Just imagine that you’re running a business and that instead of tracking sales & revenue you only measured how many units you shipped to your vendors. Samsung was recently ridiculed for announcing that they had shipped one million Galaxy Tabs but sold only twenty thousand. The shipped figure is meaningless unless it results in equivalent sales. However public relations companies do this every day for their clients by measuring only outputs not the outcomes.

Ad Equivalency Value (AVE): three words that should strike terror into every client. Basically it’s calculated by measuring the amount of coverage in mainstream media and assigning a value based on how much the equivalent coverage would cost in advertising rates. So if a 30 second advertisement on the nightly news cost $5000 and you managed to get 30 seconds worth of news coverage then the AVE would be $5000.

Great, you might think, I just saved myself five grand.

However unless you know the conversion rates that result from the coverage the figures are meaningless. If you’re paying $10,000 per month to the PR firm and they’re telling you they’re generating $100,000 in AVE but the result is only generating $2,000 worth of revenue you’re losing money. It’s a bad spend. That’s why AVEs are more than useless: they provide a false hope and hide the real picture.

Now some PR firms are using AVEs to quantify their social media outputs. I’ve seen figures as high as $500 per Twitter follower or Facebook Like. This is just absurd.

Clearly there needs to be a better way to calculate the value added from the PR coverage generated. And there is: it’s called monetary return on investment. Unless the program is adding monetary value to the company it’s a wasted effort. It can be argued that the additional monetary value can be an intangible (like goodwill) but generally it needs to increase in income or the value of an asset, or reduced expenses. It’s calculated not in number of followers or fans or +1s, but only in monetary terms: dollars, euros, bottlecaps, whatever.

So, how do you prove that your program has led to increased value?

• Firstly you need a baseline. A snapshot of how things were before the program began. You want this to cover as far back as possible in order to eliminate external influences like seasonal factors.
• Secondly make a correlation between the program and the profit and loss statement or the balance sheet. A spike in website traffic is not a correlated ROI. A spike in products bought from the website is. More Facebook fans or Twitter followers is not an ROI. Reduced customer service costs because customers are using social networks instead of call centers is an ROI. Increased revenue, decreased expenses or value added to assets over the operational period of the program are all ROIs.
• Thirdly, prove that the program directly caused the change. This can be extremely difficult but there are ways to establish indicators that directly tie the results achieved to the program

PR companies often lack access to the operational accounts of their clients and so calculating the ROI can be difficult if not impossible. In this case the client will need to calculate the ROI themselves. However PR companies need to move away from AVEs toward a strategic outcomes-based plan that is in-line with their client’s organisational goals. After all you don’t measure how successful your advertising campaign was by how much you paid for it.

Icon courtesy of Images_of_Money
Slider Image courtesy of Brittany ((Halo))

Here’s how to market a product so that you can charge money for the exact same product that someone else is giving away fro free.

Starting tomorrow (15th January, 2009) Sony Asia are offering PlayStation Home users in Hong Kong and Singapore the chance to win a $HK10 PSN wallet top up. All users have to do is track down the mysterious avatars, shown in the posters inworld, and say ‘Hello’ to him or her.

The competition runs until the 22nd January, 2009 and funds are expected to be transferred to PSN accounts by 6th February.

For more information check out the latest news or see the relevant instructions inworld

While we’re on the topic of virtual worlds, Evan Reuters (nee Maloney) tells a sorry tale of poor customer service from Linden Lab.

Very sad and entirely lacking in professionalism. I wonder what Linden would do if the reverse happened. Probably call in the police.

Due to the fluctuating US dollar, Skribe Productions will begin charging for all services in Euros effective Monday, 31st March, 2008. Prices will be set based roughly upon the exchange rate as it was at the beginning of 2008. ie. At a minimum of seventy (70) Euro cents to one United States dollar. In the event that the US dollar is higher than 70 Euro cents on the date of the switch that amount instead will become the exchange rate,

Contracts signed before March 31st for work to be completed in April and beyond will charged in US dollars.