It's undoubtedly the summer of comic book and Sci Fi this year, traditionally a niche genre but with a summer line-up that includes Gravity, Elysium, Star Trek, Thor, Man of Steel, Oblivion, Enders Game, After Earth, Pacific Rim, R.I.P.D, The World's End, Riddick, there's a definite theme Hollywood is banking on this year.

Of course breaking from tradition always brings a certain amount of risk with it but in the modern consumer age it's safe to say that for the entertainment industry as a whole, the stakes and risks are higher than ever.

The cost of movie making and producing TV series has reached record levels. The huge investments needed to make and promote entertainment material, coupled with the blurring lines between TV/DVD and on demand internet services have lead to a many a sleepless night for those in the entertainment industry.

Marketing campaigns are more advanced than ever, going out across multiple platforms but there are other factors that affect the success of a new offering aside from how well it's publicised.

It's a question of Influence

Once the marketing and advertising was done, a successful TV show, band, play or film used to rely on media/critic reviews and simple word of mouth to promote themselves. To a certain extent, mediocre or badly received products could still find success because of how slowly this information passed.

The world today is dominated by social media. The benefits it provides for viral marketing are well known but the risks and problems it creates influencing the opinion of entertainment consumers are just beginning to be understood.

With so many viewpoints available, consumers are slowly moving away from the mainstream media outlets to guide them in choosing what entertainment to spend their money on as seen by the falling readerships of mainstream newspapers, falling TV viewership and the rise of so many blogs, websites and YouTube channels reviewing and commenting on film, TV and music.

Sentiment can, and in many cases is, now be led by bloggers and tweeters. Anyone with access to the internet can now be a potential critic, influencing the opinions of their small or large circles, who then in turn pass their opinion on to their circles, the ripple effect.

Of course this isn't revolutionary, most successful brands in the entertainment industry use services to collect this data to gain insights, warn them of potential issues that could threaten a new release's success but increasingly the question is becoming, 'What to do with the data?'

Many services provide big data, large clumps of volumetric stats such tweets, Facebook likes & numbers of fans or followers but this large data is increasingly leaving marketing less informed than when they started.

False Economy

Not all social media data is pertinent. Sure, volume is always a great indicator but in the social media world you need the analysis agency to also understand the value of insight. Facebook likes for instance can be a questionable currency of measuring marketing success. Sometimes campaigns with a one off prize can get a brand huge numbers of Facebook likes at it will seem like job done. But measuring the volume of social media traffic aimed at your brand is only half the story.

A complete service agency needs to have the expertise to evaluate the full ecosystem of communications that come together to effect a brands reputation: Press releases, financial results, advertising, CEO statements, company messages, corporate CSR policy, what mainstream media is writing about the brand behind the release. Every one of these factors and more affects what is being said organically in blogs and forums as well as on Twitter and a brand's Facebook Page.

Focusing on just the sanitised social media space a brand creates for itself will not give an accurate or full story of how that brand is perceived or help to understand how each factor effects.

More than numbers

Insight, direction, answers. This is what marketers, Comms and PR professionals are looking for from media analysis, not just figures.

An entertainment brand and its offerings are affected by so many reputational factors that having a complete picture to make effective decisions means drilling down through the large data, finding the key influencers, identifying the issues that really matter, using human intelligence and experience to interpret the numbers and use them as supporting evidence for conclusions and recommendations.

The Mobile World Congress kicked off this week in Barcelona, hot on the heels of Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Manufacturers from across the world are clamouring to excite and generate buzz for their upcoming offerings this year. But it is increasingly apparent that capturing the consumer market's attention is becoming a trickier prospect.

After our Technology Sector Head Sabine Pevy's recent look at the buzz around the 2013 Macworld/iWorld event, we saw - through our informed reading of social media content - that consumers were less engaged with that event than in previous years. Post event social media chatter trailed off quickly and online news coverage was more focused on celebrity appearances than on tech innovations. The general pervading feel of consumers and commentators was 'meh', to coin a phrase. There was nothing on display to excite the consumers.

Apple hit upon this truism early on, and now the rest of the tech industry are catching up: creating hype and buzz about 'game changing' products coming in the future is key to cementing the all important attribute of any technology company's brand reputation, Innovation.

Companies like Apple and Nintendo have enjoyed so much success in recent years because their products have changed the face of the market they are aimed at and made previously 'geeky' tech into desirable, mainstream lifestyle accessories. iPod changed the way people viewed music as iPhone did for smart phones, iPads did for tablets and the Wii did for games consoles.

So why do we no longer see the excitement and anticipation focused on industry trade events that we saw during the 'noughties' and specifically when it comes to upcoming mobile releases? A decline in that excitement has been reflected in the dipping share prices of some of the biggest and most highly regarded mobile and tech firms.

I think there are three principle reasons why the thrill has gone: blurring of the lines, saturation and the right fit.

Blurring of the lines
The first mobiles were just phones for, you know, phoning people. Then we had phones and text messages. Then gradually manufacturers combined phones with other devices such as mp3 players, cameras, low-level gaming devices and satnav.

But now we are at a stage where the list of potential gadgets that it is possible to merge into a mobile handset is thinning - there's an App for everything - and it's becoming harder and harder to make a handset that contains a unique feature list.

Most new models now sell themselves as 'faster', 'thinner' or with more mega pixels crammed into the camera, but this simply does not excite the wider consumer market in the same way as seeing a phone with a camera for the first time. Mobile providers will attest to the fact that more and more, customers are not upgrading at the end of their contracts as the prospect of paying more for seemingly slight improvements on the model they already have isn't so appealing.

Saturation
And on the first day there was Symbian, and for a time it was good. Then God created Blackberry. and the two lived peacefully and for a time it was good. Then lo, iOS was born unto us and united together, we proclaimed "this is the new messiah!" But as Symbian faded from memory, Android rose to challenge iOS and behind it, many false idols sprung up.

The choice of mainstream smart phone by the end of this year will be the biggest it's ever been with new companies entering the market place. By the end of the year there will be six major competing phone operating systems.

For anyone who doesn't understand what terms like 'jailbroken', 'Tegra GPU' or 'Android rooting' mean, it is an overwhelming set of choices with no clear advantage to be had by buying into one or the other. I think we will start to see that more choice means less migration, as consumers will increasingly stick with what they know.


The right fit
The technological environment consumers now create for themselves encompasses Smart TV's, computers, laptops, tablets, consoles, and a myriad of other WiFi-connected, lifestyle-improving devices. Consumers buying choices for mobiles are increasingly dictated by what they already own and how it will fit into that ecosystem.

For instance a person who uses Apple computers, tablets and Apple TV, is not likely to pick a Nokia Windows 8 phone as the connectivity will be a problem. Some companies are pushing for universal standards of connectivity, most notably Android based platforms, but with natural competition between rival standards, proprietory systems are still rife. This is a less direct factor than the other two but is still contributing to the growing disinterest from consumers in upcoming devices.

The way forward
There is no right answer to give to companies struggling to captivate consumers who have seen 'the next big thing' a few too many times, but one thing is certain: to succeed in such a fast-moving and crowded marketplace, brands must be clear and effective in the messages they outwardly communicate and make sure they truly understand not only the changing needs and interests of their consumers, but that they each have a distinct 'character', a brand reputation governed by how they are spoken about by an ever-growing number of commentators, many of them citizen journalists.

The way that these commentators write about the brands and shape the reputation in the eyes of consumers is not just based on how many mega pixels have been added to the latest handset. It's based on how a company acts, what its staff say, what it's seen to stand for and how many of its marketing promises are delivered in its products.

It's never been harder to engage, but it is getting easier to understand how to.

A swift response, a heartfelt apology and news updates are key to averting a PR disaster, as BP and other advertisers have found.

For every well-planned ad campaign, there is also a PR disaster potentially waiting to undermine it. Most recently, Tesco has had to issue apologies about the presence of horsemeat in its burgers to reassure customers. When a crisis hits that's as big as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it demands an all-hands-to-the-pump approach to marketing and years of attempting to rebuild reputation. Welcome to BP's world in April 2010. Immediately after the disaster, as you might expect, ads appeared in the press to inform consumers and show efforts to clean up. But, more interestingly, the $93 million the oil giant spent during 2011, and every US above-the-line ad since, have been almost entirely designed to refuel goodwill towards the company

Primarily, they have highlighted the brand's desire to rebuild local communities and provided updates on the clean-up work. YouTube was a key medium, with the BP channel showcasing the company's work to boost tourism and help locals get their lives back together. So was BP's Olympic Games sponsorship, designed to convey that the company is both responsibly aware and global. The "fuelling the future" campaign and its emphasis on finding alternative energy solutions was integral to this. However, a launch ad showing Jessica Ennis running along a beach was judged by some to have got off on the wrong foot. Sponsorship of the Cultural Olympiad and Paralympic activity have been activated below the line with events, competitions and workshops, some of which have attempted specifically to engage a teenage audience, while others aimed to regain trust in the UK and champion the company's British roots. Print, out-of-home and online ads celebrated athletes' and workers' contribution to the Games with BP's inclusive "here's to the home team" campaign.

Any fleet-of-foot responsiveness came in the form of ads congratulating athletic ambassadors on their success and informing consumers of how many journeys were offset during the Games. Now the brand is expected to draw a line under the oil disaster with a return next month to ads that showcase the contribution BP makes to society. Other brands have had less environmentally catastrophic disasters to deal with and have reacted in a variety of ways. Starbucks and Barclays tried to apologise in open letters after accusations of UK tax avoidance and Libor-rigging respectively - but still were taunted in social media. Domino's Pizza used the need to counteract a YouTube film - in which employees abused customers' food - as an opportunity to revamp areas of its business and apologise. The PR disaster was the catalyst for "pizza turnaround". This was a campaign that began with the chief executive apologising on YouTube and - via a massive social media drive, online delivery tracking and iPhone apps, plus taste tests, TV ads and more - resulted in a reputation that is arguably stronger than ever.

But perhaps some of the clearest examples of how to make the best of a social media gaffe come from KitchenAid and the American Red Cross. Speed of response and consistent apologies from the head of the company managed to pull KitchenAid back from the brink of social opprobrium after one of its corporate Tweets made a joke about Barack Obama's grandmother dying. And humour did it for the American Red Cross when an employee accidentally posted a personal message on the charity's official Twitter feed about "getting slizzerd". The employee and the brand deflated the situation with swift apologies and tongue in-cheek posts. Even Dogfish Head beer - the apparent cause of any "getting slizzerd" - got in on the act with a fundraising Tweet for the charity.

Strategic Opinion Trevor Hardy, Founder, The Assembly More truth, less marketing may be the right approach in the current climate, as the world of business and governments shift from one crisis to the next. A case in point is Starbucks in the UK and what could have been a taxing disaster for the business as many action groups,politicians and media announced their intent to boycott the brand. But Starbucks' approach was immediate and frank; not wrapped up in spin or excuses. It wrote open letters to customers, laid bare the real state of its finances in digital and social channels, and spoke in front of politicians. It was honest, in plain English, about where one could see questionable tax behaviour; it put a convincing case forward and encouraged debate. The power of the response across channels was that it was fast, unpolished and, like some of the best marketing, felt very little like marketing. Sometimes, the truth hurts; but, in Starbucks' case, the truth helped.

This article was first published in print and online at: campaignlive.co.uk

With Macworld / iWorld starting Thursday, I thought I'd check out the pre-event news and buzz to get an idea of the expectations for the latest products and introductions.

(Click on info-graphic to download PDF version)

On the news side there was agreement that current consumer trends in apps and mobility will drive the interest at the show and an observation that Macworld / iWorld is "reborn as a consumer mobile lifestyle festival" (7x7.com). The huge growth of this market was, of course, already confirmed at CES. We should expect a particular interest in photo-themed apps for the iPhone and a series of new tablets from Apple for this year. Most of all, people will be looking for the three elements defining Apple technology: innovation, creativity and excitement. With an increasingly serious competition it will be more important than ever for brands to demonstrate this at the show.

Interestingly, social media buzz was very much picking up the news content but also focused on the announcement of jOBS film stars Ashton Kutcher and Josh Gad making an appearance at the show and on people announcing their travel plans. I expect more 'organic' chatter and content to appear with the start of the show.

I'll be following the event over the next couple of weeks and will publish my findings here on how the two channels - social media and news - report innovation, creativity and excitement from Macworld / iWorld and how this may affect brand reputation.

I attended an interesting speaker lunch this week and one of the key takeaways for me was the speaker's opinion that the board of a company cannot be expected to control the operations of an organisation; they can only set the tone and create a culture where people 'do the right thing'.

This led me to think about the recently announced appointment of Antony Jenkins at Barclays, a man who has spent the past three years running Barclays' much less flashy retail banking division, in sharp contrast to the cut and thrust of Bob Diamond's BarCap origins.

As a lightning rod for criticism in an industry under fire, Barclays needed to move quickly to start rebuilding trust in their organisation. By repositioning themselves as a more consumer focused firm and moving away from the perception of a banking group led by investment bankers into the muddy waters of Libor and other such scandals, they are signalling a return to more traditional banking values.

© Echo Research Ltd 2012 (click to enlarge)

Jenkins' appointment is interesting from a reputation management perspective, particularly when seen in the context of Barclays' new chairman, Sir David Walker. The combination of Jenkins, who has been in charge of the somewhat calmer waters of retail banking, together with Walker, who under a previous remit was charged with cleaning up the finance industry as well as creating the seminal report on transparency in the private equity industry, marks a visible shift in Barclays' corporate and reputational positioning.

It remains to be seen if Antony Jenkins and his board can change the culture at Barclays, but there is no doubt that as a figurehead, Jenkins is a valuable commodity. In data gathered by the Echo Sonar online media monitoring and analysis tool around the time of the half year financial results reporting at the end of July, CEOs featured in 29% of all financial results coverage seen globally, with Bob Diamond accounting for 48% of all CEO mentions in this coverage. There's no doubt that if Jenkins can leverage this high profile, he will be in a strong position to restore good will, trust and the expectations of public and shareholders alike.

A new survey from PR company Shine and the London Business School has found that less than half of marketing and comms directors believe their campaigns are well integrated (Comms Directors want more integration, survey reveals, PR Week, 25.07.12). The study also revealed that four out of five said the issue is among their main concerns.

This is not surprising, but it is a little depressing and concerning that many brands are taking so long to align and integrate their comms when savvy and connected consumers, customers and stakeholders have done so almost intuitively. For them, media is media is media.

To mark the inaugural BrandMAX event, Echo Research - the reputation practice of Ebiquity - quizzed marketing and corporate affairs teams about where they believe responsibility lies for setting, implementing and measuring marcomms activities.

We found http://bit.ly/MnmWBh that explaining to the board how brand and reputation affects business performance is important to more than 8 out of 10 respondents. However, responsibility is still often split and siloed between the functions, which at times appear to actively work against one another despite batting for the same team.

We also found that earned media coverage - in social and traditional media - has led nearly half of companies to change their marcomms activity in some way. The same proportion could readily name examples of message misalignment between paid and earned comms, from BP to Innocent, Cadbury's and Tesco to Toyota. As a result, nearly half our sample believed that better alignment between marketing and comms would benefit their business directly.

Social and online media have driven the transparency agenda (a good thing). They've wrested brand management from the hands of brand managers (an interesting transition, but on balance positive in driving brand-customer dialogue). And they've generated an exponential leap in data volumes (an opportunity, but a threat unless you use well thought-out analytics to make sense of it).

Businesses and the comms teams are not short of data. Far from it. But many are drowning in it.

They're data rich and insight poor like never before.

Comms is increasingly everyone's business - marketing, corporate comms, HR, customer service, operations, the C-suite. Those brands that will thrive in the era of Big Data will be those who get a proper handle on the alignment or otherwise of the totality of their communications, across paid, owned and earned media. This is exactly what we do for an increasing number of our clients.

Are promises made in outgoing, controlled messaging seen to be kept in inbound, mediated communications? To ensure that they are, brand custodians need to plan, execute and measure the outputs, outtakes and outcomes of their comms in a properly integrated fashion.

What is Reputation Research?

In order to thrive in today's ultra-competitive, connected market, companies and brands need to actively monitor and then manage their reputations. This means knowing what those key stakeholders inside and opinion-formers outside the company think of it. It means keeping an informed eye on what the mainstream media are writing and broadcasting about it. And it means making sense of what connected customers, consumers and stakeholders are saying about it. For in the age of social media, brand management is no longer the preserve of the brand manager.

Why should you carry out reputation research?

Companies and brands should conduct reputation research to benchmark how they are performing against market expectations and against competitors. By measuring, monitoring and benchmarking corporate and brand reputation, they can make informed, evidence-based decisions about what they need to do and say differently. Done right, reputation research should inform, define and refine comms strategy and behaviour in the round.

Who uses reputation research?

All sorts of organisations use reputation research. Public, private and third sector. Profit, not-for-profit and education. B2B and B2C. Any and all companies and brands that have a reputation at some level in the public domain. Organisations that have discrete and identifiable stakeholder groups who help to shape opinion and attitude that can impact - positively and negatively - on reputation and performance.

Typical buyers of reputation research include:

• Consumer brands that have lost their sparkle or are challenging for market leadership
• National, international and transnational Government departments seeking to engage and influence their constituency
• Multinational corporations looking to expand into new markets, either creating new categories or entering into hotly-contested space
• Financial services corporations operating in tightly regulated markets
• Academic institutions looking to reposition or consolidate their offering to prospective students
• Companies whose licence to operate can be compromised by misuse, such as the food, alcohol and automotive industries

Buyers come from a range of disciplines, from corporate communications to marketing, investor relations to marcomms, integrated comms to procurement.

How do you get the best out of reputation research?

To get the best out of reputation research, organisations need to abandon fear of what the research may show and empower and encourage their research partner to ask the questions of the stakeholders and opinion-formers that matter. They should enter into the process of commissioning reputation research with an open mind, ready to change, and not just looking for answers that confirm their hunches. Although they will have their preconceptions of what the answers might be, they need to trust in a skilled research partner to unearth the actionable insights that can enhance communications and business performance, even if those insights sometimes bring uncomfortable truths with them.

What are the costs and benefits of reputation research?

Like all genuinely insightful management information, reputation research comes at a cost, though starting with a toe-in-the-water piece of qual research among targeted stakeholders need not be expensive.

The benefits of reputation research can be huge. By correctly understanding and interpreting how the organisation performs on the reputation drivers that matter to its unique group of stakeholders, the leadership can make the informed, evidence-based decisions they need to improve both reputation and performance. Reputation research is about more than just effective communication. Proactively managing reputation leads to improved business performance.

At Echo Research, Ebiquity's reputation research practice and part of the Ebiquity family since 2011, we focus exclusively on reputation research. Through primary market research, in-depth media analysis and cutting through the clutter of social media, we help companies and brands protect, manage and grow their reputation to help grow their bottom line.

British consumers are increasingly turning to social media sites to 'hashtag' and 'bashtag' brands, rather than calling their customer service centres.

Brands also feel the change, and are starting to work out the best ways to engage and tackle the social media customer.

Echo Research and Fishburn Hedges identified six actionable insights that well-known brands, such as Barclaycard, BT and Sainsbury's often practice, such as 'choosing the right battle - but entering it fast' and 'not letting social media define you'.

But how did we reach this conclusion? To start with, Fishburn Hedges ran an online poll with 2,000 consumers nationwide, followed by in-depth interviews, conducted by Echo Research, with several blue-chip companies, including PepsiCo, HSBC and Oasis.

The social media savvy brands were more than happy to speak to us about topics including: their use of social media, who is responsible for their social media sites, whether they've ever experienced a customer backlash and how they dealt with it, and how they publicise their use of social media sites.

At Echo Research, we often conduct qualitative interviews to get to the heart of an issue, while probing and prompting our way through a series of questions and answers. We find that this traditional - analogue! - method is still one of the best for understanding a customer, stakeholder or opinion former, to ensure that an opportunity or threat is understood in depth, so that clear recommendations can be accurately passed to a client.

However, as our research shows, qualitative research works exceptionally well when hand-in-hand with quantitative research. The findings are more substantive and robust, yet also are rich with ideas and opinions. On this occasion, merging the insights from customers and brands offered a truly holistic picture of the current situation from both sides of the cash till to ensure that the findings are more insightful, powerful and genuinely actionable. We also have the technology to make sense of social media through our Echo Sonar platform, sorting the digital wheat from the chaff, enabling brands and companies to understand whether there is genuinely a storm brewing or whether it's just in a teacup.

Dan Soulas explains how what stakeholders think of your brand is responsible for an average of 31% of US share prices.

Few CEOs would question that corporate reputation ranks amongst their most important assets. However, hardly any would be able to say exactly how much it's worth.

More importantly perhaps, few would be able to say with any confidence that they knew exactly what they should be doing to manage and ultimately maximize the value it represents.

Our research, however, reveals that:

• Corporate reputation was adding close to $3.4bn of shareholder value to companies across the S&P500 as at August 2011.
• The proportion of a company's market capitalization attributable to reputation averages 31% across the S&P500.

In fact, a rise in the value of corporate reputation in the last four years has laid the foundations for the share price recovery that we see today. Although many corporate reputations suffered in the turmoil precipitated by the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008, reputation has been an important driver of stock price growth since then.

Our analysis shows that in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 market collapse, the average contribution of reputation to company value in the S&P500 fell by 3 percentage points to 13%. Since then, it has grown steadily in absolute terms and now represents 31%.

Naturally as reputation has grown its share of company value, some companies have performed better than others. The average contribution of reputation of the largest 20% of companies (by market cap) tracked is 45%. The top performing organizations are Apple and Google with a 58% contribution.

By contrast the contribution of corporate reputation in the bottom 20% of companies analyzed is only 13% and, in many cases, poor reputation is destroying value and reducing market capitalization.

The bottom line is that corporate reputations are now underpinning investor confidence in companies' ability to deliver the economic returns expected.

On the whole, the larger, and arguably more "communications sophisticated" companies, are more successful at creating value through their corporate reputations.

Nevertheless reputational value can be a fickle friend and can, and sometimes does, change quickly. Although the reputation contribution of the companies common to both our 2011 and 2010 studies increased by an average of 11%, individual changes ranged significantly.

The 10 largest risers registered an average increase of 28 percentage points while at the other end of the spectrum the 10 largest fallers declined by 11 percentage points.

What chief executives really want to know, however, is how corporate reputation can grow shareholder value.
Our analysis shows that on average, a 5% improvement in the strength of a corporate reputation of an S&P500 company can be expected to deliver an increase in market capitalization of close to 3%.

Furthermore, a better reputation will also increase the investment community's confidence in a company's ability to deliver the returns it promises.

The bottom line is that investment in building corporate reputation pays dividends and investment in understanding which particular components of reputation offer the greatest returns will enable companies to maximize them.

Social media demands that companies link both their paid and unpaid communications and measurement. Andrew Challier asks what this means for brands.

In the age of the informed consumer, big brands are subject to an unprecedented level of scrutiny. That scrutiny extends way beyond the confines of their products and financial performance.

If brands are under the microscope, it is social media which has provided the means to dramatically increase the order of magnification. The bigger the brand, the bigger the target, and so the bigger the threat posed by what would historically be labelled a 'PR crisis' but which now should be seen just as much as a 'brand crisis'. BP, Toyota, almost any bank and, most recently, News International have all suffered from the attentions of the social media 'chatterati' as well as the mainstream media.

On the plus side, however, the opportunity to manage the crisis - via the same social media channels - is greater than it ever has been.

We all recognise that 'reputation management' seeks to mitigate the negative and accentuate the positive. In this new world, however, we also need to recognise that reputation management is no longer the preserve of the Corporate Affairs function, nor is 'brand management' the sole preserve of Marketing. The consequences of misaligned communication have never been more critical.

A greater variety of Influencers

Reputations and brands are impacted by a wide variety of stakeholders, internal (staff) and external (consumers, investors, lobbyists etc) and businesses need a way to measure, manage and influence these various constituencies. Paid media is an important part - but only a part - of the picture. Brands need to benchmark and analyse both paid and unpaid media, to help identify both the 'danger signs' and the opportunities.

To create effective tools, a brand needs to understand the context for how its key products (within key markets) - and those of its competitors - are being discussed in social (and editorial) media around the world. This helps start to build an understanding of the issues of most importance and how they might choose to engage with relevant groups/audiences in a relevant way.

At the same time, by benchmarking paid-for messaging versus their principal competitors, companies can analyse the extent to which they are able to 'own' important topics and the extent to which they or their competitors are achieving better alignment between what is seen as important and the messages transmitted. Benchmarking the price paid for that media and the quality of its placement completes this circle.

Choosing the right measures and tools

There is an increasing amount of message monitoring software available to brands - paid, unpaid and social media etc. Most of it adds little value: whilst it aggregates the data, it lacks the human intelligence to draw meaningful, business-relevant conclusions. Clients are demanding an integrated 'vital signs' marcomms monitoring service tailored to their individual needs. Such a system need not be complex (in fact, the less complex the better), but the benefit is magnified when the total picture is assembled from a single, impartial perspective. And it only works to its true potential when brands have identified the correct KPIs within the business that can be reasonably linked to the benchmarking.

While brands might wish for the holy grail of a 'one size fits all' brand optimisation tool - simply drop all the ingredients in the top, pull a lever (or push a button) and out drops an optimised plan at the bottom - the reality is that there are very good reasons to use a combination of methodologies and tools.

For example, digital measures frequently underplay the contribution of offline marketing and other media 'levers' and, while econometric modelling is great at budget allocation and provides a powerful basis for budget optimisation between markets, brands and different channels, it rarely reflects the importance of reputation.

Different - and appropriate - techniques are available for measuring the corporate value of reputation. The 'brand lesson' which we preach, therefore, is to understand how these different measurement techniques are best used - not to provide a universal panacea, but to inform better quality decision making.

Taking action

Messaging

Ensure that corporate and brand messaging are aligned - addressing the key issues in a coordinated manner.

Example:

British Airways is aiming to rekindle pride among staff and consumers via a new 'heritage' marketing campaign; the aim is to regain the trust of both the general public and its own employees disillusioned by strike action, cancelled flights and low morale.

Organisation

Ensure that the company organisation is aligned organisationally. This doesn't have to imply a merger between corporate affairs and marketing.

Example:

Nestlé has appointed Pete Blackshaw - author of Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000 - as Global Head of Digital and Social Media, with dual reporting lines into the global heads of both Corporate Affairs and Marketing.

Measurement:

Ensure that tracking and measurement are able to answer these two questions from a consistent and comparable perspective: - What are people saying about us and our competitors? - What are our competitors saying about themselves?

Example:

In response to client demand, Ebiquity has developed an integrated message alignment reporting and benchmarking service, which draws upon data from its Portfolio and Echo Sonar monitoring software, and which feeds into both the marketing and corporate affairs functions.