Welcome
Welcome to the latest issue of the Harvard newsletter providing views and insights into the world of PR and communications for TMT companies. In this issue we have the first of what will become two regular features - an interview with one of our clients - looking at a senior marketing person, how they got into the role and what their key challenges are day to day. We hope that you will find this both interesting and informative as well as resonating with some of your own challenges. In this issue we interview Brian Cleary, Vice President of Marketing for Open Pages. We are also kicking off a series of more in-depth articles from our own senior executives. Each will tackle an issue of general interest to those working in communications in the TMT space. Harvard MD Chris Cartwright looks at the challenges of measurement and evaluation.



In conversation

Interview with Brian Cleary - Vice President of Marketing, OpenPages Q. When did you join OpenPages – what attracted you to the role? I joined OpenPages in February 2006 and I was attracted by the market space in which the company is playing. There are few sectors that are showing the same potential for such high growth. Q. What do you like the most about your job? What is your least favourite part?

For me the best part is setting technical direction for the company – the challenge of seeing and entering a market before the competition. Our intuition at OpenPages has been great and I get real satisfaction from this.

The worst element is working weekends – I do at least 4 hours in the office most weekends – but that’s the deal when you join a high growth software company.

Q. What are the key challenges for a communications expert in today’s market?
I think the biggest challenge for any communications expert is to take a customer-centric approach to marketing that links campaigns together and orchestrates them across different communication media and tools. Secondly, to make sure we truly understand the language of the customer and avoid the “marketing to ourselves” syndrome.

Q. In your experience how and where can PR agencies add real value?

With smaller companies, PR is probably the most credible investment that a marketing department can make in entering a market. We would never spend money on brand advertising at this stage so PR becomes our critical air cover. It can help other marketing initiatives - especially in demand generation – because good air cover produces a rising tide effect. So, my PR agencies are really marketing consultants for me.

Q. How are things changing – especially in the globalisation of media and access to information?

The big thing is that media is not as in control as they think and this presents opportunities for PR. Podcasts, blogging and e-books, are blurring the lines of media ownership and between PR and other marketing disciplines - are we influencing them in a ‘traditional’ PR context or engaging with them as a demand generator?

Q. Is social media (blogs, wiki’s etc) having an impact on the way OpenPages communicates?

We are looking at social media, but have not actively engaged. The main obstacle is that there are lots of other projects competing for budget and cycles. Perhaps we are a little conservative, but we want to invest in ‘sure things’, but I do believe we should be experimenting.

Q. To what extent do you feel that PR must move out of the confines of media relations and address wider communications channels? How should in-house and agency staff work to achieve this?

Because of the issues discussed just now I’d encourage any PR firm to not colour within the lines. Standard PR and AR etc. are still of value, but there is scope for PR to influence and consult across a wider range of marketing activities. As I mentioned earlier, I see my PR partners as consultants in marketing not jut a means to get a release over the wire.

Q. What do you regard as the greatest obstacle to effective communication?

Too many choices! It is hard to keep up with it, and you run the risk of spreading yourself to thin. The ever rising noise level also makes it harder than ever to get through. Organisations issuing press releases for every single corporate event or product launch just adds to this constant noise and hardens media to real communication and news.

Q. What was the best piece of advice that you’ve been given in your career?

Early in my career a mentor said to me - Trust your instincts. This helped free me to make better decisions and to not second guess myself. Over the years I’ve found that generally when I trust my instincts I turn out to have made the right decision, but where I’ve not trusted them and have second-guessed, events have shown that I should have stuck to my original decision. That being said, I’m still pragmatic enough to test my assumptions to validate my instincts (my safety valve) before dedicating major resources and dollars on a particular marketing initiative.

Q. What keeps you awake at night?

Making sure we can execute – once you’ve identified and sized your market and you know that there are customers that need and have the ability to buy your solution then it’s the flawless execution that gets you there ahead of your competitors to capture market share.

Q. Finally, what did you want to be when you were growing up?

A sound recording engineer – I actually took a year off from college and worked as a recording engineer in Chicago. I worked with some bands, did some advertising soundtracks and worked on the soundtrack to the first Blues Brother’s movie.



Measure for Measure
By Chris Cartwright, Harvard MD

It is with a degree of trepidation that Harvard is turning its thoughts once again to that old hoary chestnut of ‘evaluation’ of PR campaigns, as we kick off a new piece of research into whether PROs and Communications Directors have changed in their attitudes to this. Are we still obsessed with cuttings volumes? How far, if at all, are we evaluating success in the world of social media? Is the PR world still focused on outputs – numbers of releases, numbers of interviews etc – or is it focused now on genuine results? In other words, changing behaviours, moving minds, shifting perceptions and all those worthy things?

Our research project has not even started; but I am going to take a guess anyway at some of the results, especially in the world of IT and telecoms PR.

My experience with numerous brands and a number of leading agencies in the technology sector suggests that the majority of agencies and clients are still working to a cuttings quota for many, if not most, campaigns – or numbers of interviews/reviews/features/comments and so forth. This may be because many PR campaigns in the tech world are, in the end, run out of a corporate headquarters in the US mandating a certain number of clips in certain publications as the only way to keep track of a disparate set of campaigns in different countries.

Outputs not outcomes are still key yardsticks for success in the PR world.

Despite the profile of social media in the PR space, most technology companies fight shy of plunging headfirst into the social media whirl – never mind measuring it. Harvard research in September 2006, http://www.harvard.co.uk/intelligence.htm showed that while there was some adoption of social media techniques for PR, many still don’t know where to start. While one in eight in-house PR practitioners already consider blogs, RSS and online communities to be part of their mainstream PR efforts, and one in four see them as a growing aspect of their communications, the majority were yet to embrace these emerging channels of influence: 27 per cent are just experimenting and 26 per cent have not yet investigated it. I would hazard a guess that even fewer are measuring the impact of their efforts in any scientific fashion.

Yes, many technology or telecoms companies do scrutinise and evaluate results and share of voice or mind. Sony Playstation has for some time now been monitoring the blogging world 24 hours a day to ’take the temperature’ of the blogosphere and gauge the impact of launches such as the Playstation 3. Vodafone runs perceptions audits amongst the media and analyst communities and also monthly ‘share of voice’ coverage analysis versus competition via a third party measurement service. I am sure neither of these companies is alone in embracing these more accepted routes for evaluating PR success – and to be fair, these methods do go way beyond the usual ‘advertising value equivalent’ by which many measure success – but they are certainly the exception rather than the rule.

In short, few, if any, companies in the tech space, measure their communications campaigns in terms of behavioural change in target audiences – or perception changes in the same audiences.

Why is this? Our cousins in advertising wouldn’t kick off a campaign without empirical research at the outset to benchmark ‘where they were’ and wouldn’t end it without guaranteeing that someone would assess the impact of the programme on the intended target audience. Our other cousins in direct marketing are at the forefront of evaluating success to the nth degree in percentage fulfilment terms - responses, purchases, and coupons. The advent of pay per click, cost per acquisition, cost per conversion, cost per visitor and search engine optimisation, has made online marketing the nec plus ultra of measurability. Why is PR being left behind?

Whether it’s a question of cost, or lack of understanding of how to audit audience impact, or inability to fine tune the marcoms mix to pinpoint PR’s contribution – that’s what we aim to find out with our latest research. And on the back of it, we hope to put forward some ideas and options to really, genuinely measure campaign success in the truest way possible – behavioural change.

To take part in our survey, please contact Chris Wilson on chris@harvard.co.uk