Challenge: Monitoring Media Coverage for Events

Media events are the bread and butter of communications/PR work in the telecommunications industry. From new spokespeople contracts to influencer collaborations and product launch events, telecommunications is a noisy industry with only a few players and much promotional activity. Events, particularly campaigns, are notoriously difficult to track and measure for success as they are so different from one another and do not directly tie to end-results like they do in marketing. In this fast-moving industry, understanding an event’s success in near-real time can present challenges.

When a new VP of Communications joined a major telecommunications company, he wanted to understand how special events directly impact brand drivers and overall company perception and goals. The executive was looking to answer questions like “Who is talking about us?”, “How are our messages and brand drivers pulling through?”, and “Which areas are our competitors dominating with their events?”

Solution: Reporting on Event Success in Near Real-Time for Just-in-Time Insights

The communications team decided to deploy PublicRelay’s media intelligence solution, which utilizes top technology and human analysis to measure event effectiveness. This approach allows them to cast a wider net of keywords and sub topics both on social media and traditional coverage that would track various events. By combining social media with comprehensive local and national coverage access, they track not only company events but also industry-wide competitor events. This analysis goes beyond merely tracking the media coverage – it also measures the coverage against brand drivers like customer service, customer growth, network performance and partnerships.

Now in a mere matter of hours, the company can determine the impact of their events. Throughout an event the communications team receives fully analyzed reports on an ongoing basis and can view their coverage data live in the PublicRelay system at any point in time. These reports shed light on things like the percentage of coverage for key messages and the breakdown of tonality for each. PublicRelay’s Trending Score also enables the telecommunications giant to see what articles are gaining the most traction on social media.

In addition to adequately tracking their own events, the company also sees how their events compare to their competitors’ events. In almost real-time, the team can answer questions like “Were competitors getting picked up more?”, “Were their events being shared more on social media?”, “What outlets were talking about these competitors and more importantly, were influencers picking them up?”, and lastly, “What exactly are people saying about competitors – are any of the conversations about topics we are trying to own?”

Result: Measuring Impact of Events Over Time

Through quarterly reporting, the communications team has a holistic view of the overall penetration of their messages and can determine things like whether they are increasing key coverage on topics they care about or successfully engaging media influencers. They can also measure how media events stack up over time and how they impact the corporate reputation over the long haul.

The team can also view the same information about their competitors’ events, allowing them to determine areas of coverage that the competition owns, including network reliability, price, or customer service. Each of these pieces of data provides actionable insights for future events; because it shows where the company could enhance its messaging.

Getting to the Big Answers and Driving Event Strategy

Events are costly and time-consuming productions that demand accurate and timely analysis. Distinguishing the positive and negative coverage by authors and outlets helps the company strategize in real-time and, in the long term, set more informed goals. The communications team can now quickly locate favorable and unfavorable reporting from their organization’s point-of-view. Their ability to identify the reach of publications covering them as well as stories going viral on social media, enable them to successfully target key industry influencers.

Meanwhile, drilling down to the messaging of their event news and social coverage helps them track the impact on their overall brand. A dedicated human analyst ensures that even the tiniest detail about their coverage is recognized and categorized correctly – including concepts and topics that do not appear in text.

The communications team is proactively gathering insight about event performance. These high-level answers help the VP measure campaign success, course-correct strategy when messaging is not going as planned, realign resources to focus on specific outcomes, and most importantly, demonstrate to his board that his team is making strategic decisions that drive company goals.

Talk to an analyst about gathering insight into your events.