Here are some of the key findings:

• Overall, we found that how often a company appeared in the press accounted for over a quarter of the brand value among Interbrand’s 100 most valuable brands.

• The relationship between media prominence and brand value depends on “product involvement” – i.e., the degree to which customers research a given product or solution prior to purchase. Media prominence was more associated with brand value for “high involvement” products compared to “low involvement” products. Media prominence was a particularly important component of brand value for computer-related industries, such as software and hardware manufacturers, as well as computer and Internet service companies, accounting for 48 percent of differences between companies’ brand values.
• Advertising expenditures, however, predicted brand value only for “low involvement” products, and accounted for very little brand value among “high involvement” products.
• These results suggest that the more complex a product is to a buyer, the more likely they are to research the product category and to look for information that they can trust. Much has been said of the increasing power of word-of-mouth and distrust in advertising in the past few years. If unpaid media placement, as opposed to paid media (or advertising), is more credible to buyers, then it too should play a key role in building brand value for high involvement brands.

Perhaps the most important take away message from this study is that, regardless of the direction of causation, a sizable amount of brand value, particularly for high involvement industries, is tied into media coverage.  So, even if one interprets this study as showing that high brand value leads to more media coverage, it is still important for media coverage to be carefully managed since it is the window through which others will see your brand.

We used web analytics data (such as # of monthly visitors) and combined that with data on product-related coverage we already analyze for the client on a quarterly basis. We repeated this process for each of their competitors, and found the following:

• Our client was the only company amongst the competitive set to have a significant relationship between media volume and web visits. This meant that they were the most successful in using communications to drive traffic. Part of the explanation for this was the fact that the client obtained better quality press – our metrics showed higher message penetration and better tonality for key product attributes than the competition.

• 1 product-focused article in the media resulted in approximately 10,000 visits to the website. In other words, there was a tangible ROI to their efforts.

We were also able to provide insight into their SEO and search term strategy, that could be implemented in future messaging strategy for the client.

This case study is a good illustration of the fact that PR and Communication investments can be measured by not only how much press coverage was earned, but also in how the investments ultimately contribute to business outcome metrics across the organization.