New index measuring business results a game changer for PR

Razor PR has launched its proprietary Talkability index, a measurement tool that rebases measurement in earned media (publicity or exposure gained from methods than paid advertising) by tying its effectiveness to real businesses metrics.

The PR industry has long grappled with how to measure its work, with growing criticism of the industry’s tendency to focus on vanity metrics like advertising value equivalents. While there has been much discussion about abandoning vanity metrics, in reality little has been done to replace this with benchmarks that are linked to defined data points and that can be measured repeatedly over time, explains Razor MD Dustin Chick.

A global effort to shift away from vanity metrics has met with only limited success. What’s been missing, says Chick, are measurable business results.

The Talkability index – a precision conversation measurement tool which provides marketers and communicators with C-suite-level benchmarking of conversational performance in relation to business impact in real time – plans to change that.

Built in-house by Razor, the index was developed in response to the need for more relevant strategic measurement of the efficacy of PR and communications programmes. It pulls data from a variety of data points into a benchmarked algorithm that defines success against four pillars: conversation, opinion, endorsement and an overall talkability score.

Razor strategy director Vikash Gajjar says the index allows the agency to plan across the communications horizons: in advance, in real time and retrospectively, to create benchmarks.

“The Talkability index changes PR agency dynamics like never before; it puts executive decision informing power firmly in the hands of brand and communications leaders in the boardroom, and it arms them with clear-cut indications of the business impact of their marketing, brand and communications investment,” he says.  

Razor, part of M&C Saatchi group SA, is the 2021 FM AdFocus public relations agency of the year. Earlier this year it was named the world’s best new agency by global industry magazine Provoke. It was also named African agency of the year at the EMEA SABRE Awards 2022.

The Talkability index is part of M&C Saatchi SA’s efforts to become more data fluent across its operating disciplines, and catapults corporate communications and brand building into the era of measured transparency, says Robert Grace, a founding partner and head of strategy at M&C Saatchi SA.