Many of you working in the PR industry will have already heard of Louise Di Francesco, Agency Director of Verve Communications. Her 25 year career expands across all areas of public relations, media communications, issues management and crisis management... so you could say she knows a thing or two about media monitoring! Read on to find out why Louise is one of our favourite Slicers...
What has been your PR highlight so far at Verve Communications?
The highlight has been the formation of Verve Communications. Prue MacSween is a legend in the PR world and I had my own agency, The Write Communications Group, for years. Both of us were journalists in a previous life and we were competitors before we merged and re-launched ourselves as Verve five years ago. We have a great business partnership and we have never had a disagreement about anything at all. The fact we are both opinionated and tell it like it is could have been a disaster but it is a match made in heaven.
How do you compare PR practices in a consultancy environment compared with other PR roles in your career?
Verve Communications has only one client per industry sector as we are very mindful of conflict of interest. We also tend to have long term relationships with our clients – sometimes many years – so we are an essential part of their business and communications team. We get to work with incredibly talented people in a range of very different industries so that makes our work really exciting all the time.
Why did you choose Slice over other monitoring services available?
We were so dissatisfied with our previous provider. We dreaded dealing with them, but didn’t know there was an alternative. It was just taking so much time to get our hands on clips and then we were getting the wrong clips. Slice was recommended to us by a colleague. We decided to try out the service and we haven’t looked back since signing up. Slice gives us total control over media monitoring, but still provides support when necessary.
What's the top three things you love about Slice?
We have total control.
We have instant access to media clips.
It’s so inexpensive.
How did Slice make a difference to your job and/or organisation?
Media monitoring is no longer a difficult and time-consuming procedure. We have transferred just about all our clients to Slice. They love the savings, we love that we have total control and there’s really not much extra work. We just read the clippings as we would with any other service, then we download them to our server. Given the trouble we were having with our previous supplier, I think Slice actually saves us time. We can monitor everything and make instant adjustments to briefs.
How do you qualify and quantify a solid and successful PR campaign?
It’s important that we meet (or exceed) our clients’ expectations across a variety of criteria or agreed objectives. It’s important that PR is quantifiable. Without a media monitoring service, you can’t really show your success, in terms of how much coverage you obtain, or the quality of that coverage. We use Slice to conduct key message analyses and evaluate the success of a campaign. With Slice, it’s so inexpensive that we’ve convinced clients who previously couldn’t afford media monitoring to use the service.
How significant is online publicity to a client compared to off line publicity?
It depends on the client, their audience and objectives but online is definitely significant. If you ignore online publicity, you really have your head in the sand, especially because the world we live in mediates communication in so many ways.
Do clients mainly look at ‘column inches’ as the bottom line in publicity success? If not, what are other KPIs?
Most clients do want to see something concrete and column inches/estimated advertising values give them that however it is just as important that the column inches you achieve are communicating the right message.
European getaway or tropical resort?
Can I have both – just alternate holidays?
Cocktails or Champagne?
Do I have to choose? Both!
Chocolate soufflé or lemon meringue?
Definitely chocolate?
Feature films or reality TV?
Feature films
Megan Gale or Jennifer Hawkins?
They are both so gorgeous but completely different. Too hard to choose.
Chartbusting 80’s or Hip Hop?
The 80s??? Give me a break. Abba, Abba, Abba?
Jackie Collins or JK Rowling
Jackie Collins – give me wild sex, lots of champagne and decadent lifestyles over wizards and warlocks any day.
Tracking the media, monitoring the message
No comments:
Post a Comment