I am trying to discern the list of benefits and hard-dollar value for
various marketing tasks.  For example, when a magazine article
features a company and its products, (1) what is the list of
bottom-line-affecting business benefits the company receives and (2)
what is the potential dollar value of the article to the company?

I am looking for the same list of benefits and ? in particular ? the
potential dollar value to a company (or how it may be calculated) for
each of the marketing activities below.  I am less interested in the
more ?mechanical? means, such as calculating the value of an article
based on what it would cost to buy space in a publication, but a
reasonable estimate of how the article (or whatever) will affect the
company?s bottom-line (i.e., how much money it can save or earn for
them in terms of potential sales) OR a formula to calculate the value.

Here are the activities:

1.	A press release
2.	An article in a national magazine
3.	An article in a trade publication
4.	An article in a local newspaper?s business section
5.	A speaking opportunity at a national trade conference
6.	A reference from an analyst firm

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 08 Jun 2004 16:58 PDT

Is the presumpation here that all these things (articles, analyst's
reference, etc) are hgihly positive...?

Obviously, a negative analyst comment, or a national magazine article
about how corrupt XYZ Enterprises is, doesn't offer a company much in
the way of bottom line benefits.

It would help to have a clearer idea of what you're after.

Thanks.

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by prpro-ga on 08 Jun 2004 18:21 PDT

Yes, it is assuming all these things are positive. Thanks for asking!

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 09 Jun 2004 17:50 PDT

prpro-ga,

I've been mulling over your question for a day, now, and I must
say...I'm hard put to really find a way to quantify what you're after.
 Companies spend enormous amounts of money and effort on marketing,
but to actually divvy this up in a way that could put a dollar value
on a particular magazine article is beyond the scope of even a $200
question.  I believe it would take a full-fledged, professional
marketing study to really cost these out.

That said, there *is* a firm that has put a dollar value on popular
brands.  For instance, if Coca-Cola weren't called Coca-Cola, it would
only be worth $X billion dollars as a company -- the value of its
plants, equipment, etc.

But since the Coca-Cola brand itself is so valuable, the company is
worth much more than a mere $X billion.  Folks have actually figured
out that the intangible value of the Coca-Cola brand itself adds $70
billion to the overall value of the company.  The Disney brand is
worth an additional $28 billion.  And so on.

Is this sort of information of interest to you.  If so, let me know
what you think would be a reasonable way to proceed on getting you
information that would be of value to your work.

Thanks.

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by prpro-ga on 11 Jun 2004 18:51 PDT

Pafalafa, I suspect this is a problem that we can't overcome. I really
was interested to see if there was anything out there that had been
done; to date, I haven't seen much and now suspect there isn't much
(if any) info at all.  I think we'd best 'hang this up' .  The
Coca-Cola info is interesting, but wouldn't be applicable to much
smaller companies, which is the market for which I am trying to gather
this info. Thanks for trying, though!

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Request for Question Clarification by taxmama-ga on 25 Jun 2004 04:48 PDT

Dear Pr Pro, 

While there is no general value to any of the items you mention, 
there is a specific value. If I can give you a formula, or a
way to quantify this for your clients, will you accept that as
a valid answer?

Best wishes

Your TaxMama-ga

P.S. Who was quoted in the WSJ last week
and will be in USA Weekend this weekend.

The reason you aren't having much success with your query is that no
organisation has successfully been able to definitively demonstrate
the value of individual articles, press releases, etc...

I work for Haven Research, a UK media analysis consultancy and we come
up against this problem all the time. We often measure the Advertising
Value Equivalent (AVE) of an article, but as you have noted, this
proves nothing in terms of sales figures. The impact of individual
articles and press releases varies tremendously of course, so there
can be no standard figure for the worth of an unspecified item of
marketing.

The only solution the media evaluation industry can offer to date is a
general assessment of the efficacy of your marketing efforts. We can
match your sales figures against peaks in media coverage, proportion
of generated/ungenerated coverage in the media, journalist
favourability, target audience reach & demographics, etc...

The role of analysts like myself is to examine this data and search
for correlations between relevent criteria. For example, I did some
interesting work on the Atkins diet last year, showing that the
association of celebrities with the brand in the media had a positive
impact on sales (despite no actual endorsements from the celebrities
in question). This was erased later in the year by highly-publicised
health warnings from the scientific community.

I must stress that there is no scientific approach. The background
'noise' (external events, consumer trends, seasonal variations,
advertising activity) means that dollar value measurements for this
type of thing are improbable for the near future, if possible at all.

Hope this helps.

TaxMama, I am so intrigued by this.  Can you tell me what you mean by
"While there is no general value to any of the items you mention,
there is a specific value"? If you are saying what I think you are,
then -- yes-- the formula would be a valid answer.

And is it you being quoted in WSJ and USA Weekend?