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The Broken Value Of PR Value

I recently had the concept of PR value explained to me in detail and thought this would be a great posting on Digiramblings given that two of the four of us actually work in PR and deal with this day in day out.

The ludicrousness (actually a real word) of this archaic valuation left me scratching my head. How do educated, intelligent people, think that this "metric" holds true in this day and age?

Here's a crash course on how PR value is calculated:

PR Value = Value of advertising multiplied by 3

Why do you multiply by 3? Because PR is more "valued" than advertising, which is paid for. 

So lets say you're on a news channel that usually charges $100 for a 30 second spot. Having your CEO interviewed for 2 minutes is actually worth (4 units of 30 second spots) x $100 x 3 = $1,200.

Holy crap. Two minutes of the CEO is worth $1,200? What if he's on a really prime time slot for, say, just under 10 minutes?

Apparently after including other factors, this leads to a whopping $200,000 ++ (I can't really do the exact math).

Seriously? Does that make any financial sense to you? Does anyone really believe 10 minutes generates $200,000 of value? 

Bullshit-meter-0

Why are people so in love with this metric? Because it's terribly easy to inflate but yet mean nothing?

Let's talk about online

 

How do you measure online PR value?

The reason why PR value is a dated concept is because it made sense when the physical world was in its heyday. Real world, physical restrictions (like the width of the newspaper or the duration of news) created scarcity, thus creating value.

Now, your article may not make it on the news but is an extra clip on the news station's website. Or not make it to print but make it onto the online-only section of the site.

Is that still value? Do you still apply the same amount of value?

In asking around I've found that most agencies slap on a flat "value" for anything online. That means a one paragraph mention by a blogger and a full "page" on a reputable news site gets the same "value" attached to it. How does that compute?

In my opinion PR value is a broken metric. It's fake and literally makes up numbers that look good, and it's one that the PR industry needs to move on from, and maybe clients need to force the issue.