Credit crunch. There, I've said it. I'll try and make it through the rest of this post without using the phrase again.

With everything that's going on in the financial sector at the moment we've seen a marked increase in the amount of red across our reports. Bailouts, bank runs and buyouts aren't topics that inspire confidence in most people, and to judge from recent headlines in Time and the International Herald Tribune, even "respectable" journalists are finding it hard not to get caught up in the mood of panic.

Things are obviously pretty bad at the moment, and I for one am fascinated - in a 'look-at-the-car-crash' kind of way - by daily developments on this subject. But given that confidence is at the very core of the crisis, are the shock headlines and prophecies of doom and gloom really fair on the companies concerned? And do we as measurement experts have a role to play in cutting through the hysteria and presenting a more balanced view of the organisations we work for?

The answer to both questions is yes, although forgive me for perching (gently!) on the fence on the first one. Doom and gloom headlines when banks fail and have to be rescued are fair enough on balance. Less fair is when market speculation, perpetuated by the press, destroys confidence in an organisation and leads to its downfall. Leading UK bank HBoS - a Metrica client- wasn't alone in having problems with its exposure to bad debts, but would it have declined so quickly had confidence in the bank not already been rocked in March 08 by false rumours perpetuated by short-sellers in the market, and reported widely in the press? Even in the midst of this story, as our data shows below, HBoS was securing more neutral or positive coverage (within the green 'favourable' line) than negative, and this wasn't the perception that you got from reading the headlines. 

Which leads us neatly onto the second answer. Yes, in times like these our objective approach to the media, and ability to identify to our clients what is really being said about them, is more important than ever. Too often, sensational headlines distract attention from the more balanced view of the facts immediately underneath- the articles linked above are all examples of that to a greater or lesser extent.

Measurement experts must work with PR experts to help them carve through the bad press, demonstrate where they have been successful, and make recommendations on how that success can be perpetuated. It may seem obvious to us, analysing the coverage on the outside of the storm, but it can be difficult for our clients to get that sense of perspective when they're right in the middle of it. The current economic situation is a great opportunity for the whole evaluation industry to show how valuable it can be in a crisis, which in turn could help our clients to secure their PR budgets and continue their good work.

I'm not promising that we can solve the credit crunch (so close to not mentioning it again! sooo close!) but the work we do can really help our clients find their way through tough times, and that can only improve our fortunes and strengthen our reputation.

We're right in the middle of financial results season, the time where the number crunchers of the UK banking industry come out of their counting houses and tell the stock market how much money they've made.

In recent years, these articles have followed a familiar pattern: Bank X announces profits of a figure that only quantum mathematicians understand, city analysts rejoice as profits beat expectations, everyone goes home happy.

So far, so 2006.  But in the wake of the US subprime crisis, the ongoing drought in interbank lending and the realities of an economic slowdown, results this week look very different. So far HBoS and Lloyds TSB have announced a 70% fall in profits, HSBC has seen a 28% drop and Alliance & Leicester swallowed a massive 99% fall to pave the way for its acquisition by Santander. Northern Rock eschewed profits entirely and posted a £585m loss. The banks are clearly jumpy, and the media (to judge by recent headlines) has followed suit. So where does this leave the ordinary punter?

Metrica's ConsumerPulse data provides some interesting insight on public confidence in their finances.

Whilst the banks are having a tough time of it, there are some winners in the current financial climate. An excellent article on bbc.co.uk today shows that "value providers" like Aldi and Lidl are enjoying increased sales as people tighten their belts. 

Metrica's ConsumerPulse survey runs every six months and, with a new version about to launch (and rebranded UKPulse), it will be interesting to see if consumer attitudes change as the economic slowdown continues.  Watch this space!

So Google has a new competitor, and judging by the snails-pace load times on release day Cuil (pronounced "cool", although what the French make of the name I can only imagine!) proved popular. A quick search for Metrica proved its accuracy for text at least, a search for media analysis and media evaluation showed it finds the right companies!  The site previews were a little baffling however (take the link to our "About us" page -  I can't remember ever seeing this guy roaming around Metrica Towers!)

On the whole, the consensus in the office is that Cuil is, well, cool. The layout is neat and speaks the language of people like me who are surrounded by technology but have only really got into it since they dumbed it down a bit. We've established that the search engine works. But here's the thing - why stop there?

Cuil's creators are obviously smart people with their fingers on the pulse of trends in web usage. So with analysis of web content and web usage gaining importance by the second, why doesn't Cuil have any social media search functions or access to web analytics tools as part of the service? I wouldn't have expected blog tracking of the sophistication of Buzz Logic or Radian 6 (or Metrica, of course!) but I find it baffling that Cuil haven't at least paid lip service to the idea. They could be in development of course, but if I was up against Google, with it's vast array of additional products and services (let's not forget Google news for mainstream web content) I'd have been tempted to finish developing my service before I launched it.

In a straight "search engine to search engine" fight, no one really expects Cuil to beat Google. And with people pleading for more control of the information on the web, I couldn't help but feel that, pretty as it is, Cuil's offering is a bit of a step backwards.

The Friday before a Bank Holiday is often quiet, and today is no exception. So I’ve been filling my time by surfing the web for the latest evaluation news in the financial sector.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the top Google link for “financial media evaluation” (inspired search, I’m sure you’d agree) was an article from 2000 titled “The heresy of MEDIA MEASUREMENT”! Under the rather alarming headline, Wilma K. Mathews of Communication World explained that “Counting clips and calculating (advertising value) equivalences measure your activity, your output. They have no correlation to the changed or desired behavior of the audiences you attempted to reach.” Heady stuff for a pre-dotcom crash PR audience to take in.

Back in the present day, I leaned back on my hoverboard  and reflected on how successfully the output vs. outcome message has spread within financial PR. Or has it? PR managers in the financial services sector now understand evaluation well enough to benchmark their PR activity against all manner of sophisticated metrics. Meanwhile, access to on-demand reporting tools such as our very own MyMetrica gives them the means to disseminate the results across their organization in a variety of formats.

Great news, but what hasn’t happened yet is a shift in the mindset of non-PR stakeholders, especially at board level. All too often financial PR professionals find their efforts to provide actionable evaluation data frustrated by demands for something that puts a £ (or $) sign in front of their results. Senior financial executives work with money, after all, and it can be hard to make them value anything else.

So what’s a PR to do? As we see from Mathews’ article, AVE’s were past their sell-by date before the Enron scandal broke. If your board insists on hard currency as a PR metric, you could try cost per thousand people reached either in the population as a whole or, even better, within your target audience. Present the information in a scorecard alongside some more forward-thinking metrics from your evaluation portal and they might just start to see things a different way.

You may have read that Archant Suffolk, a division of the regional newspaper group, plans to make redundant subeditors on several of its titles and replace them with advertising designers who are not trained journalists.  Roy Greenslade’s blog post on the matter (with one of the headlines of the year) suggested the digital future would have no sub-editors and fewer journalists (and prompted the expected tide of protest from media commentators).  

Regional papers cutting costs, journalists up in arms- all perfectly normal so far. But it strikes me that PR professionals may be pleased with this news.  If subeditors eventually cease to be, then isn’t there a better chance of your next press release making it to print in its original (naturally, perfect!) form? And won’t regional newspaper editors be thankful that they can rely on your diligence in submitting copy that complies with media law? In short, why let subs interfere when you can do a perfectly good job of editing your own work for publication? 

Some may fear that a lack of subediting on reactive coverage could be harmful, removing an important filter for misleading or legally-dubious copy. Norwich Union, for example, may have been more concerned about misrepresentation had a sub editor not been on hand when it announced job cuts last year (the East Anglian Daily Times wrote on the subject, and is one of the affected titles). Conversely, you might argue that this presents an opportunity for crisis PR professionals to get their corporate position and key message on sensitive subjects into the press more easily. 

Perhaps I’m being a little simplistic, and perhaps taking on a sub-editor’s duties sounds like extra work to you! Will it really happen anyway, or is this just a chance for journalists to have a good whinge? I’d welcome your thoughts (including any corrections from subs, if necessary)