Now here’s new spin on spin doctoring. An American report called it PR by numbers.
A Silicon Valley software start-up is selling Biz360 and, it seems, fairly persuasively. It has convinced 70 top US corporations including 3Com, IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, that PR can and should be done by numbers.
Biz360 works by compiling up-to-date data on what their spin doctoring accomplishes. The software continuously tracks, sorts, analyses and reports on the number of times company is mentioned in magazines, TV programmes, internet news articles, chat rooms, and more than 50,000 other sources – such as Factiva.
The tool, which costs around $80,000 year, helps PR companies see exactly where their external communications are going, who’s reporting them and vice versa, how they are being interpreted and how their coverage compares with that of their rivals.
Why bother?
Well, because PR and marketing budgets are difficult to analytically justify, they are often the first to be cut. Bix360 can help change all that, say the developers.
Tighter budgets have forced many companies to rely more on PR, and less on advertising. Armed with the evidence who knows what might happen to budgets? PR analysis isn’t exactly new, but previously it was time consuming, labour intensive and not necessarily comprehensive. Now spin is measured instantly. Can you think of better story than that?
