Media Ink: 'Free' media misses the 'paid' media rebound

Joe Mandese

Joe Mandese reviews the performance of corporate public relations in 2002 compared with 2001. He introduces the findings of the so-called Media Reputations Index (MRI) which seeks to do for PR what TV ratings do for the advertising industry.

Media Ink

'Free' media misses the 'paid' media rebound

Joe MandeseMedia Markets Daily

The paid media marketplace better known as advertising may have recovered modestly in 2002, but the unpaid media business appears to have receded. Corporate public relations programmes generated 5% fewer stories in 2002 than they attracted in 2001. Even more worrisome for corporate marketers is the fact that their PR programmes yielded about half the impact per story in 2002 than they reaped in 2001.

While many people in the advertising business don't normally look at, much less try to quantify, the impact of...

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