Building a Strong U.S. Presence
Learn how the PAN team built strong U.S. media and analyst awareness for their Canadian client in just two weeks.

Creating Blog Buzz
Read about how the PAN team generated buzz and increased their client's visibility through influential bloggers.

Using Social Media to Carve a Niche in the Market
Discover how PAN initiated a social media campaign, which resulted in their client becoming a well respected expert in end user performance management.

Creating a Unique Awareness Campaign
By taking a multi-tiered approach, read how the PAN team increased awareness of their client's distinct approach to moving and packing, branding them as a luxury moving service.

Refining a Company's Messaging
See how the PAN team refined their client's message to clearly and succinctly explain their leadership and unique benefits.

A Measurement Roundtable with Directors Jennifer Meyer, Jane Carpenter and Jodie Wertheim
Moderated By Mark C. Nardone, Executive Vice President

A recent white paper by the Council of Public Relations Firms advised that to command a better place in the new marketing mix, public relations practitioners should strive to become more adept at business strategy, and become more quantitative and measurement-oriented. PR agencies talk a lot about the mechanisms of accountability, such as performance dashboards and audit and ROI reports, but how do you make PR measurable? How do you assess something that is often intangible, such as reinforcing a brand or educating the marketplace?

We recently held a roundtable with the directors of our technology, professional services, and consumer portfolio areas to discuss the latest strategies for gauging success in traditional PR outlets as well as social media. Account directors Jennifer Meyer, Jodie Wertheim, and Jane Carpenter shared insights into tools the agency has in place to measure campaign success.

My first question to our panel of experts was: What's the right formula to consider in this dynamic age of PR? Jodie got the ball rolling with her thoughts around the need for customization of measurement by client.

JW: It's key to customize each measurement program. Some organizations are looking to elevate exposure from a search perspective or to drive new sales, while others may be striving to increase membership or registration to a particular event, for example. We start out with gathering initial data as a benchmark against which to measure campaign results.

Measurement tools should take into consideration both tactical and strategic goals. We review tactical goals through weekly meetings, evaluate PR campaign spending through monthly/quarterly dashboards, and analyze strategic goals through activities such as six-month market perception evaluations. The latter involves reaching out to media, analysts (if applicable), and customers to determine how the client is being perceived and how well we're "moving the needle" in the right direction.

JM: I agree, plus it's important to remember to track not just the amount of coverage a client gets but the quality of that coverage, as well as the type of coverage. Some accounts start off getting news briefs, then move to larger trend articles, and then "graduate" to a level where the press covers them in standalone articles. There's a progression that's important to keep in mind when evaluating campaigns.

JC: That's a great point. I think too that the emergence of new media presents more opportunities and techniques for PR measurement. With viral marketing and other online campaigns, PR practitioners have the ability to track leads, and lead prospects directly to a client's website. With traditional media outlets now established online as well, clients can see a more immediate impact and evaluate their PR programs on-the-fly. You no longer have to wait six months to see if your campaign is generating success. If you secure a hit in DailyCandy, for example, your client will often see results (in terms of in-bound calls and website traffic) the minute the coverage comes out.

JW: That's so true. It's funny how different it is to measure advertising versus PR. With advertising it's easy to figure out the target demographic, the vehicle it's going in, and measure results. With PR, we're breaking new ground every time. There are no set rules. PR is more intangible, yet it can have an incredible impact.

JM: Another way to measure success in PR is by how often the client is called on for commentary by the media. This shows that they're top of mind with reporters, editors, and producers.

MCN: How do you tackle measurement for such a diverse clientele spanning three portfolios? Do you look for different criteria that measure each program?

JW: Absolutely. For a professional services client for example, it may make sense to evaluate a particular practice area of the firm against the same practice area of a competitor. This way we're comparing "apples to apples." This analysis might include a variety of metrics, such as the number and quality of press hits or more hard and fast figures, such as quarterly sales.

Similarly with a professional services program, coverage areas are often more regional in nature. Key metrics might include the number of times the firm is covered in the Boston Business Journal, the number of inbound leads by geography that are being generated, or the number of regional awards the firm has received. Those programs can get more granular as you focus more directly on key sectors of the country that matter most to the client.

JM: In addition to strong media coverage, analyst opinions are quite important in the high-tech space. If our goal is to create a new market category, for example, the program may be geared toward gaining positive reviews in analyst reports, or analyst reports being issued on a new category.
JC: In consumer markets, there's a lot of opportunity to measure PR. The blogosphere is now a critical audience for any consumer company. It is important to monitor public opinion and keep abreast of what the consumer is saying and thinking at all times. Blogs provide an opportunity to measure viral grassroots/word-of-mouth opinions about your client and/or its products and services. PR practitioners can easily measure the word on the street by monitoring the number and type of mentions the client is receiving on the web.

MCN: What is the best approach for measuring the impact of social media campaigns?

JM: With social media, measurement can often be very clear cut. You can watch your traffic around the time of a blog hit and gain some level of understanding of market influence from that. Yet straight blog measurement is something PR practitioners are still grappling with. There are a number of freely available tools like Technorati, Alexa, and Compete, which help give a sense to how much attention a particular blog gets on the web, but more often than not with blog outreach you're looking to get in front of a narrow, more qualified audience. So it's not really all about getting the mass hit on TechCrunch anymore unless your client is an ad-supported business. You need to look at how intensely people are blogging about the firm and its offerings, and how this exposure is influencing prospective customers.

JW: For some clients, where social media hasn't been as much of a priority yet, we perform media audits. This involves talking with those reporters we have strong alliances with to understand how they perceive the company, its services, or products. This helps us understand factors such as whether the company is a well known player, what their potential vulnerabilities are, and how we can make them a "go to" source in the market.

Ultimately, the full impact of PR can be measured, but it is not a cookie cutter approach. This discussion and many others like it enable us to continually find ways to gauge the success of our work and work closely with our clients to be sure we are measuring the program in the way that makes the most sense for their business.

Working with PAN:

Andi Davidson
Director of Public Relations

Andi Davidson is the Director of Public Relations at Cuppy's Coffee, Smoothies & More, a specialty coffee and smoothie franchise based in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Andi is responsible for managing national, trade and local press for Cuppy's Coffee franchises and the corporate brand.

Why did you choose PAN as your PR agency?
We did a very thorough search of PR agencies across the nation. PAN had the enthusiasm, capabilities and vision to take our account to the next level, and they have! PAN presented me with several great media opportunities throughout the proposal stage, allowing me a glimpse of the direction they would soon take Cuppy's Coffee.

What are the PR challenges in the beverage/franchise industry?
It is hard to gain media recognition in major national publications as a smaller, private company in the coffee industry. The media is obsessed with the juggernaut, Starbucks, and that leaves little room for us to tell our story in such a competitive marketplace.

How has PAN begun to help Cuppy's Coffee to overcome some of these challenges?
PAN does an excellent job staying abreast of media opportunities that fit our account. They are proactive about bringing our story to the media and garnering excellent coverage! PAN is in tune with what the media is covering and provides insight to the different initiatives Cuppy's Coffee needs to do to remain relevant.

What do you find most appealing about working with the PAN team?
The team at PAN is organized and easy to work with. They are very responsive to my needs and have the ability to locate and act fast on media opportunities. I appreciate their attention to detail, the research they have done to understand the industry we are in, and our bi-weekly status calls. I am always aware of the status on each project and I am confident that they are working around the clock to put Cuppy's Coffee in the forefront of the media.

What are some creative counsel/ideas that the PAN team has provided to you?
PAN alerts me of all industry news that Cuppy's Coffee can relate to, as well as key media opportunities to spotlight our products and our franchise. They have provided me guidance and expertise in the social media realm, that has helped Cuppy's to gain a presence online and to optimize our blogging efforts. They have initiated a powerful regional campaign to generate coverage for our franchisees on a local level. PAN has helped us identify the 'big picture' in our end of the year efforts that garnered coverage in QSR, forbes.com, yahoo! finance, and many others.

What are you looking for PAN to accomplish?
Our company is growing at a rate that we can not sustain internally. We brought PAN aboard to provide foresight to our company on the direction we should head. I expect PAN to continue to keep us in the media and secure those key placements that will help grow this business, both for our franchisees and as a franchise.

What are your plans for the next 90 days?
I would like to see our end of the year release emerge in major print publications, while we support our franchisees on a local level with our regional campaign. I look forward to hearing fresh ideas from the team at PAN on how we will move forward in 2008.

Congratulations to Sandra Proulx who was promoted to Senior Associate and to Aidan Bradley and Megan Gallagher who were both promoted to Associates!

Their hard work and dedication is very appreciated.

Join us in welcoming the following new PAN team members:
Geoffrey Spillane, Account Manager
George Thomas, Junior Associate
Emily Held, Junior Associate

Happy PANniversary to our employees!
Andy Baron - 7 Years
Lisa Rivero - 4 Years
Megan Gallagher - 1 Year
Randi Sussman - 1 Year
Jeff Dillow - 2 Years
Sandra Proulx - 2 Years
Gene Carozza- 1 Year

Happy PANniversary to the following clients!
Tyco - 5 Years
Burns & Levinson - 2 Years
Acsis - 1 Year

Happy Birthday to the following employees born in November, December and January!
Philip A. Nardone, Jr.
Jeffrey Dillow
Michael O'Connell
Ashley Thomas
Jill Reuter
Gene Carozza
George Thomas
Katie Despres
Kim McCrossen
Leslie Doyle
Pam Woodford
Geoff Spillane

Since our last newsletter, we've announced a handful of new clients across all three of our portfolios.

In our Consumer portfolio, we welcome Cuppy's Coffee, Bridgevine and OKA b. shoes.

We've added the following companies to our Technology portfolio: TRA, Lexalytics, Attivio, JackBe, Safend, Airwide Solutions and ion interactive.

The Professional Services portfolio is happy to welcome Epoch and DSF!

We're all very excited to have these new accounts at PAN!

Life at PAN: Our Employees Make Us Shine


Please join us in welcoming Geoff Spillane, Account Manager. Geoff attended Babson College and graduated with a degree in Marketing. We're very happy to have Geoff on board! We wanted to introduce and ask him a few questions about so you may get to know him better:

Why did you choose PR as a career? How long have you been in the field?

Geoff: Well, to me a PR career represented the "best of many worlds." As a lifelong "news hound," I would often watch the news instead of cartoons as a child. I also had a passion for writing at an early age, winning a literary contest from Paramount Studios at the age of 11. Hence, in college, while studying business and marketing, I became editor-in-chief of the school's newspaper - The Babson Free Press. So, the equation of news fiend + writing acumen + business education = PR career made perfect sense to me. I have thoroughly enjoyed a successful PR career - in both agency and corporate environments - for more than 15 years, and hope it continues well into the future.

What are your day to day responsibilities in your new position at PAN?

Geoff: Managing day-to-day activities of my client portfolio, ensuring that they receive the highest level of agency service and results - bar none - on the planet.

What's your favorite thing about your job?

Geoff: The dynamic nature of the agency and its client base - never a dull moment. I thrive in an adrenalin-fueled work environment. I also am profoundly grateful to PAN for allowing me to have a terrific work/life balance, as I often work "virtually" from my home office on Cape Cod (100+ miles away from the agency's Andover, MA headquarters).

How do you add value to your clients?

Geoff: In a nutshell, experience and creativity. This is not "my first time at the rodeo" - I am battle-hardened and field proven, knowing what it takes to increase client visibility and market traction.

What are your goals for the next six months?

Geoff: To become completely absorbed in the "PAN Way," and establish successful relationships and program results for my client portfolio.

What do you like best about PAN?

Geoff: The family atmosphere and incredible work ethic that Phil and Mark instill upon the entire team. As a corporate marketing manager, I twice selected PAN as my agency-of-record - I think that says it all.

What are your hobbies? Any favorite Fall past times?

Geoff: Tossing tennis balls into the Martha's Vineyard waters to my best friend, Zachary (my golden retriever). As one would expect, given my Cape Cod residency, I am a beach fanatic. I truly believe that the word "summer" is a verb. I am also an avid concert-goer, golfer, and traveler.

Director Jennifer Meyer was the guest speaker at the North Shore Women in Business Conference on January 17, 2008. Jennifer spoke to the audience about the importance of PR for small businesses. The event was a great success!

PAN's Holiday Party was held on December 14, 2007 at Dante Restaurant in Cambridge, MA. Great fun and merry times were had by all!!






Please go to this link to view more pictures from the wonderful evening!