Can you help..?OK, so it's not "I'm having sex with my husband's best mate...and his wife" but a reader has sent Auntie TWL a missive with a desperate plea for help:
Dear TWL,
I've been working as an in-house PR manager for 3 years now and our clippings supplier is Press Index. Last year, I noticed that the cost of our clippings had doubled over a period of about 4 months. While I would love to be able to say that this was due to the efforts of our PR agency, sadly this was not the case - it was instead due to Press Index adding vast quantities of irrelevant online titles (especially those that just run press releases verbatim) and failing to apply our account filters properly. I estimate this is costing us several thousand pounds a year, even after I have tried to take steps to fix this. I would be interested to hear whether your other readers report similar frustrations?
I would like to change supplier but having looked at Romeike, Durrants etc, sadly I think PI are the best of a bad bunch. What do readers think about getting the PR agency to manage monitoring themselves, or using facilities like Factiva and RSS as a replacement? We do have both these services, however I am nervous they will miss important pieces.
I'm sure you have some views dear viewers! Please feel free to use our comment facility to get them off your lovely chests.
Personally, I think that Press Index should adopt "Best of a Bad Bunch" as its new corporate strapline...
11 comments:
Actually, we've always found Press Index to be extremely helpful when we've asked them to stop sending us these types of cuttings. An email to your account manager asking to put the website on the exclusion list does the trick.
I'd steer clear of Romeike, as they've just spent the last six months sending me clippings for a completely different customer having updated my delivery address onto someone else's account. They only managed to pay attention, be helpful and actually fix the problem when we stopped paying them...
Are there actually any good suppliers to the PR industry?
snip... "An email to your account manager asking to put the website on the exclusion list does the trick." ...snip
No, hasn't worked - have requested the removal of certain sites up to 3 times. Also, they keep sending over this infernal list with about 4000 titles which you have to go through manually. I've done this once but a) excluded titles are still being included and b) with it being regularly updated it is extremely time consuming to go through it.
I've had good and bad experiences with Press Index. The quality of the digital clippings and monthly analysis provided has been balanced against really slow delivery of important coverage and - last week - receiving a piece of coverage almost 12 months old. Best of a bad bunch is a perfect summary. In answer to your DIY question re: Factiva and RSS feeds, I'd say that clipping services are becoming a secondary means of capturing coverage, which is no bad thing for junior PROS as tracking the media themselves helps them see how the coverage gained for their client fits into the bigger picture. Having PDFs sent straight to our inboxes might be convenient, but it can also make us lazy [soap box dismounted].
I have used a number of services over the years. Durrants, Precise and Romeike. At one time or another they all seem to miss coverage for some reason. I have now been with Romeike for a number of years and have found that if I am clear in my instructions they can be and are very helpful.
I am sorry to hear that you've had an unpleasant experience with us and I unreservedly apologise for that. Unfortunately, people make mistake but if you wouldn't mind sending me an email -your comment is anonymous- it would be good to talk directly with you about how this situation occurred and to see if there's any way we can put it right.
Sarah Clark
Romeike
"Unfortunately, people make mistake"
Wonderful...
Durrants has invested a lot of time and money in its sytems and people to ensure that we continue to lead the market. We monitor coverage from over 100 countries around the world and have more than 2,500 clients. I'd like to think they are all happy with our service. We pay particular attention to the relationships we build with our clients because a media monitoring service is only ever going to be as good as the client brief allows it to be. Our account managers ensure that the process of selecting media and setting up briefs is as simple as possible. If you haven't used Durrants for a while you should contact us, I think you might be pleasantly surprised.
Jeremy Thompson
Managing Director, Durrants
I switched from Press Index to NewsManager and never looked back.
An alternative supplier that we've found useful on both a omestic and global level for both press cuttings and broadcast is TNS Media Intelligence. The account managemewnt team are available 24 hours a day and they respond to queries and requests almost instantly. In an industry where a number of the suppliers are digitalising their operations and treating clients as if they were in a 'factory', TNS seems to have retained the human touch - I recommend them!
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