Keeping Up With Media Measurement

Posted June 4th, 2012 by Barry Parr No Comments »

Ethan Zuckerman proposes a new measurement of attention – the Kardashian:

The Kardashian is the amount of global attention Kim Kardashian commands across all media over the space of a day. In an ideal, frictionless universe, we’d determine a Kardashian by measuring the percentage of all broadcast media, conversations and thoughts dedicated to Kim Kardashian. In practical terms, we can approximate a Kardashian by using a tool like Google Insights for Search – compare a given search term to Kim Kardashian and you can discover how small a fraction of a Kardashian any given issue or cause merits.

As Zuckerman notes, Google Insights doesn’t work well for measuring Kardashians. It’s unclear whether Google’s scale is linear or logarithmic.

Factiva, on the other hand, is an ideal tool for measuring Kardashians. Last week, “Kardashian” was mentioned in 5,174 stories on Factiva.  So, that week, 1.0 Kardashians would represent 5,174 stories about a topic.

How did some of last week’s other newsmakers fare?

  • Mark Zuckerberg, at the peak of his public attention, received a mere 3.6 Kardashians of attention last week.  
  • JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, in a week when he lost billions of dollars, flashed across our consciousnesses with 1.5 Kardashians of attention.
  • Donna Summer had to die to achieve 2.1 Kardashians of attention in her final week. Last year, she averaged 85 milli-Kardashians of attention.

Of course, the value of a Kardashian changes, depending on coverage volume. Eventually, we’ll enter into a period of Kardashian hyperinflation, and we’ll all be overexposed.

Tags: , ,  
Posted in Barry Parr, Measurement

Think Twice Before Doubling Down

Posted May 8th, 2012 by Barry Parr No Comments »

In the summer of 2011, Netflix was the future of video and its stock was at an all-time high. Within a quarter, the company lost two-thirds of its market value and its strategy was a shambles.

Between July and October 2011, the company unbundled its DVD and streaming services, increased its prices for the second time in a year,  announced  that it expected to lose a million customers and that it would spin off its DVD service under the brand “Qwikster”, and then canceled Qwikster less than a month later.

Netflix’s stock price has not recovered.

Netflix was trying to mitigate some powerful strategic threats in the summer of 2011, but the company lost control of its message.

I charted Netflix’s Dow Jones Insight Media Index (IMI) for 380,000 news stories since last July. Since October, Netflix’s IMI has returned to its summer  2011 levels, but the company’s stock price is stuck in the doldrums.

The Netflix debacle is more of a strategic than a communications fable, but there are some clear lessons for marketers:

  • Think ahead. By delaying the inevitable unbundling until the last minute, Netflix maximized the pain for their customers and themselves.
  • Keep it simple. Netflix was founded on a principle of simplicity, but Qwikster was just baffling.
  • Own your name. Someone already owned @Qwikster on Twitter. This expensive error signaled a lack of preparation to the markets.
  • Think twice before doubling down. Netflix followed its unpopular unbundling with a baffling spinoff.

Tags: , , , ,  
Posted in Barry Parr, Measurement, Public Relations, Social Media