Method of Quantitative Analysis of Corporate Communication Performance

• US 20050060288A1
• Filed: 08/26/2003
• Published: 03/17/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 08/26/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Factiva Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Benchmarking Solutions Ltd. (Factiva Incorporated)
• Inventors: von Groll, Goetz
• Granted Patent: US 8,078,616 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A method for the analysis, benchmarking, and finally improvement of communications pertaining to the field of public relations is described. The methodology is based on a massively quantitative approach suitable for numerical processing. Furthermore, it takes into account data outside the realm of communications and the press, such as a company'"'"'s commercial and financial market performance to normalise the quantitative results and facilitate comparisons between competitors. Taking into account proprietary data such as the communication budget of a client the performance of the communications effort can be benchmarked objectively. Finally, the method offers the resulting key performance indicators to a wide audience within the client company in a “cock-pit” style manner.

Claims

1. A method for quantitative analysis of communication performance comprising the steps of:

(i) Performing a computerised set of at least two searches in a database or a network containing articles, each search comprising an object of interest related to said communication performance or objects to be compared to said object of interest, at least one search term to be searched in the publication and optionally one or more attributes concerning the publication itself.

(ii) Analysing the search by taking into account additional data, in particular data being provided from a different source than said database or network of articles for weighting or normalisation purposes.

(iii) Displaying the results of said analyses as graphs.

2. A method for quantitative analysis of communication performance as set forth in claim 1 comprising furthermore the step of

Performing steps (i) and (ii) for articles published at different points in time and displaying the results as a function of time.

3. A method for quantitative analysis of communication performance as set forth in claim 1 wherein said object of interest is a company, brand or product name or category, governmental or non-governmental organisation, person or issue of general interest or public policy.

4. A method for quantitative analysis of communication performance as set in one of the preceding claims wherein said data being provided from a different source relates to financial data of company, product line, marketing and PR budget.

5. A method for quantitative analysis of communication performance as set in one of the preceding claims comprising furthermore the step of evaluating the positive, negative, and neutral tone of voice concerning said object of interest or said objects to be compared to said objects of interest of a plurality of retrieved publications by manually evaluating a statistically chosen sub-set thereof.

6. A method for quantitative analysis of communication performance as set in one of the preceding claims comprising furthermore the step of counting and mapping the frequency of most relevant words concerning said object of interest or said objects to be compared to said objects of interest of a plurality of retrieved publications by plotting the most relevant words in conjunction with their change of occurrence over time.