BREAKING THROUGH: GETTING YOUR MESSAGE TO YOUR AUDIENCE

The "wall of noise" between consumers and marketers is thicker than ever. News, entertainment, advertising, online content and personal conversations all vie for consumers' attention 24 hours a day. So how can communicators make their messages powerful enough to break through?

In almost all cases, the key is understanding what your target audience wants to hear. And surprisingly, breaking through the "wall of noise" may be easier than you think.

While consumers are being bombarded with an endless flow of information, search engines and other technologies also have made it possible for them to tune into messages they want and filter out ones they don't. Pair this with traditional market research and you'll soon get a clear picture of what moves and motivates your target – and what it takes to help your message stand out.

This issue of Perspectives looks at various ways of breaking through to target audiences. One highlight is a novel concept called "messaging through memes." The idea behind it is that marketers can hit a PR home run by associating their brands with topics that consumers already are talking about in online conversations – rather than adding yet new story lines to all of the noise that's out there. This approach takes authenticity to a new level because consumers will accept a brand's presence in their conversations if there is a natural fit.

In that spirit, our "Voices of Influence" section opens with an authentic discussion that focuses on consumers as the ultimate voice of influence. In a conversation moderated by Perspectives using instant messaging, three new-media strategists from Ketchum's Interactive Strategies Group discuss "messaging through memes." The conversation reflects the way everyday people communicate online and was edited only for length.

In "Viewpoints," Ketchum's new-media strategist Gur Tsabar lays out how search marketing can help deliver targeted PR messages – another way the Internet has made it possible for messages to break through (provided, of course, you know how to leverage it). In a look at how brands can stand out by associating with consumers' interest in sports, Ann Wool, head of Ketchum Sports Network and Ketchum Entertainment Marketing, answers a few questions about "breaking through" at the Olympic Games in Beijing. In a companion article, Bob Page of Lenovo, the official technology provider of the Beijing Olympics and a Ketchum client, talks about the benefits of his company's sponsorship. And Joanne Puckett, a Ketchum research director, looks at how research can and should be used to evaluate communication programs' effectiveness in reaching their targets.

"Viewpoints" also features a more traditional look at a timely target audience: value shoppers. This summer, consumer trends research firm Iconoculture issued a point of view about four types of consumers who are tightening their purse strings this year. As concerns about the economy mount, most companies with a product or service to sell will be considering value-conscious shoppers. In a Q&A and with excerpts from the research firm's own article, Iconoculture consumer strategist Tim Henderson provides a closer look at this target.

Finally, "Street Smarts" wraps up the issue with some key stats on a widely sought-after consumer demographic: U.S. Hispanics.

Just to the right of this letter, you'll find links to our latest poll as well as the results of the poll on expectations of corporations and CEOs. Our polls are designed to help us understand the communication challenges of our readers, and they provide an opportunity for you to compare your organization with others. Please take a few minutes to answer the four questions.

I hope you enjoy this issue of Perspectives and that you will let me know what you think. E-mail me at ray.kotcher@ketchum.com.

Best regards,

Ray Kotcher
Senior Partner and Chief Executive Officer, Ketchum

Voices Of Influence

Messaging Through Memes:
An IM Discussion on the Most Powerful Voice in Marketing: Consumers

The underlying goal of nearly every PR program is this: to tap into what matters to consumers. To do that, PR practitioners typically rely on focus groups, secondary research, past behavior and experiences, and sometimes plain old hunches. But what if it were a lot more streamlined?

In the age of new media, perhaps it is. Web technology has enabled people to connect in ways that they never could before, including gathering around common interests and concerns. Any given subject can attract large groups of people who are not only reading blog postings but also actively contributing to public discourse. These people openly share what matters to them with anyone who has an Internet connection. Simply put, they are the voice of the Web.

Ketchum's Interactive Strategies Group believes its job is to help clients hear and respond to that voice. Rather than asking consumers to join a brand's conversation, they steer brands into joining consumers' conversations. They call that process "messaging through memes."

Perspectives recently gathered three members of the group for a roundtable discussion to talk about this idea. The discussion was conducted through instant messaging and appears here in that format.

IM Roundtable Participants:
Jonathan Bellinger, Interactive Strategist, Ketchum, Chicago
Chris Kooluris, Senior Media Specialist, Ketchum, New York
Fernando Rizo, Interactive Strategist, Ketchum, New York
Calmetta Coleman, Senior Editor, Perspectives (moderator)

from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Let's start by defining what we mean by messaging through memes. Can one or each of you explain?

from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: so before we talk about communicating through memes, we should probably define memes first. memes are self-propagating ideas
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: generated organically by a community
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: exactly
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: they pass from one community to another, or just stay in one community
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: and I think it's worth saying up front that it's extremely, exceptionally rare that a meme comes from a brand or a PR / advertising agency
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: almost never
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: What do you mean by that?
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: well, whenever a PR agency or an advertising agency sits down to come up with a program idea, what they're really trying to do is create a new meme
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: something that's so culturally resonant with a specific audience that it gets propagated and shared
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: how many clients have you had that asked for a "viral video"? it doesn't work very well that way
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: let's say you try to create a meme, spend money creating a video and a website. Once you put the video out, it's a dice roll to see if it catches on
from C Kooluris to All Participants: The meme story is the primary message, it's popular, people care about it. Our client message is often predictable and expected... But because a meme is a story, there are times when a brand can create a message that becomes part of that story. Sort of like those small fish that attach themselves to a great white shark, you know they are part of a (popular) movement, even if they are just cleaning the teeth
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: memes that arise organically online are actually the web's way of telling you what it's already interested in
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: our approach is to find memes that are already popular, and hitch brands to them
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Is it easy to get clients to understand the importance of connecting with existing ideas?
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: no
from C Kooluris to All Participants: they are used to ad agencies maintaining creative control and PR agencies delivering well-constructed stories
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: they don't understand why consumers won't be as interested in their product launch as they are
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: what helps a lot is showing clients hard data supporting the fact that their target is crazy-interested in a meme, and that a meme is poised to spill over from a niche group into the mainstream
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: sometimes a meme will start super-niche, but often it can spill over into the mainstream
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: There's this meme out there now--the large hadron collider destroying the world--that started with super-geeks only, but now the NY Times and USA Today are covering it
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Once you've identified a meme, is there any way to tell just how big the target audience is for that particular issue or subject?
from C Kooluris to All Participants: For example, a meme surrounding politics might have 200 million potential fans
from C Kooluris to All Participants: where as a meme about Uwe Boll (the German film director) will relate only to hardcore gamers
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: we look at Google Trends data to see how many people are searching for specific meme-related keywords
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: you can identify massive spikes indicating that something is catching fire
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: we also look at certain target-right forums to see what people are talking about and read the tonality to estimate if something is going to explode
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: we also pay attention to important message boards and forums -- reddit, digg, something awful
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: You know what's funny too, we use the web to source all this stuff, but when we actually execute on a meme we use traditional PR tools...it's nothing very special that requires special knowledge...we just actually pay attention to what consumers like
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Identifying a brand with issues people already care about sounds smart enough, but how does it really work? Can you talk about the typical process for connecting a client to a meme?
from C Kooluris to All Participants: we have some examples – bridesmaid, Guns N Roses
from C Kooluris to All Participants: Jon, want to discuss bridesmaid?
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: 1. our group consumes a LOT of online content, so we see little blurbs and emerging stories that catch our interest
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: 2. once we find something that just screams for a brand to do something interesting around (e.g., a bride auctioning off a spot in her wedding on ebay), we do a quick, informal brainstorm to come up with what we might do
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: 3. in the bridesmaid case, we decided we needed to find a brand to place the winning bid
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: 4. we take it to the brands we think have relevant products/ brand positioning / brand characters...
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Does that mean that the action often starts with the meme? Rather than a brand seeking out a meme?
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: absolutely. we find memes first and then try to figure out what the next page of the story could be if a brand got involved
from C Kooluris to All Participants: it's like chicken or the egg though
from C Kooluris to All Participants: memes come to us at the same time we are looking for them
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: memes are ephemeral
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: they show up, get popular and go away, sometimes all in a day or two
from C Kooluris to All Participants: the key is this
from C Kooluris to All Participants: Clients need to respond quickly
from C Kooluris to All Participants: We need to know within 24 hours if a client wants to be part of a hot story
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: and i think it's important to note, too, we're not saying we can't plan ahead
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: sometimes we'll get a client with a product coming out that we know has a specific brand identity--Venom energy drink, for example
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: we know that with a brand like that, we want to hijack something completely over-the-top
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: so we might suggest to the client that they give us a chunk of budget we'll set aside while we look for a meme that fits what we want to do
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Explain what you mean by hijacking.
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: hijack: inserting our brands into existing memes to tell the next page of the story
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: and it's important that we be first
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Why?
from C Kooluris to All Participants: because then you own it
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: and memes get played out quickly
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: that basically ensures that our brand becomes a permanent part of the headline
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: take bridesmaid for example--that was a story about a bride that was in the news cycle for 2 days
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: after we got involved, it was a story about a brand helping a bride that dominated the news cycle for the next two weeks
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Are some clients hesitant to sign on to memes because they play out so quickly?
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: a lot of them just can't get approvals fast enough
from C Kooluris to All Participants: there are some concerns about sustainability
from C Kooluris to All Participants: and that's why we look to attach a brand's platform to a meme
from C Kooluris to All Participants: so for example
from C Kooluris to All Participants: if Alka Seltzer attaches to a meme around the plaform of RELIEF
from C Kooluris to All Participants: then we'd look for other memes that share that platform
from C Kooluris to All Participants: having a consistent brand voice is so important but clients need to be flexible
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: yeah, they'll already have invested $ in an ad platform
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: and they want that to dominate everything we do
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: that's just not always feasible with memes
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: they need to be able to adjust across multiple memes
from C Kooluris to All Participants: it's not about being associated with a million memes. that's pointless if each story has a different voice and brand platform
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Does that mean a brand should only seek out say, one meme a year or something?
from C Kooluris to All Participants: you can do a few
from C Kooluris to All Participants: depends on the brand
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: you can do a few memes and hit different audiences so they don't interfere with each other
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Can you share other successes like bridesmaids?
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: for example, Dr Pepper hit women and everyone else with bridesmaid, and hit music fans with Guns N' Roses
from C Kooluris to All Participants: this year, they are Guns N' Roses fans, everything is behind that
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: that raises a good point
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: whenever a brand gets involved with a meme
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: they can't behave like marketers
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: they need to show sincerity
from C Kooluris to All Participants: so true
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: they need to illustrate that they get why people love a meme
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: and behave like their audience
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: perfect example: when Chris wrote the release we put out for Guns n' Roses, he used allusions to lyrics from GNR songs
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: How do you know when it's working well?
from C Kooluris to All Participants: when Axl Rose thanks you
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: watch the reaction online
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: bloggers come to you, instead of the other way around
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: watch the tonality
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: see the pickup
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: for example--for bridesmaid, we barely lifted the phones to pitch
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: and the coverage kept rolling in
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: the basic underlying idea behind all of this is that communications come from the people now – the consumers
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: twenty years ago
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: there were three broadcast TV networks
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: now there's a million cable networks
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: a million glossy magazines
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: and who knows how many websites
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: nothing brands come up with will be more interesting than what people come up with on their own
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: In some ways, shouldn't this make marketing easier for brands?
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: Yes! The meme is the organic intersection point between what brands want to tell people and what people actually want to talk about. Marketing should take into account what people want to talk about, right?
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: it makes niche marketing easier for us
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: the line between PR and marketing has totally blurred
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Have you seen any brands that really do this well?
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: it blows my mind that this isn't more common, actually
from C Kooluris to All Participants: Taco Bell
from C Kooluris to All Participants: They have been doing it since day one
from C Kooluris to All Participants: like when that Satellite was crashing into the earth
from C Kooluris to All Participants: they put a big bullseye in the ocean that read
from C Kooluris to All Participants: HIT HERE
from C Kooluris to All Participants: if it hit, everyone in the world got a free taco
from C Kooluris to All Participants: brilliant
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: so simple
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: that was beautiful
from C Kooluris to All Participants: here is something that's KEY
from C Kooluris to All Participants: ideas need to be one sentence additions to a meme
from C Kooluris to All Participants: you can't tell complex stories
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: one sentence, tops
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: a headline
from C Kooluris to All Participants: be a welcomed addition to that story
from C Kooluris to All Participants: not an ad plastered against it
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: its about adding value for the people involved in a meme
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: and that almost never comes from talking about yourself
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: I know you all need to wrap up. Any summary comments?
from C Kooluris to All Participants: I like to say I work for Ketchum, I work for clients, but I really work for the people out there, for they will ultimately decide if I am succeeding in PR...my paycheck stays the same, the hours I have to bill are always the same, the only change I can make is in the minds of people.
from Fernando Rizo to All Participants: your product launch is not a holiday.
from Jonathan Bellinger to All Participants: PR doesn't have to be so complicated. It's so easy to find stuff people are interested in, and clients don't lose out by talking less about themselves and going along for the ride once in a while.
from Calmetta Coleman to All Participants: Thanks, all!

Viewpoints

There are many ways to hone in on a target audience. What the best strategies have in common is a clear understanding of what will get a particular target's attention at a given time. Sometimes reaching an audience can be as simple as making information they're looking for easier to find. Or maybe it's fitting a relevant message into something that already has your market's attention. Here, three PR professionals and two research specialists share insights on targeting through search and sports marketing, understanding an important target audience, and evaluating the effectiveness of targeted programs.

Searching For Your Audience Gur Tsabar	Homing In On Value Shoppers Tim Henderson
Hitting a Home Run With Sports PR Ann Wool and Bob Page	Did You Hit Your Target? Joanne Puckett

Gur Tsabar
Vice President, New Media Strategist, Ketchum

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Searching For Your Audience

Imagine that your company is the focus of negative and inaccurate news. Now, imagine that – months later – existing customers, potential customers, shareholders, prospective investors and advocacy groups are still calling to chide and complain.

Target audiences usually are defined by a set of common demographics: male/female; young/mature; married/single; affluent/budget-conscious; and so on. But sometimes the main thing a "target" has in common is your product, brand, or company, and the latest news surrounding it.

So how do you reach them with public relations messages? The traditional methods are mostly mass communication. Not everyone who hears the messages cares. And not everyone who might care hears them.

Enter search marketing.

Most marketing and communication professionals think of search marketing solely as a form of advertising. But it also can be powerful as part of a public relations program.

Consider that Ketchum's most recent media usage survey showed that more people rely on search engines than on any other media channel, and you realize that consumers view sites like Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN as virtual catalogs of all the information they might ever need. That makes Google the largest publication on the planet – one that attracts upward of 5 billion views a month in the U.S. alone. And that makes it a key outlet for countering negative news, announcing a new product, or simply enhancing corporate or brand reputation.

Each search query represents a customer, a prospective customer, a journalist or a blogger telegraphing to the world what it is that they want or need – effectively starting a conversation. A company or brand can earn its way into those conversations through paid placements that provide the precise information that fills those wants and needs. (Imagine an irate customer Googling for your company's e-mail address and turning up a press release that lays out the real facts and cools his anger.)

Professional communicators should understand this: Tie your public relations messages to the right keywords, and search marketing can put those messages in the middle of public discourse – in real time. Your target audience, in essence, will "search" and find you.

Tim Henderson
Consumer Strategist for Iconoculture

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Homing in on Value Shoppers: A Closer Look at Iconoculture's Point of View

With current concerns over the economy and prices rising everywhere from grocery stores to airports, more and more consumers are looking for bargains. That makes value-conscious shoppers a relevant target for virtually any company with a product or service to sell. Consumer-trend research firm Iconoculture took a close look at "value shoppers" in a recent point-of-view article titled "The New Value Mindset: Targeting Value Shoppers During the Shopping Recession."

To bring some of the company's insights to our clients, Perspectives recently interviewed Tim Henderson, one of the authors of the July 2008 article. Here is the Q&A along with excerpts from Iconoculture's article.

Q&A with Tim Henderson, Consumer Strategist for Iconoculture

Perspectives: Why is Iconoculture looking at value shoppers now?

Henderson: We're looking at consumers across the whole value set, and we see that 2008 brought a much more price-sensitive consumer. Until this year, most shoppers engaged in what we call scrimping and splurging. They used the Internet, loyalty programs and coupons to get the lowest prices on many things, but the same consumers would often splurge on other things that they saw as offering higher quality. That was part of their idea of value. Now, with the mortgage meltdown and other economic realities, value basically equals price. Value isn't as nuanced as before. So we're looking at how that will change retail going into the 2008 holiday shopping season and beyond.

Perspectives: The "demographic hotspots" that you spell out in your article seem to cover every income level. Is everyone redefining value?

Henderson: In some ways, yes. The "demographic hotspots" are key targets and they can be found across incomes. If you want to narrow it, think about consumers as swing voters or what we call "swing shoppers" – that vast middle ground of middle-income shoppers. In terms of income, they aren't very high end or very low end. So they are shopping across the spectrum. These are the people who are redefining value and are changing where they shop. Moms are a key demographic among middle-income consumers, and it's likely they have decided to tighten the purse strings.

Perspectives: You also assign several values to each group – such as control, self-sufficiency or loyalty. How are you seeing marketing messages encompass these values?

Henderson: Those values are motivators. They help marketers understand what motivates consumers' shopping behaviors. For someone who has reality as a value, it's likely they will prefer straightforward marketing messages – they want a clear, no-nonsense message indicating the value of this product. A shopper who has belonging as a value may prefer marketing messages that make her or him feel a part of something.

One thing I've been telling retail clients is that they have to redefine value because that's what consumers are doing. Retailers like Whole Foods and Target already are starting to do this. For instance, Target is a discounter, but most people don't think of it that way. People expect Target to be trendy and hip. They expect more from Target than they do from other discounters, and people sometimes equate "more" with higher cost. Unfortunately, that can hurt Target in 2008.

In September [2008], Target launched the Bullseye Bodegas in New York. These are essentially pop-up stores that feature products from the retailer's designer collaborations. When Target announced the Bullseye Bodegas, the press release was filled with very value-conscious terms, such as "bargains," "great deals," "commitment to low prices," "incredible value." Essentially, Target is putting forth its definition of value, which is that value equals price plus quality plus hip and trendy merchandise. It's delivering the low-price message that shoppers are listening for this year, but it's also reminding people that they don't have to sacrifice other things that matter to them.

Ann Wool
Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Ketchum Sports and Entertainment Marketing

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Breaking Through With Sports Marketing:
An Interview with Ketchum Sports Network's Ann Wool

Talk about an Olympic-sized task. Getting marketing messages to stand out among all the noise surrounding the Olympic Games is a major challenge, but the effort is well worth it. In the U.S., NBC declared this summer's Beijing Games the most watched television event of all time, with more than 211 million viewers tuning in. And the China Network Communications Group, which provided fixed-line communication for the games, has said that more than 4 billion people around the world had access to coverage.

Even a slice of that audience is a worthy target for almost any company. And Ann Wool has years of experience in helping clients reach it. Ann, who heads Ketchum's sports marketing specialty, has worked on communications programs around every Olympics since the 1992 games in Barcelona. She and other members of the Ketchum Sports Network spent most of August in Beijing executing programs for clients and observing the communication landscape. Perspectives recently interviewed Ann about her reflections on breaking through at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Perspectives: You have extensive experience working with the Olympics. What are some general guidelines that companies should keep in mind when considering a marketing or communication campaign tied to the games?

Wool: The Olympics offers many points of entry and many levels of sponsorships. Understanding what any one point will get you is important. For instance, some publicity efforts start about six months ahead of the games, so companies that launch a campaign "early" need to be sure they can maintain the news momentum throughout the games. Companies that are new to the Olympics also need to be aware that many corporations already "own" programs that they have been doing for a while, so you have to steer clear of other people's territories. For smaller companies especially, competing for space can be extremely challenging.

To succeed, it is important to work with a partner who is really good at counseling clients on creative ideas and developing strategic approaches that are going to break through. One technique we've used that has been especially successful is what I like to call "layering." We help clients decide on a few key focal points, but we make sure that those points offer multiple ways to generate publicity.

Perspectives: Given the global nature of the games and of many of today's corporations, what are your thoughts on how the Olympics measures up against other sporting events for PR effectiveness?

Wool: The only sporting events that can compare to the Olympic Games from a global nature are the FIFA World Cup for soccer and Formula One auto racing. But they are extremely different marketing platforms. The Olympic Games has a unique halo and distinct spirit that demands extremely careful handling. Companies are easily accused of over-commercializing the games. The nearly 11,000 athletes from all corners of the world make the Olympics truly special. Brands that align with the right athletes, or make the athlete experience better, can enjoy great PR success. That said, it's a very competitive space to work in, and the 10 days leading up to it can be the toughest. That's when marketing and PR programs are rolling out thick and fast, and programs are being tweaked and refined leading into the Opening Ceremonies.

Perspectives: Was there anything new in terms of communication programs or particular opportunities at this year's games?

Wool: One of the greatly publicized challenges facing the PR teams for the sponsors of the Beijing Games PR was the efforts of anti-China activist groups. It was difficult to compete with that media coverage. But the worst period ended when the Torch Relay entered China on May 2, 2008. As for opportunities at the games, one of the expectations people had was that there were going to be 12,000 to 20,000 members of accredited media there and that an additional 15,000 reporters would be there just to cover Chinese culture. I don't think the actual numbers reached anywhere near the projections, but there was still an amazing number of media in Beijing. And there was incredible competition among sponsors for their attention.

In terms of what was new, it was a challenging environment to operate in because we often had to operate with less advance notice than in previous games. Everything from media access, to access to athletes and access to venues was decided at the last minute – and even changed during the games. For example, we didn't find out until about two weeks prior to the games that we would have only five day passes for entry to Lenovo's iLounge. The passes had to be shared among Chinese and worldwide media. We had long expected that more passes would be available and had planned around that, so everything had to be refined at the last minute. Another challenge was that people learned soon after arriving in Beijing that the Olympic Green – the Olympic Park that was built for the games – was not accessible to most non-rights-holding TV crews, and that put a dent in PR possibilities for the costly sponsor pavilions. Overall, these unexpected challenges tested PR teams and provided an opportunity for teams to show how quickly we could think on our feet and sometimes develop significant new programming on the spot. It also reinforced the value of great media relationships as PR teams were more valuable than ever in helping media get access to the stories they wanted to cover.

Perspectives: Can you sum up some of the best public relations or marketing programs that you observed in association with this year's Olympic games?

Wool: Some of the best things that I saw were done by Lenovo, Bank of America, Visa, Coca-Cola and McDonald's – the usual suspects – except Lenovo, which was making its debut at this summer's games. These companies represent the best in class. Their programs broke through the clutter and also made sense for their brands. For instance, Lenovo provided all of the technology and hardware for the games, and they built Internet lounges, called iLounges, for the athletes in the Olympic Village. Thousands of athletes and media used the lounges, providing great visuals and user experiences for Lenovo.

Similarly, Bank of America rented out a two-story building that served as a gathering place for athletes and their families. The media were there every day and whenever anyone interviewed an athlete, the reporter opened or closed with the message that they were broadcasting from the Bank of America Home Town Hopefuls Family Center. Also, Visa's eight-year sponsorship of Michael Phelps paid off and demonstrated the value of deep partnerships with the right athlete when the company was able to host one of his first major post-competition press conferences.

Johnson & Johnson also had a program that got lots of notice. The company has had a long-time partnership with China's Qin Shi Huang Terracotta Army Museum, so it placed five terracotta soldiers from the museum on display at the pavilion. This gave people at the games an opportunity to see a rare exhibit of precious relics, and it also reinforced the company's ties to communities around the world, including in China.

Bob Page
Program Director, Corporate Communications, Lenovo

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Sports Marketing: Lenovo at the Olympics
Interview with Bob Page, Program Director,
Corporate Communications, Lenovo

One of the clients that Ketchum Sports Network accompanied to the Beijing Games was Hong Kong-based technology provider Lenovo. Lenovo was a first-time Olympics sponsor this year, and Perspectives is honored to feature the company in our discussion of sports marketing. Here, Bob Page of Lenovo's corporate communications team discusses his firm's global sponsorship of this summer's Olympics.

Perspectives: What do you see as the major benefit(s) of being a worldwide partner for the Beijing Games?

Bob Page: Lenovo's two central objectives for partnering with the Olympic Games on a worldwide level were to position the company as an international brand within China and to introduce the brand in the rest of the world.

Perspectives: Do you expect to be able to leverage Lenovo's role as technology provider for the games beyond this summer? If yes, in what ways?

Page: Yes, serving as the technology provider of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games – the most complex sporting event in human history – is an outstanding case study that will live on for years. Lenovo will reference both its technology support of the games and its marketing activation to build the brand.

Perspectives: As a technology provider for the games, can you share your thoughts on how the role of new media helped shape publicity during the games?

Page: Lenovo's deployment of new media made historic changes in how athletes communicated about their experiences in the Olympic Games, and in how fans connected to athletes and Olympic events. These were the first Olympic Games in which athletes could blog during the competition time period, and Lenovo created a blogging program called "Voices of the Olympic Games" that fully leveraged this historic change.

Stories on CNET.com and The Wall Street Journal Online described how Lenovo led these historic changes. The headline on the CNET story is impressive – "How Lenovo changed our Olympics experience." Beyond this program, Lenovo and the Ketchum Sports Network also created another new way for fans to connect with athletes and with the games – a philanthropic Olympics memorabilia auction with the athletes' organization, Right to Play. This online auction enabled fans to connect to athletes and the games by purchasing a piece of Olympic history, with proceeds going to philanthropic organizations.

Perspectives: We understand that Lenovo had PR representatives from both your company and the Ketchum Sports Network on site in Beijing; what PR programs executed during the games did you see as major successes? And what made them successful?

Page: Lenovo and the Ketchum Sports Network executed seven major PR programs at the Olympic Games. We promoted press visits to Lenovo Internet Lounges in the Olympic Villages and to other Lenovo Olympic venues, such as the Showcase on the Olympic Green. We hosted 400 reporters every day in the Internet Lounge in the main press center. We trained executive spokespeople and aggressively promoted interviews with them on broadcast and major news media. We created video, print and online news and events daily with a news bureau operation, both before and during the games. We hosted dozens of journalists on four separate half-day familiarization tours to the Lenovo Research and Development campus in Beijing. We prepared for contingencies. And we shaped a comprehensive story around the launch of the Lenovo brand.

Each of these seven programs was successful in different ways, but executed simultaneously they created a regular and unstoppable story about Lenovo's involvement in the Olympic Games. This resulted in positive stories on an hourly basis from news media in various parts of the world.

Perspectives: How does Lenovo measure the success of the partnership overall?

Page: Lenovo is measuring the success of the partnership in impact on the Lenovo brand, in how coverage was generated, how Lenovo visibility and awareness compared to other sponsors, and how connections between consumers, athletes and Lenovo representatives were created.

Initial measurements conducted during and immediately after the conclusion of the games have been extremely positive. For instance, according to the Global Language Monitor, Lenovo's media awareness increased more than 2,100 percent after the Olympics, compared to the end of 2007. Lenovo will continue to gather and evaluate these measurements throughout the fall.

Joanne Puckett
Vice President and Research Director, Ketchum

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Did You Hit Your Target?
By Joanne Puckett
Vice President and Research Director, Ketchum

Consider these statistics from the 2008 PRWeek /
MS&L Marketing Management Survey:

• Only 30.6 percent of marketers believe PR agencies do an "excellent" or "very good" job of measuring the effectiveness of their performance, well behind direct marketing agencies (54.8 percent) and Internet / new-media shops (53.2 percent) and also lagging advertising agencies (35.7 percent).
  
  
• When asked why they would consider cutting PR budgets, 65.9 percent of marketers cited difficulty in quantifying ROI, lack of effectiveness, or inability to measure PR efforts.
  
  

The sentiment behind the numbers is no surprise. Marketers have long viewed public relations results as difficult to measure. What is surprising is that communication professionals don’t do more to counter this thinking. A 2007 survey of senior-level PR practitioners by the Annenberg School for Communications at USC¹ revealed that budgetary allocations for evaluation fall within a fairly narrow range, from 5 percent to 7 percent. All too often, post-program evaluation isn’t done at all.

If you understand that research can inform the development of communication programs, recognizing that it also can help determine whether you reached your target is a logical next step. Every communication professional should want to know: Was my message heard? Did it change the target awareness, understanding or behavior? Did it ultimately affect business results?

The metrics used to answer such questions can range from the simple (such as the number of clips generated or total impressions) to the very sophisticated (including a regression analysis to determine how local-market PR affects sales). Here are some ways Ketchum recently has measured success for clients:

• When Kodak entered the inkjet printer category with a new value proposition in 2007, the company looked for PR to drive sales. Advertising was limited and included no TV. One month after the product introduction, the PR team had achieved more than 2,700 news stories, reaching nearly 1.3 billion consumers worldwide. Kodak soon led in share of voice globally. In early 2008, Kodak announced that it had exceeded its sales goal of 500,000 printers.
• A commodity client sought to measure the effectiveness of its marketing communication programs, which aimed to increase awareness, change the attitude of consumers and influencers, increase influencers’ recommendations to consumers and boost sales. Ketchum analysis revealed that for every article placement in a certain region, sales in that region increased by 60,814 pounds of product. Increases in the quality of media coverage (placement of photos with stories vs. without, color photo vs. black and white, etc.) and in persons reached also led to higher sales in each region.
• A consumer product company sought to connect with consumers using its branded Olympic sponsorship platform. After the program, a media analysis revealed that the coverage generated an average quality score of 68.4 out of 100 points. A survey of the target revealed a 31 percent increase in purchase preference. A regression analysis determined that an increase in awareness of 10 percent would generate an increase in sales of 0.86 percent to 1.4 percent. Based partly on this analysis, the company continued the sponsorship the following year.

So, PR results can be measured. Take time to evaluate communication programs after they’re done, but don’t make it an afterthought. Build in research and measurement at the beginning of programs – and budget for it.

¹ Fifth Annual Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices Study, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communications, 2007 data

Street Smarts

Five Facts You Should Know When Targeting U.S. Hispanics

• The buying power of U.S. Hispanics was an estimated $862 billion in 2007 and is projected to reach $1.26 trillion by 2012.
  The Multicultural Economy, 2007, The Selig Center for Economic Growth, 2007
  
  
• About 60% of U.S. Hispanics say they "enjoy looking at or listening to advertising," compared to 30% of non-Hispanic whites.
  10 Things About U.S. Hispanics, Yankelovich Monitor Think Tank, Q1 2008
  
  
• About 44% of U.S. Hispanic consumers choose brand-name products or services because they "seem to understand what's important to my family," compared to 25% of non-Hispanic whites.
  10 Things About U.S. Hispanics, Yankelovich Monitor Think Tank, Q1 2008
  
  
• Among first-generation U.S. Hispanics, 48.6% like to buy brands that make them feel successful, compared to 32% of second-generation and 26% of third-generation Hispanics.
  Acculturation & Beyond, New American Dimensions' Hispanic Segmentation Study, 2008
  
  
• Seventy-seven percent (77%) of U.S. Hispanics believe women have as much of a responsibility to support a family as men do.
  Acculturation & Beyond, New American Dimensions' Hispanic Segmentation Study, 2008