Following the news that Durrants, Metrica and Gorkana have joined forces to provide the PR industry with a best of breed PR planning, media monitoring and PR evaluation platform Metrica is looking for an Account Director to join our succesful team. 

As an Account Director you will be working on an enviable list of global household names and taking the lead on a portfolio of clients. You will also be responsible for:

• Growing the client portfolio revenue
• Provide guidance and advice to Account Managers and your account team
• Attending and running senior management meetings and contributing appropriate strategies to achieve the desired business direction
• Provide support on process management and quality control
• Motivate and develop individuals and take an active role in the internal training and development programme
• Attend PR events for networking purposes
• Present at industry events where appropriate

Exciting times are ahead for Gorkana, Durrants and Metrica as we continue to expand our business with our passion for PR Measurement, media analysis and how it all fits into the PR planning and implementation cycle.  If you always strive for brilliance, are excited about change and want to enjoy your business career then you may be the right candidate.   

Tess Donnelly, HR Manager.

As unbelievable as it may seem, this year’s Glastonbury was drenched in sunshine, with no mud-fights to be seen at all! The fact that it was the 40^th anniversary was another reason to celebrate. But it’s not just the partygoers that benefit from the atmosphere and musical extravaganzas, for many charities it is one of the most important events of the summer calendar.  

Charities have long been associated with the Glastonbury festival. With its eco-friendly vibe it’s only natural that organisations such as Greenpeace, WaterAid, and Oxfam have a strong presence there. In fact some may not realise exactly how much of this festival is run for and by charities. Many have their own areas, and some run their own stages independently. Many of the thousands of volunteers are provided by Oxfam, who in return get a large donation from the festival organisers. Each year, most of the profits that are made at Glastonbury are donated back to various charities. A ‘virtuous circle’ you may say!  

Our own charity radar report, which tracks almost 90 UK charities, also proves what a big impact this event has on the sector. Our June report shows that as an organisation itself, Glastonbury was far and away the most prolific mentioned over the month. Around 45 different charities were mentioned within coverage that featured Glastonbury, and WaterAid was the most prominent charity, benefiting from a lot of press coverage when Prince Charles, who is also President of WaterAid, stopped by to meet volunteers.  

The National Trust also featured heavily, as they lit up St Michael’s Tower on Glastonbury Tor to celebrate the festival’s 40^th anniversary. This helped to boost their coverage, and this month they reached 44% of charity donors, the highest reach within the arts/culture sector in our Radar report.  

Looking back to 2009’s report from June, this year saw almost three times as many pieces mentioning Glastonbury in 2010. It will be interesting see how many turn up in next year’s report!

Working on large international PR measurement programmes for firms head-quartered in the US provides me with many benefits, not least the opportunity to network with some of America's smartest operators in the field of public relations measurement, social media and market research. One of the these is Jason Falls who writes an excellent blog 'Social Media Explorer.'

Today Jason has posted on an issue close to my heart - whether to rely on automated sentiment analysis when undertaking social media evaluation. The issue has arisen due to the overwhelming volume of content that the social web generates. Companies know that it contains much valuable information, but PR analysis providers are unable to scale up to measure the content with human coders in the same way that they always have done with traditional media.  Either they don't have access to enough people, or if they do, the costs incurred for the clients would be simply prohibitive.

As a result many firms attempting to measure content in social media have developed automated systems to assess the tone of the myriad of conversations and in some cases to rank posts, blogs, tweets etc for their levels of influence and engagement. A lot of these companies are software specialists who are branching out into new fields.  Social media content has brought their world colliding with that of PR and evaluation. Many have built flashy dashboards that appear to offer great functionality and amazing insights from all of this content.  

The problem is that the data that they are serving up is often plain wrong. Jason's post describes the issue in great detail so I would urge you to take a look at it.

At Metrica we have been helping clients to understand the threats and the opportunities that social media offers since 2006 (and analysing the traditional media since the early days in 1993!) Our approach to social media measurement has always been to use an element of automation, but to undertake large scale human checking on the data before providing it to our clients. The automation provides an element of filtering if you like, the humans provide the real business insights and the intelligence.  Metrica wouldn't base any business decisions on data that stands a significant risk of being flawed.  So why should our clients?  

Regular readers will know that along with Durrants and Gorkana, we are in the process of integrating our businesses to provide the PR industry with the very best media intelligence service available. As we do this, you can rest assured that human quality control, assessment and consultancy will remain at the heart of our offering. After all, as one client in the United States commented to me: "garbage in... garbage out."  Neither Jason nor I could have summarised the risks of relying on automated social media measurement better.

Last week we were delighted to announce that PR planning specialist Gorkana is joining Metrica and Durrants to provide a best of breed PR planning, media monitoring and evaluation solution for every stage of the PR process.

I managed to catch up with Celina Maguire, Gorkana's Consumer Director, and asked her to answer a very vexing public relations problem.  Over to Celina:

Pet Peeve, noun: something about which one frequently complains; a particular personal vexation

Speak to any journalist and ask them their pet peeve about PRs and they will usually say one of two things:  PRs who ring to “check” they have received their press release and PRs who clearly haven’t read their publication before phoning to sell in their “hot” news.

I hear these two gripes time and again from senior journalists I have in the hot seat as part of Gorkana’s regular breakfast briefing programme to help PRs get under the skin of key publications. On the Gorkana couch to date we’ve had the likes of Lisa Smorsarski, the savvy Stylist editor and her team, Heat editor Sam Delaney and his team, the Glam Media crew, News of the World’s Fabulous team (5.2 million readers and counting) and the boys from FHM revealing all about how they want to be approached by PRs and what stories will work for them.

On May 7, in front of a room full of 250+ PRs, I’ll be grilling Terri White, the editor of ShortList, the free weekly men’s title which has become a media phenomenon, her style director Adrian Clark and features editor Lucy Foster. Terri is planning to spill the beans on some brand new editorial plans for the magazine as well as telling PRs how they can get their client included in its sought after pages.  If you want to know more about the Gorkana breakfast briefings email events@gorkana.com.

In the meantime, I’ve pulled together some little gems - anti-vexes if you will! - gleaned from the journos I’ve interviewed over the last six months about how they want to interact with PRs:

Lizanne Harris, Fashion Director, Stylist

Arrange press events in the morning around 8.30am or in the late afternoon from 3pm onwards as it is very difficult to leave the office once she has started for the day. Central London is the best location for convenience.

Lucie Cave, Executive Editor, heat

Lucie receives around 20 pitches from PRs each day and she and the team can spot which emails are circulars. Offer an exclusive as this will increase the size of the feature, for example they exclusively covered Fern Britton dressed as a man and will always attend celeb parties if they are given a unique opportunity. Lucie’s golden advice is: know the team, read the magazine, familiarise yourself with the sections and pitch to these directly.

Ally Pyle, Editor, Glam.com

Ally encourages personal relationships and one-on-one meetings with PRs wherever possible. She will always try to make time for a coffee or quick lunch meeting. Emails are the preferred method of contact.

Jo Upcraft, Lifestyle Editor, Fabulous

Jo is unlikely to cover anything older than six months, anything that has been placed elsewhere already or anything aesthetically unappealing. Statistics (eg 50% of women saw improved results...) are important and PRs should put those in the first few lines of a concise email, along with an interesting header. PRs should also read the magazine and suggest sections that would suit the story they’re selling in.

Colin Kennedy, Editor, FHM

Colin says PRs should not call before 10.30am – best to aim for between 5pm and 6pm, once the majority of the day’s work is behind the team. He likes PRs to email him, suggesting why a story might suit the magazine, and then follow up with a phone call the following day.

Jon Gripton, Chief News Editor, Sky News Online

Jon prefers to be contacted via email and particularly dislikes it when a cold call is made asking “have you received my email?” However, he actively encourages the personal touch, and appreciates those PRs who have forged a relationship with him over time by understanding the Sky News remit and audience.

Celina Maguire is Gorkana's Consumer Director. Prior to joining Gorkana in 2008, Celina's career incorporated journalism and PR where she has worked both in house and for a number of high profile agencies including Consolidated Communications and Le Fevre Communications.  

Celina is on twitter @celinamary50 where you can follow her to keep up to date with all of her latest PR news and tips. Gorkana itself can be found at @Gorkana. Gorkana also regularly tweets about both journalist job opportunities and PR job opportunities.

Following on in quick succession from the purchase of Metrica by Durrants at the end of October last year, we are delighted to welcome Gorkana to the group today.  The story has been well covered in the national, trade and social media and has stimulated plenty of discussion.

 

We're very excited to be working with Gorkana.  When Metrica came together with Durrants in October, the plan was to build the industry's leading media intelligence organisation covering all of the key stages in the PR life cycle.  Durrants' media monitoring, Gorkana's PR planning and Metrica's PR measurement consultancy means that for the first time it is possible to work with the market leaders as part of one group.

 

In the short term it will be business as usual for all three firms.  As Durrants' Managing Director Jeremy Thompson explains over on Speed MD Wadds' blog:

 

"How soon can we get an enterprise deal for Durrants, Gorkana and Metrica products and services?

 

We’re not going to rush to integrate. The key is stability, and to build something really special for the long term. We are very happy to do enterprise deals from day one though, and have already done a number for Durrants and Metrica combined services." 

 

In the near future, we will create a fully integrated offering in response to the demands and needs of our clients.  We have already conducted significant research amongst the PR industry to help us understand the specific needs of today's PR pros.  But we're always keen to hear more so do please feel free to contact us with your views and ideas.

 

The final thoughts go again to Jeremy:

 

"This move is transformational as it completes the coming together of three market leaders, all with strong reputations for delivering exceptional services and customer support...  Durrants acquired Metrica, the award winning media evaluation specialist in October 2009. Combining Gorkana with Durrants media monitoring and Metrica analysis will give our customers unrivalled access to the ‘best of breed’ solution for every stage of the PR workflow.” 

 

Watch this space!

 

 

Has it really been a whole year since we launched our re-vamped charity benchmarking report, the Metrica Charity Radar? We have seen so many events shape the charity sector over the last twelve months, whether they are global crises, such as the Haiti Earthquake, or UK fundraising events which have captured the imagination, such as Eddie Izzard running an obscene amount in aid of Sport Relief.   

Here at Metrica, we’ve put together an annual version of our Radar report, to be able to see what has driven the news agenda across all the different charity sectors this financial year, and it makes for very interesting reading! 

To begin with, the Haiti earthquake was by far the biggest single event driving coverage, affecting over 20 charities, including Oxfam, the Red Cross and the DEC. This generated sustained coverage throughout January and February, as various organisations offered to help.  

Some stories were slightly smaller, but came back into the public eye throughout the year, such as the case of a policeman who left two police dogs to die in a hot car. The RSPCA were involved in this case when it was first reported, when the trial began and when sentencing occurred, proving that some stories can keep running over a long period of time.  

Political issues often made an appearance in our Radar report, illustrated by the fact that Gordon Brown is far and away the most prolific public figure to feature in charity coverage, being mentioned in over 15,000 articles this year, followed by the ever charitable Gary Barlow with almost 5,000! 

So who emerged top in the annual report? Get in touch to find out! Email the team on charity@metrica.net or give us a call on 020 7922 1670. The Radar report could be a great planning tool for next year’s PR activities, or just a great way to get an overview of all that has happened in your sector over the past 12 months.