Category: Best PR measurement on a budget (the Little Acorns Award)
Client/Entering Company: Philips
Campaign title: Philips PerfectCare – Evaluating PR’s Effectiveness
Company Name: OneVoice Connect Measurement (OVCM)

Objective/Brief

Philips UK was facing a common business challenge. The company had developed a breakthrough product in garment care, the PerfectCare steam generator iron, and the time had come to launch it in the UK.

The question was how best to spread the word effectively, and in a meaningful way, among consumers? The answer was public relations and earned media engagement. Philips UK, with OVCM, launched PerfectCare using PR, targeting earned social, digital and traditional media channels. With the help of PerfectCare spokesperson, the British actress Hermione Norris, OVCM used earned media to show how PerfectCare differed from other irons in its category, specifically that the product:

• was safe on all fabrics
• could cut ironing time in half
• wouldn’t burn your clothes

Now that PR had successfully done its job in generating quality outputs, Philips UK wanted to understand how PR impacted consumers, namely women living in the UK and, in particular:

• awareness of PerfectCare among target consumers
• perceptions of, and familiarity with, PerfectCare, its unique brand technology and features
• product recommendations
• purchase intent

Research provided critical outcome data, and armed Philips UK with valuable insights into target consumers, allowing the company and OVCM to refine their engagement strategies.

Strategy

In order to capture key consumer outcomes, and to understand how PR drove and impacted those outcomes, OVCM recommended and designed a post-campaign awareness survey. As PerfectCare was new to the UK market, a pre-campaign survey was not fielded and OVCM assumed that outcome metrics were starting from zero.

OVCM worked in close partnership with Philips to ensure that the survey was designed in such as way so as to reflect the company’s communications and business objectives. Specifically, the survey was to include elements that focused on:

• social, digital and traditional media channels
• key PerfectCare messages
• relevant UK competitors

The survey asked a series of questions about female consumers’ exposure to communications, including message penetration by channel, and association of key brand messages with the product. Their responses were critical to linking the effectiveness of PR in driving target consumer outcomes.

Execution/Implementation

Data was collected via an online survey, fielded in partnership with Vision Critical, among a representative sample of 2,011 women in the UK. To ensure that target consumers were reached while campaign efforts were still top-of-mind, the survey was fielded immediately on completion of the major PR push. OVCM analysed the data in two ways:

1. Outcome metrics for women aware of the PerfectCare steam generator iron

2. Outcome metrics defined by communications channels for women exposed to PR and delivered an analysis report to Philips UK.

Conclusions

The PR-driven PerfectCare launch campaign, successfully reached women in the UK. Not only were female consumers aware of the PerfectCare steam generator iron, but our analysis showed that women who had seen, heard or read something about PerfectCare were more likely to understand, recommend, intend to purchase, or had already purchased, the PerfectCare Steam Generator iron.

On the heels of these great outcome metrics, Philips used survey data to further refine its communications and engagement strategy. Specifically, the data analysis revealed that while there was high brand awareness, an in-depth understanding of PerfectCare technology was relatively low.

PR Insight: Focus campaign on driving trial and purchase the two most important purchase drivers were trying the product before purchase and recommendations from friends

PR Insight: Focus on ways to prompt target consumers to try the PerfectCare steam generator iron and encourage friends to recommend the brand (either face-to-face or through online reviews)

Based on these insights, OVCM advised Philips to launch a word-of-mouth campaign to encourage product trials, and further product recommendations, through social channels.

As a result, we put on a series of PerfectCare ironing parties, which allowed more than 2,000 women to get hands-on experience of the PerfectCare steam generator ironing products, totalling over 9,000 hours with the product. Attendees were encouraged to post and share content from the parties via social media. Immediately afterwards, there was a large increase in Amazon and Philips.com reviews. A post-party survey revealed that each attendee recommended PerfectCare to many of their friends.

Lastly, shortly after the parties, Philips was elevated to the top position in the UK garment care category

Name of contact: Ben Levine
Email: Ben.Levine@ketchum.com
Telephone: +44 20 7611 3522

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