles circling patiently outside the great windows of the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong on the second day of the AMEC Asia Pacific PR Summit on Measurement, held on 29 February and 1 March 2012.

The popular myth has it that eagles have a lifespan of up to 70 or 80 years and that around the age of 40 or 50, they go through a painful process of breaking their beaks and talons which then grow back and enable the great birds of prey to live for another 30 years or so. The myth conveyed a message about change or rebirth as essential for survival - and often always, a painful process.

The PR industry, as David Rockland of Ketchum Communications so honestly described it: “lives in fear” of being under-valued, unappreciated and worse, redundant – pitted against marketing and in the post-global economic crisis environment. How can we change that?

Although the mind-boggling question for PR practitioners has not changed - how do we demonstrate the value of our work? - the times call for a change in how we approach that question in order to survive and thrive in this challenging industry.

COMMITMENT

Firstly, it means being committed to measurement - monitoring and evaluation of PR efforts, even if the results are not always heartening. It also means being committed to measurement best practices and not reliance on magic bullets. While applause is due to industry players in Australia and New Zealand in the Asia Pacific region for making it loud and clear that AVEs (advertising value equivalency) are a far cry from an accurate measure of the value of PR, the PR industry in South East Asia and in many parts of Asia have yet to catch up with Australia and New Zealand.

What do we do while the PR industry is not quite there?

EDUCATION

We have to get out there and do some PR for best practice measurement. “Talk the walk, and walk the talk”. Simply said, we have to use valid metrics for measurement instead of sensationalising AVEs . Read also this related article: Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles, a new declaration of standards and practices to guide measurement and evaluation of public relations discussed in Barcelona in 2010 and adopted by delegates of the 2nd European Summit on Measurement, organized by AMEC and the Institute for Public Relations.

ROI

To convince procurement, CFOs and the C-suite, we need to define ROI not necessarily across the industry in the way that AVEs (once) erroneously fulfilled this role, but in clients’ business terms – it could be an increase in subscription, sales, attendance at an event, number of downloads of coupons from a company website that customers use to purchase items with, at a discount. The buzz phrase is “ROI in clients’ terms”. When ROI is not defined in an operational manner, this often poses a challenge in being able to isolate the contribution of PR from the overall outcome of marketing and other communication channels. For example, this may mean being able to identify a campaign where only PR was applied, no advertising or events, and then measuring the coverage.

If that proves too challenging, an alternative is to have a holistic view of campaigns and to measure the overall outcome - in other words, integrated marketing communication, which encompasses PR, advertising, sales promotion, any and all business communication. As Kieran Moore, CEO Ogilvy PR Australia shared at the AMEC Asia Pacific PR Summit: “budgets don’t get smaller; they actually get bigger when we (PR) work with the other disciplines”.

BRAWN AND TEETH

Instead of living in fear, PR practitioners and corporate communicators need to stop avoiding numbers and research on account of being wordsmiths. We cannot communicate with audiences we do not understand and listen to, more so these days with greater social media engagement. Research is a core element of doing effective PR and should be expected of practitioners. As Kieran Moore of Ogilvy PR Australia said it, “become more like the wolf… grow some teeth and stand up for our profession”.

But first, there are beaks and talons to be broken.

Browse the discussion on the AMEC Asia Pacific PR Summit on Measurement on Twitter at #amechk12

Image (Eagle) courtesy of Sir_Leif on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing.

Love and Labour in the Singapore Budget 2012

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:30:00 GMT

If there were two things the Singapore Budget 2012 set out to do, they had to be (i) show love to the people, particularly the seniors, and (ii) address the labour issue.

Media Monitors analysed opinion expressed in the media on the Singapore Budget 2012 between Friday, 17 February 2012 (the date of the announcement) and Wednesday, 22 February 2012 in Singapore-based print media, blogs and forums monitored by Media Monitors. Here’s what the analysis team found:

LOVE

The topic most favourably and frequently discussed in media responses to the budget was individual tax and subsidies (46% of the analysed coverage discussed this topic). Benefits such as those for lower-income families, the disabled and the elderly were widely acknowledged in the analysed coverage.

Senior citizens featured very prominently as key beneficiaries of the 2012 budget. Six out of the eight most frequently discussed topics bore relevance to seniors, namely: individual tax and subsidies, ageing population, CPF, public healthcare, older/disabled workers and housing. Some of the incentives catering to the seniors involved subsidies for families and homes caring for the elderly, MediShield allocation, Silver Housing bonus, increased CPF contribution rates for older workers and incentives for employers hiring seniors.

Labour

Following the perks for individuals (love for the people), the second most frequently discussed topic was foreign labour. Although 34% of the analysed reports on this subject was unfavourable in tone, the sum impact of this coverage was still on average, slightly favourable.

The discussion on the lowered dependency ratio ceilings (DRCs) was polarised between concerns expressed by businesses particularly SMEs that were heavily reliant on foreign labour on the one hand, and an appreciation of the longer term benefits of reducing reliance on foreign workers on the other.

Singaporean demographics as well as competition for employment were often key arguments against foreign labour. In the case of the latter, some of the coverage made a distinction between foreign workers engaged in low-skilled work that was unattractive to Singaporean nationals and skilled foreign employees.

Diagram 1. Leading Topics on the Singapore Budget 2012

Among messages conveyed, the three leading messages were that the Budget has the people’s interest at heart (26 mentions), is focused on the long term (20 mentions) and is focused on increasing productivity (19 mentions). These messages were mentioned in reporting on benefits for different stakeholders as discussed earlier and in reports on economic restructuring particularly with regards to labour and productivity.

Despite active debate on the social dynamics between the ageing population, foreign labour, rising living costs and the low birth rate, an angle that did not emerge explicitly in the media discussion was that Singapore as a developed nation is facing similar population challenges to those faced by other developed Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea. This comparative approach may better contextualise the budget recommendations in light of preserving culture and sustaining growth.

To request for the full report of the Media Analysis of Coverage on Singapore Budget 2012, kindly email the following details to pohlin.lim@asiamediamonitors.com:

Name:

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Image (Merlion) courtesy of kewl on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing.

AMEC’s 1st APAC PR Summit on Measurement

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:15:00 GMT

The First Asia Pacific PR Summit on Measurement with Sentia Media as the exclusive National Partner was a huge success. The two-day event (29 February - 1 March 2012) was organised by AMEC and hosted at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong. The summit attracted more than 100 enthusiastic professionals - from corporate communications, PR and measurement and agencies - to share their experience and insights on regional media measurement.

With the launch of the Barcelona Principles in 2010 there was an increasing importance in delivering quality and creditable measurement standards. Speeches delivered during the summit re-emphasised the invalidity of Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE), mainly for its inability to categorise functionality of business or to identify tonality of reports, and its validity where co-relating company key indicators such as ROI or KPI is concerned.

The summit further focused on the strategies of executing PR measurement. By learning from the experience of global brands such as Ford Motors, Lenovo and Ogilvy PR, it was agreed that setting measurable objectives and justifying PR activities in facilitating business goals and objectives are the more important parameters.

With the increasing global focus on Asia, business opportunities in the region and advances in research and development are expected to be key areas for development. The collaboration between AMEC and China International Public Relations Association (CIPRA) on the First Asia Pacific PR Summit on Measurement demonstrated the strong connection and commitment of the Chinese agencies and practitioners to meet global quality measurement standards.

To view the summit website, please visit: http://www.apacsummit-amec.org/index.html. To view Tweets about the Summit, search for #amechk12

The Media Revolution - It’s about diversity, not just convergence

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 04:00:00 GMT

We all know that today there are more platforms than ever from which people can get news and information in a bewildering array of formats and styles. But while choice has increased exponentially, and some newer communications platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are capturing massive audiences very quickly, older formats are still commanding significant audiences.

How and why is this happening? The simple answer is product diversity. Just as with any other business, media organisations are tailoring their content to suit their specific audience and what they are looking for in that particular format of news. As people gather information from more and more sources, they are reading newspapers for one style of news, checking websites for different types of news and listening to radio or watching television for another style of news. Then social media is introduced, largely referencing all the other forms of news and recirculating them to friends and followers, occasionally bringing new information to the conversation.

Our own research shows that far from all news sources relying more and more on a single source, as some experts predicted, mainstream media organisations are diversifying their content. Many newspapers, for example, share little content with their own websites, the newspaper versions focusing more on local stories and longer form news, while the website focuses on breaking news, entertainment, video and photo content.

The world is currently going through a media revolution. We are all accessing far more information in far more ways and clever news organisations have already refined and differentiated their offerings to make sure they continue to attract strong audiences, even amongst those who are accessing four or five different platforms in a single day.

The fastest growing of all platforms is mobile, reflected by enormous smart-phone uptake. In a recent interview with marketing website Mumbrella, the Head of Mobile for Google worldwide, Karim Temsamani, said the future of mobile communication was hyper-local and super tailored to the end user.

“We know the mobile web is growing eight times faster than the desktop was growing at the same stage of its existence,” he said, adding a warning to brand arbiters not to get lost in the rush. “Advertisers are very late to capture this community and reach customers on their mobile phones – 79% of our top clients do not have a mobile landing page, meaning the user experience is not as good as it should be.”

Not so for global news organisations, who stream a constant feed to your handset while monetising what once was free. News Corp recently added The Australian newspaper to its trial of an online subscription news model that could change the information game.

In long form literature too, if new communications platforms such as E-readers and iPads are fast capturing massive audiences, older formats are still commanding significant reach. In a recent Vanity Fair article, “The Book on Publishing”, Keith Gessen said Amazon now sells more e-books than hardcovers, adding that “by the Spring of 2011, the numbers for a best-seller were as high as 50% e-book; Hachette reported e-books were accounting for 20% of total revenue.” Yet far from a mutually exclusive splintering of the way we choose to read, the most vociferous readers want access both to books and e-readers, depending on the situation.

The media revolution still has a long way to go. But the proliferation of platforms can only mean one thing. Ultimately, the choice is all yours.

2012 Edelman Trust Barometer

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:30:00 GMT

Early this month, whilst sat between meetings in Kuala Lumpur, I spotted an intriguing tweet by @DavidBrain. It simply read, “The set for today's presentation of the first ever Trust Barometer data for Malaysia #edeltrust http://yfrog.com/mnfmfyij”. A smile crept across my face as I realized that David was in town to present the findings of the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer. Needless to say, I rearranged my schedule so that I could attend the event at the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur.

The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer survey aimed to gauge attitudes about the state of trust in businesses, governments, NGOs and media entities across 25 countries and quite frankly this year’s report was indeed very interesting. The survey was in its 12th year and is produced by StrategyOne, a Daniel J. Edelman company and is a leading market research firm. The results were shared at the 2012 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland held from January 25th to 29th. Here are some of the insights from the presentation in Malaysia.

David began the presentation by sharing that trust in governments and CEOs is declining. However, he went on to say that notably, trust was highest in the following countries: China, UAE, Singapore, India and Indonesia. The survey was quantitative in nature and questions were open to interpretation and did not speculate about reasons for the positions. On the other hand, panellists speculated that trust might be derived from the economic (or perceived) trajectory of these markets. The panel concluded that trust was bestowed because standard of living is generally improving in these markets and people are optimistic about the future. The highest positioned European country was the Netherlands, ranked 7th.

It was also intriguing to note that whilst NGOs remain the most trusted institution globally, yet they saw a decline on the previous year. Interestingly, Media was the only institution to see an increase it its global trust level – it rose above 50% in trust for the first time. This came as a surprise given the global nature of the ongoing News International phone hacking scandal and the resulting Leveson Inquiry in the UK. One possible interpretation of the result was that Media has improved in its role of holding officialdom accountable - something that it arguably did not do during the financial crisis; as a result Media is now considered more trustworthy.

The report further stated that, “Overall Malaysia does fit an Asia-Pacific norm and is generally more trusting. Of the 25 countries we surveyed, it ranks 10th most trusting (57% of opinion formers trust its institutions to do what is right), but it is behind close neighbours Singapore (67%) and Indonesia (63%) and other Asia Pacific markets like China (76%), India (65% ) and Hong Kong (61%).” I cannot help but wonder how such findings may correlate with election results as trust will be more influenced by such events in the coming months as Malaysians await the next general election.

Further facts, figures and interpretations can be found here: http://trust.edelman.com/. Special thanks to Edelman for sharing the results.

Sentia Media - a new name for media intelligence

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:00:00 GMT

At Media Monitors we work for a company with a long and proud history in media monitoring, a company that started as a small press clippings business in the 1960s, which, after his acquisition in 1982, was built by the late Mr Neville Jeffress into the multi-national media services organisation of today. Among many other acquisitions and consolidations Mr Jeffress oversaw throughout the 1980s, in 1986 Media Monitors was acquired from Ian Parry-Okeden, with Media Monitors eventually became the name of the overall company.

Over the past 30 years, and in particular this century, the transformation in the company has been profound, with major technological improvements in our monitoring through scanning, OCR and digital feeds, the digital capture of radio and television and of course our premium online service, Mediaportal, along with growth through acquisitions in Australia and New Zealand.

However over the last five years, while major technological improvements have continued, our growth path has become much broader, with the company commencing operations in a number of Asian markets as well as rapidly expanding our media analysis and introducing advisory and online business intelligence services. We are also currently further developing our distribution and media networking services. In all, we now have six leading brands operating across 15 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

To put it simply, we are much more than a media monitoring business, we are now a group of media services companies that can provide a broad range of information, analysis and advice, with solutions tailored to just about any type of organisation, large or small, single country or international. And that’s why Sentia Media has been born in 2012, in the year of the 30th anniversary of the group. To watch the video click here.

Sentia is a Latin verb with three primary meanings:
1 I perceive with the senses. (Monitoring)
2 I notice mentally. (Analysis)
3 I have an opinion. (Advice)

The name Sentia Media reflects our full range of services and the media intelligence industry in which we operate, while allowing our product brands to speak for themselves and tailor their services to specific markets.

The Media Monitors brand will continue, and will continue to be known as the clear market leader in monitoring services across Australia and New Zealand. Our newer brands such as Brandtology and 360m will continue to grow their own identities within the Sentia Media group of companies, as will our recent Asian acquisitions, MediaBanc and ChinaClipping, meaning that in a way this development is simply the name of the company catching up across the region.

I'm sure you'll jopin me in welcoming this next step in the evolution of our business, one that supports our service and technological innovation to help ensure the strength and vitality of our organisation for the long term.

Outbreaks of sentimentitis – riding the social media tiger

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:00:00 GMT

It was deja vu all over again when the Twitterati presented Qantas with a public relations challenge earlier this month. The unexpected negative response on Twitter following the launch of an online competition was just one among several similar social media PR predicaments this year for brands, including Southwest Airlines, Kenneth Cole and Vodafone. As a friend - a Joseph Heller fan - who works in PR said recently, it’s enough to make you long wistfully for slapping a variant of Colonel Korn’s Catch-22 rule on Twitter: the only people permitted to tweet are those who never do.

To me, these social media developments brought to mind observations made in the pre-Social Media dark ages by a certain American Postman.

What the Postman Said

Educator and media theorist Neil Postman came up with an interesting term in 1985 to describe the relationship between information consumed and any resultant action: the Information-Action Ratio. Information in our age, said Postman, “comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it.' Pretty good comment, made circa 1990, by someone with an Old Media last name.

Over the past 5 years or so, with the online Social Media explosion, Postman’s Ratio has gone completely askew, weighed down by the deluge of “information” washing across the online world every minute of every day. To paraphrase what I wrote two years ago, people have always been active with their responses, views and opinions, but they just never had the right tools to reveal their own thoughts and take their conversations to the wider world easily and simply. Now they do, with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and a myriad of others. While the sheer volume of social media talk has unhinged traditional media types (or, as Norg Media CEO Bronwen Clune described them in 2009 at Media 140, ‘the audience formerly known as the media’) it has also overturned many public relations certainties for organisations of all hues.

The challenge facing organisations who are keenly aware that they need to do something about this revolution has sparked an innovative social media enterprise: expert services and tools to monitor and ‘filter out’ the noise for you, leaving only that which is most relevant to you.

But, for the Web, ‘relevance’ is a broad term (the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “Computing. The property of fulfilling the requirements of a user's search for information; the degree to which a document, web page, etc., fulfils such requirements”). Especially in the light of Postman’s Information-Action Ratio, this definition encompasses material of potential interest in addition to rarer information of pressing urgency. Within the ambit of media information that is ‘relevant’, what is singularly important is social media material with a potentially high Information-Action Ratio. The most imperative of all such media information is that which causes organisations to quickly roll out the PR heavy artillery for prompt reputation management: chain reactions of unpredictable user-generated negativity that erupt online. Because of its potential to cripple organisations’ cachet, it greatly helps to be forearmed to deal rapidly with such an eventuality - and to act promptly and effectively.

As the examples given early in this post show, when the negativity contagion gets out of hand, a single misstep can turn into a stumble in the social media minefield, causing reputations to fall apart. And bad news travels fast.

A bad case of Sentimentitis

What is it about negative sentiments that causes them to go ‘viral’, to use particularly apt social media-speak in this case?

First, it would do good to take a look at what the boffins have to say about why social media is so popular in the first place.

In 2009, just when Twitter was transforming from a tyro into an online phenomenon, I came across a quite interesting study by Princeton psychologist Emily Pronin and Harvard’s Daniel Wegner. The study focused on a link between situations that make you think fast and feelings of elation, power and creativity. However, the rush of positive feelings is seen only when the brisk thinking is varied; repetitive thoughts instead cause anxiety. This could partly explain the rapid growth of microblogs such as Twitter, vis-a-vis ‘slower’ social media such as blogs. ‘Tweets’ are often posted in relatively short bursts of activity, and the frenetic activity and varied content can leave microbloggers with a palpable dopamine surge.

An important ego-booster and motivator for tweeters is re-tweeting of their 140-word outpourings. Research at the Institute for Web Science and Technologies, University of Koblenz-Landau, suggests a potent recipe to increase the chances of your tweet being re-tweeted: a dash of negative emoticons, such as :-(, and generous helpings of exciting or intense sentiment, including annoying or unpleasant words. That old adage, ‘bad news travels fast’, holds very true for online social media as well - only, the velocity of this spread gets ramped up a geometric scale because of the massive connectivity that the medium provides!

And then, compounding the virulence, there’s the action-emotion link: the action of tweeting anti someone perceived as more powerful can itself cause feelings of emotional satisfaction (that dopamine surge again), thus feeding on itself and driving the social media user to tweet some more! And the language used by other tweeters on that topic, if it is trending and is emotionally provocative, will cause further ‘emotional action tendencies’.

The curious work of ‘rock star’ experimental philosopher Josh Knobe at Stanford University hints at an interesting insight that has relevance to our discussion. Knobe’s work suggests that situations that present enough detail for people to be able to make an ethical judgment are more likely to provoke a stronger negative response if they trigger cynicism, while any positive response in the absence - or paucity - of information inviting cynicism would be much more subdued. While tweetlengths do not lend themselves to much detail individually, it’s when tweeters begin to converge on a topic and start it trending that potentially damaging details (about the target of the ‘conversation’) can start to be shared at a furious pace, inciting further negative responses that lift up the Information-Action Ratio from the social media users’ perspective. This dramatically increases the chances that they will act in some way - mostly individually and online, but sometimes collectively and in the real world.

Ask a certain Hosni Mubarak about the potential consequences when the latter happens.

Conclusion

The conclusion from the above discussion almost goes without saying. Keep your ear to the ground and your antennae out for social media content with potentially ‘virulent’ negative sentiment, which has a potentially high Information-Action Ratio (from the users’ perspective). Act quickly but judiciously to quell the negativity when you sense the first hint of an outbreak.

The Apple of My ‘i’

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 05:45:00 GMT

October 6th, 2011 will forever be remembered as the day one of the most prolific CEOs of our time cashed in his chips and headed for greener pastures. The man, Steve Jobs, was the beau ideal of second chances, a shining beacon who demonstrated that with perseverance and courage, one could take on the world and “put a dent on the universe”. His ingenuity and innovation bore fruit from keynote speeches to nifty gadgets which mesmerized and mystified an audience that never stopped asking for more.

A day after the unveiling of the latest iPhone 4S, the shocking news of Steve Jobs’ passing swept across the World Wide Web just when media coverage of the new iPhone was expected to continue to grow in the days following its launch. Tributes from tech journalists and headline news from countless others flooded the media with nostalgia of the first Apple computer they owned, Jobs’ influence and his impact on people’s lives.

Steve Jobs’s death was never going to be a timely one, expected or otherwise, not least for Apple Inc. With the launch of the iPhone 4S the day before his passing, the timing of the two big Apple stories were most unique.

Media Monitors measured the media impact of Steve Jobs’ passing over the iPhone 4S, comparing mentions of Steve Jobs and the new iPhone in Malaysian English and Malay print media coverage between October 3rd and 12th, 2011 (Chart 1).

Chart 1: No. of “Steve Jobs” vs. “iPhone 4S” Mentions on Malaysian English and Malay
Print Media from October 3rd to 12th, 2011

Media coverage of Steve Jobs overshadowed that of the iPhone 4S. The higher volume of mentions of Steve Jobs was most likely because coverage of his passing was not limited to tech news but was covered in world and current affairs news. Mentions of Jobs could also have been bolstered by coverage mostly focused on the iPhone 4S which also mentioned Jobs’ passing. The sum impact, however, was that the overwhelming news of Steve Jobs’ passing took the spotlight off the iPhone 4S.

Charts 2 and 3 below show the trend of iPhone 4S mentions in Malaysian print media coverage and social media respectively.

Chart 2: No. of “iPhone 4S” Mentions on Malaysian Print Media from October 3rd to 12th, 2011

Chart 3: Trend of “iPhone 4S” Mentions on Social Media* from October 3rd to 9th, 2011

*Social media analysis is provided by Brandtology (A Media Monitors Company)

Print media coverage is usually delayed by a day hence the mirrored trend does not appear on the same timeline. The peak in iPhone 4S’ buzz (the term for mentions on social media) occurred on October 5th, the day of its release whereas the peak in print coverage occurs the next day - the day Steve Jobs passed away. News breaking online ahead of print media is particularly telling of the losing battle faced by print media against online in terms of timeliness, no doubt as seen on October 6th.

The two charts above showed the same trend of a peak with coverage of the iPhone 4S release, a dip the day after with the bulk of coverage directed at the passing of Steve Jobs and an upward trend on the following day.

On October 10th, Apple released a press statement on the record-breaking pre-order sales in the US, reflecting the general demand for iPhone 4S and sentiment of consumers over the new iPhone. Brandtology conducted a sentiment analysis on the iPhone 4S from mentions on social media between October 3rd and 9th, 2011 in the following are the results (Chart 4):

Chart 4: Sentiment Analysis of “iPhone 4S” Mentions on Social Media from October 3rd to 9th, 2011

*Social media analysis is provided by Brandtology (A Media Monitors Company)

During the seven-day period, there were 1,848 buzzes (mentions) of iPhone 4S and although the bulk of the social media discussion had “neutral” sentiment (shaded in blue), there was a large proportion in the “very positive” buzz category (shaded in light green).

75 netizens expressed their interests in buying the new Apple iPhone and 40 netizens who pre-ordered them expressed that they were anticipating the arrival of their new iPhone 4S:

“Got my iPhone 4 sold.. Guess I'm getting the iPhone4S next week #winning” - StoKes8723

“Glad I preordered my iphone4s in time!! Apple sold out preorders…” - MISSBEHAVIN35

There were seven netizens who indicated that they would buy the iPhone 4S in honour of Steve Jobs.

“In honour of Steve Jobs I decided to pre-order the new iPhone 4S. #ThankYouSteve” - cool_tweeter

While the publicity garnered by the death of Steve Jobs may have lowered the impact of the iPhone 4S, “very positive” sentiments made up a considerable proportion of the total sentiments – and, judging from the overall publicity garnered from both events in print and social media coverage, the iPhone 4S has already cemented a positive media standing in Malaysia, even before pre-order sales for the iPhone 4S began in the country.

As in the case of cool_tweeter, Jobs’ death probably added sentimental values to the iPhone 4S and just like the blogger, many fans would get the iPhone for more than its features but in memory of its creator (see blog post on “Grief Marketing for Posthumous Success”).

For Apple Inc., Steve Jobs was more than just a CEO, more than an inventor/innovator. He was the identity of the company and the spirit that drew the masses. In publicity terms, he was the rock star equivalent of the tech industry (think Kurt Cobain, Freddy Mercury). The question remains - will Steve Jobs keep selling long after he is gone?

Image (Apple on MacBook) courtesy of markhillary on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing.

What’s the Australian obsession with Twitter?

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Many readers are likely to be approaching this post with a degree of skepticism, and whilst reminding you of the need for a catchy title, I’m still willing to accept a certain level of doubt. After all, Australia is not even amongst the top 10 countries when it comes to Twitter reach across the population. Less than 10% of Australian’s visit the microblog as of August 2011, which clearly doesn’t stack up to the dizzying obsession of places like the Netherlands, where one out of four people tweet.

However, one loss is another’s gain for Kevin Rudd MP, who is now the biggest fish in a relatively small pond. His list of one million followers represents half of Australian Twitter users - or 1% of the entire Twittersphere. Even so, such numbers associated to local tweeters (sorry if that’s getting twedious) are not even close to the towering stats we associate with Facebook, which has 10.5 million profiles in Australia - almost half the population.

For those of you who aren’t across these ever-changing social media stats, the skepticism may simply stem from the view of Twitter as mainly a trivial broadcast of an individual’s menial existence, where the only redeeming aspect is the person’s offline profile (be it physical or otherwise). Kim Kardashian has, after all, gathered almost 10 million followers (slightly less than Barack Obama, but a lot more than Mr Rudd!) with timeless tweets like: “I think it's new background time!!! I want to find a new one!”

So while I accept these views aren’t without foundation, Twitter reach in Australia has nevertheless almost doubled since January 2011. Its use as a public platform for User Generated Media (UGM) is already higher than any other in the country. And although Facebook is accessed by many more Australians on a much more frequent basis, this is mostly for private social interactions. The public Groups on Facebook do receive a lot of ‘likes’ and ‘fans’, but the time spent and the content uploaded on these pages compared to that within a person’s private network, is extremely low.

So, when it comes to expressing their public opinion and sharing the news and issues that matter most, many Australians really are obsessed with Twitter.

While this position may now come as no surprise, Twitter’s dominance as a single channel for online public opinion is actually exaggerated in Australian social media relative to its Asia Pacific neighbours (excluding perhaps New Zealand). In countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, the conversations are typically much more evenly spread across a multitude of influential forums and blogs. In others like South Korea, Twitter is overshadowed by local microblogs such as me2DAY while, similarly, in China Twitter doesn’t even exist and the China-only Weibo rules (to give further context, Weibo acquired its 100 millionth user in February ie. Six months earlier than Twitter!).

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/bmasia/bm-asiapacific-social-media-infographics-bookletaug2011

I believe there are three key factors contributing towards Twitter’s position in Australia, which I will explore in soon in an update to this blog. I’m sure you’ll agree that they deserve their own post!

1. The youth of Australian social media
2. Freedom of press
3. The rise of mobile

Until then, happy tweeting!

Grief Marketing for Posthumous Success

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 04:00:00 GMT

It is just over a week since Steve Jobs died, but on Etsy, a website for crafters to sell their creations, there are already 185 Jobs-related items for sale. At least 70% of those items were listed for sale since his death. On Facebook, one of my contacts remarked that he intends to get a black turtleneck in Jobs’ memory. My friend was not alone; an article on PCMag.com reported that Steve Jobs’ black turtlenecks have had a huge surge in sales. Headlines dredged up from Google also mentioned that Jobs’ biography has been a hot item over the past few days and cynics predicted accurately that the iPhone 4S, which launched to lukewarm reception just the day before Jobs’ demise, will enjoy a sales boost.

All this buzz has not been unexpected and indeed, many of us saw it coming. After all, had we not seen a similar trend with other well-loved celebrities? Within a week of Michael Jackson’s death, 422,000 copies of his albums were sold and more recently, when Amy Winehouse passed away in July 2011, 50,000 of her CDs were sold in the week that followed. The day that crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin, died, “eBay was auctioning off t-shirts, mugs, and other memorabilia”, reports Margaret Gibson in her academic paper on public mourning of celebrity deaths. Posthumous success is a phenomenon ingrained into our culture, as The Band Perry sings, “A penny for my thoughts - oh no, I’ll sell them for a dollar; they’re worth so much more after I’m a goner” in their hit song, If I Die Young.

So what is it that compels us to part with hard-earned currency upon the death of a celebrity we only know from afar? In one word, the answer to that question is ‘influence’ – more aptly, media influence.

Wall Street Journal writer, Terry Teachout, muses upon posthumous success of creative artistes and comments that obituaries summarize achievements, reminding us of their works which we have come to take for granted. Their deaths also bring about what he calls a “scarcity effect” as we realize they can no longer produce new works. Another perspective is offered by Steve Jones and Joli Jensen in their book entitled “Afterlife as Afterimage: Understanding Posthumous Fame“ (2005). Like Teachout, Jones and Jensen cited the role of the media, seeing it as attempting to locate and profit from the celebrity process. To the authors, posthumous fame is seen as analogous to religious fervour, in that commodified dead celebrities are akin to sacred figures, and merchandise and memorabilia are like relics to be collected.

In Jobs’ case, both theories apply. Media coverage calls to attention the ups and downs of his life, discussing his perseverance in the face of adversity. Some listed the many patents that are under his name and some reminded us how different the world would be without his influence. The narrative offered us in the media is that Jobs is an inspirational figure, a hero and a role model whose passing many mourn after. As cultural historian Leo Braudy has said, “the real definition of fame is memory” and an easy way to remember Jobs’ life is to own something associated with him. Would that not be reason enough to pick up the new iPhone 4S as many have done? I reckon it would if some of Jobs’ perseverance and ingenuity would flow into our ears through our iPods, seep into our fingertips on our iPads, or do both on our iPhones. As the saying goes: there’s only one way to find out.

Image (my tribute #1 to steve jobs) courtesy of Ioran on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing.

Global coalition to establish standardised international social media measurement

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:00:00 GMT

As a committee member of AMEC (the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication) I’m pleased to announce that after much hard work, three leading international communications groups have formed a new coalition to define, develop and promote industry-leading standards for social media measurement around the world.

The coalition aligns top communications research and measurement consultants from AMEC, the Council of PR Firms (CPRF) and the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) and aims to build on initiatives by the three associations, including community discussion at conferences held over the past 18 months in Barcelona, Portsmouth, London, Miami, Lisbon and Philadelphia.

The aim is to provide much needed expert guidance for clients to navigate the changing media landscape using data based on sound social science and widely accepted methodologies - bypassing proprietary barriers to map out standards based on a broad industry perspective that address key social media measurement challenges, such as content sourcing, influence, sentiment, engagement and ROI.

For more details please click here.

Brandtology: Social Media Metrics

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

As congratulations rain in on the news of Media Monitors’ acquisition of Brandtology (three months on and clients are still congratulating us on the merger) and the launch of 360m analysis and consulting in the ANZ market, a few people have followed up the good cheer with a question about the ‘Holy Grail’ that would be combined Media Analysis Reports.

This unified media report would ideally integrate both mainstream and online media. Indeed, a report that provided deep analysis and correlation between both online and mainstream media has been on the top of our clients’ wishlist since we first began, and the merger is a huge leap in the right direction. But as we await more progress on combined reporting, in the meantime I’d like to write about the evolution of Social Media Metrics since Brandtology began.

Sentiment and Buzz have always been the simplest metric when organisations choose to measure their online efforts, however, as the industry matures and understands social media better, many realise these metrics are not enough to help them to measure their brand engagement, their marketing efforts or specific areas of their social media activities.

Clients are starting to ask the right questions about Social Media Metrics. What we at Brandtology had initially done was to introduce the SMI (Social Media Index) into our Digital Conversation Management System (DCMS). They focus on the four major elements of Social Media: Engagement; Reach; Influence; and Net Sentiment. (For a more detailed explanation visit http://www.brandtology.com/blog/dcms-v2-5/)

The SMI has been used by all our clients across different industries to focus their social media efforts on areas that need help. Some clients, like Microsoft, Nokia and RIM, have gone astep further and incorporate dour metrics in their Digital KPI Scorecard for both marketing and PR.

However, as the late, great composer Charles Mingus put it, “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.”

Putting our creative minds to work, we worked with Nokia to produce the Nokia Social Media Index. This customised Social Media Index consists of the four SMI metrics which are then given a decided weight. Next, an index is derived from this, which ultimately allows the client to have a simple yet effective gauge of their Social Media efforts.

As clients get more acquainted with social media, we foresee a demand for metrics that will incorporate the KPIs for mainstream media (audience) and the other elements of online media (like click-through rates and page views) allowing organisations to gain a more holistic view of their brand. So, we look forward to a future together leading the market with highly relevant metrics.

Tips on Measurement for Crisis Communications Plans

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 04:00:00 GMT

During my time at Media Monitors, there have been a number of times where we have had to work with clients during crises to ensure they stay on top of breaking news.

Crisis periods happen to just about any corporations and individuals, and given some of the PR foul-ups we saw in the past year, those who are involved in PR / communications are gearing up to put crisis communications plans in place for when the inevitable happens. Here are several tips for PR pros looking to create measurement plans ahead of a crisis:

1. Track news on your industry. This is really important. You can often identify boiling or bubbling issues before they break into a full-blown crisis, and prevention is the best cure. Work with your monitoring agency to identify issues that really matter to your company, and make sure those updates remain a key part of your communications plans. Keeping track of competitors also helps.

2. Have a measurement plan in place. Most of the communications practitoners I know – whether working in an agency or in-house - have a crisis communications plan in place and can activate it in times of trouble. It is therefore important to build a strategic partnership with your monitoring agency in creating crisis plans, so that you are able to leverage on relevant resources to take some of the pressure off you when you really need it. Media Monitors, for one, has round the clock updates via mobile phone, SMS and a fantastic analytics resource that can help you manage the huge volumes of news with related mentions in real time.

3. Analyse perceptions and representations. When in crisis mode, there is not going to be much time to sit back and reflect. Doing so afterwards is really crucial to ensuring lessons are learned – and applied – for when the next wave of crises happens. Media content analysis can also help you assess the impact the crisis has had on perceptions of your brand, so you can more effectively plan ahead – whether identifying tweaks that need to be made to your messaging or determining which of your frontline spokespeople may need to be sent for media training sessions.

In summary, integrating effective measurement into your crisis communications plans – and making mutual agreements with your monitoring agency – is really essential to crisis management, especially in the 24/7 news environment we live in. By having measurement plans in place before, during, and after a crisis, companies will be able to focus on their main objectives: resolving and responding to the issues at hand in a more strategic manner.

Image (crisis) courtesy of WeNews on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing.

Business views media measurement as vital

Mon, 16 May 2011 21:00:00 GMT

Research from the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) has confirmed what we have already seen across the Asia-Pacific region, that the increasing importance of media measurement continues to be recognised across the corporate and government sectors, even in economies where the recovery has been slower than in our region.

The report states that “AMEC members reported industry growth of 14% in year 2009/10 compared with 2% in the previous 12 months period.” These figures show that companies across the globe are recognising that comprehensive and effective measurement of their media engagement is more essential than ever, ensuring limited marketing and communications resources are used to greatest effect and lessons about engaging with all forms of media are learnt quickly.

Full details of the report can be found here.

Social Media and the Singapore 2011 Election

Thu, 12 May 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Rallies have been an important part of political campaigning in Singapore, as they're one way for the public to get a sense of the support parties have.

Following recent changes to the Constitution and election laws, Singaporeans have another avenue to engage in political discourse through discussions on social media platforms.

So what about online buzz and chatter? Are they a good indicator for parties to gauge their support?

On 4 May 2011, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong invited netizens to an unprecedented chat with him on Facebook. Does this suggest that the importance of an online presence should not be neglected?

Since this is the first time new media is allowed for campaigning, let’s look at how online campaigns compared to the actual election results.

Online Popularity

In terms of the size of their online following, the two most popular local politicians on Facebook are Nicole Seah and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. However, both of them had contrasting results at the polls. While the former failed in her campaign, the latter won by a walkover, albeit thanks to his opponents’ inability to complete nomination by the stipulated time.

As candidates in a Group Representation Constituency (GRC) contest do not run as individuals but in groups, it’s hard to compare and contrast directly. Nevertheless, similar observations can be made in the Single Member Constituency fight in Pioneer Ward.

Steve Chia may have a 30% greater following than Cedric Foo on Facebook, but actual vote counts showed Foo to be the more popular politician.

Reasons could be that Steve Chia’s online supporters are not eligible voters in his electoral ward and there might be duplicated followers. Nevertheless, as an overview, most winning candidate did not have a much more popular following online, with the exception of Sylvia Lim. Lim Hwee Hua, the losing candidate, had a 3471 following compared to Sylvia Lim’s 10,345.

More examples for comparison and contrast:

In this ward with the only all female candidate fight in this GE, Teo Soh Lung similarly led Grace Fu in online popularity but lost in the poll. Grace Fu’s winning margin is almost the exact reverse of her online popularity.

Lam Pin Min won Koh Choong Yong in both online popularity and polling result. However, both candidates did not focus their campaign heavily on new media and their online following is also among the lowest in this GE.

Marine Parade is another GRC, where candidates were supposed to run in teams. However, in the media the debate between the two youngest candidates running for election, Tin Pei Ling and Nicole Seah, dominated – this overshadowed the rest of the candidates, even the well liked Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong. One candidate, Spencer Ng had a scandal on the New Paper but the focus on Polling Day remained the battle between Nicole Seah and Tin Pei Ling.

Nicole Seah may be the most popular online politician, but Tin Pei Ling was able to close that gap on Polling Day, with a GRC contest ultimately diluting the impact of individuals.

Although there was not a direct square off between Sylvia Lim and Lim Hwee Hua (and Sylvia Lim did not even engage on a massive online campaign), incumbent Minister Lim Hwee Hua struggled to catch up to Sylvia Lim in both online popularity and vote count.

It was also interesting to note that the entire WP team for this GRC largely steered away from new media campaigning, focusing more on walkabouts. This strategy in ‘working the ground’ worked and WP won the only opposition GRC with 12 433 more votes.

In contrast, the SDP had a highly praised new media engagement strategy but failed to win in Holland-Bukit Timah GRC.

No doubt new media may have offered participants more visibility than before but its impact and effectiveness is still not as proven as traditional media. There is a need to engage in new media but other communication channels – such as grassroots engagement on the ground - should not be neglected.

On a side note, Returning Officer Yam Ah Mee has risen to fame thanks to his Internet popularity. For this General Election, Mr Yam was in charge of announcing the official results and somehow this gave him celebrity status overnight with spoofs and mentions. As of now, his Facebook Fan Page gained more than 39000 likes even with his name spelt wrongly. Such is his popularity that some 503 netizens have already urged him to run for the Presidency.

Please note, all figures are as at time of publication

In the spotlight: Coverage of the 2011 General Election

Thu, 05 May 2011 14:00:00 GMT

I attended a panel discussion at the Singapore Press Club recently on the upcoming General Election. Despite their differing forecasts on the outcome of the election, all the panellists agreed on one point: the role of media in this election is different than in the past, predominantly due to the relaxation of rules on campaigning online. This has had an impact not only on the ability of the public to discuss electoral issues and candidates online, but also on the way the media has covered the election, they argued.

I thought I would use some of our resources at Media Monitors to delve deeper into this, and to see what the changes have actually been. I set up an account to monitor all mentions of the terms “election and Singapore” in Singapore’s newspapers, as well as in Singapore-based news sites, blogs and forums to track the news over the period of April and May. I then ran searches on mentions of the parties running over the weeks to see whether the figures could bring anything to light. I found some interesting results.

Week on week volume of mentions in Singapore newspapers

In newspapers, the PAP dominated the discussion for the first two weeks in April, but there was a significant shift in the week of Nomination Day resulting in almost twice the amount of coverage across the opposition groups. The PAP continued to receive the most coverage, which would be expected for an incumbent party, but the Workers Party (WP), National Solidarity Party (NSP) and Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) in particular gained in their share of voice.

Week on week volume of mentions in Singapore online media

However, this was not reflected in online media coverage. The PAP remained overwhelmingly dominant in discussions online, while opposition parties saw only a modest increase after Nomination Day. This runs contrary to expectations, and could be attributed to the requirement of both the party name (or acronym) and the word election, but is a significant and surprising result nonetheless. It indicates that the bulk of online discussion is driven by channels managed by the parties such as YouTube and Facebook pages, but has not resulted in a significant increase in online discussions of the opposition on open channels such as the forum pages. Or maybe we all just like talking about the PAP.

The question remains what impact this will have as Singaporeans take to the polls. Agenda-setting theory would suggest that regardless of whether the coverage was positive or negative, the prominence of a party or its candidates in media coverage will correlate to the perceptions – and actions of the public. On Sunday, we'll all know the answer.

1st Malaysian - ASEAN Regional Bloggers Conference - "Blogging Mindfully and Responsibly"

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:30:00 GMT

On the morning of Sunday, 24 April, I had the great pleasure of attending the 1st Malaysian - ASEAN Regional Bloggers Conference (1MARBC) organised by Blog House Malaysia, at the InterContinental Hotel in Kuala Lumpur along with many ASEAN social media enthusiasts and Malaysian dignitaries.

The morning began at 0830, yes a little early for a Sunday. First up, I attended one of the tracks on “The fine line between what is allowed and what is not” in the blogosphere, moderated by Anirudh Bhati, Datuk Shafee Abdullah, Irwan Abdul Rahman – Datu Zaini Hassan (Deputy Chief Editor of Utusan Malaysia). The room seemed to advocate for “responsible blogging”. In her blog, NINITALK says, “bloggers themselves must fundamentally demonstrate civic responsibility by choosing their words and expressions with care.” The reality is, however, that blogs do not adhere to the same standards or practices as traditional media. Most do not have the same degree of literary training. It is also worth noting that bloggers and microbloggers tend to be more emotive and issues based.

The climax of the morning was undoubtedly the arrival of YAB Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and the newly appointed Patron of Blog House Malaysia Tun Dr Mahathir. They were introduced by the President of Blog House Malaysia, En. Syed Akbar Ali, a dignified host. Most notably it was good to hear the Prime Minister say (and I paraphrase): "What is important for us is for you to put forward your (bloggers) views, even your constructive criticism and together we can build a better Malaysia and future for us". In my personal view, it is clear that blogs will play a role in elections in Malaysia in the coming years. It is also clear that corporate and government bodies and organisations need to monitor blogs to ensure that they are in a position to “make sense of the media” and can thereafter engage in conversations with relevant influencers.

Like NINITALK, I agree it was good to make some new friends, greet old friends and chat with citizen journalists.

Those on Twitter used the hashtag #ASEANBloggers, tweets can be found here.

Image (blogosphere) courtesy of DaveBleasdale on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing.
Image (1MARBC) courtesy of NINITALK.

Why Accurate Audience and Media Measurement Matters

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:30:00 GMT

Tony Kelly, Editorial Director of the Marketing Magazine Group wrote in the March 2011 edition of Advertising + Marketing: “A paperless world of content isn’t something we should fear, it’s just something people have to get ready for, although that’s easier said then done.”

It’s easier said than done, if I may, because there is indeed little to fear. History has shown that traditional media forms rarely disappear into oblivion - except perhaps when production of those media forms ceased altogether. Instead, a niche often develops; for example, the radio is still very much depended upon during those long traffic jams in the KL city. But Mr Kelly was right, that at this point in time while (a) media consumers continue to take up, be educated in, and adapt to digital media, and (b) traditional media finds its niche audience - there is conflict between those embracing the future and those having the mindset that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Fortunately, opposing sides of the conflict have not lost sight of what really matters - the content. In his article, Mr Kelly discussed the iPad-based The Daily in the US, a News Corporation-Apple collaboration, where he wrote that audiences “are past being dazzled by the technology and are now looking for an exceptional content experience.” To me, that simply means that where quality content matters, there will be an audience, never mind whether it’s on paper or whether it’s from a tweet.

Doug Page, a columnist with News & Tech magazine, shared my doubt of us facing the imminent extinction of the newspaper (also posted in RJI News Collaboratory, 2 February 2011). He wrote: “The industry's problems don't so much stem from the decline of print and the rise of the Internet, as they do - first and foremost - from the industry's inability to deliver an audience in a time when consumers are far more demanding.” Mr Page believes that faltering print circulation numbers are to be blamed on poor management of, and as a result, poor handling by the circulation departments of print media.

According to Mr Page, before the question of securing advertising revenue for print media can even be raised, the burning issue is really the strength of its circulation – assuming corporations, government bodies and other organisations wishing to reach audiences en masse instead of target specific audiences. Therefore, the questions print media publishers should be asking most urgently should pertain to increasing circulation numbers.

This might explain why Sun Media Corporation ran a front-page announcement that it would sue The Nielsen Company (Malaysia) over misleading readership estimates, an article headlined ‘Absurd figures’ (The Sun, 2 March 2011). The article provided a table showing comparisons of circulation estimates for The Sun, The Star and the New Straits Times as provided by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), Nielsen and The Sun (an estimate of only its own readership). Suffice to say, the discrepancies between ABC and Nielsen estimates were staggering.

Certainly, the discrepancies owed themselves to the methodologies applied in the measurement of audiences. Lecturer in Advertising (Marketing Communications) at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Dr Mohamad Md. Yusof, commented, “It is strange for reports to show a lower estimate of readers [per copy] than circulation numbers” and urged The Nielsen Company to prioritise accuracy in reporting readership figures in the country as it impacts greatly on the newspaper industry including print advertising (Utusan Malaysia, 4 March 2011).

To a certain extent, a pointing finger lies in wait at media industry regulators and watchdogs on the issue of guidelines and standards on audience and media measurement accuracy. The Sun Media-Nielsen spat has served to highlight this gap.

Media measurement is a topic that is close to home for us at Asia Media Monitors. Recently, the PRWeek Awards UK banned the use of advertising value equivalents (AVEs) or PR value, as it is commonly known in our region – an act that was lauded by the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC), the international trade body and professional institute for practitioners who provide media measurement and communication research (amecorg.com). Sadly, many PR practitioners in Malaysia continue to rely on inaccurate AVEs for estimates on ROI on corporate communications initiatives. As in the question of audience measurement, it is important for organisations to take a long, hard look at measurement methodology and seriously consider accuracy of measurement in evaluating the returns on those often-hefty, hard-earned PR budgets.

Image provided by Funkdooby on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing

How the world Tweeted about Japan - and what that means for news media

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:00:00 GMT

The earthquake which took place in Japan on March 11 triggered a massive tsunami which claimed the lives of many and crippled nuclear plants along its way. Hundreds of thousands of people were left stranded. Shortly after this, social networking sites such Facebook and Twitter saw a spike in traffic. According to the Tweet-o-Meter, there were nearly 1200 tweets per minute from Tokyo, alone.

As radiation fears engulfed the minds of people all around the world, there were constant tweets from news corporations. They were constantly updating their dashboards and their Twitter pages were filled with continuous news reports and updates. The nuclear devastation left the situation hanging in Japan for weeks and many news networks kept a very close watch on this issue.

From Ann Coulter to Obama, almost everyone tweets. This micro-blogging site has more than a billion registered users to date. According to the Huffington Post, users are tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day. Social networking undoubtedly brings people together. But in times of calamity, how do people on twitter react? How do they communicate?

I wanted to analyze the impact of news today as reflected in this medium. Did Twitter users depend on news corporations like BBC and CNN for updates on the Japan Tsunami? How about the radiation leak which hit international headlines within minutes of broadcast?

I looked at 110 Twitter feeds in a span of 3 minutes. It surprised me that nearly 90.9% of Twitter feeds were RT’s (ReTweets) of news corporations’ tweets. On Twitter, news corporations face fierce competition. Their Twitter feeds have to be both concise and eye-catching for people to RT. I doubt anyone wants to RT something dull. Especially with link-sharers and bloggers on Twitter, they want a good summary.

Study 1:

According to study 1 shown above, we can infer that the RT’s were highest for CNN World’s article Japan scrambles to curb nuclear crisis with a whopping 16 RT’s per minute.

Another high number of RT’s came from The Times of India’s article Japan continues nuclear struggle, fixes key power cable.

While going through the tweets, I came across two opinion leaders. These people have many twitter followers. Kennysia has 17,257 followers and ProphetKim has 9,438 followers. I believe the huge following has got a lot to do with the nature of their tweets. They make sense and seem to be representing the views of many people. People clearly like that judging by the number of RTs:

@kennysia: Japan's nuclear plant radiation leak makes people in neighbouring countries come up with stupid conclusions and do stupid things.

@prophetkim: I am praying for Japan right now. The nuclear radiation to stop immediately. Enough of this suffering. I am praying for Sudan. Let's agree.

Study 2:

On 19th March, Japanese officials announced through a press conference that the radiation level was high enough to kill people.

Daily mail.Uk’s news article The moment nuclear plant chief WEPT as Japanese finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people, had the highest amount of re-tweets for that day with close to 83 RT’s in 3 hours. People were also adding their own comments about how they felt. Most of them were grieving alongside Japan.

@claypaff: This is just sad - I feel for Japan. http://bit.ly/ecH7aA

@stephenfung: Oh man...Japan... No breaks at all. 3-mile/Chernobyl all over again apparently. - http://ow.ly/4hG3i

Remember when conservative columnist Ann coulter was insisting that radiation was good for you? Well, this is a twitter response to that statement:

@i_am_nicolasc: Oh, c'mon now, no need to cry! #moron#anncoulter says radiation is GOOD for you! http://bit.ly/h7cnME#heartbreaking#Japan

All in all, I can deduce that Twitter users rely highly on news giants such as CNN, Daily Mail.UK and Reuters to name a few, for latest updates. One of the main reasons may well be because they are much more credible.

Most of the news corporations today have an active Twitter account. News is a service. Twitter is an eminent way to enhance this service.

SMEs in Singapore - punching above their weight in media coverage

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:30:00 GMT

Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) are not traditionally thought of as media darlings, since they rarely have a budget to spend on media relations. Generally these enterprises keep their focus on sales returns and traditional advertising aimed a key audience to maximize their budgets.

However, SMEs in Singapore punch above their weight when it comes to the media coverage they receive. The Business Times in particular is an advocate for SMEs, with a regular SME Inc column, interviews with SME leaders and features on successful SME businesses. In a search of our archive, I found 76 items in the publication that referenced SMEs.

Many of the articles featuring SMEs also feature large companies, such as SAP and Salesforce, which have business products that cater to SME businesses. Increasing efficiency in SME businesses, particularly using software, is a story line that is frequently revisited in coverage. In both the Business Times and Straits Times, spotlight articles appear from time to time that focus in on successful SME businesses, particularly taking a story angle highlighting how they’ve achieved their success, how they found a target area in the market and how they leverage on their competition.

Exhibitions and awards also frequently highlight SME businesses, such as the Entrepreneur of the Year Award and Singapore Prestige Brand Awards hosted by the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (ASME) and the Singapore SME 500 Awards supported by DP Information Group.

To take this a bit further, we analysed coverage of prominent SME businesses in a few different industries to see how these enterprises are represented in media coverage. The list of businesses was derived from brainstorming session among the Media Monitors Singapore team, and the results pulled from a 3-month sample from October – December 2010 in our archive. They include Singapore English-language newspapers and magazines only.

Coverage of enterprises in the F&B space focuses primarily on success stories and spotlight articles. In many cases these stories take the angle of how software or services, particularly cloud computing, has helped to increase the efficiency of a particular F&B enterprise thus increasing their profit margins.

As F&B enterprises tend to have more well-known brands among SMEs, they are more frequently quoted as experts on homegrown businesses – this makes up a substantial amount of the coverage of Sakae Holdings, the company which owns the Sakae Sushi chain of restaurants. These same articles often turn to organizations such as the Singapore Business Federation and SPRING Singapore as another reference on SME issues and best practices.

Events and exhibitions, such as the Asean Food and Beverage Exhibition, present opportunities to highlight Singapore’s F&B businesses and the exposure of Singapore culture to other companies.

A surprisingly low amount of the coverage is in promotions.

Automotive enterprises also receive a fair amount of media coverage considering their size. They frequently come up within an economic context, such as where regulations would impact exports or using car sales as a measure of how the economy is doing. Changes in the COE almost always result in coverage of automotive enterprises, discussing how the changes will impact the sale of cars and their bottom line.

They do feature in trend and showroom articles, but less so in promotions of individual cars. In magazines, Malaysian companies tend to appear more so than Singapore companies. However, they do receive mentions in corporate or car launch stories, where journalists are looking to get a local angle to a regional or global story. There are spotlight articles from time to time, which tend to focus on how automotive enterprises are approaching increasing their exposure.

With the economy heavily geared toward the growth of Singapore tourism this year, it’s not surprising that SMEs in the travel and tourism space benefitted from the increased focus. However, in contrast to other SMEs, travel and tourism coverage is very much promotional in nature. The vast majority of articles are features on travel deals or sales among travel agencies.

Interestingly, leading travel agencies are sometimes quoted in industry articles or asked to comment in response to a crisis. In one example, a travel agency was asked to respond to the impact of the political tensions between North and South Korea on its sales of tours to the region. This highlights their value to media as experts, who can serve as a barometer of the health of an industry increasingly important to Singapore’s economy.

Law and professional service firms may not fit the traditional definition of an SME, however we decided to include them in this study as their size and media profile is closely in line with the other enterprises we looked at. One of the leading issue s discussed among SMEs at the moment is the impact of the re-employment law, which would require re-hiring of a certain number of elderly workers, on small businesses. Attracting and retaining talent is another key issue featured in media coverage of SMEs.

Law firms are most commonly mentioned with regard to prominent legal cases which receive media attention. Significant personalities within firms may also attract media coverage, such as Sundaresh Menon of Rajah & Tann being sworn in as Attorney-General. The Law Society is also an organization that attracts media attention, and which can drive media coverage of its representatives. Publicity may be slightly more sensitive for law firms given the nature of their business, but coverage driven by CSR and charity initiatives can help them to drive positive coverage about the firm in general, rather than their cases individually.

Quality of service and adaptability the key to Brandtology acquisition

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 23:30:00 GMT

In over 25 years of working in the media intelligence industry, there is no doubt that right now is the most exciting and challenging time to be working in this industry. Innovation and change are the rule, not the exception, as new platforms and new voices join the already crowded media space. Now more than ever, an ability to filter through this noise to find meaningful media intelligence, and provide continuing support and advice, is vital to our clients and every organisation with a public profile.

That is why we announced today the acquisition of Brandtology, a global leader in social media intelligence and analysis. The acquisition further strengthens Media Monitors ability to provide the highest quality and most comprehensive suite of media intelligence services across our region and beyond.

All of us know the extraordinary statistics relating to the growth of social media forums online, along with the exponential increase in smartphone use and broadband availability, particularly across the Asia-Pacific. These platforms are neither fringe nor niche – they are already a huge and growing part of the public conversation. The key for us developing in this space was to make sure we maintained the Media Monitors philosophy of providing valuable information and world leading client service.

Brandtology’s business model reflects Media Monitors focus on accuracy, timeliness and deeper insight – all rare commodities in the current world of social media monitoring and analysis. This commitment to valuable information, quality assurance and real client service outlines Brandtology as a company that is here for the long haul, not just trying to make a fast buck out of companies that are forgotten as soon as the sale is done. They also have a huge and ongoing commitment to R&D, ensuring they are ahead of the trends and maintaining the flexibility to provide valuable information and relevance in the ever changing online space.

If you haven’t seen it already, we’ve put together a video (below) that outlines the challenges we all face in the new environment and how Brandtology answers those challenges. It’s an exciting time ahead for the now over 1,000 people across 15 countries in the Media Monitors Group and we look forward to both Media Monitors and Brandtology growing together as leaders in the provision of media intelligence across the Asia Pacific region.

Read the full press release here.

Press v Online News: Is the content the same?

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT

This is an extract from a white paper. Please click here to see the full version.

As traditional media companies have built up their news presence online, many people have assumed that the website is simply an online version of the newspaper. But is this the case? Have news websites evolved as a separate style of news medium to press or does one equal the other?

As one of the only organisations aggregating and filtering content across all news media, Asia Media Monitors decided to analyse the coverage of nine leading business brands and three prominent figures over ten days between 1st and 10th October 2010 in order to find an answer to this question. Our aim was to supply a snapshot of how much content across these areas is shared between the major metropolitan newspapers and their online properties and how much is unique to either the print version or the online version.

We analysed 1,155 articles during the one week period, finding that only 20% of items appeared in both the print and online versions of the leading metropolitan media outlets in Malaysia and Singapore. 28% were unique to the online version, while 52% of articles analysed appeared solely in the newspaper.

This finding reinforced to us that different media forms and their audiences have completely different needs. People seek different types of news from online sources than they do from print publications and large media organisations have recognised this and catered to each specific audience, whether online or in print.

The methodology that was used was by collating and compiling the news coverage, via our monitoring system, which mentioned the following keywords over the week from 1st until 10th October 2010:

Malaysia	Singapore
Brand
Proton	SingTel
AirAsia	Temasek
Sime Darby	DBS
Celcom	HDB
	Parkway Holdings
Public Figure
Dato’ Sri Mohd. Najib Tun Razak	Lee Hsien Loong
Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim
Media
New Straits Times/ New Straits Times online	Berita harian Singapura/ cyberita
The Star/ The Star Online	Straits Times/ Straits Times online
Berita Harian/ Berita Harian Online	Today, Today Online
Utusan Malaysia/ Utusan Online

The 1155 articles relating to these 12 names were then analysed and categorised as unique to the print version, unique to the online version or appearing in both print and online properties. Articles with altered headlines but the same content or slightly altered text between print and online properties were considered to have appeared in both media.

Overall Volume

The chart above shows the breakdown of coverage from each print media (red) that also appeared in the online version (grey), as well as coverage that appeared on the website but not in the print version (blue).

Coverage	Volume	Percentage
Print only	596	52
Both media	235	20
Internet only	324	28
Total	1,155	100

Proportion by Publication

The chart above shows the breakdown of coverage from each print media (red) that also appeared in the online version (green), as well as coverage that appeared on the website but not in the print version (blue).

The Star had by far the highest proportion of shared content between its print and online versions at 33% while the News Straits Times had only 7% of shared content. The publication with the lowest proportion of unique print content was The Star (35%). The comparable levels of unique online content amongst all publications other than The Star was primarily owing to news agency provided material, with the same Bernama or Reuters article often running across most of the online media. The lower proportion of shared content in the tabloid newspapers may also reflect the more restricted nature of their coverage, while the keywords used related to major national brands.

Proportion by Keyword

In Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim had the highest proportion of shared content at 27% while in Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Hsein Loong had the lowest amount of unique print content at 40%. Conversely Lee Hsein Loong had the highest volume of unique online content at 39%, largely owing to regular Singaporean political news websites. Over half of articles mentioning DBS during the analysis period appeared only in the print versions of the selected publications.

These results clearly support that both comprehensive print and online monitoring is required to understand the complete picture. New media has not replaced print, it has provided a different style of news for a different, more immediate purpose. Companies need to consider how they can stay abreast with both media engines as there is no doubt that new media is progressing rapidly alongside traditional forms. Monitoring print and online media is vital for tracking news release placements, identifying other mentions in the media relevant to the organization, manage corporate and brand reputation, monitor competition and stay current on industry issues. Media Monitors and Asia Media Monitors provide a one-stop, customised print, broadcast and internet monitoring solution for every organisation, big or small, government or commercial.

“In other markets, most notably Malaysia, the online space has become a way to get around a tightly controlled traditional media structure for discussion of politics and current affairs, with three of the top ten bloggers in Malaysia being prominent opposition politicians. In some cases new media usage has been complementary, mostly covering different user needs and in some cases supplementary, providing a wider range of opinion, but most evidence points to very little complete replacement of traditional media by new media….. There may even be some publications that stick solely to print, but the key word for the future, not just in delivery platform but also revenue model, is diversity, and for any organisation trying to stay across their coverage across all of these equally important platforms, the need for professional assistance will only become greater”. – John Croll, Chief Executive Officer, Media Monitors.

This is an extract from a white paper. Please click here to see the full version.

Oprah not quite so hot in Singapore

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:00:00 GMT

There’s no denying that the average TV viewer is aware of The Oprah Show’s popularity. Viewers of DIVA channel on will be familiar with advertising for The Oprah Show to the catchy chant of Usher Raymond and will.i.am’s foot-stomping, OMG. For many, a letter in the alphabet is now synonymous with Oprah. There’s O, the Oprah Magazine and O at Home, Oprah Radio, Oprah.com (a whopping 70 million page views, 6 million users a month, 20,000 e-mails each week), Oprah’s Book Club, “Oprah’s Child Predator Watch List” and now the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

For many , Oprah may have come to occupy the seat of wisdom like the Oracle in The Matrix trilogy. But is her influence universal? Our media analysis reveals that the answer is ‘not quite’.

For an idea of how publicity on Oprah has permeated other media channels besides television, the chart below shows Oprah’s print media coverage and related audiences over 2010. That’s over 550 print articles in Singaporean media – more than 1.5 articles on average for every day of 2010.

Oprah in Singaporean print coverage over 2010

December 2010 and January 2011 have seen international media follow Oprah on her Australian tour, report interviews with the TV hostess on her personal life, discuss the curtains coming down on The Oprah Show, promote the swansong season and support preparations for the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

For the global public, the end of 2010/beginning of 2011 was going to be made memorable as the goodbye to Oprah’s much-loved show and a fresh new start to the Oprah network. It was as if she was saying to the people: ‘The show is ending. Let’s face it. Let’s go on holiday together to Australia and enjoy each other and life (and wildlife). Let’s look forward to something new – my new network.’

Creating a strong presence is essential for Oprah during this time of transition. Oprah herself is giving ample publicity to new shows that will be on her network. But the immediate challenge for Oprah’s publicity team is to keep the media interested through the lead-up to the launch of OWN network on 1 January 2011 and some.

Here’s a breakdown of the key topics discussed on Oprah in 50 Singaporean print articles between 1 December 2010 and 15 January 2011 (six and a half weeks).

Leading Topics on Oprah in Singaporean print coverage 1 December 2010 – 15 January 2011*

* A single article may discuss more than one topic. As such the volume of topics mentioned does not equal the volume of articles analysed.

While it was headlines for Oprah in Australia and smooth sailing in Malaysian media, Singapore lacked the same enthusiasm (see Oprah’s Leading Topics in Malaysian coverage. Oprah was discussed the most in coverage of her TV show and her Australian tour but unlike Malaysia, Singaporean media did not make much of a fuss over “Oprah’s Big Give-Away” to her loyal audience – 300 of them- an 8-day holiday in Australia for “Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure” , which would have been newsworthy.

Oprah’s Australian Tour was not just any holiday but a massive boost for tourism publicity in Australia. Some of the analysed coverage mentioned that Australia had spent A$3 million in hosting Oprah and 300 of her fans during the week-long visit but “government officials say they got tourism advertising worth many millions more in return” (The Straits Times, 28 December 2010). Tourism Australia will have to report any evidence of ‘The Oprah Effect’ in the coming year for serious market researchers. Coverage gave regular updates on Oprah’s adventures Down Under, discussing the Australian celebrities she engaged with including the late Steve Irwin better known as ‘Crocodile Hunter’, through his family. There was drama, amusement - such as in the case of Hugh Jackman’s failed flying fox entrance into the show – and good, old ‘Oprahfication’.

The launch of Oprah’s OWN network and new shows to be aired on it were frequently discussed, including Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York and Shania Twain’s shows. The Australian tour, The Oprah Show and the launch of OWN network were probably the meatiest of reporting on the talk show queen, while other reports often only mentioned Oprah in passing, such as in articles focused on people she had previously interviewed.

Rather surprising was the lack of media discussion of OWN’s early days after its launch; for instance, there was no reporting on audience ratings for OWN network nor was Oprah’s statement after the launch published in Singaporean media. It seemed Singapore was not quite as excited about OWN network now that The Oprah Show was coming to an end. One may argue the new network made little difference to Singaporean audiences as it was not going to be available in Singapore. Still, the discrepancy in media interest in Oprah as a personality, between Malaysia and Singapore was notable.

Even so, the most fascinating thing about Oprah’s marketing is her ability to build partnerships and co-brand with other celebrities, products or even an entire country, such as in the case of Australia. It is an ultimate win-win situation as businesses and individuals seek Oprah out to make it big as a result of the so-called ‘Oprah Effect’. People may recall John Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus as one of the books that took the world by storm after being featured on Oprah’s show. In many ways, Oprah is an extremely well-respected talent scout and critic in the same way that the final say seemed to rest on Simon Cowell on American Idol. Oprah keeps her influence by sharing the limelight with the stars or the big names and later channels that influence to other talents or even issues or causes, that will benefit from her limelight.

Oprah has a worldwide, mass audience that has strong identification with her message of empowerment of the ordinary person. At the end of the day, Oprah’s greatest ‘effect’ is on the personal lives of her customer base. In other words, her secret is excellent, personal customer service. Perhaps it is this, that makes the closure of The Oprah Show so disturbing. Without Oprah’s consistent, physical presence onscreen, will the quality of her personal customer service be compromised? Maybe not, if her publicity team keeps up the good work.

Image by nayrb7 on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing

Malaysia and Singapore Website Rankings - November 2010

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 02:30:00 GMT

Its been an incredible year for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. He was recently named as the TIME’s Person of the Year and his social networking site “Facebook”, added more than 100 million new users to the network in 2010 which is a remarkable achievement by any standards (Penn Olson’s Infographics here).

But comScore data clearly highlights that Facebook still has an uphill task on their hands to oust Google. According to comScore, Google was the largest website in the world by total unique visitors in November 2010, followed by Microsoft, Facebook and then Yahoo finishing at fourth position.

In Malaysia, however, Facebook retained its second position with 9.1 million total unique visitors and Google again tops the charts with 9.4 million. My last month’s post on Malaysia’s website ranking comparisons from October 2010 is here. Some other major findings from Malaysia’s November 2010 total audience data is as below:

Star Online is still the top news website.
Mudah.my is still the top local website.
Twitter climbed up one position this month and is at number 33 with 0.8 mln total unique visitors.
Linkedin is at the 135th position.
Foursquare is at the 260th position.
Utusan Group is second most popular news website.
Maxis Group is the top telecommunications website.
Paultan.org drops down from last month position and is now at the 112th position.
Lowyat.net falls down two position and is now at number 43.

There was not much change in the Singapore’s website rankings as well with Microsoft at number one with 2.7 million total unique visitors followed by Google with 2.5 million, Yahoo with 2.3 million and Facebook with 2.1 million. Some other major findings from Malaysia’s November 2010 total audience data is as below:

Singapore Press Holdings Group is still the top news website group.
MediaCorp Pte Ltd is second most popular news website group.
Twitter dropped one position this month and is at number 28 with 0.4 million total unique visitors.
Linkedin also dropped one position this month and is at number 49.
Singtel Group is the top telecommunications website.

This data is from some selected sources to give you a bit of perspective of website rankings in Malaysia and Singapore. I am happy to provide anyone with the data for their particular website (for example, Average Daily Visitors, Total Minutes, Page Views, etc). Please feel free to email me or send me a tweet.

Image provided by lrargerich on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing.

The Business Year in Review

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT

With the end of the calendar year almost upon us, it is a good time to reflect on the current state of the media intelligence industry across SE Asia. It is also a good time to pause, and look at the year ahead.

Media Monitors SE Asia began 2010 with 145 employees and will finish the year with 171 employees spread across offices in GTower and Menara Taipan in Kuala Lumpur and Far East Square in Singapore. These offices complement 5 scanning stations that are spread across SE Asia. The growth in headcount demonstrates our commitment to helping SE Asian and regional clients to make sense of the media and reflects strong client and revenue growth across both media monitoring and media analysis services throughout the year. In particular, I am pleased to share that we have continued to build relationships with government and multinational corporate clients. Putrajaya is beginning to feel like a second home!

The growth in headcount has in part been fuelled by a resurgent Singapore economy and a steady Malaysian economy. In addition, I am of the belief that our growth has been fuelled by a change in industry psyche. The GFC effectively elevated the importance of media measurement by increasing accountability across wider industry. Public relations professionals must measure and evaluate communications efforts to effectively participate in C-level discussions. This has led to an increasing demand for our CARMA® media content analysis solution across all industry segments.

Our inaugural Media Influencers Survey (MIS) in August highlighted that “Optimism is returning fast”. In Singapore >30% of public relations professionals said that budget is ‘likely to go up’ in the next 12 months. Malaysian respondents shared similar views, 25% said that budget is ‘likely to go up’. Given this, our media intelligence service has been well positioned to assist clients to monitor and analyse content across both traditional and online media sources. The MIS Findings can be found here.

Throughout 2010 Media Monitors SE Asia continued to develop a strong service and support-based culture that is focused on the principles of client centricity. On that note, I would like to thank clients who participated in the recent client and industry benchmarking survey and all SE Asian colleagues for their commendable efforts throughout 2010, particularly those that were nominated for a Media Monitors Excellence Award.

As we move into 2011, I look forward to seeing the results of the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) in Malaysia. On the media front, I look forward to seeing what impact the WikiLeaks phenomenon has on the monitoring industry; at the very least it will speed up the global media cycle and necessitate improved issue management. In general I am looking forward to the evolution of social media. It will certainly be interesting to see which corporate department becomes the official social media partner.

By mid 2011 Media Monitors will launch Mediaportal Analytics, an innovative reporting tool that will introduce a new set of graphical user options to www.mediaportal.com which will help clients to analyse their media activities. I will share more exciting details in due course.

That’s all from me, season’s greetings to you all.

Reef Kok receiving an MMXL Award - Above and Beyond in June 2010

Kunalan Ramasamy receiving the 'Certificate of Analysis Accreditation'

Leon Hudson at Marketing Magazine's Agency of the Year Awards 2010 in Singapore

Back row (L to R): Chin Wei Chong, Illka Gobius, Leon Hudson, Suzanne Ho
Front row (L to R): Pamela Lin, Cheryl Tay, Sarah Myers, Rachel Lim, Michelle Tay

Understanding Influencers Pt II – Activating and Measuring

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:45:00 GMT

This is the second post of "Understanding Influencers". Read the previous post here.

Hoopla in social media creates anxiety, pressure and lots of it.

The constant influx of social and new media conferences give me the impression that people are scrambling. They just want to gather as much knowledge about everything going on without taking a step back and assessing the lay of the land.

Think of it like this- when you go to the cinema and find out that all the tickets to the movie that you want to see are sold out, don’t panic. Instead of trying to scramble to think of one other movie you could see instead, just relax, keep your exorbitantly priced $18 worth of ticket in your wallet and come back when there are tickets to the movie you really wanted to see in the first place.

It’s the same in the new media space. Instead of scrambling to get a piece of the pie without really wanting to be involved, or thinking it through properly, relax. First think what’s right for your company, your audience and your voice. Then take action. Approach your influencers, understand their needs and how they match your clearly defined needs. Find a happy medium if necessary, but never jump in with your eyes closed.

Essentially that happy medium should be something where both parties get something out of the relationship including a mandatory of a return on investment for the company. That return doesn’t have to be financial. It can be number of interactions, positive feedback, or even just impressions. You need to know what your measure of success will be.

Which leads us to the measurement. Part and parcel of the activation. There are a lot of companies out there trying to find the ‘right way’ and just like everything else in social media, it’s different for everybody.

As we navigate through the space, I can share some tips that I’ve picked up:

Relevancy

Ensure you track and follow those mentions that are only relevant to you. Identify and create a list of the terms that apply to you, your brand and your message.

My favourite line of this year for relevancy “Apple isn’t just a fruit. It’s a fruit, it’s a brand and it’s a celebrity’s baby”.
Don’t be blinded by all mentions

Just like in the real world, when some people share something it just doesn’t have the weight that other people may bring to their comments. When establishing influencers and watching comments within the space, make sure you really qualify the chatter as well:
- Do the voices have an impact in your relevant market, no matter where they happen to be?
- Are the listeners qualified? Is there a sizeable number who are actually real people?
- Rate the comments on a scale of influence across the socialsphere.
Benchmarking

It’s very hard to benchmark in new media with previous comparable campaigns being few and far between. So use your competitors as a healthy benchmark. Measure them on the same scale that you measure your own brand on.
- What are they doing?
- How many people are mentioning them?
- What’s their level of engagement and influence?
Don’t’ let your measurement stay idle, use it to your advantage

Use what you’re gathering, during your activation, to continually optimize and revise engagement. We don’t know how people will respond or what they will respond to. So run with the things that get positive response and make them bigger. Drop the ideas that don’t work. The beauty of social media is still the ability to change tack in a heartbeat. Use that to your advantage.

This world isn’t set in stone. It’s constantly moving and changing. Go with the change, keep experimenting and work with what works best for you and your campaigns. Think intelligently about objectives, success metrics and measurement. Use the tools already at your disposal to help you learn more about what works best for you.

Image provided by WagsomeDog on Flickr under CC attributions licensing.

Understanding Influencers

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:15:00 GMT

A month ago a documentary on influencers was released. It’s a great piece which begins to uncover the realities of this breed.

“INFLUENCERS is a short documentary that explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment. The film attempts to understand the essence of influence, what makes a person influential without taking a statistical or metric approach.”

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo.

There is no denying that influencers is a new key buzz word that’s here to stay. It isn’t a fad, it’s one of the cemented foundations of the new communications paradigm as we know it. Influencers are the key to spreading news and ideas across their social networks of interest.

We probably first saw use of the idea in Malcolm Gladwell’s book- The Tipping Point – where he investigated the idea of Mavens, Salesmen and Connectors. They all did their job to spread different types of information and an influencer is a simplified idea of those concepts. They are a trusted individual and the go to person on a certain topic.

When we come to the world of media, marketing and PR who are the influencers?

Official media people, i.e. anyone with a press pass, is an influencer. They have a platform which supports them and allows them to have a voice. On the other side is the existing audience base whether in press, online or broadcast. No doubt there is influential power, but it’s much more one way and harder to establish 2 way communication. Censorship and control may have something do with that.

Bloggers, tweeps and social media addicts have to build their audiences and become recognized as influencers. Once they arrive they often have the potential to influence people with more authority than traditional influencers. The removed barriers of access allows them to be more honest, upfront and simply more accessible that those in a corporation/media provider cannot adhere to. They are therefore more trusted.

The added benefit of being completely open and (generally) uncensored means everyone in the network has a say. The influencer is driving the conversation, but any comment, positive or negative, has a place.

Is there a difference in harnessing the influential power of either of these influencers?

There is, but it’s debatable. Once a social media influencer becomes as well known as any other media personality, do they not automatically become part of that celebrity bucket?
My initial reaction is yes- but these types are few and far between. Perez Hilton and Dooce are one in a million. Any marketing approach here would be viewed as the classic celebrity endorsement.

The influencers we all need to be harnessing are those who have real connections with their respective communities. They participate and connect with as many of these people in their communities as they can. They are part of something as opposed to the sole driver. They may also connect with people in the real world, or the prospect of meeting is a possibility. It is a more real relationship and all levels of pretense are removed.

And the simple way to get involved in these circles, with these influencers, is find ways to give back. Find the leverage point where your company/brand can connect and allow advocacy to grow. Relinquish a bit of control and respect these influencers – giving them complete freedom creates more appreciation. Influencers will feel that they are respected as equals and trusted by a big corporate.

What Next?

The bottom line is that these relationships are constantly evolving and the influencer importance within a communications strategy is growing. We are understanding new components of the influencer dynamic every day. But by tapping these new voices you can generate positive returns for your business and that’s never a bad thing.

Read the second installment to this post Understanding Influencers Pt II – Activating and Measuring

Image provided by Ted Van Pelt on Flickr under CC attributions licensing.

The good and the bad of iStrategy2010, Sydney

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend iStrategy2010 in Sydney.
As someone who has attended a lot of conferences and been disappointed many a time with the one or two nuggets I leave with, this one was pretty good. There were some really inspirational speakers who brought some great insights and ideas to the table and then there were the speakers who rehash the same old chestnuts that we’ve all heard before.

So let’s break it down:

The Good

Haresh Khoobchandani
Chief Marketing Officer, Consumer and Online - Microsoft Asia Pacific

Haresh was without doubt the best speaker at the conference. He spoke about Microsoft social media marketing operating on a dynamic basis and the notion that as technology gets easier and more sophisticated, things get harder for business.
Key points:

Facebook is not a communications channel, it is a social service. Unable to acquire data becomes a huge chink in a social media strategy.
Microsoft continually monitor their social media campaigns and re optimize tactics on the fly.
Search is a form of engagement- a nice thought and a different way of understanding the channel.
Microsoft heavily tracks competitors in the social space to benchmark their results. Year on year data is pretty much useless and comparison paints a much better picture.

Mark Wynne
President South Asia Kimberly-Clark

The Australian-New Zealand market is leading the way for Kimberley Clark. They’re changing from a ‘telling and selling’ marketing function to one which focuses on building relationships.

They’ve established communities around their 2 biggest brands- Huggies and Kleenex. They understand that nappies, tissues and toilet paper aren’t passion points for people in social media but parenting is. And they actually attempt to migrate their community from the Huggies to the Kleenex community as babies grow into kids.

The only fault (and not even such a bad one) is the lack of connectivity to fathers- but then there are Dads in the community, they just aren’t as vocal as the mothers.

Glenis Carroll
Group General Manager of Marketing Fairfax Digital

Glenis spoke in detail about email marketing and how important it is for most businesses. Numerous commentators continue to bring up the conversation that email is dead. It seems the only reason they do that is because they have nothing else to say and it stirs up a good debate - an easy way to create conversation.

The quote of the conference came out of this workshop- if Facebook says email is dead, how come you need an email account to login?

Email is effective if used correctly:

Prior to sending an EDM, always ask how you are going to make a conversation valuable to a customer. Sending effective emails minimizes the chances of getting on Spam lists which is an increasing problem for companies which rely on heavy EDM sends.
Benchmark open rates against your respective industry.
Subscribers are a long term investment and not a short term opportunity- results won’t happen in one click.
Clean your email databases every 90 days. Forrester reports that 27% of people change their email addresses every year (2009 statistic).

Other goodies

Nick Love
Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand at MySpace & IGN Entertainment

Nick made me want to venture back into the land of mySpace. They’ve realized their shortcomings, reassessed and created a hub that keeps your blood pressure down

Mark Jones
Digital Director, Fox Sports

Mark’s honest and frank approach to social media is refreshing. They’re trying, trying to make Fox Sports useful and more accessible to their fanbase.

The Bad

Panels

Panels weren’t the greatest largely due to the fact that everyone was on the same side. Effective panels need to have polarizing sides full of drama, hyperbole and misused facts. That’s when people get fired up and more interested in the discussion.

A workshop on Mobile

We’re at a stage of the e-Revolution where smart phones are becoming the norm. Yes it may have been the potential year of mobile in 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09 and 2010, but in 2011 every Dick and Harry has a mini computer in their pocket (according to Nielsen, Tom might not have one yet) and they are appreciating the useful functionality that comes with it.
Missing this thought is the reason this workshop failed. Now that people and companies actually have a more solid understanding of this channel, how do we utilize it and shift marketing from pure message and play? How do you, as a brand, become a necessary functionality in someone’s mobile life?

And then from there, how can you further monetize and see returns?

Len Starnes - Head of Digital & Marketing & Sales General Medicine Bayer Schering Pharma
Phil Owens - Former Global Brand Head, Yaz Family Bayer Health Care

This panel discussion was disappointing and could have been so much more effective.

I think the main issue here is that Pharma is trying to use social media in a B2C sense. The restrictions surrounding pharmaceutical marketing is just too much of a barrier that the Pharma marketing function should reassess their approach to social media and create strategies within a B2B framework.

Social media doesn’t actually employ only one B2C strategy and copying that for a B2B context just won’t work. There is no way to compare the tactics employed by the 2 streams. B2B doesn’t have the natural passion points like a clothing brand or electronic device. It’s a completely different headspace and to mimic it within B2B is an immediate fail.

The suggestion I have for Pharma is take the insights from your target and the things you know about social media and apply those to your B2B social marketing strategies. Remembering that social media doesn’t just mean digital. Social media is a complete evolution in how companies talk to their customers. Use those insights to reshape relationships with clients in ways that work for pharma.

Key takeaways

The bad still weans some really good insight and understanding in the space. So not so bad after all.

I think the key to this being a good conference was the high level of understanding of social media and its impact on business. The other key factor was the way that case studies were more than just case studies. Strategy, methodologies and the derivation of idea processes enabled attendees to leave with new ways of tackling business issues, rather than just cool stories to tell.

If you missed this one, I strongly recommend going to the next iStrategy conference near your area.

Read Toula Serna's blog from this conference- Social media through the eyes of the uninitiated.

Social media through the eyes of the uninitiated

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 01:00:00 GMT

I attended the iStrategy conference in Sydney last week to understand the concepts of social media and how organisations are leveraging the new communication channels with their clients. The conference included many inspirational presentations by companies who related their experiences, both good and bad and other presentations by motivating technology leaders who charted out their vision for the future.

It was difficult not to detect the main theme of the conversation. Growth in internet and mobile communications at an unprecedented rate, technology advancement which democratised the tools of production and consumers having more choice and asserting their views solicited or not. Rewards for those who engage with their clients and tap into this force are immense.

Hyperbolic numbers were thrown out like they were out of fashion, often the same anecdotes. But what became clear to me that while the experiences of large and small companies could be very different, companies are succeeding in this space only when they build relationships with their clients.

We listened to many innovative ways of marketing to clients using websites, Facebook and Twitter. And as I looked around me I noticed many had their heads down and interacting with their phones or occasional iPad. Not wanting to be left out, I decided to join the fray and experiment. I tentatively tweeted (or is it twittered?) my comments as the speaker was pacing the podium and flashing his PowerPoint graphics. I was encouraged by the approving nod of my colleague, who is mentoring me in my journey of discovery.

I found myself joining a flood of conversations both within and outside the conference. It was fascinating to hear the immediate thoughts of many around me. You feel the distinct pleasure of voyeurism creeping in. I found it surprising that people wanted to share their thoughts so openly and so continuously.

I was also trying to follow the presentation and make meaningful notes at the same time. Amazingly, and counter-intuitively, undertaking three simultaneous but related tasks seemed to concentrate my mind and focus it on the essence of the message. My notes make perfect sense!

At one point during the afternoon, someone tweeted their need for a Red Bull to help them through the long afternoon. Within less than thirty minutes and at the next break, the conference attendees were met warmly by two beautiful girls distributing free Red Bulls to one and all. I was instantaneously converted! It was such a powerful example of the power of the medium. Red Bull had its listening ears on and responded immediately, thus gaining the appreciation of all who were there. Red Bull now has a new admirer.

Read Deb Wiseman's blog from this conference- The good and the bad of iStrategy2010, Sydney

Obama in Asia: Are we dancing?

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 01:00:00 GMT

The international news was awash with images of President Obama and the American First Lady, Michelle Obama sharing a Diwali dance with children in India just days after the US mid-term elections. The Republicans gained a majority vote over the Democrats, seizing control of the House of Representatives, while the Democrats maintained majority of the Senate.

The spotlight is on the US President and it seems the public wants to know whether there will be dancing in the US on account of a quicker economic recovery, with new jobs for Americans and a more stable greenback. The rest of the world, however, is watching and waiting to see if the meetings will yield real ease on trade imbalances in the global economy. Currency and trade wars as well as current account surpluses and deficits are very much the preoccupation in recent economic coverage but will these anxieties be resolved anytime soon?

The US President’s 10-day Asian trip began on 6 November with stops in India, Indonesia, South Korea (for the G-20 meeting) and Japan (for the Apec forum). The trip included a spattering of bilateral meetings with heads of state from India, Indonesia, South Korea, China, Japan, Australia and Russia. Click here to see a map of the Asia trip itinerary.

But before the President can deliver the goods, perhaps another question to ponder is just how much dancing is there in Asia over President Obama’s visit?

We took a look at how the print media in Singapore, an important financial hub in the Asia-Pacific economic region, reported on President Obama between 1 October to 9 November 2010 - this being the period leading up to the mid-term elections and immediately after, to include coverage after the President’s Asian trip had begun.

Overall Singaporean print coverage on President Obama between 1 October and 9 November 2010 focused on the mid-term elections. This represented 72% of coverage on the US President, with reports predicting, reporting and analysing the outcome of the elections. It was noteworthy that in some instances, the tone of coverage towards the contesting parties did not always match the tone towards President Obama and vice versa. For example, reports may have been critical of the Democrats or favourable towards the Republicans but may have had a neutral tone in discussion of the President.

The remaining 28% of the analysed coverage discussed US foreign policy, issues relating to the global economy and the President’s 10-day visit to Asia. A large share of this coverage discussed the state of affairs in the US economy and repercussions for the global economy.

The weakest point in favourability of reporting on President Obama was the second week of October, when coverage focused on the weak US job report where employment fell for the fourth consecutive month.

Nevertheless, there were signs of improvement in the aftermath of the elections. Coverage trebled between the period 28 Oct – 3 Nov (13 articles) and 4 – 9 Nov 2010 (34 articles), with favourable stories on US trade deals with India and pledges of “mid-course corrections” by the President. Overall, between 1 Oct and 9 Nov 2010, however, there were more unfavourable articles (27) than favourable (20). The media that was most critical of President Obama was The Straits Times while its Sunday edition, The Sunday Times, showed the greatest favour (see Media Favourability chart below).

Half of the analysed coverage was neutral in tone towards President Obama - perhaps, a more favourable indicator than unfavourable, considering the fact that the Democrats lost the majority in the House of Representatives. Most of the neutral coverage discussed the actions President Obama would need to take to regain support in the US as well as abroad, or mulled over his plans for the second half of his term.

It seems the Singaporean media is walking the tightrope more than it is dancing with the US President, not least because of its strong economic connections with other Asia-Pacific countries, in particular China.

Reports following this analysis period suggest that few of the bilateral meetings held during the Asian trip yielded trade wins for President Obama and little progress was made in advancing economic cooperation towards beating trade imbalances in the global economy. The coverage unfortunately suggests it may be a case of the US being cut off without a penny at the global table at a time of great need.

If you liked this blog post, Media Monitors conducted some research on the election of Barack Obama. Feel free to download The Obama Report 100 Days in Power Vol 4.5 and The Obama Report – Vol 4 on the US President’s rise to power here.

Image provided by Alessio85 on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing

Asia Media Monitors media analysis wins international AMEC award

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 02:00:00 GMT

Media Monitors recently won four medals at the 2010 International AMEC Awards. The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication ( AMEC ) has 103 media analysis / research companies as members from 38 countries. At the 2010 Awards there were 92 submission across 11 categories. This blog talks about the analysis for the Silver medal we received for Best use of communication measurement, Business to Consumer for the Digi.com, Berhad Malaysia

View our other award wins

The Asia Media Monitors Analysis team has chalked up another win at the international Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) Awards in London last week, this time for a Malaysian client following our Singapore success last year. Once again, we garnered a medal in the ‘best use of communication measurement: business-to-consumer’ category this time with a silver for our work on the DiGi Malaysia project.

As lead analyst for DiGi, it’s hard to imagine my two years at Media Monitors as being exclusive from my work on the project. Although I’ve worked with a number of clients in the automotive and oil and gas industry, the DiGi assignment has proven to be the most challenging project to date, and was excellent training ground in terms of understanding commercial customer needs and assessing media effectiveness through content analysis.

DiGi is one of the largest telecommunications companies in Malaysia, providing wireless telephone and internet services throughout the country. The company had procured the services of the analysis team to determine its share of voice in the market and determine its success in conveying its media positions to the masses.

As the victory follows on from our double award winning report for Shell Singapore in 2009, I believe it is a testament to the determination and hard work of the AMM Analysis team. The award reinforces both the rapid growth of the team over the last two and a half years and the stellar reputation our analysis reports have already earned with many Malaysian and multi-national companies in a short space of time.

The team has doubled in size since 2008, incorporating analysts and researchers from diverse fields including education, banking, media and tourism. Our portfolio includes a number of South East Asia’s major market movers including Sime Darby, Petronas Citi Asia and Bursa Malaysia; and with the assistance of a dynamic accounts management team, the team has also scored important government contracts with the Malaysian Ministry of Health and Singaporean Armed Forces, amongst others.

Holding the team together is analysis manager, Izzat Khiruddin Ibrahim who cites cohesiveness as the key ingredient to the team’s continued success. “It isn’t enough to have highly skilled, capable individuals although this is an asset to any team,” he says. “In order to push the bar in quality we need to be able to work well as a unit and ensure a consistent exchange of ideas that boosts innovation.”

I am pleased that the recognition by AMEC of the team’s success acknowledges the value our media analysis service to clients particularly in gauging current public perception and enhancing it for the better.

Guerrilla marketing stunt: Why the public didn't just grin and bear it

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 01:00:00 GMT

Is any press good press? A recent publicity stunt held here in Singapore questioned this maxim after garnering media attention and sparking fiery conversations about where to draw the line between guerilla marketing and creating a public nuisance.

In an effort to promote its shavers, Philips Electronics held a guerilla marketing stunt involving a man in a bear suit rummaging through trash cans in Ulu Pandan at 2 in the morning. How this has to do with buying shavers, I’m still not quite sure – and the bear in the video was a black bear of the type commonly found in North America, not a type to be found even in the Singapore Zoo.

But the public and the government took it very seriously, slapping a public nuisance investigation on the agency responsible, The Secret Little Agency. While some are questioning whether we all just need a better sense of humor, I thought I’d take a deeper look into the stunt and its relation to the Philips brand.

The execution of the stunt had its ups and downs. The agency behind the campaign did some of their homework, calling the police beforehand to see whether a permit was needed for mascots. After filming it, the video was released online and picked up discussion on the online platform STOMP. But they failed to gain authenticity among traditional press by having a questionable spokesperson behind the event, which stunted the spread of the campaign as legitimate news.

Their main source for the story was a Mr. Wilson Tay, who claimed to have been responsible for capturing the video – but after he called newsrooms, he could not be contacted on the same phone number. The New Paper ran the story with some expressed trepidation, but TODAY didn’t run it until Philips claimed responsibility for the stunt, saying they embargoed the story because details could not be authenticated.

The story did get pick-up in the online space, ultimately getting 334 mentions in blogs, based on an archive search for “Ulu Pandan” and “Bear”. While the page got a 49% LOL rating from its viewers on STOMP, comments seem to be a little more incendiary:

“The marketing department should be fired for this and to whoever approved this idea - you need an MRI to see if your brain is in your skull. I was so worried when driving past the area and afraid a bear would stomp my car out of the blue, hungry for food and had me for supper. I will NEVER buy Philips - I can do without. What if there is a real bear out there and calling the police and they will think it's a PR stunt. Crying wolf by all these advertisers will cause real situations to be ignored.” - hairyfairy

This may have been the actual intended audience of the guerilla marketing stunt, judging by its YouTube release – but the nature of the act served more to alienate its audience rather than engage them. And while the stunt clearly sparked discussion as intended, it didn’t tie back to the brand in the way they’d intended – maybe fortunately for Philips, given the negative response they got in the end. If they’d done a bit more homework by looking at past press coverage similar animal sightings received in the past, they’d find that these kinds of stories always have overwhelmingly negative connotations.

I ran a search on the articles over the past 3 months in Media Monitors’ Singapore archive that mentioned the keyword “bear”, and (after filtering out mentions of the bear market) found that they were highly negative in tone. The biggest stories to receive pick-up in Singapore included an animal welfare case involving polar bears at the Singapore Zoo, and a bear in the US that wrecked a car.

I ran a similar search on the campaign itself to see what the nature of the discussion was around the stunt, and found an even split between the terms “Ulu Pandan Bear,” “Philips” and “The Secret Little Agency” in newspapers. It is interesting that it served to leverage the advertising agency just as much as the brand itself, though in both cases spokespeople were acting on the defence.

However, only 3 out of 45 Tweets archived since October 17th tie the campaign back to Philips:

@koolwool: @missu_ada Like how the Philips logo didn’t appear on the Ulu Pandan bear video. I said viral campaign.

@izreloaded: It’s the Philips Carnival Sale 2010. I’m very sure the Ulu Pandan bear won’t be there.

The key takeaways I got from this are as follows:

1. Guerilla marketing is cheap and effective, but it requires homework and a tie-in to the brand that engages audiences. Tim Clark, a communications professor at Nanyang Technological University was quoted on this issue in the Straits Times, saying “Was it relevant to Philips’ shavers? If the only relevance was the suggestion that avoiding being mauled by a bear was a close shave, then that seems to me to be a rather lame pun.”

2. There is a line to be drawn between getting any publicity, and getting the kind of publicity that the brand wants. In this case, Philips was lucky in averting even more of a PR disaster because of point 1, but it certainly didn’t make anyone want to go out and buy shavers or raise the cool factor of the brand.

3. The public also needs to lighten up a little bit. Yes, they crossed the line and wasted public resources. But in the end nobody was hurt. Sometimes guerilla and viral marketing can be fun and engaging – and yes, even in practical Singapore. One good example is the Raffles Place ghost campaign for GMP, which scared us into not working late - but didn’t drive us away from the brand (even Anderson Cooper liked it).

In the end the impact for Philips will only be determined by the “stickiness” of the campaign as a future cultural reference – but already some are spoofing it with a bear of their own.

Image kindly provided by Greenpeace

Why Online News Monitoring Is Essential For Organizations

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 02:00:00 GMT

In recent years, numerous debates have taken place on whether new media or online media poses a threat to traditional media.

As information research behaviours change and as more people use Internet or social networks to search for information, online media has gradually become mainstream. The Internet is giving people the power to voice their issues and encourage bottom-up communication that was never defined in the professional culture of journalism.

Members of the public are now playing an active role of collecting, reporting and disseminating information and shaping the future of news and information. As more user generated content changes the media landscape and this gives ways for media monitoring companies to assist brands in monitoring online sources globally.

Internet media monitoring and managing issues at the grassroot level that can possible damage a brand’s reputation is one of the most important part of any company’s public relations efforts. Brands need to understand that it is imperative to monitor online coverage 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. They need to ensure that they are gaining access to relevant and accurate information as fast as possible, preferably in real time!

Internet media monitoring services normally get Internet content from 3rd party sources or internal harvesting procedures. Internal harvesting normally involves configuring computer programs like web crawlers (aka Web spiders, robots, etc). A Web crawler browses the Internet in an automated manner to retrieve content from any website.

Once the program has collected all the content, it then goes through syndication and duplication systems. Duplication systems ensure that no client is receiving content that has been duplicated from the original site. Due to clients being charged on a per Internet clip basis, they sometimes do not subscribe for syndicated repeats of articles. All articles go through the syndication systems to check specified parameters and determine if it was syndicated or not. Internet content syndication is the controlled placement of the same content on multiple partnering Internet destinations.

These news and blog articles are then sent to clients as per their search or keyword requirements. Unlike the traditional way of monitoring press or broadcast which is scanned through by humans, internet content is sent automatically to clients as the system reads the entire article word for word.

Vastly the problem with Internet news monitoring is “accuracy”. Free services like Google alerts are unable to flexibly scope to monitor only the most relevant sources, for example geographic targeting, etc. In this instance geographic targeting is used when you require monitoring tailed to a particular country, and most importantly can be further reduced to particular news sources you are only interested in. This targeted monitoring is beneficial for the separation and relevancy of results. Whereas if you are conducting a random search on Google.com.my then you would obtain results from sites that concentrate on the business relative to the keyword query within that country, so Google.com.my will return popular car dealerships in Malaysia, whilst Google UK will do the same for the UK and so on. No human expertise means no client services team to create search terms and maintain the client’s scope of monitoring. Free services also struggle to identify and filter syndicated repeats and they do not provide any online advertising rate calculation or audience data for the clips in question. This is where media monitoring services like ours come into play.

Information management specialists translate your monitoring requirements into sophisticated search strings which automatically prospect relevant content. With the use of Boolean search conditions, we create complicated, qualified and accurate requirements for clients. Instead of providing them everything under the sun for a specific keyword, we deliver much accurate, filtered and relevant content. For example if a client wants to monitor about Najib Tun Razak only when he speaks country development, economy and Islamic finance, then the boolean would be:

(econom* AND (gloomy OR better OR fiscal OR remain* OR budget* OR beyond* OR optimisti* OR stable* OR weigh OR release* OR dim OR dimmed OR grimer OR bleak OR bleaks OR worsen* OR general economic outlook OR rebound* OR deterior* OR increa* OR slump* OR declin* OR boost* OR stimulat* OR depress* OR rebound* OR rise* OR risin* OR jumps OR toppli* OR arise* OR consumer confidence* OR downturn* OR addition* OR fell* OR fall* OR slow down OR slowdown OR remain* OR measure* OR change* OR changin*)) AND ((najib AND razak) \\ (said OR says OR saying OR told OR tell OR according _to OR notify OR notified OR notify OR claim* OR annouc* OR statement).

Clips are then sent to clients which include audience and advertising space rate (ASR) data. ASRs are the cost an organisation would incur to buy an advertisement in a specific media outlet for a particular position (expressed as a currency). It is normally used a benchmark of performance represented as a figure (duration/size, audience, advertising cost). Please take note that ASRs are not a measure of any of the following:

value
impact
influence
engagement
return on investment (ROI)
‘PR equivalent’ value

In summary, Internet monitoring services reduce information overload and ensure only relevant online content is delivered to you in a timely fashion. This includes the ability to filter out syndicated summaries of web content and nominate which individual sites you want to track. Internet monitoring ensures you are informed of online content important to you, whether it be news, social media or user generated content.

As we become increasingly time poor it is more difficult to filter through the large numbers of results. Managing numerous sources, duplicate results and generic term filtering becomes a full time job in itself. When clients reach out to hire media monitoring services, they should make sure it is robust and covers a range of variables they see as important in their monitoring and reporting. They should ensure that they go beyond a standard monitoring service to give the relevance, analysis and data required, based on the individual’s specific needs.

Image provided by mfophotos on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing

The future of media in APAC

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:30:00 GMT

This article previously appeared in the publication Australian Innovation newsletter.

We have heard for many years about the revolutionary change going on in the media across the world, the emphasis usually being on how new media platforms - first online news, then social media, then mobile applications and now electronic readers such as the iPad - are tearing asunder traditional media forms and destroying the revenue base upon which journalism relies. But what is the real state of play, and how rapid is the transformation?

Media Monitors is uniquely placed to provide insight on the status of media content and delivery in our region. With 700 staff across six countries in Asia and the Pacific filtering and analysing over 5,000 traditional media outlets and 6,000,000 websites for over 6,000 clients, we are abreast of the speed of developments in almost all of APAC’s major markets. There is no doubt that the media is one of the most rapidly evolving mainstream industries in the world, but underneath the hype, there is a far more complex story, which includes the sturdiness of traditional media forms and the vastly differing uses of new media forms in different communities.

New media - different markets, different foci:
There has been an explosion in social media and video sharing across Asian markets in the last five years, with Facebook and Youtube amongst the top ten websites in almost every market in the region, current estimates claiming the average person in Singapore consumes ten hours of online video per week. Add to this the rapid growth of localised social media and shopping networks such as uWants in Hong Kong, Taobao in China and TradeMe in New Zealand. Then include the exponential growth in mobile phone penetration, smartphones and their applications and there is no doubt that the average person in Asia is consuming significantly more information from a far wider range of media than ever before.

Is this replacement use or complementary use? Have people suddenly found an extra two hours a day to engage with all of this new media while maintaining their relationship with traditional forms, or have they just swapped their focus from print and broadcast to computer and phone screen?

In some markets there remains a clear split between entertainment and news, with online platforms predominantly focused on shopping, lifestyle, music and social networks, while news, and in particular financial and international news, remains the province of traditional media organisations. In other markets, most notably Malaysia, the online space has become a way to get around a tightly controlled traditional media structure for discussion of politics and current affairs, with three of the top ten bloggers in Malaysia being prominent opposition politicians. In some cases new media usage has been complementary, mostly covering different user needs and in some cases supplementary, providing a wider range of opinion, but most evidence points to very little complete replacement of traditional media by new media.

The death of traditional media – the facts show a different story:
Press circulations, free to air television audiences and radio audiences have remained stable over the past five years. In no market in the region has there been a widespread collapse in traditional media audiences such as has been seen in the USA. Even as time spent online and mobile phone penetration has jumped at exponential rates throughout Asia, traditional media have powered on as widely consumed and influential as ever.

Preliminary media analysis undertaken on the decline of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd from stratospheric popularity to a comprehensive defeat in his own Party room within the first six months of 2010 shows a strong link between a rapid decline in favourability of coverage from leading traditional media journalists and a polling collapse after reversals on a number of policy issues and a controversial new mining tax. In Australia traditional media journalists remain heavily read and watched, and their opinion remains influential.

Making news profitable on its own - the immediate challenge:
For decades, the provision of news services has been in some case partly paid by cover prices for print media, but also partly or wholly underwritten either by government ownership or by classified and display advertising. The far more immediate effect of growth in online usage on traditional media has not been a fall in audience, but the separation of journalism from one of its prime revenue sources. The growth of online shopping across the region (and in Australia the collapse of print classified advertising as real estate and car sales moved online) and the far cheaper cost of online display advertising have combined to put massive pressure on the revenue model for news content providers. The global financial crisis muddied the waters on the speed of this revenue decline, with the traditional media spend returning to an equilibrium in recent times. Once again, while there is a more pronounced downward trend in revenue than in audience, nothing has fallen off a cliff and as the leading media intelligence company in the Asia-Pacific, we see no reason to think the gentle slope is going to become a cliff in the short term.

The near future in media - no cliffs, but some exciting scenery:
While there is nothing to show that any particular form of mainstream media is going to rapidly vanish over the next few years, there is a huge upside for new media forms, primarily related to technological advances but also cultural developments across the region. The major constraint to new media growth is bandwidth, both wired and wireless. Where wireless bandwidth has led the way, such as mainland China, mobile applications have grown most rapidly, while in areas with good wired infrastructure such as Hong Kong and Singapore, the growth is being seen in IPTV and online video.

This convergence of broadcast technology could see big changes in how people receive their video content and we should see greater product placement and other incorporation of advertising into the fabric of this content, as well as possible subscription models, teaser videos and greater nicheing of content streams. The print media audience, particularly in large developing markets with relatively open ownership structures such as India will hold up strongly for some time to come, while there will also be rapid uptake of mobile news and electronic reader applications.

There may be further divergence of ownership between content companies and platform providers, but also greater co-operation in many cases. We believe the revenue model for content companies in the future is likely to be as diverse as the methods of delivery, ranging from full subscription models through part paywalls to completely advertising supported news websites. There may even be some publications that stick solely to print, but the key word for the future, not just in delivery platform but also revenue model, is diversity, and for any organisation trying to stay across their coverage across all of these equally important platforms, the need for professional assistance will only become greater.

Blog image provided by aussiegall on Flickr under CC Attributions Licensing

The challenge of “amplified” books

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

A novel is a photo album without photos, an art gallery with no guiding visual reference. It paints pictures with every word, sentence, paragraph, and chapter, but to a great extent the reader retains the brush. For every sentence weaved by the author, a certain level of imagination is required. This is one of the novel’s magic tricks: every reader experiences something different. Book clubs would not exist otherwise.

Last month, the book took another leap forward that begs the question: is Guttenberg’s greatest gift to the world about to lose one of its greatest attractions? The e-book has not removed this power from the reader, thankfully, because the unique images we form aren’t dependent on the device from which we absorb them. However, when the device gives us these images ready-made, in video form, and with making-of documentaries and production diaries for support, the need for imagination-centred reading may have begun to lose its grip (do I need to be shown what a particular character looks like?). Worse still, the simple pleasure of immersion in a novel’s self-contained world may be compromised.

This is the reality presented by the next chapter in the convergence story, and it’s a chapter filled with rich, beautiful images. Eight hours of them in fact, in glorious, pounding, visceral detail, brought to life through the pairing of Apple and film producer Ridley Scott. Ken Follett’s paper and ink Borg cube The Pillars of the Earth, a 1000-page epic set in the Middle Ages, was re-released on July 20 as a first-of-its kind “Amplified Edition” e-book to coincide with the premiere of an eight-hour offshoot miniseries. First published in 1989, The Pillars of the Earth may just represent the next step in the evolution of reading, and it should come as no surprise that the fulcrum on which this milestone hinges is the iPad.

The amplified edition is an interactive e-book for Apple’s iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, the result of a partnership between pay TV station Starz and Penguin Group (one of the leaders in reading technology). Interspersed within the text of the amplified e-book are videos culled from the miniseries and a host of other features. The app, sold through the App Store rather than the iBookstore, is updated weekly with new downloadable scenes and text-embedded video clips, after each episode airs.

Follett’s novel is not the first e-book to incorporate video (and it’ll be the first of many; Hyperion’s The Secret Diary of Ashley Juergens also splices footage from a TV show, for instance). So-called Vooks are hybrid works that blend books and videos, but since the release of Apple’s tablet device, more and more authors have seen a way to liberate themselves beyond text-based storytelling. This allows them to offer readers (or viewers, or listeners) enhancements to their books and, in some cases, create entirely new multimedia offerings. The iPad is the ideal platform for Pillars’ re-release, capitalising as it does on the device’s strong media profile and must-have status. Already seen as a way for publishers to lock in users, the creation of a compelling audio- and video-enhanced e-book could also significantly widen the audience for books beyond those who read today. This could create a whole new digital book industry, much like has been seen in the digital video and music industries. No doubt as this happens, the iPad will continue to be a key platform.

Follett doesn’t seem too concerned about the impact this technology will have on reading, and Susan Sontag’s fears about the end of reading itself during a walk through Tokyo already appear unfounded. As our tolerance for technology’s growing presence in our lives increases, Follett may well be right, and consumers will view new reading technology as an enhancement rather than a distraction. Story will always win, Follett says, but it’s possible this latest development may make the battle harder fought. We should hope he’s right, because the immersive, imaginative transmission of story and character from author to reader will always be the book’s best magic trick.

Media Influencers Survey: Trends in Singapore and the Shift to Online

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:00:00 GMT

Media Monitors hosted an event last week to launch our Media Influencers Survey, and I thought I’d share some of the results.

We surveyed both public relations professionals and media professionals (journalists, bloggers and the like) in Singapore and Malaysia with the goal of providing the community with a better sense of their collective views on media in the region, and, well, each other.

The findings are posted on our website at http://www.mediamonitors.com.sg/insights/media-influencers-survey-findings, but I thought I’d focus in on what seems to be a hot issue from both perspectives: the shift to online.

Interestingly enough, we found that traditional media is considered more influential by PR professionals in both markets. In Singapore, 55% of communications professionals believe newspapers and TV to be most influential, while 57% find the same in Malaysia – strong majorities in both cases.

Contrastingly, media professionals themselves prefer to look to online news sources over traditional media for information – 80% deemed online sources their preferred platform for research.

However, it seems like few want to pay for news content online across the board: 57% of PR professionals would not pay for access online, and a whopping 70% of media professionals would not pay.

In tandem with these changes the economic downturn has had a significant impact on both media and PR professionals – while journalists face challenges of declining audiences and shrinking budgets, communications professionals face more pressure to justify their budget by demonstrating return on investment. Although optimism is returning in line with the improving economy, this has had an impact on both professions.

The role of public relations may be increasingly outsourced in some arenas – while 44% of corporate or government sector PR budgets saw a decrease, PR agencies were split, with 33% saying their revenue declined, and 31% recording an increase. However the importance of PR to organizations is supported by figures that show that 6 in 10 heads of communications have a direct line of reporting to the Chief Executive Officer of their organization.

Similarly, journalists are increasingly charged with multi-tasking by adapting content to print, broadcast, and online mediums – MediaCorp’s switch to a NewsHub model(http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/1013079/1/.html) is a timely example of this. In fact, journalists say one of the biggest challenges they say they face is coming up with unique and relevant online content that is interactive – something that communications professionals may benefit by taking into account when pitching. This is also the case for bloggers, who welcome contact from PR professionals but prefer if media releases are customized to fit their platforms.

One last little tidbit – despite widely held views that PR is a female-dominated industry, we found that women didn’t have such a high majority – only 60% - of the over 250 respondents. There’s a slightly higher skew for journalists, who were 64% male out of almost 70 respondents.

The survey is the first landscaping study of its kind conducted by Media Monitors in the region – do check out the details and feel free to join the conversation. If you’d like to tweet about it, there’s a hashtag #mmsg.

Content Curation: Making sense of a whole lot more media

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 04:00:00 GMT

There’s a debate raging over which direction the media industry is going to take – recently the buzz has focused on paywalls and subscriptions as publishers struggle to work out a successful business model for a media landscape that changes as quickly as it’s innovated and reengineered by its audience.

At a recent talk led by Vin Crosbie, an Adjunct Professor at Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, the discussion centered on the speed at which these changes have occurred over the past several years.

In his discussion, titled “The Greatest Change in the History of Media,” Crosbie traced the history of great changes in the media industry over the past 20-30 years, including the development of cable TV and the growth of the topical magazine industry due to cheaper printing costs (the magic words: offset lithography). Key turning points were the introduction of public access to the Internet in 1992 and widespread acceptance of broadband in the early 2000s. According to Crosbie, that more than one-fifth of humanity has now gained instant access to information over the internet in the last 18 years.

The key takeaway was that the great change we’re seeing in media these days is not in the Internet, or in mobile, or in any one platform: it’s in the availability, in fact the surplus, of information which once was scarce.

This has had drastic effects on the newspaper industry around the world which relied on charging a premium for content – we’ve seen this recently with the closures of major newspapers in markets like the US, UK, and Germany (notably this has not proven the case in Singapore, where traditional media continue to thrive). Simultaneously the growth of sources online - at last check there were approximately 238 million active websites - has resulted in a robust and thriving internet economy.

However, with the increase in accessibility of information comes one major problem: relevance. Where journalists once did the job for us by picking and choosing “all the news that’s fit to print,” we now rely increasingly on search engines and algorithms to seek out information that’s useful to us. As Crosbie termed it, we act as hunters and gatherers of the web.

There’s an important space opening up for someone – or something – to come in and help us to understand and access relevant information. Google news and search tries to do this for us by taking stock of our previous searches and allowing us to customize the look and feel of a site to predict what’s up next. A few publishers are also looking into a customized print newspaper option, where users can select sections they’d be interested in reading.

But what about news we don’t know to ask for yet? Content curators may have a key role to play in the next media wave. A couple steps beyond your local media librarian, curators serve the public by predicting and aiding them in identifying what information they’ll want to consume – and what they can do without. Mashable recently made an interesting post overviewing the arguments for and against editorial curation (access it here), but I’d argue that we’ve reached a point in this day and age where making sense of the media has never been more important.

Pouring oil on troubled waters… and oil spills

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:30:00 GMT

The media has been hot on BP’s heels since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on 20 April 2010, causing a massive oil spill. In a separate incident, more than 18,000 barrels of crude oil leaked into the Singapore Strait after a tanker owned by AET Tanker Holdings, a unit of Malaysia-based MISC Bhd, collided with a bulk carrier owned by Treasure Marine Ltd near the Singaporean port on 25 May 2010.

In this posting, we look at five online articles - four by BBC News and one by Bloomberg – to find out how public relations teams tackled the two oil spills and how the two online media responded.

We analysed the BBC News’ coverage of CEO Tony Hayward’s statement of apology at the US Congress hearing and of BP’s public relations following the oil spill. We then compared this with the Singaporean oil spill. How did the BBC News cover the Singapore oil spill a month later? Did Bloomberg cover the story in the same way?

Here’s how we calculated the favourability rating of the BP oil spill articles by the BBC News. Areas in blue represent favourable tone and in red, unfavourable tone. Beginning at 50.0 rating (neutral tone), we considered the parameters in the left-most column below to derive the favourability ratings of:

Parameters	BBC News, 17 June 2010: BP CEO's apology	BBC News, 21 June 2010: BP's public relations
Messages + Spokespeople/ Commentators	+ 5 favourable messages	+ 1 favourable message
	- 2 unfavourable messages	- 6 unfavourable messages
	+ 1 favourable spokesperson	- 2 unfavourable commentators
	– 1 unfavourable commentator	- 2 unfavourable spokespeople
	= 3 @ 5 points each = +15 points	= -9 @ 5 points = -45 points (cap at ±20 points for messages and commentators) = -20 points
Tone	“personally devastated”, tone of regret (+5)	Generous sarcasm eg “wayward Hayward” and “chronic foot-in-mouth outbreak” (-10 capped)
Headline/sub-headings	BP chief Hayward: ‘I’m deeply sorry oil spill happened’ (+5)	‘BP’s Gift of the Gaffe’, ‘Stupid’ and ‘Filed away and forgotten’ (-5)
Images	Video:phlegmatic facial expression made apology appear unconvincing (-5)	3 unfavourable images: 2 photographs such as the one below, and the framed unfavourable quotes (-10 capped)
Length		More than ½ page (-5)
Favourability Rating	50.0 (neutral) + 20 points = 70.0 rating	50.0 (neutral) - 50 points = 0.0 rating

This screengrab from the BBC represents an unfavourable image of CEO Tony Hayward

Had it not been for the negative introduction, the first article would have been even more favourable. But perhaps the warning bells should have begun ringing for BP at that point for what was to come four days later - a brutally unfavourable article on BP’s public relations, by Denise Winterman.

Now compare the BBC News’ coverage of the Singapore oil spill in May 2010. For starters, we found only two articles on the story – one on 25 May 2010 announcing the oil spill from the tanker collision and another on 27 May 2010 when Singapore closed its east coast beaches. This compared poorly to an entire webpage dedicated to the BP oil spill, that had an array of media reports, written and audiovisual - not surprisingly, given the scale of the disaster.

The BBC article on 27 May suggested that the authorities were downplaying the gravity of the situation but on the whole, the article was generally favourable towards the Singapore authorities. The Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) was quoted stating that the main spill was “largely contained out at sea” while the National Environment Agency (NEA) advisory declared that the “impact [was] currently minimal, but [would] require some clean-up over the next few days.” The article also stated that there was no reported effect on shipping traffic in the Singapore Strait. A low profile and the general message that the situation was under control; so far so good for Singapore. But where was MISC or AET in the BBC News’ coverage?

Bloomberg’s coverage of the oil spill (26 May 2010) had more details to offer such as information on MISC’s share performance as a result of the oil spill AND a statement by AET.

Was it because there was a tight hold on information released on the Singapore oil spill as the BBC News’ 27 May article suggested or was it just that the Malaysian shipping companies had not reached out to the BBC News as they had done with Bloomberg? The former scenario was possible. For one thing,there was no explanation on the cause of the collision. Both articles focused instead on what was being done to resolve the issue, such as closure of the beaches and recreational areas affected, as well as the deployment of containment booms.

Crisis management 101 – Focus on solutions. When in doubt, seek independent, expert advice or comments. For example, in the Bloomberg article, a favourable commentator furthering the discourse of the oil spill being contained and managed was John Vautrain, senior vice-president at U.S. energy consultants Purvin & Gertz Inc. in Singapore. He argued that it was “not like BP’s problem in the Gulf of Mexico. This is not a difficult spill situation… I shouldn’t think it’ll take too long to clean this up.” Also, a typical PR trick - detach or distance the issue from a larger, related issue, in this situation, the BP oil spill.

A harsh lesson learnt from the BP oil spill but a lesson learnt well – to address the public and reveal all actions being taken to resolve the issue immediately. However, one similarity prevailed between the two oil spills and that was the attempt to diminish the magnitude of the oil spill. If that is what the crisis management manual says for Oil & Gas communicators, then where did BP CEO Tony Hayward go wrong with his understatement when he said it was a “very big ocean”? Could it be rather, a question of audience reaction - that America is a paranoid nation and thus, an “over-reaction” as mentioned by Professor Brammer was necessary (BBC News, 21 June 2010)?

Such are some considerations that media monitoring and analysis can help direct. The BBC News, for example, would be a media outlet that BP could target to develop better media relations with – more specifically, with Denise Winterman, the byline of the unfavourable article. Or following the Singapore oil spill, AET or MISC Berhad would now recognise Bloomberg as a newswire that would take an interest in their activities and capitalise on bettering their relations with that communication channel. Of course, they may also want to target the BBC News in future.

Continuing the ASR debate

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 06:30:00 GMT

Recently Media Monitors launched a product enhancement to the quantitative metrics we provide to clients. We invest significantly in audited audience data for press and broadcast media and know that clients value this data. We also needed to provide that same quality of data for internet content. Hence we partnered with comScore to incorporate internet audience data into our products.

We also provide advertising space rates (ASR) to those clients that require this metric. This is a calculation that indicates the cost an organisation would incur to purchase an advertisement in a specific media outlet for a particular position, expressed as currency. We have provided ASR metrics for press and broadcast for many years. What was new was providing ASR calculations metrics for internet content.

Following the launch there has been some robust debate on various sites, particularly Mumbrella, on the validity or otherwise of our ASR metrics.

I think it is important to absolutely reiterate Media Monitors’ position. We do not, nor have we ever endorsed advertising value equivalents as a measure of the value of public relations.

How we position ASRs are as a basic quantitative output metric, which some clients can use to benchmark coverage, as they can also do with volumes of coverage, press circulations or broadcast and internet audience data. There is strong client demand for this data.

The distinction may seem like semantics, but we at Media Monitors take utmost pains to ensure that we do not portray ASRs as representing public relations value, impact, influence, engagement or particularly return on investment. ASRs are just a calculation of media space and cost.

I genuinely welcome this debate, because I and Media Monitors would love to see media measurement progress far beyond AVE/ASR. We have over 60 staff providing high level qualitative analysis services to clients across the Asia-Pacific region and have won a number of AMEC Communication Effectiveness Awards for the quality of our media analysis. We take pride in and enjoy offering insightful analysis of media coverage, to assist clients with the evaluation and formation of strategy.

We constantly strive to inform communication professionals on the value of in depth qualitative analysis and have internally commissioned a number of case studies to showcase this, plus holding client events to explain the value of detailed media analysis.

Some clients however do not require, or see the value in business outcome related research, and prefer output based data and metrics such as ASRs. The reality is they expect us to provide those metrics.

Recently I was in Barcelona for the Second European Summit on Measurement, organised by the international Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC). Media Monitors is a member of AMEC, and I’m proud to say that I’m also a Board Member. AMEC’s mission is to improve the standards, quality and position of media measurement as an industry.

A key part of the Summit was determining the “Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles” to achieve a global standard for the measurement of communication. This is hugely positive as it established the key elements and direction for the media measurement industry.

Barcelona Principle 3 was “AVEs do not measure the value of Public Relations and do not inform future activity”. The addendum to this was that AVEs (or ASRs) measure the cost of media space, and no more.

As a delegate to the Summit I absolutely agree with that principle, and I do not believe that Media Monitors undermines that by providing ASRs. We do not claim they are measuring value, only cost.

What would be great is if we can all, and I’m committed to this, embrace the other principles, namely:

Goal setting and measurement are fundamental aspects of any PR programmes.
Media measurement requires quantity and quality – cuttings in themselves are not enough.
Social media can and should be measured.
Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results.
Business results can and should be measured where possible.
Transparency and Replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

There is clearly a range of opinion on this issue and as a member of the communications community, we would like to help facilitate further discussion. We are hosting a panel discussion on, July 22nd, with more information and rsvp available here.

July 13: Since posting, AMEC has release their own statement regarding this issue.

The case for digital media research

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:30:00 GMT

If you picked up a copy of The Australian on Monday (or perused the website), and happened to flick through to the media section, you might have come across an article headlined Marketers in the dark on what digital delivers, which opened with the following paragraph:

“Researchers are failing to keep up with the explosive growth in digital communications, forcing some of the world’s biggest advertisers to rely on guesswork when adopting new marketing strategies, the new regional head of ad agency McCann-Erickson has warned.” – The Australian, 5 July 2010. (You can find The Australian’s condensed, internet friendly version here).

Michael McLaren, head of Asia-Pacific at agency McCann-Erickson, said “you are asking [companies] to carve 20, 30, 40 percent of that budget to put in areas that they have got no history and no evidence that it is going to drive return on investment”. McLaren is exactly right – there are very few tools, supported by evidence, to help companies make decisions on where to advertise and how much to spend online.

There are even fewer tools to gauge the effectiveness of that spend.

However, even as The Australian was going to print – and to pixels – one media intelligence organisation was collecting and quantifying digital media and providing clients the return on investment data raised by McLaren.

As discussed by Deb Wiseman in two previous blog posts (Online Media Measurement Hysteria and Measurement Hysteria Pt II: Benchmarking Performance) Media Monitors enhancement to its Advertising Space Rate (ASR) methodology gives tangible audience and value figures for blogs and online news. The online ASR component is brand new, it’s backed by comScore internet audience data and provides daily page impressions and daily story audience.

Researchers move at the pace of demand, and while McLaren is correct that the results of some forms of engagement remain mostly “guesswork”, other forms are becoming increasingly quantified and quantifiable. Editorial content remains one of the best ways for companies or organisations to convey messages about their products, services or interests – it leverages an existing brand image, while reaching a large audience that trust the content (according to Mumbrella’s number crunching, for example, the Sydney Morning Herald website had almost 7 million Australian unique browsers in March).

It worthwhile for companies to have representation in that editorial content – whether by issuing press releases or making spokespeople available for comment on topical issues. It’s a very valuable part of media relations for any company or organisation.

It’s equally worthwhile, in a way that McLaren suggests, to quantify that engagement.

Measurement Hysteria Pt II: Benchmarking Performance

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In a previous post, Online Media Measurement Hysteria, I spoke about the need and importance of accurately tracking and reporting consistent measurement. All components of the media mix add to the impact of communications efforts and no single channel should be assessed in isolation.

Today, there is another victory in effectively measuring media mentions across all channels. On 1st July, Media Monitors is enhancing the audience and ASR (Advertising Space Rates) methodology that calculates broadcast ASR figures and introducing Internet coverage. This means we can give a consistent audience and currency figures against all media coverage- Press, Broadcast and Online.

Changes to these ASRs include:

Incorporated cost per thousand and timeslot audiences incorporated in broadcast monitoring;
Validated internet audiences from comScore so that you can benchmark audiences across medium types;
Daily Page Impressions and Daily Story Audiences will appear on results and as an aggregate

It’s a huge step forward in delivering tangible and consistent tracking of mentions in the market place. And again worth mentioning, it’s important to be realistic about analytics. We can no longer look at diluted content streams in entirety and consider them valid. We need to be smart about how we approach our internet tracking.
There’s value in minimising our workload to have exactly what we need, when we need it.
There’s value is knowing what your local audiences are exposed to.
There’s value in the ability to read content once, without re-reading syndicated duplicates.
There’s value in integrating online reporting and analytics with broadcast and print.
And there’s value in the ability to validate legitimate sources.
Simply put - content in context. The cherry on the cake.

If you would like to understand more about the methodology behind this improvement, view this preview video to find out about the Google Effect and more detail about the development process.

Click here to view the complete video.

Tension Within the Media Evaluation Industry

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:00:00 GMT

In the second workshop on the opening morning of the 2nd European Summit on Measurement (ie: the AMEC Conference), panelist Mark Westaby started his presentation with 'I will be the most hated person at this conference'. His discussion was about automated analysis a label that I believe is slightly misleading. I think a better label would be automated data extraction with human analysis of the aggregated data to pick out the key insights. Mark Westaby, if my interpretation is incorrect, please let me know so that I can correct my interpretation.

Over the course of the next two days, automated data extraction accuracy levels were questioned by a series of speakers in different contexts. The speakers questioning accuracy felt that close enough is not good enough and that we must have and maintain standards.

On the second day of the conference, the delegates voted on seven Key Principles. The most contentious principle was you guessed it – about AVE. The principle was passed with a small majority. My reading of the delegate mood was that the overwhelming reason that delegates were against the Principle was the Industry was legitimising AVE through one of the three points in the principle.

I believe the reaction to automated data aggregation and the result of the AVE vote highlights tension in the industry between those who lean more towards pure research and those who are more commercially orientated.

Where you fit into this continuum is probably a little bit immaterial because I think those in the Industry who will ultimately decide for commercial organisations like us at Media Monitors is the client. We of course will have a choice about whether we feel morally we can service a clients request. If our conscious is clear, it is profitable and there is strong client demand, then I would be highly surprised if we would not service client requests.

Marketing Magazine's Agency of the Year Awards

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Media Monitors Singapore was proud to sponsor Marketing Magazine’s Agency of the Year Awards on Wednesday at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore. Just one night before the leaders of the world arrived for this weekend’s Shangri-La dialogue on regional security, we hobnobbed with the leaders of Singapore’s top PR, creative, and media agencies for a night of celebration.

Interestingly enough, the same three PR agencies – Hill & Knowlton, Ogilvy, and Edelman, took the top slots for both awards given for public relations that night (and Fulford PR was voted Local Hero for the third year in a row).

What does it take to win? Ogilvy, which won the gold award for overall PR agency, was lauded for their creativity in tough economic times. One of their interesting approaches to PR was their Intel Blogathon last year, where 10 local bloggers stood at the window display of Tangs and blogged ‘round the clock to launch Intel’s new Core 2 Solo chip. The site saw over 40,000 page views in 5 days, and won a Certificate of Excellence for Technology Campaign of the Year at the Asia Pacific PR Awards 2009.

Though there wasn’t much variance in the agencies on top, they did note some changes in the marketplace over the past year.

According to Managing Director Andrew Thomas, they’ve seen growth particularly in the number and size of government contracts over the past two years. Bob Grove of Edelman, the gold winner for media relations, said the agency also grew a significant 17% last year, proving that PR firms can thrive despite hard times.

The line-up:

Public Relations Agency of the Year – Overall PR Strategy
Bronze – Hill & Knowlton
Silver – Edelman Public Relations
Gold – Ogilvy Public Relations

Local Hero – Fulford Public Relations

Public Relations Agency of the Year – Media Relations Strategy
Bronze – Hill & Knowlton
Silver – Ogilvy Public Relations
Gold – Edelman Public Relations

Local Hero – Fulford Public Relations

Gov 2.0 requires more listening, not more information

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Government 2.0, also referred to as e-democracy, has received a major boost in Australia with the Federal Government adopting 12 of 13 recommendations of the Government 2.0 Taskforce released in December 2009 and all 28 recommendations of the recent review of the Australian Public Service report proposing a “blueprint for the reform of Australian government administration'.

The central thrust of these policy and regulatory reforms is a “commitment to open government” and use of Web 2.0 interactive communication to increase citizen engagement across the APS”.

These reforms follow a number of online public consultation trials conducted by federal departments in late 2008 and early 2009 and guidelines developed by the Australian Government Information Management Office.

While these are welcome initiatives in many respects, a number of warning signs are flashing in relation to Government 2.0 and use of Web 2.0 generally.

Independent research into the 2008-2009 federal government online public consultation trials that I led and which is reported in the June issue of The Australian Journal of Political Science and also in my book, The 21^st Century Media (R)evolution, found that many government departments and agencies set up sites for citizen engagement but were not prepared to receive and process public comments. They did not allocate additional resources for reading public comments; sites were heavily moderated; public servants could not respond in a timely manner because of regulations; and none had specialist tools such as text analysis software to process large volumes of public comment.

Furthermore, some government agencies – as well as many companies and organisations – do not have a culture that is conducive to listening. To the contrary, one of the major risks in moving to ‘open government’ or ‘government 2.0’ and organisational use of social media generally is that it is interpreted by management as an opportunity or requirement to distribute more information.

A significant study of communication from 49 US government offices published this month by two scholars from the University of Maryland has found that most citizens do not want more information.

People want government to listen more, not talk more. They want delivery on the promise of 2.0 which denotes two-way interaction.

Simply providing more information to the public is likely to create information overload and be counter-productive to citizen engagement and public communication generally.

Listening to the public (or publics) can be assisted in a number of ways including:

Comprehensive media monitoring – not only of traditional media and official sites, but also of social media such as blogs, microblogs such as Twitter, video sharing sites such as YouTube, and social networks. Social media are major sites of public comment and expression which no government or company can afford to ignore;
When large volumes of public comment occur – such as thousands or even tens of thousands of blog posts, Tweets, social network comments, text messages, or e-mails – listening requires specialist resources and specialist tools such as content analysis or text analysis to identify key themes, popular topics, and dominant views. Individual responses to citizens may not be possible, but acknowledgement of common concerns and interests is an essential part of listening and good policy making;
Metadata needs to be collected to identify influencers and credible sources of comment. While audited circulation statistics and reputation indicators such as mastheads are not available for social media, metadata on the number of unique visitors, duration of visits, return visits, links to sites, user ratings (e.g. stars), reviews, recommendations, and posted comments provide indicators of the most credible and relevant sites.

The same warnings and advice apply to businesses. Improving public communication does not necessarily mean talking more; it often means listening more. Web 2.0 social media, in particular are about two-way engagement and interaction.

Jim Macnamara addressed a seminar at the National Press Club in Canberra on 2 June sponsored by Media Monitors in which he reported these and other findings of his research.

The Value of Social Media to Corporations

Thu, 20 May 2010 03:45:00 GMT

Precise recently held a panel on social media and its applications for corporations in London, inviting C-level execs and communications heads to share their views and best practices.

I've shared their review of the discussion below but thought I'd highlight a few insights:

"Although there was consensus that social media provided an opportunity to obtain views from stakeholder groups (customers, shareholders etc) there were clear differences in the value attributed to views that failed to break through into the mainstream media, and a note of caution to beware of PR consultants bearing shiny, new social media services."

This serves to emphasize a trend I think we’ve seen here at Media Monitors Singapore – that the usefulness and opportunities provided by social media apply unevenly across businesses. It can be a useful outlet for communications and certainly should not be ignored – but relevance is determined by the target audience, and increases where there’s crossover into traditional media forms.

This is emphasized by a later point:

"There were positive views from the panel and the floor on the value of social media, particularly Twitter, as a channel to communicate with customers, for instance during crises such as the recent ash cloud, or in order to drive sales. However there was clear agreement that social media represents a potential additional channel and not a wholesale replacement for traditional customer communication channels."

Integration across media seems to be the key, using social media to drive engagement directly with customers, but mass media remains an important platform for branding, to create those customers in the first place.

They've also posted some Tips from the Masters on their website – worth having a look.

From Precise:

Social media for corporates: essential channel or unnecessary distraction?

Our panel of industry experts - moderated by Helen Dunne of CorpComms magazine - led a lively debate with a packed room of senior communicators on the value and role of social media in PR and strategic activity.

The panel comprised Paul Charles - chief operating officer at Lewis PR, Peter Morgan - director of communications at Rolls Royce, Neville Hobson - head of social media Europe at WCG and Georgina Wald - corporate communications manager at Domino's Pizza UK and Ireland.
There were positive views from the panel and the floor on the value of social media, particularly Twitter, as a channel to communicate with customers, for instance during crises such as the recent ash cloud, or in order to drive sales. However there was clear agreement that social media represents a potential additional channel and not a wholesale replacement for traditional customer communication channels.

Although there was consensus that social media provided an opportunity to obtain views from stakeholder groups (customers, shareholders etc) there were clear differences in the value attributed to views that failed to break through into the mainstream media, and a note of caution to beware of PR consultants bearing shiny, new social media services. The panel noted the return to the fore of traditional media during the UK election in contrast to the 2008 US election.
The argument was made that social media requires communicators to shift their thinking from the way they view mainstream media - it's about forming new connections with different audiences and identifying that there are a handful of people online who have the power to influence what others may say about brands.

The panel agreed that effective measurement of communications activity just like in any other area of PR depended on setting clear and measurable objectives for social media activity.
The overall conclusion from the exchange was that social media represents a new channel of communication for PR people and that the importance of the channel to an organisation depends on the audience they are trying to reach both in terms of their presence in social media and their willingness/motivation to discuss relevant topics.

Tips from the experts can be downloaded from Precise News at: http://www.precise.co.uk/precise-news.aspx and we'll circulate a full write-up on the event in due course.

The 11th Biennial PRISM Awards

Thu, 20 May 2010 02:00:00 GMT

The Institute of Public Relations of Singapore celebrated its 11th biennial PRISM Awards at the Marina Bay Sands last Friday, only the second major event to be held at the new casino (and thankfully, the lights stayed on this time).

Agencies led the night, with Weber Shandwick taking home a whopping 4 awards, followed closely by Ogilvy with three. However, in-house PR was well represented by teams from Republic Polytechnic, the Singapore Civil Defence Force, and ITE with Director and CEO Bruce Poh Geok Huat nominated as this year’s Outstanding PR Champion.

Hosted by Fly Entertainment’s Irene Ang and IPRS’ own Michael Rose, the awards (which we learned stand for PR In the Service of Mankind) recognized the contributions of individuals and organizations to the practice of public relations.

It was a good chance to see the communications industry in Singapore come together – across industry sectors from in-house representatives, to agencies (and even media intelligence providers) – to celebrate the growth of the PR industry in Singapore.

One key takeaway: current president Ng Wei Joo’s cautioning note not to forget the recent history of the global economic downturn, saying that “as we welcome the silver lining that now emerges, we should take heed of the lessons that the recent upheaval has taught us. Let us strive for even higher professional standards. Let us not lose sight of our mission.”To recap a few of the night’s winners:

Outstanding Overall Corporate Reputation Programme – Singapore

Merit

Open Doors: The Truth Behind McDonald’s Food

(Golin Harris)

Royal Caribbean Cruises – Full Steam Ahead

(Weber Shandwick)

Investor relations

Merit

Engineering the Success of an IPO During Turbulent Times

(Weber Shandwick)

Public Service Campaigns

Excellence

READ!Singapore 2009

(National Library Board & Edelman)

Merit

Health Promotion Board – “Dementia: Understand, Identify, Reduce Risk”

(Ogilvy Health)

Merit

National Family Celebrations 2008

(Asia PR Werkz)

Outstanding Campaigns by Non-Government Organizations

Excellence

Do it Your Way: Active Ageing Heroes

(Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide)

Excellence

The Boys’ Brigade Sharity Gift Box 2007 and 2008

(Asia PR Werkz)

Corporate Social Responsibility

Excellence

STAR HomeTouch

(NBS Consulting Pte Ltd)

Merit

HP Power to Change Campaign

(Waggener Edstrom Worldwide)

Crisis and Issues Management

Merit

SCDF’s Information and Media Management

(Singapore Civil Defence Force)

Merit

Republic Polytechnic’s A(H1N1) Crisis Communication

(Republic Polytechnic)

Events/Conferences

Excellence

Singapore Arts Festival 2009

(Burson-Marsteller (S.E.A) Pte Ltd)

Merit

F1 Rocks Singapore with LG

(Communications DNA Pte Ltd)

Integrated Marketing Communications

Merit

Halloween at Night Safari

(Citigate Dewe Rogerson, i.MAGE)

Digital Media

Merit

Oracle Corporation Asia-Pacific

(Oracle Corporation Asia-Pacific)

Outstanding PR Professional

Andrew Thomas

(Managing Director, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide)

Oustanding Young PR Professional

Shashin Surti

(Consultant, Weber Shandwick)

Lifetime PR Achievement Award

Krishnasamy Bhavani

(Director, Public Communications Division, Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts)

Outstanding PR Mentor

Christina Cheang

(Regional Managing Director, South East Asia, GolinHarris)

Outstanding PR Champion

Bruce Poh Geok Huat

(Director and Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Technical Education)

Special Awards

PR Consultancy of the Year – Singapore

Fulford Public Relations

Overall Outstanding PR Consultancy

Weber Shandwick

Media Monitoring: Information is a raw material of productivity

Thu, 13 May 2010 02:00:00 GMT

Last month I had a truly fascinating chat with one of my ex-classmates at University of South Australia, about what exactly data and information means. That discussion inspired me to research more about what data means for organizations and how it has evolved over the years. First, let’s look at what exactly data and information means.

The classic definition found through Google and Bing was:
“Data is something which can exist in any form, usable or not and information is data that has been given meaning by way of relational connection.”

Information is everywhere around us, for example, an F&N Drink can displays its brand name, ingredients used, expiry date, volume and so on. When we have to identify a person we need to see their identification card which shows their name, date of birth, address, etc.

Even businesses today are organized in global networks of management and information, fundamentally deciding their productivity and competitiveness. Working processes, therefore, are being increasingly individualized, fragmented and in the end re-integrated through numerous rational tasks at different locations.

Manuel Castells, who is a sociologist associated with research in the information society and communications, introduced five concepts of ‘the information era’ or ‘the networked society’. One of which is that 'Light-weight data or information are the new raw material for productivity'.

As it is becoming an information saturated world, information is now mostly known as light-weight data because it is low in mass and high in value. This is because internet technology changes any information such as text, sound and images into digital form like single 0-1 binary code. As a result people can quickly send information across the world via the Internet.

Digital forms of information lead to increased productivity in all industries that rely on communication technologies. It demonstrates positive factors of the digitalization such as the ability to reduce the cost of processing information and the ability to customise consumers’ demands.

Castells also introduced the change of mode of development from an industrial mode to an informational mode which is a part of the information revolution. In this informational revolution of development, information processing and technology become the sources of productivity. Castells mentions that the informational mode of development is not only about managing information but also about generating knowledge for all kind of activity.

After brainstorming with my mate for quite a while, we concluded that the media monitoring industry is one which uses information as their new raw material for productivity. That is the reason why the use of information technology becomes a critical issue for these organizations.

Media monitoring services, by definition, provides clients with documentation, analysis, or copies of media content of their interests. The media monitoring industry has gone through drastic changes over the years. From being costly, labor intensive and presenting last week's news, the media monitoring industry is now highly intensive and technology driven.

Last week’s news is history: professionals demand that relevant news be delivered as close as possible to real-time. As the media scramble to seek news and source information to then present that information to the public, media monitoring continuously gathers this information and tailors it according to any clients’ needs. From this we understand, that in order to increase productivity for media monitoring and coverage, management of information needs to be taken as a top priority.

Information from print, broadcast and online media is used as raw material by storing it in huge databases and formatted for client use with high tech IT software and applications. Clients can then receive or access the relevant information via flexible interfaces at anytime from anywhere. In short, information is bought, filtered and again sold to the clients, which exactly relates to Castells’ notion that information not only acts as input but also as an output.

In my opinion, information has transformed various facets of our life, such as the fields of business, education and communication, to mention a few. The impacts of information on our society are profound. Information is seen as the new raw material for productivity because in order to maximise profits, save time, increase efficiency and lower costs, it is now compulsory for managing information properly.

Do you think information is used as a raw material in most industries now? Would love to hear your feedback.

What does social media mean to you?

Tue, 11 May 2010 05:00:00 GMT

From a personal perspective, it's a way to communicate with friends, relatives, and seemingly people you didn't realise you knew in some cases – whoever it may be, social media is a fantastic medium for building links, and strengthening communications with people.

The term 'social media' is an interesting one. Wikipedia would define the word social as “... the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.”

It's an interesting point regarding “whether they are aware of it or not”. Are we ever totally aware of who and what we are socially part of? Am I socially part of the Carlton Football club, purely because I barrack for the team? Am I a part of the HouseMD fanclub because I have memorised almost every single line of every single episode?

We all would know what the word media means so I won't delve into the details of that one too far – or should I? Many people underestimate the breadth and power of the simple term media. Many would simply say to the question “what does the word 'Media' mean?” with a brazen “It's tv radio and print of course!”. However on a simple scale media has become so much more than in was back in 550 BC when (supposedly) Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great devised the method of the first postal system.

In the small time we have been around on this planet we have gone from that one simple type of media to a plethora of methods, deliveries and contexts of media that it is hard to compare in some respects to other ground breaking features of our civilisation. To name a small few, we have the obvious advertising media, electronic media, published media... and that's just part of it.

Now that social media is currently a force to be reckoned with – how does a company keep track of their brand name, their products, and the public's perception of them in print, broadcast and online media along with the new powerhouse of social media? It's an issue that has only just started to rear it's head. As a business you want to know when you're being mentioned on Twitter. You want to know when someone is talking about your customer service on Friendfeed or Facebook. The power of these social media tools can be a great asset for assessing how your business shapes up in it's 'local' landscape.

Which brings me back to the first question, with a slight addendum;

Social media. What does it mean to you, or your business?

Let data drive you

Wed, 05 May 2010 08:00:00 GMT

A New York Times magazine article this weekend titled “The Data-driven life” examined the lives of a few – slightly nerdy – individuals who govern their lives literally through the collection of data.

In one example that I found pretty useful, a software designer designed from England tested the impact of coffee on his concentration by creating a chart that tracked the number of minutes each day he could spend in focused concentration, altering the variable of how many milliliters of coffee he drank. In time, the data showed that coffee, surprisingly or not, decreased his levels of concentration.

In another, a teacher in California tested the impact of different sleeping supplements on her mood and concentration by scoring them daily – ultimately determining that tryptophan, a sleeping supplement, increased her ability to focus.

From calculating the number of minutes spent doing a roommates’ dishes to checking in at every place you go to through Foursquare, we as individuals have the capability to use data effectively to make intellectual choices about what would otherwise be subjective matters.

Reading it, I thought – what’s the implication for PR? Sure, it’s easy to think in data terms when you’re an engineer – it’s your job to. And sure, in many cases communications is an intuitive process. But forming data-driven PR plans allows us to measure effectiveness and make variable adjustments in similar ways. By letting the data take the wheel, it’s possible to develop more targeted, more efficient media strategies in an environment where audiences are increasingly niche.

This is not to neglect the emotional impact of good communications work, which can be difficult to measure. But by introducing data into the mix wherever possible, it is possible to glean insight into what’s effective and what’s not – along with where and how it’s effective.

Technology is allowing us to do that in an increasingly sophisticated way - whether that’s figuring out the number of retweets an article got and from whom, to developing detailed content analysis on messaging that stretches across multiple media platforms.

As the media landscape continues to evolve both on and offline, I predict data will increasingly become part and parcel of the way we look at communications planning.

How "Small" Companies Strategically Use Media Monitoring

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Tracking media is tailored to every company that uses it. From my personal experience every single one of my clients uses media monitoring differently. There is no "one size fits all" product at Media Monitors, just as there is no "one size fits all" PR campaign, marketing tool, or crisis management strategy!

The most important approach for any client is to use media monitoring in the way that works best for them. We’re all familiar with tracking and monitoring mentions, but it’s the companies who go beyond the standard that get more out of their monitoring. Some of these approaches include collecting a pool of insights to develop growth strategies or even gathering contacts to build loyalists. One of the most underused tactics is utilising Media Monitors to increase media intelligence, and consequently increase presence in the media. When we talk about increasing presence in the media we are not necessarily talking about volume, but looking at how media coverage can have the most impact. An initiative that works for companies both big and small.

For every major Government department or Top 100 company using media monitoring for crisis management and to track the penetration of their key messages, there is a small to medium company using media monitoring for their own specific circumstances.

One of our clients is a small boutique cheese maker. They don't have a marketing manager or a communications team, but they recognise the value of media monitoring to increase their market share in their niche industry. Every time a restaurant review comes in mentioning a dish that used their cheese, the head cheese maker sends the restaurant chef a sample of other cheeses that they might like to consider using in future dishes. This then enables her to get ahead of her competitors by tracking one of her target audiences - restaurants who are already using her cheese in a successful way.

Another client is a small to medium winery in South Australia who monitor the mentions of their wine brand. The press, broadcast and internet clips that they receive have many other uses outside of covering all their mentions, they serve as cellar-door staff training tools. All helping to:

Identify what people are actually saying about the wines
Alert distributors to new news about the wines
Identify trends in wine journalism
And of course identify target markets that they might be hitting - or missing!

Speaking to the marketing manager, it was good to see that they recognized the value beyond simple monitoring, to grow their business. I managed to gather a few key insights:

"In my role Media Monitors is an essential tool to follow what and who is talking about the winery. Obviously it becomes impossible to follow all the reviews, comments and mentions that the wines and the winery receive throughout our national media on a daily basis.

"The audience [for the media monitoring] is wide and varied; internal staff, national and international distributors, retailers, restaurateurs, mail order outlets etc. Most of these organisations use the info to add credibility to the brand and hence sell more wine. We also use some of the third party endorsements acquired via Media Monitors for marketing collateral and attracting potential new distributors.

"It's a really good indicator for us as to which wines are attracting the attention of journalists throughout the country. It also keeps us informed re competitors media exposure."

These two great examples show that you don't need to be a top 100 company or a multi-national business with a marketing and communications team to find media monitoring and media analysis valuable. All you need to understand is that Media Monitors can tailor a solution for each client - big or small. The way YOU use media monitoring is the right way - and we can of course help you with suggestions on how to take it further!

A Media Measurement inflection point?

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A product launch in Seattle last week may be seen in the future as a strategic inflection point for the media analysis and measurement industry.

As Intel CEO Andy Grove explains: “A strategic inflection point is the time in the life of a business (or industry) when its fundamentals are about to change”.

The event I refer to is the release of SAS’ Social Media Analytics platform (SASSMA).

The release of a social media measurement platform is hardly news; there are literally hundreds of them. What is so different about this event was the extremely positive reaction to the quality of its technology, especially from previous ardent sceptics. The consequence of this positive reaction is likely to be far reaching and ensure the increasing acceptance of effective technology solutions in the media measurement industry.

The media analysis and measurement industry has traditionally been predicated on utilising skilled researchers in content analysis methodology to decode and categorise media coverage on behalf of clients to identify the communication of key messages, issues or trends. It has always been a shibboleth of the industry that only people, not computers, could identify the more qualitative elements of media coverage, such as tone, messages, concepts and context. Only people, not computers could understand sarcasm or irony, or the difference between a company being described as “red hot” as opposed to “in the red”.

The rise of computer assisted natural language processing technologies over the last 10 years has narrowed the quality gap between computers and people and there are many companies now providing automated “sentiment analysis”, with varying degrees of accuracy and validity. However until last week it was generally held that, whilst improved, computers still lagged substantially behind people in their ability to extract those valuable qualitative elements.

A long time critic of computer assisted media measurement has been Katie Paine. Paine can be a polarizing figure in the measurement community, but there is no doubt that she is hugely influential and well respected, so her opinion matters. Paine was involved in the development of SAS’ solution, but even so, for her to become such a strong advocate for a computer assisted analysis solution, in essence reversing her position, means a likely burgeoning acceptance of computing solutions for media measurement.

Katie Paine’s enthusiasm for SASSMA has been matched by many other influential members of the broader PR and measurement community, such as CIPR president Jay O’Connor and Philip Sheldrake.

Of course it will require high quality technology solutions to ensure the right level of research and measurement outcomes. Not just any technology will do. However this concept also applies to the quality of people involved in measurement. For the first time it seems that technology will be an equally acceptable solution to meet clients’ media analysis and measurement requirements.

The other fundamental issue with the SAS’ product launch is the fact that it is SAS itself that has entered the media measurement game. The public relations and media measurement industry has developed considerably over the last 20 years, but it is still essentially fairly small. The industry has been characterised by small research consultancies of less than 20 or 30 staff or as divisions of larger media intelligence organisations like Media Monitors. The last three years has seen the explosion of social media monitoring platforms, which are too numerous to mention. However again, nearly all these companies are small to medium sized businesses at best.

The entrance of SAS and to a similar extent Salesforce’s Chatter, shows that media measurement in the broadest sense is now on the radar of much larger enterprise providers. This can only accelerate the industry’s development but it may be that some of the existing smaller players fall by the wayside, lacking the funding and capability to develop competing solutions.

Media Monitors is strongly placed to take advantage of this potential industry shift. Firstly we still use and will always use high quality people, as evidenced by our AMEC award wins. Secondly we have the scale and funding to invest in the right enterprise solutions, plus utilise our own in house development expertise. Lastly we have a large, unique content set to analyse against. Our available content includes hard to aggregate sources such as television and radio media across the region and the most comprehensive press content sources in the Asia-Pacific. Of course we also have access to the huge data available on the Internet, be it online news or social media like twitter.

Time will tell if the rise of enterprise technology solutions in media measurement is an industry inflection point. What is certain is that there is real change happening right now.

Online Media Measurement Hysteria

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:00:00 GMT

Social media has shaken our communications methodologies to the core.
Proliferation across all channels has created marketing hysteria and tracking complications.
No longer simple, no longer controlled. The mass of content out there is overwhelming.

Online seems to be the current focus and the key to analyse the right content lies in the ability to filter the noise. But you know, any Joe Shmo can use searchtastic and activate Google Alerts to catch any mention of any search string. I question:

How does that really help you when you’re getting hundreds of content items a day?
How does that help you when the ability to filter out words with duplicate meanings is non-negotiable?
What about other media? Does it compare? Does it shift from one to the next? Where is the starting point? No one really lives in a digital vacuum.
And do you really need to react to every single mention that’s relevant to you? If someone with a nonexistent virtual social life makes a mention is it worthwhile to respond to? Usually the life of these comments lives and dies with the next topic stream, sometimes even an inhalation is enough.

What am I getting at?

Yes, we can listen to any type of noise out there. For example, if I want I can indeed track all mentions of an Apple, whether it’s Steve Job’s baby, Gwyneth Paltrow’s or a piece of fruit. But if I want to track those important apple mentions relevant to me AND get the most traction with a sizable audience- i.e. I should definitely be aware of them so I can react accordingly- I want to know about them as soon as they happen. I don’t want to sift through hundreds of mentions of Apple Pie before I know that Apple, Gwyneth’s baby, is as cute as pie.

In actuality, looking at absolutely every single mention is not that important. That’s what interns are for. They can listen to the noise and the random mentions. They can deal with those small time issues. But the decision makers of an organisation need to be aware of the mentions which have legitimate audiences requiring PR expertise and a strategic response effort. This could be those blogs with the most readers or the news sites which are employing comments and interaction. Social media spread across consumer generated channels is just as important as the social media uptake on professional offerings.

As a strategist with a focus on new media, I have developed an outlook which incorporates a balanced approach to communications. I value that I can discern between the bogus and the bonza. I know that a lot of tools out there don’t actually offer me any value because:

I can’t segment audience by region, and even if I can, it doesn’t appear to be legit.
I may be able to filter by the source region, but the internet is global and readers live far and wide.
I’m limited by more sources to predominantly ugc sites, but so many corporate sites now offer social media capability.Those conversations are just as important.
Online and print coverage varies. If you don’t believe me, look at this white paper entitled “Comparison of print and online content in Australia’s metropolitan media.'

We aren’t all digital, we aren’t all tech heavy and we all like to know what’s going on with the world without getting spammed. The problem is that 2-bit marketers often flash bells and whistles about great analytics, the volume of mentions and the strength of a search term. But, when you really think about it, the value of that volume is minimal. A search term can have double or even triple meanings and if measurement isn’t consistent across channels, it doesn’t mean much.

All this new media is still new. It’s no surprise. The good news is that we’re learning how to navigate it and digest it. But when we make leeway like this which helps to make our understanding of it more intelligent, it’s worth taking that kind of learning on board. Something I’m proud to say, is being done here. It is possible to filter the validated and legitimate mentions as well as analyse the overall impact. I am actually genuinely excited to know that this can be done. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a really great post and then learned it came from some guy living in a cave in Siberia with an audience of 3.

Being realistic about analytics, we can no longer look at diluted content streams in entirety and consider them valid. We need to be smart about how we approach our internet tracking.
There’s value in minimising our work load to have exactly what we need, when we need it.
There’s value is knowing what your local audiences are exposed to.
There’s value in the ability to identify duplicates with the originating source.
There’s value in integrating online reporting and analytics with broadcast and print.
And there’s value in the ability to validate legitimate sources.

Simply put - content in context. The cherry on the cake.

Making anti-social organisations social

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:30:00 GMT

PR and corporate communication practitioners are certainly not anti-social – either in terms of drinks and finger food or in the sense of being negative towards social media.

To the contrary, it is apparent here at the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) global conference in Hong Kong (7-9 April) that there is widespread interest and enthusiasm for social media. Sessions on blogging, social networks and measurement of social media have been over-subscribed with hotel workers running for extra chairs.

But what is equally apparent is that PR and corporate communication are still at an early and steep stage of the learning curve in terms of using social media. Questions and discussion indicated that most organisation communicators use social media in some way, but this is mostly personal use. Incidentally, this finding is confirmed in recent research about to be published.

At the IABC global conference, despite their enthusiasm, many professional communicators admitted that they do not monitor social media and most are not aware of how social media can be monitored and analysed.

Some mentioned the names of a few specialist social media research firms, but almost all seemed unaware that media monitoring and media intelligence companies such as Media Monitors are expanding their services to cover social media.

Also, many PR and corporate communicators seem to feel that a whole new set of mysterious metrics are needed for identifying important social media and evaluating their content. Fortunately, several speakers including yours truly explained that many of the metrics required are readily available through Web analytics – such as unique visitors, duration of visits, page views, downloads, etc.

In simple terms, bloggers, tweeters, YouTube videos, and social network sites that have only a handful of RSS subscribers, visitors, followers, fans, or viewers can be identified as non-strategic, while those with a high volume of attention need to be taken seriously.

Beyond quantitative metrics available from Web analytics, qualitative content analysis can evaluate the issues discussed, messages conveyed, and tone of social media content. In short, it can be done. And it must be done if public relations and corporate communication departments and agencies are to fulfil their role as media and communication specialists in their organisations.

Part of the problem is that many organisation communicators see social media as separate to their regular day job and as new and still unestablished. With the number of tweets occurring daily, the massive scale of YouTube views, and the global popularity of social networks such as Facebook – all discussing organisations, companies, products and services every day – it’s time to drop the term mainstream media (MSM) as it is currently used, and rethink media. Any medium reaching large numbers of people in your market is mainstream. And social media are not separate – they are interconnected with press, radio and TV, each feeding off each other. All media are going social. So PR has to go social – but with fingers tapping, not finger food.

Would you like to hear the good news first or the bad news?

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:00:00 GMT

In the modern media world sometimes they can both be the same thing, because news is often what the journalist makes it.

Some recent media coverage concerning a public official’s views about an expected increase in electricity prices reinforced the importance of media analysis in examining how widely messages can vary, even when journalists are using exactly the same facts.

The following article excerpts appeared on the same day, covering the same topic, using the same interviewee.

Outlet 1

Plea to carefully consider power hikes

The NSW body that sets energy prices is being urged to consider the impact on households as it prepares to lift electricity rates, amid warnings that consumers are growing anxious. Ms Petre said she hoped Australia did not get into a situation where electricity price increases caused 'fuel poverty' - where consumers can't afford to have power connected to their homes.

'Fuel poverty suggests a much more chronic and widespread problem than we have at the moment,' she said. 'Although, that said, I don't want to undermine that it's serious and that there are people facing real issues with affordability.'

Outlet 2

Families in fear as energy costs soar

SOARING electricity prices will force more working families into 'fuel poverty' where they simply cannot afford to pay for power.

That is the grim prediction from an energy ombudswoman, who revealed that the number of people fearing they will have their electricity disconnected had surged by a third.

Pricing regulator IPART proposed rises of 44-62 per cent over three years to pay for a backlog of network maintenance and the Federal Government's proposed ETS.

Ms Petre said these increases could cause 'fuel poverty'. 'It may well, that's our concern, particularly if the [ETS] comes in,' she said.

Fuel poverty - a household spending more than 10 per cent of income for an adequate 21C warmth - contributed to nearly 37,000 English and Welsh deaths in 2008-09.

The language of these two clips couldn’t be more at odds, the first clip using words such as carefully consider and growing anxious, while the second clip talks about fear, grim predictions and raises the spectre of many thousands of deaths.

It is hard to know what the intent of the interviewee was, the mild concern of the first clip or the prediction of serious and widespread harm the second article strongly implies, but it does show the extraordinary variability of messages that can come from the same basic material when put in the hands of journalists with differing agendas.

The headlines from the day of the actual announcement showed similar variations. I’ve thrown a few of my own made-up ones in there, see if you can pick the real from the fake...

“Kevin's carbon compo blowout”

“Collapsing infrastructure sees massive power price hike”

“Energy bills to rise $2 a week if ETS goes through”

“Air conditioners, electricity rises link”

“ETS blamed for up to 64% power hike”

Six golden rules for media and PR measurement

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Jim will expand these conclusions during his keynote presentation at the International Association of Business Communicators Global Conference in Hong Kong on April 8th.

There are six golden rules for media and communication measurement – an activity that has bedevilled the PR and corporate communication sector for decades. Without them, measurement is meaningless mumbo-jumbo or untrustworthy ‘smoke and mirrors’.

1. Measure outcomes, not only outputs – or at least link your outputs to outcomes.

No one cares about how much stuff you put out. Effective communication is more about what arrives in the minds of your target audiences and what they do with it than what you send out. And it’s not just any outcomes that should be measured. Measure and demonstrate the outcomes that matter.

How do you know what outcomes matter? These are the outcomes specified in your organisation’s corporate and marketing communication objectives. For example, if the desired outcomes are increased brand awareness, creating a positive reputation, and/or generating inquiries, that’s what you should measure. If you are part of an integrated communication effort responsible only for parts of it – such as generating publicity or keeping employees informed – measure your specific outcomes and then link them to overall organisational objectives. For instance, if you can show through customer surveys that they are influenced by product publicity and your media analysis shows that you generated favourable publicity in the media they read, you have linked your outcomes to the organisation’s desired outcomes. You have contributed value.

The issue of ROI comes up in such discussion and causes considerable confusion. Return on Investment is sometimes perceived only as dollars made from sales or ultimately in profits. Revenue is typically and appropriately the ROI for sales departments. But, it is illogical to measure support functions in terms of dollars generated. HR, accounts, and legal departments are not measured in dollars generated. Similarly, PR cannot be measured in terms of dollars if its objectives are related to awareness, perceptions, inquiries, loyalty, and such like. But each of those important outcomes can be measured.

2. Measure what’s relevant.

You don’t have to measure everything. Not every person, channel, medium, or issue in your marketplace matters. Some hardly matter at all, while others matter a lot. For instance, news and comment may appear in media ranging from national dailies and networks and important vertical market publications to ones that hardly impact your key stakeholders. Similarly, media will report on issues vital to your organisation as well as issues of no strategic concern. Measure what is most relevant – that is, relevant to key markets and stakeholders and your key objectives. This means you should establish a clear, precise brief for your measurement. Do less better – which leads to the third golden rule.

3. Use reliable methodology to measure.

When you come to measure, remember the warning: ‘Garbage in, garbage out’. All measurement uses instruments (the tools) and methodologies (how they are used). If you use an inappropriate instrument, or – as is more often the case – you use an instrument without calibrating and applying it correctly, the findings will be inaccurate and can even be seriously misleading. You’ve no doubt also heard the phrase: “There’s lies, damn lies, and statistics”. That criticism is not levelled because statistics are wrong; it’s because the wrong statistics are too often used. Metrics generated from inadequate or distorted samples, invalid calculations, flawed analysis, and even from some ‘black box’ measurement methods based on algorithms hidden in computer code (or the researcher’s fertile imagination), put you and your management on a dangerous path. Flawed data can misinform decision-making – and eventually you will be found out and face career-limiting embarrassment. If you can’t do the math, use someone who can. The next golden rule makes this rule about reliable methodology even more important.

4. Measure qualitatively, not only quantitatively.

It is self-evident that brands, reputations and public image have a qualitative as well as a quantitative dimension. It is very unlikely that your organisation wants lots of brand awareness, public discussion, or publicity if its bad. Yet many PR and even some marketing practitioners measure only quantitatively. A fundamental aspect of public relations measurement, in particular, is deploying qualitative analysis. Media publicity, as every executive knows, can be positive, negative or neutral. It can be in highly important media, or down the back of unimportant ‘rags’ or programs. It can be ‘on message’ or inane twaddle by a misinformed commentator.

Qualitative measurement is more complex than generating and capturing quantitative data (which is largely counting), as it requires a rational and reliable basis for assessment. This is where methodology becomes paramount as, without use of an established method of qualitative analysis, findings can be subjective and invalid. This is where professional researchers and analysts earn their keep as they can bring specialised knowledge in rigorous methods and independence to the measurement table.

5. Track social media.

Today it is essential and highly beneficial to track social media. Even if you are not using social media for outgoing communication, there is a good chance that there are people talking about your brand, products, organisation, management, and relevant issues in blogs, social networks, on YouTube, or Twitter. Social media provide, first and foremost, a vast site for free market research. You can find out what people think just by tapping in to online conversations. Second, you can track specific issues or conversations to identify key influencers – what network specialists call nodes and hubs – thus informing your future communication planning. A range of metrics are readily available for measuring social media including visitors, page views, duration, downloads, and rankings, as well as qualitative analysis of content.

6. Present findings in management language.

The language of management is not English. It’s not even words – they’re cheap in the C suite. It’s numeric. Management want and believe numbers. Numbers presented as numerals such as percentages or after dollar signs are impressive. But also numbers illustrated in charts and graphs get management’s attention and speak to them in terms that they understand. Most senior managers are accountants, economists, engineers, IT specialists, or sales and marketing number-crunchers.

Also, senior managers are time poor. So present your measurement in brief, visual, numeric terms, ideally in graphics. Then management, and you, will be in the picture.

Adtech Sydney: Hits and Misses

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:45:00 GMT

Latest findings from AdTech Sydney unveil some interesting perspectives on how to handle various components of social media.

Hit

Adnews: Lion Nathan former national marketing director Margaret Zabel stresses media mix is crucial for branded content.
Lion Nathan's "6 Degrees of Separation" branded content for Tooheys Extra Dry would have been more effective with better media choices, its former national marketing director has admitted.

Here is an example where a brand has gone out guns blazing into the social media sphere and realized there are a gaggle of improvements that should be implemented when creating content. Lion Nathan should be applauded for these efforts and realizing the necessary changes they need to make to future content initiatives.

The problem with content today is that there is a volume mismatch. Branded content disappears into the content vortex where the millions of content creators fight for eyeballs. The mismatch lies in the fact that branded content aims to be a short-tail initiative in a long tail world. This is why so many branded content pieces fail. Only a few can ever rise to the top in this fashion.

This is where a more solid media mix comes into play. A brand needs to utlise its capacity to buy media time and invest its dollar into both environments to ensure traction with the right audience.

The lift should be enough to rise above the pack and hit the eyeballs required.

Miss

Adnews: Social media demands commitment
Marketers must avoid hype and commit to the long-term relationships they create in social media, according to a panel at Ad:tech.

This excerpt outlines that any social media activity needs to go for the long haul. It’s an interesting perspective, and one that brands/agencies have been touting since the early days of social media. However as time has passed it has become apparent that:

People care about a brand only when it’s relevant for them.

People might not need to know about your brand on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

People get bored.

This is a clear case of not using metrics, data and the correct human insight to create a social media strategy which works for a brand in its category in it social media space. The intent to use social media for the long haul does not work for every product and is a statement that should be used with caution.

For many products, their audiences have different social media soft spots. I’ve written a previous post which discusses this briefly. Brands need to create social media strategies which speak to their objectives. If one of those objectives is to effectively manage resource and an organization can’t support activity within a social media environment all day every day, then create a strategy that meets that requirement. And if a fan gets irritated that you aren’t available 24/7, make that fan the 24/7 representative! If they fan is that loyal they’ll love it.

Media 2010: New media and Opportunities to Innovate

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

This year’s Media 2010 was characterised by more attendees, and more of these attendees wearing suits. The formality of the occasion was joined with a much more well inform, open minded approach towards New Media and the underlying opportunities to innovate and differentiate content and product in this space.

With an eclectic representation of speakers spanning across the U.S, Japan and Paris, the common topics discussed revolved around the content oversupply, future media revenue streams and the role of social networks as a competing news source to print. My favourites were: Adrian Holovaty and Marc Frons who both saw an opportunity to innovate and provide incremental value in their services.

Key learnings from the day:

Content is no longer scarce; the ability to diffuse and distribute is now outside the control of the media organization
The internet is now a huge collaborative copying machine, oversupplied with content. As more permutations of devices used to consume the content increases (which in turn blurs lines between different media types), the challenge is to produce/curate content that can be discovered and is fresh, targeted and ‘social.’
Metadata is the key asset for companies to exploit. Use customer knowledge across networks to create value to your product/service offering, and if you want charge for this value, make paying for it a ‘frictionless’ process
In the same way that media is moving from print to digital, media companies need to also move from a news to technology company, New York Times recently invested in an iPad app in support of portability, convenience and readability of digital print
Holovaty uses Everyblock to talk through his 3 simple media ideas: Reorganise free, publicly available information to your end user. View information as ‘living’ i.e infinitely relevant, available and evolving; and taming streams of insight
Whilst global time spent on social networks has gone up 82% YoY to Dec 09, time spent on news sites have declined from 42 mins to 30 mins (Nov 06 vs Nov 09).
Consumers are now at the centre of product creation and management: they expect to be involved in the designing, tweaking and marketing of products and services

What does this mean for your company?

New media bring significant opportunities for companies to ensure success with their product, marketing or customer service initiatives by engaging and interacting with customers and prospects right from the start. The beauty of new media is that reactions are instant, making the process of refining your proposal streamlined as well.

As content consumption becomes more web centric, activities and other efforts should also be increasingly spent online. The good news is that you can probably save a buck or two by doing so. Pepsi’s recent decision to dedicate all advertising spend to a $20m Refresh Everything social campaign is evidence of companies responding to this trend.

The real challenge is looking at your business models and:

Creating compelling products, services and experiences that help sustain revenue streams
Looking for new ways to reduce cost structures to support the desired margin levels of your company

Online coverage of Media 2010 is filed in Delicious.

Questions you need to ask yourself in 2010

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:00:00 GMT

The changes in our media landscape over the last 10 years have been pretty exciting.

Accessibility, freedom and power of the people have been the pillars which have helped shape the new consumer driven age. In 2010, it’s safe to say that these technological advancements are entrenched in daily life.

Communications as an industry has turned a complete 360, even a 720. Measurement impacts every facet of the communications choices we make, yet I find measurement and its importance, often forgotten. In fact, the rules of thumb within this new paradigm of our industry are often useless and frustrating. After attending numerous conferences, I always only ever walk away with a couple of nuggets which seem to be revealed in the subtext of a case study. Case studies are great at showing how to do things correctly or incorrectly, but I never walk away with a proper solution, only dazed by more case studies and guidelines which seem to relate only to those particular examples.

Perhaps looking for the holy grail in a solutions model isn’t possible. It’s not how this game works. Every case is so specific and folding new media alternatives into strategies just isn’t that simple. A shift is required. Rather than solutions and models, we need to ask the right questions in order to reach the best outcome. Seeing that 10 years is a fairly long time in the new mediascape, it’s time to buckle up and think intelligently about what we do know and apply that knowledge to effective communications.

The real questions communicators should be asking:

How do I combine new and traditional media platforms into robust communication plans?

I often hear people talk about all the great stuff they’re doing in the digital realm, and forget their older and wiser traditional neighbours. My favourite catchphrase has become “people don’t live in a vacuum”, because quite frankly, people don’t. People consume all media in varying levels and great communications should tap into the different touch points of their audiences, leverage integration and send the relevant message.

Use the data that's available and logically find where you need to be to reach your audience.

How do I achieve my objectives and see valid results?

It’s common fodder for marketers and agency representatives to create and apparently validate a “Test execution” with no real objectives other than to get feet wet. This is no longer a valid excuse to spend budget I’m afraid. By now, we know how people are operating within new media. We know how they combine different media together, the weight of those channels and how they like to consume it. If a company hasn’t gotten their feet wet by now, it’s no longer ok to attempt a test solution without having the proper objectives and metrics in place. Use the data to help your learnings for future activations.

What is the best platform and best device for my target?

Rather than “My Competitor is on Foursquare/FB/Twitter” or “What’s the latest gizmo? I want in”, communicators should be asking themselves about relevancy first and foremost. Different industries and their audiences have completely different needs. For example, communicators in the political world have a completely different modus operandi to social media gurus and to food bloggers. They use different platforms in varying ways and this should always be factored in to any approach.

Do I need to create a long term social media initiative, or does a short term initiative meet my objectives?

The industry catch cry that social media must be for the long haul just isn’t true. Simple measurement shows that users drop out of groups or lose interest and a well managed resource can exploit those behaviours.

For example, you’ll find that Facebook may be great for an FMCG needing a short term promotional initiative which needs a quick, fast bang and a clothing label might create long term plans which build their loyal customer base over time.
Both are valid, both effective and with the correct preperation, both meet a company’s objectives.

How can I be relevant?

Activating in any media requires relevance. It’s important to understand that social media is about “passion points”, traditional media is similar but to a lesser extent.

The only way people are interested in a topic is if it’s actually interesting to them. In this day and age it’s important for companies to think how they can leverage of those passion points and enter into a sphere, rather than deliver irrelevant messages in a non-caring environment.

Measurement: How and what?

There is no doubt that new media in combination with the traditional, is steadfast. The dimension of what we need to know about our communications is no longer as simple as an eyeball count. Numerous soft (eg engagement) and hard (quantifiable numerical metrics) analytics have been established as standards. However, these metrics only get us so far. Analytics needs to come up to speed with what's happening out there, eg

Identify the origins and timelines of different points of coverage
Graph coverage sentiment
What times of day coverage occurs across different channels
Establish plausible dollar value for traditional and new media coverage
Establish focal points for coverage jumping from one media to another
Identify key influencers for category specific coverage
Identify key media across your category

And right now, it seems the bulk of tools out there just can’t tell us the information that appears relevant in the new communications lifecycle. Something, we’re working on improving.

Hopefully these questions give a bit more clarity then a case study can. Understanding your business and its relevance in the market seems more useful than comparing your business to a case study.

Product in Vogue: iPad’s Identity Crisis

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:00:00 GMT

It's going to be hard to top Apple's iPad launch this year. The blogosphere was abuzz with short and long posts of iPad’s specs, what it has and what it doesn’t and why Steve Jobs forever turtleneck and jeans attire. A great chapter for Google to read as an example of effective Marketing

What I love about it:

It builds on the strengths of the iPhone: its compelling multitouch interface, icon based dashboard and slimline design;
It adds colour to your reading pleasure: whilst the Kindle’s E Ink technology uniquely renders the bookworm’s experience to the matching of reading a physical paper, the LED backlit display claims a crisp appearance on the screen;
The retail price is affordable, starting at US$499 but with more storage compared to the Kindle

As history tells, Apple is jumping ahead on the demand curve and building demand with a sexy piece of innovation. But what perplexes me is iPad’s lack of clear positioning on the device food chain. We have portable Netbooks that let’s us surf the web wirelessly and work on the fly, the eReader is for, well, reading books and other types of literature, and the iPhone is your better than average mobile phone slash email device.

Some might say that integration of all these bits (with improved performance) into the one device is what makes iPad unique, saving on luggage when you’re out and about. But remember:

If it aint broken, don’t fix it – my Samsung Netbook and iPhone is working fine and don’t intend to replace it any time soon
Convergence is not always the best policy. Telco operators have spoken to death about fixed lines and mobile phones converging onto a single device (cite, BT Fusion) but this concept is now dead. Why? Some people see value keeping the utility of one device separate from another

What is clear is the need for compelling, diverse content that gives people reason to use these sexy devices on. The iBook store will only rise for the occasion if there are great items on offer!

The diversity of views with this launch has been immense – would you buy an iPad and for what reason/s?

Media in the 2000s, the only constant is…

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:15:00 GMT

Since the turn of the millennium, the media has changed more rapidly than any other large scale global industry. Media Monitors is continuously analysing the media and evaluating emerging trends, and one of the most interesting trends has been the increase in media intermediation, the referencing of content from one type of media by another media outlet. Intermediation has always been an important part of the news cycle and a source of specialist content for many generalist media providers. Yet like the media itself, this practice of reference and re-use has evolved and expanded at an ever more rapid pace in the last several years to have now become an integral part of most mainstream media as well as the founding idea of many successful social media platforms.

The chart shows the amount of media coverage across press, radio and television of the four most prominent social media websites.

Not so long ago people in many areas had as few as only one or two regular media content providers which they could access quickly and easily. As mobile and broadband coverage and usage rates have skyrocketed across Asia the number of separate information sources available has become close to infinite for many of those people. Yet the reality is that the vast majority of us still rely on a handful of sources for all or most of our news.

Because of the massively increased competition for both advertising dollars and audience numbers, almost all of these established media brands are already operating with reduced resources and this trend will continue, with more content being produced or edited using fewer resources.

While these resources are being stretched, the news cycle continues to gain speed, with 24/7 news websites now needing to cycle through content faster than ever, as stories are created, developed and moved on from within hours, rather than days – many news websites will have half a dozen different “front pages” per day, increasing the pressure to provide new content to an even higher level.

When we look at how the media now covers breaking hard news, the horrific and virtually instantaneous destruction of the Black Saturday bushfires was delivered to a shocked audience via radio, television, news website, mobile phone and social media at virtually the same time across all platforms. Numerous media outlets initiated immediate specialised coverage from the late afternoon through to midnight to cover the bushfires, with the majority of news within minutes of real time.

Meanwhile on the lighter side of news coverage, social media and user generated content has become a saviour for the overworked journalist. Social media content that ends up in the mainstream media is usually already packaged for easy viewing or listening, brief, entertaining and in some way unique. It is usually free and can also bring new readers to the site and can sometimes provide stories that run over days or even weeks.

Our most recent analysis of this trend has shown a significant jump in third party generated content in large metropolitan news media from under 20% only a couple of years ago to over 30% in 2009. While the significant majority of this content is generated by professional communicators, the amount of amateur generated content has increased from virtually zero to make up around a fifth of all third party generated content.

Third party content use can increase the authenticity of both the outlet being referenced and the outlet in which it is referenced. A traditional media journalist discussing a story generated by a social media site both shows how up to date they are with new forms of media and trends amongst consumers, but also gives that social media site a wider audience and increases its authenticity as a reliable and/or interesting source of content.

Intermediation can also become a cycle, with traditional media content being picked up by online content sharing sites such as YouTube or Twitter, bringing them to a much wider audience. As these media channels blur and overlap, the imperative to stay in touch with all types of media is greater than ever.

Ten years into the millenium, there is no question the media is significantly more diverse, with our organisation now monitoring (along with over 5,000 traditional media outlets across the Asia-Pacific) over 25,000 blogs and other social media and 15,000 news and other websites, the vast majority of which simply did not exist even five years ago.

However, the majority of people still rely on major media organisations to provide them with rapid delivery of news both locally and globally, whether that be through print, radio, television or websites. Technological advances have not replaced traditional news gathering, but they have vastly increased the scope of information sources available to all of us.

Monitoring Social Media 09 Conference - London

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:00:00 GMT

In November I was lucky enough to be in London to represent Media Monitors at the AMEC Awards night. Whilst I was in London I was able to attend the Monitoring Social Media 09 Conference.

The conference was attended by over 200 delegates from around the world, including representatives of 15 social media monitoring companies (a very competitive industry!).

Whilst there were definitely a lot of the usual suspect social media “experts” in attendance the conference certainly outlined both the desire for knowledge in this nascent space and the business challenges and opportunities that social media offers.

One key observation from the day was that the level of thinking on social media and the tools utilised to monitor social media seem no more advanced or cutting edge in Europe than we experience in the Asia-Pacific region.

A few key take outs from the conference:

Social media is about people, not just ROI or funky cool tech people.
Many organisations are battling how to deal with social media, especially culturally. There is a crucial difference between “listening” and just monitoring
Social media is already significantly impacting organisations’ business processes, but often not in a planned way.
Relying on technology solutions just isn’t good enough. This is two-fold. Firstly and most importantly there is a fundamental lack of trust in technology solutions for sentiment/qualitative type measures (even though humans never agree either!). Secondly it is important to tailor solutions because every campaign and situation is different. This message obviously made some of the whizz bang social media monitoring solution types somewhat uneasy.
Social media monitoring is a huge data challenge for the providers. Giles Palmer of Brandwatch was particularly interesting in explaining this.

Here is the link to the conference presentations and further information about the speakers.

For Media Monitors there are some interesting considerations. Firstly social media is an important component of the media landscape and one that we must address, which we have started to do with baby steps with the new micro-blogging search function in Mediaportal. Secondly social media monitoring is a huge opportunity for us, because we are experts in collating huge amounts of data and then adding that critical human element, be that our experienced information management people, sales and client services or talented media analysts.

The Product and Innovation team is certainly aware of the importance of social media (I’m sure many of you have come across @schmediachick !) and we’re looking at providing new products and services to address this huge opportunity, so stay tuned!

One decade - a millenium of change

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:00:00 GMT

In the last ten years the media has changed more rapidly than any large scale global industry. And one of the areas of the media that has changed the most has been newfs gathering and reporting. As we near the end of the first decade of the new millennia, Media Monitors has undertaken an examination of the media coverage of some of the biggest news events in the last ten years to gain insight into what has been an extraordinary decade of change for the media in this country and around the world.

When East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia on the 30^th of August 1999, the maelstrom that ensued was seen by the world almost solely through the foreign correspondents that were on the ground at the time. The first television and newspaper reports emanating from Timor focused on the complete break down of law and order as journalists attempted to flee the country. In 1999 there were no mobile phone cameras and no blogs. The overall picture delivered through radio, television and newspapers was one of deep confusion and unknown levels of violence without direct footage or indeed personal accounts. As the chart shows, this lack of direct information actually saw coverage dip in the first few days of the crisis as media organisations struggled to find accurate information.

The chart shows the first five days of media coverage of the four issues, and what percentage of that coverage was on each day. Black Saturday was the only case where the biggest two days of coverage were in the first 48 hours.

Two years later, the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 were initially a television news event. While there was some amateur footage disseminated in the days following the attack, it was professional camera footage which carried the news almost immediately across the globe. The volumes of coverage were enormous, higher than for any other single event in the last ten years, yet there was still significant confusion in early reports, with some newspapers confirming that over 10,000 people had been killed, a number three times the actual figure.

The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 also involved a high level of early confusion as the media attempted to piece together the scale of this international catastrophe, however the advances in telecommunications and information technology allowed the awful scope of the tragedy to come to light relatively quickly, even though some of the areas most heavily affected were remote regions of developing countries.

The first radio reports were heard mid afternoon at approximately the same time as news websites, with initial casualty figures below ten. First pictures were only hours behind, followed by a slew of amateur video footage, phone reports and emails linked together with professional reports that allowed the media to present the real scale of devastation across multiple countries within 36 hours. While the full scale of the destruction took far longer to be detailed, the media was able to provide a sense of that scale almost immediately.

Moving to the current state of news gathering, the horrific and virtually instantaneous destruction of Black Saturday was delivered to a shocked audience via radio, television, news website, mobile phone and social media at virtually the same time across all platforms. Numerous media outlets initiated immediate specialised coverage from the late afternoon through to midnight to cover the bushfires, with the majority of news now within minutes of real time. From 3pm to midnight on 7 February there were 1,526 broadcast reports on the fires and 574 news website items. with the print media being able to draw on a comprehensive range of sources across those immediate platforms as well as traditional news gathering techniques to provide comprehensive deeper analysis over the next two days, rather than within the next two weeks as may have been the case a decade earlier.

Ten years on from the confusion of Timor, the vast majority of people still rely on major media organisations to provide them with rapid delivery of news both locally and globally, whether that be through print, radio, television or websites. “Citizen journalism” and technological advances have not replaced traditional news gathering, they have in fact vastly improved the scope of information sources available to journalists and the speed in which they can piece together the elements of a news story. There is no question the media is significantly more diverse, with our organisation now monitoring (along with over 5,000 traditional media outlets across the Asia-Pacific) over 25,000 blogs and other social media and 15,000 news and other websites, 95% of which simply did not exist in 1999.

Individuals and organisations demand their news, and are able to respond to it, faster than ever. So while all of these new platforms are providing content and information is coming from many, many more sources of varying reliability at an ever increasing speed, the journalist of 2009 plays perhaps a more crucial role than ever in turning that information into news, far more rapidly, and it could be reasonably argued, more accurately than ever.

Media Strategies in Changing Times - Kuala Lumpur

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Last Thursday, Asia Media Monitors organized its 3rd seminar “Media Strategies in Changing Times - Expert Panel Discussion” @ Pacific Regency Hotel Suites, KL. The event kicked off great with a fully packed gathering of PR and Communication professionals. Leon Hudson (Director of Sales and Client Services - South East Asia, Asia Media Monitors) who was also the Moderator of the session, commenced with the welcome address and a brief introduction of the distinguished speakers.

Just a quick note on behalf of Asia Media Monitors to thank everyone who came and to the expert panelists:

Cameron Buckley (General Manager – South East Asia, Asia Media Monitors)
Ku Kok Peng (Senior Vice-President, Partner and General Manager, Fleishman-Hillard Communications Sdn Bhd)
Suzanie (Suzie) Adina Mat Saat (Head of Corporate Communications, Ministry of Information, Communications, Arts and Culture)
Shameem Abdul Jalil (Director, Corporate Communications & Business Liaison of Public Investment Bank, Public Bank Group)

Leon also highlighted the session’s agenda and topics which were as below:

Trends within the media industry
Social media
The new audience
Cross cultural communication
Media intermediation
Paid versus free content
Citizen journalism.

Shameem was the first panelist invited to shed light on the topic. She shared her vast experience in Public Relations and talked about her book 'Growing in Public Relations - Lessons from the Past' in which she has encapsulated her knowledge for young PR practitioners and all communication students. She repeatedly raised the point that nowadays PR pros are not following the correct processes and sometimes even getting their CEO’s picture on the front page is considered enough. She spoke about how social media has revolutionized the PR industry and how pros should integrate traditional media, social media and academic theories like Laswell’s paradigm, Two step flow, Spiral of silence, Grunig’s Agenda Setting theory to succeed.

Later in the discussion Shameem shared an insightful survey done by PRSA and is also on Public Relations Journal Vol 3, No 3, Summer 2009, “How PR Practitioners actually are using Social Media' by Donald Wright and Michelle Hinson.

Top 3 categories that should be important in overall communications and PR efforts:

Search Engine marketing
Blogs
RSS, Social Networks, Video sharing

Frequent usage as information sources by PR Practitioners in this order :-

Newspapers
Magazines
TV News
Radio News
Blogs
Social Network

In spite of huge growth, social media do not compare favourable to traditional media when it comes to:

Accuracy
Credibility
Trust

Ku was the next panelist to provide his insights. During his presentation he touched on a number of points as below:

How he gets the 1st bite of the news now via Twitter, SMS alerts from Star and by reading emails on his Blackberry. Media is evolving.
Traditional media is no more source of goto information.
Traditional media will either live or die.
Traditional media will be ‘complimentary media’ with social media.
Everything has changed and yet nothing is changed.
Credibility cannot be achieved if organizations are not going to let go of control on social media. Credibility and Control are inversely proportional.
Web 1.0 has transformed to Web 2.0 in the shape of User Generated Content (UGC), YouTube, Editing Wiki, Flickr, etc.
Circle of influence exists when referring to the Hierarchy in Social media. Every organization should have a “Chief Communication Officer” position and to be on the executive board, as Communication is an integral part for any organization.
There are no more media categories anymore, lines are very blurred (referred to only ‘media’ now).
Advertising Value Equivalents (AVE) is rubbish, it is actually an advertising industry standard and a ‘cover your ass’ measure by PR practitioners.
Even GOD does not know PR value and Multipliers. Who are we to determine PR values without actually qualitatively analyzing our, messages and linking it directly to sales, business objectives, etc.
Forums are a place where people come for trouble shooting, answers, sharing experiences and in worse cases grievances.
If clients are looking to engage their customers on Forums then they are to keep the below four points in mind:
1. Objectives to be clear.
2. More negative coverage is expected
3. Negative is not wrong.
4. Forum communicators should be industry experts as mostly Forum contributors have niche industry knowledge.

Next was Suzie to provide her views on the topic. In her energetic and engaging presentation she shared the Social Media Sphere (Carta hubung kait media social di alam maya). She also highlighted the below points:

Traditional media will still work.
Blogs still need traditional media to create awareness about their existence.
She spoke about her 8 year daughter’s blog which has attracted numerous visitors, high volume of hits and followers in just 5 days.
‘Hari Malaysia’ campaign success story due to media coverage.
27% of Malaysia’s population has internet connection.
6:1 is the ration for Urban: Rural for internet penetration.
101% of population has cell phones as one person can sometimes own two cell phones.

Last but not the least, was Cameron. With his vast industry experience of working in Europe, Australia and Asia, he shed light on many interesting facts and statistics:

Its about time organizations should try paid tools against free tools.
Positive / Neutral / Negative comments for coverage are non descriptive (this does not show performance trends).
Blogs / Online content analysis should be much more than Positive / Neutral / Negative, more accurate methodology is the CARMA Favorability ratings (0-100) where number of key factors such as positioning, tonality, etc are used to score each article.
Seat on the top table of executives by a Communication / PR representative will only be possible when they are independent.
Compared Social Media Evangelist (advocates) vs. Traditionalists (cynical):
- Social Media Evangelists: 19.4% of Asia is online, 1000% growth for Twitter growth globally, Facebook has 300 million users worldwide sharing over 10 billion photos. 1.4 million Malaysians on Facebook and some 100,000 Malaysians are joining Facebook every month.
- Traditionalists: Globally newspaper went up by 1% (source: latest PANPA report), Productivity in down-whirl spiral due to social media usage during working hours, But Facebook is still in deficit, yet to make a profit.
Discussed great firewall of China, Google vs. Murdoch story (Paid model will not restrict all pages on a website, it will be selected. Pointed out examples of such models like Bernama Online)
60% web traffic is Peer to Peer.

If you have any feedback, future event topic recommendations or anything you would like to share please feel free to comment on our Linkedin Group (www.bit.ly/3XuVsM) or use #AMM on Twitter. A special thanks and congrats to AMM for organizing a successful event. For more information on Asia Media Monitors, please click on www.asiamediamonitors.com. If you have taken pictures, please share with us by either posting a link to your album here or post it to our Facebook fan page at http://www.companies.to/asiamediamonitors/

After the panelist’s discussion, was the Q&A session. There were some really interesting, fiery and passionate questions and I think the guest panelists did a good job meeting everyone’s expectations.

The audience engagement tool “Twitterfall” was used to track #AMM (event’s hashtag), which had numerous interesting live comments on the event. Many thanks to @scorpiojerm, @nicklwc, @kimberlycun, @minishorts, @paprikaglobal, @nikicheong, @kukokpeng for contributing and sharing your ideas, thoughts and feedback. Light refreshments were served after the session and I thoroughly enjoyed mingling around with clients, friends, twitterers and new people.

Testing

Developing compelling products in the social context

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:00:00 GMT

We’ve learned at length about the benefits of Twitter as an information network for communities of interest (my personal RSS feed of choice!). Twitter continues to innovate in this arena with the trailing of Twitter Lists to improve the organisation of such information within communities.

The notion of communities and social networks however is a much bigger playing field than just Twitter. Entrepreneurs in this day and age have a limitless amount of free/low cost online tools that can potentially deliver value to businesses, big or small across a range of disciplines. This post will focus on these tools that support your Product Development activities.

By typical product development stages, you have:

1. Ideas generation

In this phase, product, process or service related concepts are created in an unstructured, at times macro level. On generating ideas, the social sphere is a wealth of information that can help seed your idea from the get go. The likes of Social Mention can help you search through the web for conversations and opinions on a certain topic.

In terms of keeping track of your ideas, there is ideas management software such as Spigot that enables ideas to be captured from internal folks as well as customers in the one spot. These same tools have also raised the bar in sophistication, allowing businesses to rank, assess and prioritise ideas in a collaborative manner with key stakeholders such as customers, partners and employees.

2. Concept validation

Aside from formal approach of investing in ideas management software, existing communities in social networks such as Twitter, FriendFeed and identi.ca , is the easiest and quickest way of validating your concept (all done confidentially, of course!).

But before you start DM’ing your followers (followees!) with your latest idea, be sure that your community: 1. Represents your business’ target market or customer segment; and 2. Is happy to provide you with good feedback on your idea. (Ideally this group would be the same group of people who you can test the final product or service on during the test/market launch phase.)

3. Development phase

Kicking off development requires some orchestration amongst various functions (even if it’s you doing all these on your own!). If you’re like me, you would want to be clear about whether you will hit your target launch date along the way. Project management tools such as Basecamp help you set and allocate tasks, track progress against milestones via a secure online environment.

4. Test and Launch

Refining the final product is also important in the process of maximising appeal and ultimately sales and revenue. You can return to the same group of people from the validation phase and use traditional phone calls and emails to undertake this step.

Emerging beneath the cracks is potentially a complimentary approach to customer interaction: Google Wave holds a lot of promise in tapping into your customer base to refine and improve your product offering. I can confidently say this as Google is currently using it to refine Wave itself!

Which then leaves us at market launch, but that’s for another day!

Staying relevant in times of change

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Working in Product Development at Media Monitors is very much focused on delivering compelling products and services to satisfy (and hopefully exceed) the needs of our wide and varied corporate customer base.

The fun bit about the job though revolves around looking into the future and looking for opportunities to innovate, excite and lead in our areas of expertise across capturing media intelligence, extracting and presenting invaluable insights for our clients. This is mostly done within the team, and at times collaboratively (Dell’s Ideastorm is the essence of how the latter works).

An obvious trend which continues to evolve is the concept of social media and how businesses choose to get involved in this arena. Having been on the Twitter scene for about a year now, there are still a bunch of people dedicated to the topic of social media, take @socialmedia29 and @socialmediamaze amongst other Twitter community members who converse about social media and other topics.

What continues to be a challenge for any serious player in the media arena is staying on top of these trends andquickly deciding on the appropriate course of action to address these trends. We’re about to experience this ourselves: launching a social media tracking solution within Mediaportal is a great start, but dare I say it will quickly lose its edge in a matter of months.

Another working example is Murdoch’s intention to charge for content: since his announcement in April 2009 , the concept has since been embraced by some publishers or bragged excessively by others.

So, how can we as innovation centric, strategy driven individuals continue to add value to our customers when the traditional crystal ball ain’t giving as much insight as it should be? Perhaps some simple yet hopefully practical mantras that most of it will be familiar with:

1. Own your niche, then build on it

Apple’s iPod is proof in the pudding. When the device was launched in 2001, there already existed a variety of MP3 players in the market, from Samsung and iRiver. What made the iPod stand out from the crowd was not its functionality (in fact, some may argue its features were inferior to the rest), but its simple, intuitive user interface (as we all now know and can’t live without!). Being first to market didn’t matter for Apple, in fact, the wait-and-see approach helped them learn market preferences and craft their own niche, which in turn created more value in iPod’s ease of use proposition. Functionality is still key, but pinpointing and leading in your niche area will fund your future endeavours in functionality at a later stage. Perhaps user experience and effective user interface design work is king after all!

2. Reinventing the Old

To stay relevant in any business that you’re in, it’s important to keep evolving your product or service offering. A good example here is RSS Feeds. Many have discussed this technology as reaching its hey day, being substituted by social networking sites and its supporting apps who do better on currency of content and accessibility. Mashable’s recent post on Fresh Sliced News proves the point that such aging technology can be revitalized to bring new appeal to the table: the product allows users to personalize their ‘online newspaper’ using RSS Feeds of their choice.

3. Know your clients.

This is stating the obvious and organizations know that it is important, but the truth is, not everyone puts this mantra into practice. This means being customer centric across all aspects of the business, from reviewing technology to selecting your next billing system or even the choice of code to develop on. The key to this is staying relevant to your customer needs, challenges and to achieve this you need to be frequently engaging with them: listening, learning and living their business (very familiar aspects at The Insight Exchange’s Social Media Strategies event). Taking these steps guide your business decisions, prioritise the right activities and helps you formulate the appropriate actions to take with your customers in context with what matters to them.

4. Agility matters

Identifying a customer insight is one thing. Acting on this insight is another challenge in itself. Gone are the days of successive stage development, where your business requirements are locked for development, and any deviation from the original spec is treated as a change request and its impact must be assessed before progressing further.

Think prototyping, testing against users, refine design and functionality, repeat cycle. This is exactly the path that Apple took when creating the iPhone. Apple started off with a paper based prototype, conducted several rounds of usability testing before any code was cut to build the device.

Any similar stories to share, or thought of some more useful mantras? Add your comment below!

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Why Accurate Audience and Media Measurement Matters

How the world Tweeted about Japan - and what that means for news media

SMEs in Singapore - punching above their weight in media coverage

Quality of service and adaptability the key to Brandtology acquisition

Press v Online News: Is the content the same?

Overall Volume

Proportion by Publication

Proportion by Keyword

Top Stories of 2010

Oprah not quite so hot in Singapore

Malaysia and Singapore Website Rankings - November 2010

The Business Year in Review

Understanding Influencers Pt II – Activating and Measuring

Understanding Influencers

When we come to the world of media, marketing and PR who are the influencers?

Is there a difference in harnessing the influential power of either of these influencers?

What Next?

The good and the bad of iStrategy2010, Sydney

The Good

Other goodies

The Bad

Key takeaways

Social media through the eyes of the uninitiated

Obama in Asia: Are we dancing?

Asia Media Monitors media analysis wins international AMEC award

Guerrilla marketing stunt: Why the public didn't just grin and bear it

Why Online News Monitoring Is Essential For Organizations

The future of media in APAC

The challenge of “amplified” books

Media Influencers Survey: Trends in Singapore and the Shift to Online

Content Curation: Making sense of a whole lot more media

Pouring oil on troubled waters… and oil spills

Continuing the ASR debate

The case for digital media research

Measurement Hysteria Pt II: Benchmarking Performance

Tension Within the Media Evaluation Industry

Marketing Magazine's Agency of the Year Awards

Gov 2.0 requires more listening, not more information

The Value of Social Media to Corporations

The 11th Biennial PRISM Awards

Media Monitoring: Information is a raw material of productivity

What does social media mean to you?

Let data drive you

How "Small" Companies Strategically Use Media Monitoring

A Media Measurement inflection point?

Online Media Measurement Hysteria

What am I getting at?

Making anti-social organisations social

Would you like to hear the good news first or the bad news?

Six golden rules for media and PR measurement

Adtech Sydney: Hits and Misses

Hit

Miss

Media 2010: New media and Opportunities to Innovate

What does this mean for your company?

Questions you need to ask yourself in 2010

How do I combine new and traditional media platforms into robust communication plans?

How do I achieve my objectives and see valid results?