Creating Media Darlings

They may score high on the revenue front but that does not essentially make

them darlings of the media. The Image Index for the Dataquest Top 10 companies

is an interesting tale of how these top runners of Indian IT industry fared in

terms of managing their media activities (read news coverage).

Amongst the top 10 DQ companies, Infosys tops the Image Index for the

nine-month period between October 2001-March 2002 (agencyfaqs started monitoring

media relation activity of Indian corporates only in October 2001) with a total

of 26,066 cirrus image points (CIP). While Wipro with a score of 23,775 CIP was

not too far from the #1 player, the #3 on the list was way behind with 9,930 CIP

but was also closely followed by TCS with 9,651 CIP.

The interesting story, however, is the respective positions that these

players have on the Image index vis-a-vis their rankings in the DQ Top 20

listing. While the #1 DQ Top 20 player TCS finds itself occupying #4 slot in the

Image Index, HP–#10 player of the DQ Top 20 list–surprises all by grabbing

the #3 slot in this list. Similarly, Compaq, the #4 player in the DQ Top 20 list

managed to score only 2,872 CIP and was #8 in the image listing. Most

interestingly, the two strong channel players, Tech Pacific India and Redington

India (#7 and #9 amongst DQ Top 20 respectively) did not score a single CIP and

hence have not been included in the list. While this does not mean that nothing

has been written about these two companies–they might have got media space in

terms of being part of other stories–it definitely indicates that news

originating directly from these companies did not find place in media.

The quality of exposure (QE) index, which is the ratio between the image and

visibility points and helps in understanding whether the nature of the coverage

was flattering or not, however, saw some of these companies fighting a close

battle.

Wipro just managed to squeeze past Satyam by 2 points to score 135 and grab

the #1 slot. Similarly, TCS was just 1 point behind Satyam to emerge #3 on this

list. On the other hand HP which scored high on the Image Index could barely

manage to float above the danger level with exactly 100 points and Compaq scored

the worst with just 72 points.

This implies that out of all the articles that appeared for these two

companies, the ratio of neutral and negative articles outweigh the positive

articles. While 53% of all Compaq news was neutral in nature, it got 20%

negative coverage (the highest amongst DQ Top 20 players) and 27% positive

reports.

In HP’s case, the percentage of news tone to overall coverage was 26%

positive, 59% neutral and 15% negative. Companies that scored high on the

positive front, include IBM (49%), Wipro (47%), Satyam Computers (43%) and TCS

(40%).

Overall it was an interesting period, watching these big guns fire their best

as they jostled for more share of the media pages. As for the subjects covered,

personality-based news and issues related to marketing and sales as well as the

financial results hogged the limelight.

SHUBHENDU PARTH in New Delhi



(For more information on Cirrus, contact: sandeep@agencyfaqs.com
or srinibalram@agencyfaqs.com)

METHODOLOGY>>>>>>>

To arrive at the Image score, each news report for a company is run through

two measurement tools–the first measures the visibility of a company, while

the second interprets the exposure tonality. The model assigns quantitative

weights to factors like readership, article space and prominence of coverage,

the summation of which gives the visibility point. The visibility points,

however, represent only the coverage received by a company and do not address

the nature of news coverage. To measure exposure tonality, each news piece is

interpreted for its reporting tone (positive/neutral/negative).

Once the tone level has been established, the visibility score is overlaid

with the tone to arrive at the Cirrus Image Points (CIP). On the other hand

Quality of exposure (QE) index is a ratio between the image and visibility

points and the maximum a company can score on this is 200. Greater the index,

higher is the ratio of positive coverage in relation to total coverage received.