ImpactWatch

You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again. Monitoring the jumble of user-driven media is essential for the health of any brand. A few days ago, Jeremiah Owyang highlighted the importance of this on his blog entry about a recent brand-jacking involving Exxon Mobil. Apparently, a user account “ExxonMobilCorp” was created on Twitter, and a user known only as “Janet” posed as an Exxon Mobil spokesperson. This is not the first time that brand-jacking has been been identified as a problem within social media.

Analytics aside, it boils down to a matter of tipping points. Most organizations spend countless resources building their brands, and the reality is that these intellectual positions can fall at a moment’s notice. Trying to calculate ROI, tracing overall trends, semantic analysis — all of these take a back burner to public relations emergencies within the realm of new media.

Being aware of attacks on your image, misrepresentations of fact, and negative opinion from top influencers is simply necessary when positioning your brand.

With only three days left before things kick off in Beijing, our ImpactWatch demo has made itself clear: within the media, China is being portrayed at a far less favorable rate than that of the actual Olympic Games. Even with widespread buzz addressing athletic performance enhancers, coverage of China’s human rights record, air pollution, algae blooms, and authoritarian domestic policies have been pushed to the forefront of western media. While glittering articles about athletes’ preparations boost the favorability of the Olympics, China is struggling to find its own crutch topic under the strain of relentless criticism and unfavorable press.

The graph below illustrates what I’m talking about:

 Even from this raw graph of daily average favorability, the difference is quite noticeable. When I visualize by month to show overall trends, things get interesting:

These trend lines highlight the discrepancy between the two topics. While the Olympic Games’ average favorability has had its ups and downs, its average favorability has both remained positive and increased in positivity from May to August.

China has not fared as well in its coverage; while enjoying two relatively neutral months (May and June), its favorability rating began to falter in July (-.13) and August (-.29). Quite the opposite of the Games’ coverage, China’s trend line indicates both a negative rating and an increase in negativity from May to August.

As the Games’ opening ceremony nears, a new chapter in our ImpactWatch demo begins. With Beijing as a stage, the world — and our demo — is all eyes…anything could happen.

In the most recent volume of Communique Magazine , TBG’s Gary Bivings authored a featured article. “Watching the Web” is a great piece about how PR and marketing techniques are changing to incorporate the monitoring of various new forms of media, primarily the Web. The article cites several examples of how the Web has affected PR and customer involvement in the pharmaceutical industry, and discusses how content tracking platforms can be an effective addition to any PR firms strategy (this includes our very own ImpactWatch !). Among other issues, Gary listed the Top Seven Online Media Monitoring Practices in his article:

1. Get involved sooner rather than later
2. Implement a platform that will track online media for you
3. Categorize online activities of target markets/information seekers–blogging, message board posting, etc.
4. Make a list of the top sites to monitor per public/target audience
5. Track site statistics (eg, how often the site is visited)
6. Track bias of various sites with regard to your product
7. Decide how you will respond to the circulation of negative information about your product

You can read the article in its entirety here.

We’ve mentioned our media management and analysis platform, ImpactWatch, several times (in passing) on this blog. Last night, at the 2006 Sabre Awards Dinner in Manhattan, we learned that we had won the Iron Sabre for the Research/Evaluation category, beating out Hill & Knowlton’s Wal-Mart Media Day Analysis case study. H & K has won the category for several years in a row and is quite the formidable opponent. Thanks to tablemates Stanton Crenshaw (received the Bronze Sabre for Best Media Placement: Television) for their hearty congratulations and Denver-based MGA Communications for their kindness and their spirited applause.

We are very proud of our ImpactWatch product and also our work in assisting corporations and public relations agencies with continuous measurement and analysis of their programs and initiatives. The media landscape has been evolving rapidly in the past few years and we have been developing the system so that it reflects emerging media trends and represents each company’s communications goals and objectives, while staying consistent with best measurement practices. Measurement, as so many communicators know, is not very easy and it’s important to assess program measurement in context. Anyway, we sincerely appreciate the honor. (more…)