Folio: the Magazine for Magazine Management

Fear Factor

JOE MANDESE
532 words
1 May 2003
Folio: the Magazine for Magazine Management
17
Volume 32; Number 5; ISSN Number 00464333
English
Copyright 2003 by Media Central Inc., A PRIMEDIA Company. All rights reserved.

When Madison Avenue execs look at media, they often see a marketing communications glass that is less than half full. That can't make them happy. But when you consider that the stuff they actually have control over * advertising * typically represents only a small percentage of media content, well, then, their perspective makes sense.

But there are others * public relations pros * for whom the media glass is looking increasingly full of opportunity. And on a relative basis, magazines appear to count disproportionately more to these folk than the other major media.

Why? While magazines, overall, don't focus much attention on corporate America, they yield some of the highest returns in terms of total corporate news impressions.

Magazines' Share of Corporate News Impressions '02

   
  Stories  Impressions  Net Effect
Magazines   3.0%   9.4%  23.9%
All other media  97.0%   90.6     76.1%
Totals   250,942 312,278,195,247  7,118,431,443
 
  Source: The Media Reputation Index

And we know this ... how? Because several companies have emerged that track and analyze corporate news coverage, in much the same way that Madison Avenue evaluates the advertising impressions they buy in those very same media. One of the firms, Delahaye Medialink, has even teamed up with the Reputation Institute to create what in effect is the Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI) of public relations.

The so-called Media Reputation Index (coincidentally also called MRi) monitors corporate news coverage in print (magazines, newspapers, and newsletters) and electronic (TV, radio, and the Internet) media and assigns values based on whether it is positive or negative, a metric Delahaye calls the "net effect."

Based on these newfangled measures, magazines generate only a small share of stories about corporate America * 3 percent of the 250,942 stories tracked across all media during 2002 * but yielded a disproportionately higher share of total corporate news impressions (9.4 percent) and a significantly larger share of the corporate net effect (23.9 percent).

K.C. Brown, vice president of research at Delahaye, suggests magazines generate more impressions per story because they go into greater depth than either newspapers or the electronic media. And they generate larger net effects because they tend to deliver more balanced coverage. Magazines also tend to have stronger graphics that "draw a reader into a story," says Brown. He remarks that newspaper and TV coverage is often "forgettable" from a corporate PR standpoint.

On the question of editorial balance, Brown says magazines perform better than other media because of their longer lead times. By contrast, he points out that TV, radio, and newspapers tend to flip-flop from extremes of negative or positive. "We find TV to be the most polar," he says. "On TV, everything is either great, or it's horrible. ... Magazines offer a more balanced view of corporate America."

Ad agencies may still focus on the paid part of media * advertising * but smart marketers increasingly are looking at media based on their total communications effect, including PR. Research like Delahaye's is helping them better understand the relationship between the two, and it may prove especially useful to those who care about the editorial coverage of corporate America.