A few of us here at Metrica were lucky enough to go to the CIPR Excellence Awards last night and it’s fair to say that they were excellent!  We had a small vested interest, as sponsor, but also as a number of our clients were nominated for the work they have done over the last year.

So we were very pleased to see both the British Heart Foundation awarded for their Christmas Campaign in the Consumer Relations category, as well as the Royal British Legion for their Poppy Appeal Launch from Basra in the Broadcast category.  Congratulations to both of them.  We were also pleased to see other charities picking up awards throughout the night, including Action for Children, Guide Dogs for the Blind and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Given the tough economic conditions, with falling donations and pr budgets under continuing pressure, it is great to see how well the sector is doing in achieving excellence in PR despite restricted budgets.  It goes to show how much can be achieved through creative and innovative pr whatever the circumstances. 

We hope to see even more charities pick up awards next year, as we know how much good work is going on everyday in the sector.  Congratulations again to the winners and to those nominated.

In March 2009 Metrica's specialist Government and not-for-profit team launched the dedicated media PR benchmarking report for the charity sector -  Metrica Charity Radar.

Updated each month, the report evaluates a massive cross section of the online and traditional media to provide a level playing field for communications professionals working within the third sector to benchmark their organisations media coverage within both their specialised sectors and within the charity and not for profit arena as a whole.

To produce the report Metrica is analysing around 27,000 articles every month, clearly demonstrating that the charity sector continues to command a large amount of media attention.

This week sees publication of the second edition of the Charity Radar.  Some of the highlights from the April report include:

• The G20 summit was a key story with Oxfam, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF saying that the focus on economic recovery plans meant the summit missed an opportunity to set the world on a low carbon path

• Within the health and medical sector Breakthrough Breast Cancer found that there was an ‘alarming’ lack of awareness of breast cancer amongst women in Scotland; with one in six surveyed not being able to name one symptom of the disease

• This follows continued coverage in March and throughout April of the risks of cervical cancer following the death of Jade Goody, with a push to make women more aware of the need to screen against the disease

• Publications continued to site proceeds from Jade’s book going to Marie Curie Cancer Care; with Cancer Research UK gaining coverage of their Men In Heels day for the Race for Life campaign, urging people to be aware of cancer and help raise funds for research

• Gordon Brown was the most prolific public figure to be mentioned in charity coverage throughout April.  This was primarily focused on the G20 summit with Oxfam urging the government not to use the recession as an excuse for cutting overseas aid.  Other political figures making the top 10 were Boris Johnson and David Cameron

• Fundraising and research dominated the theme of coverage this month, however, legacies saw a large increase from March, with 812 articles referring to charitable legacies during the period

• Tesco was the most featured company mentioned within charity coverage during the month. This coverage was driven by the Tesco Mum of Year Awards awarded to Nell McAndrew for her efforts raising money for Cancer Research UK

• Both BT and Sainsbury’s saw an expected drop in their charitable coverage, following highs in March linked to the success of the Comic Relief Red Nose Day campaign. This helps to illustrate the value of charitable partnerships for companies wishing to demonstrate successful ROI for their business.

Cancer Research UK was the most prolifically covered charity, closely followed by the RNLI, and then the RSPCA. The monthly results for the top 25 of over 75 charities currently tracked are detailed in the table below.

Each month the report throws out so much fascinating information that I could go on and on!  Rather than doing that here, we want to encourage you to take a look for yourself.  In a neat mirror of Paul's post yesterday on how the media are coping trying to monetise content which has previously been given away for free, we thought it would be a great idea to make the launch edition of this report freely available.  You can download your complimentary copy of the first edition of Metrica's Charity Radar here.

If you’re interested in reading the full April report, or subscribing to the Charity Radar on a monthly or ad-hoc basis please get in touch with the specialist charity media analysis team at Metrica on 020 7922 1670.

Unless, you’ve been on the moon for the last 12 months, you'll be aware that the economy is on something of a slow down at the moment and worse, many people are predicting a recession. 

Here on the Government & NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) team at Metrica we wanted to highlight some research that we found interesting and also to give a few tips for controlling costs and improving time efficiencies that many of our clients are successfully implementing. 

First, the research - published by nfpSynergy earlier this week, it indicates that unsurprisingly, donations are closely linked with GDP, and if that drops, so do donations.  However, the research also concluded that there was an average 17 month delay before a drop on GDP had an impact on a charity’s income. This means there is more than enough time to prepare for the worst and begin to turn the ship so it faces any potential crisis head on. 

In our experience, there are some areas that have proven to be of huge value as clients look to extract more benefit and save costs from their media monitoring and evaluation. Whilst these are particularly relevant to the NGO and charity sectors many of the points will also apply to any business or organisation looking to control costs without diminishing the value of reporting.  

So here are five of our main insights ... 

1. First, and maybe most importantly - making sure you get the right message to the right audience is paramount.  This is particularly the case as the exploding world of media (think online, CGM, social media, TV on demand etc) fragments your target audiences ever wider.  It’s never been more important to have a system in place that allows you to check whether you are reaching your target audiences with the right messages.  If you can’t identify whether you’re reaching your target audiences, why bother measuring at all? 

2.  Once you have identified who your core target audiences are and what they’re watching, reading and listening to, focus your efforts, your media monitoring and your PR measurement on these outlets.   

We see a lot of charities who generate an enormous number of cuttings. When the cuttings books roll in, it’s an impressive sight, until you realise that actually, many of the stories just aren’t relevant -  articles about a local cake sake for example.  The bottom line is that nice though it is, these ‘name checks’ won’t make things happen, they won’t drive fundraising and they won’t raise any awareness of your major issues and campaigns.  

That name check is costing you a lot of money.  I don’t need to tell you how much a cutting costs to be sourced, you will already be painfully aware of that.  Add the cost of getting that piece about the local cake sale analysed, and you’ve already blown a fiver in the time it takes for your monitoring agency’s computer to pick out a keyword.  Getting a few hundred of those a month?  Ouch. 

A specialist media evaluation consultancy will be able to advise you on getting the best from your monitoring brief, focussing in on what really matters.  Is a monitoring company going to offer you advice that will cost them money?   

3. Resist spurious measures like AVEs and other mickey mouse measures – do we really need to go there? You know the arguments against them make sense, now stop paying them lip-service and wave them good bye!  PR, the guardian of an organisation's reputation,  will never be taken seriously at boardroom level while low-end evaluation techniques are still put forward to justify a budget or demonstrate success.

4. Do your reports give you exactly what you need?  Think about what is most important to you, and the different members of your team.  Are you getting the information in a timely fashion? Is the report you receive one long tome with large parts of it irrelevant to your role within the organisation?  If you recognise any of these issues, you should consider utilising online media analysis and evaluation portals like our very own MyMetrica.  Many of our clients find that having the ability to access their data 24/7, in real time, and completely customized to each user’s specific requirements gives them the control over their data that they have been missing. 

5. As previously mentioned, target audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented, making reaching them ever harder.  Proper planning has never been more important.  PR planning when done correctly will allow you to understand your target audiences better, their lifestyles and importantly how best to reach them through the media.  The old familiar PR planning tools don’t help you to get close to your target audiences – instead look to learn from the creditable systems that advertising firms use – you could look into TGI lifestyles or ConsumerPulse for example. 

In conclusion, evaluate your success at reaching your target audiences, not how many cuttings are sitting on your desk every morning.  Control your costs by being ruthless about what is important and what is not; make these decisions based on accurate research rather than gut feel.  Avoid the spurious measures of yesterday in your media evaluation, and ensure that you are using the latest time saving tools.  You will find that your time and your budget will go a lot further!