P&G Case Study Purports to Show PR ROI Beats other Methods

Mark Weiner, President and CEO of Delahaye, Bacon's presented a case study focused on PR
marketing mix modeling (MMM) about a P&G new-product release in which he said the PR spend on the product had the best ROI of the four types of spends. For every dollar spent, the following sales were generated, he said: TV ($1.31), trades ($2.13), price promotions ($0.78), PR ($2.70). I'm not entirely clear how they got such exactly ROI figures, but that, it seems, is the MMM at work. (This was the first question that was asked by the audience. A: It's all in the data! which is able to show trends and very small, but meaningful spikes over time -- using regression analysis. For example, Mark said, they compare weeks where there were PR placements to weeks when there weren't PR placements.

The case-study was put together by three groups for
client P&G, according to Mark's co-presenter, (the literally, fast-talking) Jim Allman, CEO,
DeVries PR, a N.Y. boutique firm. He said the team that does the modeling is a 3rd party, not part of Delahaye or DeVries. "Delahaye and the modeler are getting paid lots of money, and the agency isn't," [laughter] he said. Modeling, he said, is very time-consuming and focused on the minutiae of the data.

For its long history as a super marketer, P&G has never tried to quantify PR results before, Allman said.