Disney Dominates "Free" Media, Consumer Marketers Rise Amid Declining Impresions

Procter & Gamble may be the nation's largest advertiser in terms of paid media impressions, but when it comes to the free kind - a.k.a. public relations -- the packaged goods giant doesn't place in the top 10. In fact, many consumer marketers historically have not been able to match their corporate counterparts in terms generating impressions in the U.S. press, but that appears to be changing, according to a just-released report from public relations researcher Delahaye and The Reputation Institute.

During the second quarter of 2003, Walt Disney Co. attracted more media attention than any other of the top corporations in America during the second quarter of 2003, according to the second quarter 2003 Delahaye Media Reputation Index (MRi). Other venerable consumer brands including Coca-Cola, General Motors and McDonald's also rank near the top.

The study, a kind of Nielsen for PR professions, provides an in-depth analysis of the news coverage of Fortune 100 companies, not just in terms of quantitative impressions, but in terms of the impact press coverage has on their awareness and reputation.

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In a potentially alarming note, the study also finds the corporate news hole continues to decline, but that the tone of coverage about corporate America has grown much more positive than it did in the immediate aftermath of corporate scandals like the downfall of Enron, WorldCom and others. During the second quarter of 2003, the corporate news hole - number of stories generated by the top 100 U.S. corporations was about 60,000 print media and TV stories, a decrease of 12% from the 68,000 stories the top 100 companies attracted during the second quarter of 2002.

At least part of the cause of the shrinking corporate news hole, interestingly, has to do with Madison Avenue. "The number of pages that were available in print media was down, because a lot of publications have declined in size. And that's because the advertising guys weren't pulling their weight," explains, K.C. Brown, senior VP-research at Delahaye and creator of the Delahaye Media Reputation Index (MRi).

Another key factor in the decline of corporate media impressions ironically is one that also proving to be an overall positive one: the disappearance of stories about scandal-ridden companies like Enron and WorldCom, which have lost their Fortune 100 status and have been removed from the MRi database. "They were a drag on everything last year," recalls Brown. Meanwhile, there's been some interesting shuffling among the top U.S. corporations in terms of media attention (see table below). Microsoft, which usually ranks No. 1, fell to second place behind Disney, which had a spectacular quarter in terms of media spin: lot's of positive buzz around hit releases like "Finding Nemo" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," as well as a stronger than expected earnings report.

But Disney didn't just generate the highest volume of coverage, it also generated the proportionately most positive coverage. Using an index dubbed the "net effect," Delahaye is able to gauge the net result all positive and negative coverage has on a corporation and distill it down to a single number. On that basis, Disney also ranks as the strongest U.S. company in terms of the overall effect on its corporate reputation, followed by Microsoft, Intel, Wal-Mart and General Motors.

Interestingly, consumer products marketers appear to be moving up the corporate news rankings. Both Coca-Cola and McDonald have emerged as top companies this year, but were barely blips last year, says Brown. The release of Delahaye's MRi data offers media planners a rare glimpse into the world of PR and provides on the basis of a common currency: media impressions. While most major agencies still don't formally factor PR impressions into their planning, an emerging group of communications planning shops consider it de rigueur.

"Its critical that we take a look at brand impressions from a consumers point of view not from an agency's point-of-view," says Steve Farella, president-CEO of one such shop, TargetCast TCM. "We've traditionally taken a look at Nielsen data and CMR data and studied it and, in fact, torn apart advertising campaigns to understand what's going on. But we've been ignoring what's going on in PR, which is becoming a huge part of the business, especially with video news releases."

While some traditional ad agencies poo-poo such needs, because PR is not deemed to be in their portfolio of media options, Farella asserts, "We have to find a way to measure that impact on a brand so that we can respond with the media we can control - advertising."

Top Companies Ranked By Free Media Impressions, Net Effect


Top 10 Ranked By Impressions Top 10 Ranked By Net Effect
Walt Disney 2,805,000,000 Walt Disney 212,000,000
Microsoft 2,411,000,000 Microsoft 178,000,000
AOL Time Warner 2,136,000,000 Intel 132,000,000
General Motors 1,993,000,000 Wal-Mart 122,000,000
Merrill Lynch 1,908,000,000 General Motors 119,000,000
Wal-Mart 1,859,000,000 IBM 119,000,000
Citigroup 1,452,000,000 Home Depot 110,000,000
IBM 1,428,000,000 Coca-Cola 101,000,000
General Electric 1,403,000,000 Bank of America 92,000,000
Morgan Stanley 1,381,000,000 AOL Time Warner 87,000,000

Source: The Media Reputation Index, a collaboration of Delahaye and The Reputation Institute. Net effect = and index weighted by the amount of positive and negative coverage of a company. Includes print (newspapers and magazines) and television news coverage.
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