Sunday, September 9, 2012

PR Measurement Guidelines – Module 1



   1.     What are General Mills’ current PR activities?

a.     GMI’s current PR activities range from global advertising and marketing, to press conferences, releases, and publications, to social media, blogs, and more.

   2.     Some of the possible outputs, outtakes, and outcomes might be:

a.     Outputs
                                               i.     Articles that appear in the media regarding a product or advertising campaign.
                                              ii.     Content assessment
                                            iii.     Specific messages communicated by the company.
b.     Outtakes/Outcomes
                                               i.     Was an advertising campaign “well-received” by customers?
1.     Did customers “like” our ad for Cheerios?
                                              ii.     Was the campaign understood?
1.     Did it market Cheerios successfully?
                                            iii.     Was the campaign memorable and effective?
1.     Do customers remember/discuss the ad, did it translate to an increase in Cheerios sales?

   3.     What are GMI’s business and PR objectives?

a.     As I mentioned in the previous post, General Mills business objective in terms of marketing is to “[focus] not just on growing our brands, but on outgrowing the category." This translate into PR objectives that ensure we are advertising our products effectively, and communicating our product objectives of price, convenience, and health across our marketing efforts, press releases and conferences, and all other forms of PR. Bottom line – our goal is to sell as much of our product as possible to as many consumers as possible.

   4.      How are these objectives measured?

a.     These objectives are measured in a myriad of ways, including, but not limited to:
                                               i.     Sales increases/decreases
                                              ii.     Focus groups
                                            iii.     Tastes tests
                                            iv.     Segment performance
                                              v.     Market performance
                                            vi.     BU performance

   5.     Are our objectives being met?

a.     While our messages arguably missed the mark in the yogurt BU this year, other BU’s performed exceptionally well. In fact, General Mills performed so well this past fiscal year that we increased our dividend to shareholders by 8%. We have paid a dividend to our shareholders without interruption or reduction for the past 113 years!

References:

4 comments:

  1. How might you expect outputs, outtakes & outcomes to vary from offline channels to online?

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    Replies
    1. Professor,

      These things would vary in several ways -- for example, the immediate output for response to a Twitter campaign can be measured much more rapidly than, say, an article in the NYT could.

      You would also see a much more tangible measurement with response to digital outtakes and outcomes. For example, we could tell whether customers "liked" that Fiber one ad by the number of "likes" posted on Facebook rather than having to wait for Nielsen to compile data for a comparable TV campaign.

      Social media is literally a front for our millions of consumers to speak to us directly -- and the advantage we gain from that level of connectivity is priceless.

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    2. Excellent, Thank you :)

      Delete
  2. Not sure what happened, but the formatting was all off for me.

    Do you think that you would have to change the PR channels or strategies depending on the products? Do you think that if you had a hypothetical recall for "Fiber One" vs having a recall of "Lucky Charms" that they may have to approach the outputs, outtakes, or outcomes differently?

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