Box Clever.

How to use online media coverage to engage TV audiences & increase viewing.

Soaps: ideal media content.

• TV Soaps are embedded in the fabric of UK culture. Since the first TV soap aimed at an adult audience, The Grove Family, aired on the BBC in 1954-57, audiences have been endlessly fascinated by programmes which reflect the lives and domestic dramas of ordinary people.

• Soap creators compete to create storyline moments which will boost TV audience viewing figures. Nevertheless, audience figures have been in decline for some of the longer-running soaps, with a younger audience defecting to reality TV shows such as Love Island.

• Producers and broadcasters use a range of media tactics to support their programmes and increase interest in plot lines, characters and situations. Given the national obsession with soaps, PR is critical in keeping them top-of-mind with potential viewers. Mainstream news media frequently cover the on-screen happenings. Soap stars are celebrities and the public is endlessly fascinated with them too; encouraging strong media interest in their real lives.

• Increasingly, soaps are introducing challenging plot lines that would not have been possible even ten years ago. Reflecting current social issues is a way to keep soaps relevant and the controversy sometimes sparked by this strategy is itself part of a plan to keep programmes on the audience’s radar – not just on TV but in other media they consume on a daily basis.

• This report shows how online media coverage is fundamental to delivering the viewing audience for TV soaps. Using its PRSV methodology to show how data-driven PR can impact TV viewing, Tribe sheds light on the symbiotic and powerful relationship between online media coverage and broadcasting success.

PRSV – what you need to know.

• Audience impact is at the heart of PRSV evaluation, revealing how people respond to media coverage. This is far more robust than vanity metrics such as volume of press clippings, impressions or AVEs.

• The PRSV algorithm calculates the probability that the audience has seen, opened and actually read PR-generated content. We call this the engaged audience.

• The content that appears in Google search results is the basis for our analysis because online media are now the most influential channel, with some news sites reaching audiences far larger than those achieved by social media. Nowadays, people turn to Google first for information – about 90% of consumer journeys start with a search. The information returned in search results has a significant impact on audience decision-making.

• Not all media are created equal, however. For any given topic, PRSV calculates which media have been most effective in reaching the interested audience.
• To prove the validity of PRSV results, we correlate them against independent data sets, such as consumer search trends, website visits, sales or recruitment figures. This allows us to illustrate the impact of PR on real-world audience behaviour and outcomes.
• All of our analysis is carried out at very high levels of statistical significance, which gives us confidence that the findings cannot be down to chance alone. PRSV allows organisations to #GetReal by providing insights which genuinely answer the ‘So what?’ question and add value to PR planning and campaign implementation.

Which soap has the most effective PR?