Quantifying Brand and Reputation

Effective, proactive communications strategies are key in the pharmaceutical industry to influence what little of the conversation about your brand can be controlled.

When a new Vice President of Global Communications came aboard a leading pharmaceutical company, he wanted to quantify brand and reputation to effect shifts in messaging and strategy. He wanted to track several brand drivers, subtopics, and therapeutic areas for his organization as well as their competitors to pinpoint which strategies were successful and highlight where his team needed to focus to improve.

With so many data points in one article, an automated solution could not accurately gather and tone all of it correctly. The company turned to a hybrid solution in which all their coverage is read by a human analyst to extract key topics and therapeutic areas, as well as tone it correctly. The solution uses AI technology to make the process precise and efficient for analysts, enabling the nuanced analysis the company needs.

Reputation Management in a Vilified Industry

A true understanding of brand reputation is difficult in an industry where negative press is inevitable. This is especially true in the pharmaceutical industry where negative coverage about a competitor or the industry in general can damage your brand. The team measures negative coverage against volume benchmarks and drills down to the nature of the coverage to understand which outlets, authors, social influencers, topics, or practice areas are driving it, to decide if an issue requires a response.

When a crisis occurred for a competitor that called into question the ethics of the industry as a whole, the team wanted to understand the impact of the coverage and if it required a proactive response. Analysis revealed that while the industry was condemned as generally distrusted, coverage did not mention the team’s brand by name, nor was it so penalizing for the industry that it required a response. Because of accurate analysis, they were able to make a well-informed decision and avoided associating their brand with a scandal unnecessarily.

Targeting Authors and Outlets to Increase Positive Coverage

The team goes beyond reputation management with their media measurement program to uncover trends in coverage that they can capitalize on to increase positive coverage.

They use proactive, data-driven media relations strategies to drive positive coverage and build strong relationships with industry influencers. Author and outlet analysis informs who to pitch based on interests and habits, as well as helps them craft personalized pitches that will grab journalists’ attention. Measuring authors and outlets has also uncovered new influencers in the industry. Analysis revealed a certain Associated Press author wrote about the pharmaceutical industry much more than the team realized. They used this info to build a relationship with the author, changing their AP strategy and resulting in increased positive coverage in an important top tier outlet.

Social sharing data also informs the team’s media relations strategies and drives positive coverage. They target authors who receive high amounts of social sharing and have written about them in the past to give a message traction. Analysis of social sharing data also revealed that articles with quotes from certain spokespeople like the company’s CEO or Head of Oncology are more likely to be positive and garner a high number of shares.

Tying Media Measurement to Business goals and Affecting the Bottom Line

The team measures the coverage they receive in key therapeutic areas because this shows their direct impact on company goals. Public perception of how the company is performing in a therapeutic area is a measure of how successful the brand is in the space. For therapeutic areas like Oncology, which is a company-wide priority and revenue driver, it’s important to demonstrate that the team is contributing to this goal by increasing positive oncology coverage, especially around innovation, product performance, and financial performance.

The team also uses analysis and reports on earnings coverage to inform executives of top drugs and therapeutic areas driving earnings coverage, the tonality breakdown, as well as highlighting trends within coverage that authors discussed such as overreliance on one drug or impending patent cliffs. This information prepares executives for quarterly earnings calls, making the team invaluable to leadership.

Managing communications in an industry with very few direct competitors might seem like a cake walk. Until you need to differentiate your brand from only a handful of others – then it gets interesting.

In the established credit reporting market, the key players are well-known brands that have been servicing this market for decades. That’s why differentiating their offerings and gaining market share is a key business objective for a data and analytics-savvy company.

To accomplish these goals, the communications team of the company needs to have an accurate view of the media landscape – which messages are resonating with influencers? How does this compare to our competitors’ coverage? Are our studies reaching the right audiences? Where are our experts quoted and how often? Thought leadership is a key component to their strategy and message pull-through is a metric that informs if they should stay on course or refocus their efforts elsewhere.

Comprehensive Brand Driver and Subtopic Analysis Drives Action

The communication team measures and compares SOV on topics like data security, credit reporting, and identity protection. They also measure the impact of their research studies, experts and spokespeople, financial performance, and industry litigation/regulations. The analysis of these topics and concepts enables the communications team to not only report on what has happened but also provides a roadmap for what needs to happen next.

Is positive SOV decreasing for data security messaging? The team can quickly uncover the reasons and assign resources to focus on the issue. If authors are not talking about them but covering their peers on this topic they can share the information with their agency and have them focus on outreach.

By consistently measuring and analyzing their key business drivers over time, the team has become more predictive about their outcomes. This allows them to react to anomalies much more quickly. For example, their PublicRelay analyst alerted the communications team when a new non-credit monitoring competitor started dominating positive coverage about data security and identity protection. The company was able to quickly assign resources to formulate a response strategy.

Leveraging Key Studies and Company Experts

Key sources of thought leadership content for the company are their research studies in the Automotive, Finance, Mortgage, and Marketing industries. PublicRelay delivers analysis of the impact their traditional coverage has created – including how often this coverage is shared on social media. This enables them to determine which industry topics drive the most engagement for their brand. They can then refocus their outreach efforts to gain traction on studies that are lagging.

Their consistent analysis of these studies also delivered an added benefit – uncovering a possible competitor. A niche property reporting center started gaining positive SOV for the quality of their studies on disaster damage in the wake of Hurricane Harvey and Irma. Their PublicRelay analyst quickly alerted them and they were able to respond accordingly.

Before the company develops reports in new industries like Healthcare, they can utilize PublicRelay data and insights to assess the media landscape and determine if there are thought leadership and whitespace opportunities. The communications team can then work with their agency to devise a tactical plan to launch the new studies.

Keeping Their Industry Leader Status

Quarter over quarter the company generally receives much more positive coverage than its mainstream competitors, particularly in the areas of its expert spokespeople and research studies. They also keep a keen eye on their brand reputation and can pivot quickly to address any issues.

Working in partnership with PublicRelay to analyze key trends and events for actionable insights, the team ensures the company is in control of its reputation and leadership initiatives. They continue their quest to be the top provider and ultimate authority in the areas of data and analytics.

When the animal health subsidiary of a major pharmaceutical company raised money in its public offering, it was the second largest IPO from a U.S. company in history and it quickly became the largest global animal health company.

The newly public company built a communications strategy around global expansion, innovation, and customer experience. They needed a solution to help them measure how their coverage was mapping to these goals and how they compared to their competitors for metrics like SOV and audience reach.

Measuring Coverage Tonality, SOV and Reach

They deployed a multilayered media measurement program powered by PublicRelay to monitor and analyze social, broadcast and traditional media coverage. Semiannually, the company reviews the in-depth analysis that helps the communications team understand their brand’s dominance in the market and its public perception. The team is looking at both most recent activity and time over time metrics to understand trends and look for anomalies.

The communications team evaluates the top tier outlets they and their competitors appeared in, their coverage tone levels, the authors rewriting about them, how often their spokespeople are getting quoted, and the stories trending on social media. All this data is aggregated to summarize the company’s global coverage reach every six months. Over time, the team can see the types of stories and authors that trend on social media and across what channels and become more predictive about their campaign performance. They also evaluate their spokesperson strategies and determine who is gaining the most traction and on which topics.

The analysis also features reach and SOV for their band and competitors. The data is shared the internal PR team, who can adjust their media engagement plans based on which key topics about its competitors gained the most traction in high-powered outlets.

Understanding Key Message Pull-Through

Brand and product-level analysis of reputation drivers like global leadership, innovation, customer service, and impact on emerging markets helps the team measure their campaigns and message pull-through success. Reports outline the percentage of high-status (high-reach) outlets that cover information about the Pharma company’s different business divisions, ranging from their vaccine arm to their livestock services, and the prevalence of key brand messages.

Such insight is indispensable for strategic and tactical assessment and future planning. For example, when the company recognized that its global leadership and innovation messages where getting picked up by high-powered outlets and accounted for 50% of coverage, the team could then pivot resources to different messages that were not performing as well. Furthermore, the head of communications was able to show his entire company how its communications team is boosting the company’s brand reputation, year over year.

Understanding the Impact of Sponsorship Campaigns, Strategic Partnerships and Events

Aside from helping the company evaluate how well its reach and key message-pull through is increasing, the communications team can also understand how well their communications efforts around key corporate initiatives are paying off, and how the public is responding to those messages.

For instance, the company has strategic partnerships with many other companies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations, Mayo Clinic, the American Humane Society, the Hero Dog Awards, and others. Bi-Yearly reports analyze the communications around these campaigns and show whether these initiatives have successfully generated positive spikes in coverage.

Similarly, the company measures its earnings reports and acquisition announcements. Comparing spikes related to specific events gives its leadership key insight into how well key stakeholders are receiving strategic partnerships, acquisitions and earnings information.

Daily, Company-Wide Reports and Insights

Semiannual and annual reports are supplemented with a daily clip report that is circulated to the entire C-Suite and Board. The daily updates contain brand mentions and key industry topics across the globe so that the entire organization is abreast of global coverage and key issues, when they arise.

Lastly, the PR team keeps a very close eye on a key competitors and rumored spinoffs, acquisitions and other similar events. These reports are essential to the entire organization as they deliver competitive insight and allow the executive team to be prepared for market shifts.

Challenge: Lack of Actionable Insights to Make Data-Driven Decisions

Large publicly traded companies receive a tremendous amount of earned media coverage and it contains valuable information that communicators can use to inform their media relations, influencer, and reputation management strategies. But only if they can analyze the context of those articles.

A leading financial services company simply did not have the resources to measure its media coverage, especially in terms of an in-depth analysis to drive business decisions. The communications team frequently had the right hunch or intuition when making decisions, but they lacked the data to support these decisions. This deficit was highlighted when business leaders asked for data to back up their strategies, just like other departments were required to do so.

Unlocking Hidden Insights in Media Coverage

The team understood that each piece of earned media coverage contained valuable data points about their brand, competitors, authors, outlets, and their industry. This information would allow them to not only look back at how they were doing today, but also help them build more informed future plans. The ability to analyze concepts like “innovation” would enable them to focus on campaigns tied to broader business goals. The team chose PublicRelay’s human-assisted AI solution to help them uncover the insights that would make them a strategic partner to the business.

The daily clip reports are human curated and toned by PublicRelay so the communications team is able to spend time on more valuable tasks. In addition to the company’s own brand, PublicRelay also analyzes the coverage of their largest direct competitor. This enables the team to answer questions like, ‘what influencers are covering my competitor, but not me?’. They can then refer to specific topics and tone of articles as they build an informed outreach plan to target those influencers.

The team also utilizes analysis of the impact of social media on their earned media coverage to understand how different topics perform on the various social platforms. Do financial performance topics get shared more often on twitter or Facebook? What about workplace environment articles? Does it vary by sentiment? They also review how different authors and outlets are impacted by social media. Do certain authors write about them often but have low sharing numbers? How are the top tier outlets performing? Do they have larger audiences but lower engagement?

As in most publicly traded companies, the communications team is especially tuned in to their coverage during earnings season. PublicRelay supports their efforts with more frequent special reports during this time that enables the team to swiftly address negative coverage and amplify positive coverage. These special reports regarding earnings coverage are often shared directly with the executive team.

Event Strategy

The financial services company attends an annual conference where they speak and make announcements each year. PublicRelay provides analysis of the brand’s media coverage during this annual event. In particular, PublicRelay measures coverage for specific topics such as mortgage technology, innovation, and new product announcements. By monitoring these data points year over year, the communications team can be proactive in its event strategy and establish informed, realistic goals when preparing for the next conference.

For example, the positive sentiment and volume of coverage at a recent event significantly decreased from the previous year. The team dug into the data to uncover that a majority of their coverage from the previous year focused on a new product launch. They used this information to recommend that the company utilize this event to announce new products as that topic generates significant positive coverage for the brand.

Furthermore, by showing data from past performance, the communications team is able to present data to back up their plan and get executive buy in. They can demonstrate that if X spokesperson speaks at this conference and is quoted in Y outlet, then they could receive Z amount of positive coverage. This gives credibility to the communications team to show how they use data like other departments.

Whitespace Analysis – Boosting Thought Leadership

The financial services company is in a noisy and highly regulated industry with few key competitors. This makes it vital for the company to capitalize on topic whitespace and expand its messaging to start a new conversation. PublicRelay consistently tracks popular topics that are being talked about within the industry and examines how coverage of those topics change over time. This includes research about the company itself, its competitors, and the authors and outlets writing about them. By measuring industry conversation at the topic level, the communications team can quickly position itself to be the go to source on a fresh topic and increase thought leadership positioning, giving the company a significant competitive advantage.

Result: Executing Data-Driven Communications Plans

As a publicly traded company in a highly regulated industry, the team focuses on amplifying their positive coverage and consistently communicating with stakeholders. In addition, it is key for everyone to understand stakeholder and market sentiment about the brand. By consistently measuring its earned media coverage, the company can understand the impact of social media on their traditional coverage and discover key influencers in the process. Measuring coverage at the topic level for their brand and their competitors helps them uncover new messages they should be pitching.

Using accurate data to both understand the moment and inform the future is a game changer for the communications team. They can not only show why they are building and executing the plans as they are, but also adjust and refocus efforts as needed.