ReputationOnline » Blog Archive » Fleishman Hillard joins the in-house monitoring trend

Fleishman Hillard joins the in-house monitoring trend

Posted by Vikki Chowney
on 23rd November 2009

heart-monitor Earlier this month Fleishman Hillard announced a new partnership with research company evolve24 that will see the two companies join forces to provide a powerful new analytics software called The Mirror.

The tool will deliver data in near real-time to the desktop from traditional media outlets, as well as blogs, social networks and forums. It will categorise coverage of a brand or business, applying metrics such as topic, sentiment, share of voice, influence and reputation impact.

The Mirror will be fully customisable depending on individual needs, and contain a self-search capability for reviewing coverage, which can be broken down by region, publication or language.

This is the latest in a series of in-house offerings from agencies to be launched over the past few years, from Edelman’s relationship with Technorati in 2007, to Hill & Knowlton’s iRadar service and most recently, Waggener Edstrom’s Twendz Pro last week.

Is this integrated offering the future of reputation management? Fleishman Hillard’s tool seems to be one of the most comprehensive services we’ve seen to come out of an agency, and without a doubt, one of the first to boast both online and offline measurement.

Will we see this trend continue over the next 18 months? Is combining the experience of a smart communications team with a proprietary tool a huge potential revenue stream?

By working with a technology specialist, agencies can provide the same level of expertise as an external monitoring company, but also the understanding of what to do with the results. If this opportunity is fully embraced, it could cause quite a stir among those that rely on agencies to act as the bridge between their monitoring services – and the brands and businesses that buy them.

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Chris Lee

We've just seen the Edelman crew unveil its 'TweetLevel' tool - is this going to become de facto big PR agency practice, now? Does everyone have to have their own analytics tool to demonstrate how very social they are? If so, I think that's an issue: Companies may be able show that they can monitor and measure online reputation, but can they come up with the ideas to successfully engage when those figures their tool find aren't quite as positive as the client would like?

Very interesting development, though. How many more will provide this in the next six months?

vikkichowney'

I don't think it's the announcement that's interesting though (hence why I'm talking about it a few weeks after the launch). I think it's the interest in this space. Valid or not, this is something many big agencies are now investing in.

The partnership isn't exclusive either (not in the news I read anyway...)

Of course it's important to them, it's about putting their name in the hat, which brings me back to my first point :)

Will McInnes

In my opinion this kind of move - for a big agency to make an announcement around a partnership with a monitoring partner - is marginally better than no move at all, but I'm not sure how much it really means.

Surely the primary question is: why bet on a particular horse when this market place of online monitoring is so rapidly changing, so technologically challenging and so immature? Why do that when you can establish strong, mutually beneficially relationships with one or more partners without committing exclusively?

Having been on the other side of conversations like these, with very established agency businesses, I've ended up wondering 'why does an announcement mean so much to these guys?'. In the end, I've decided that perhaps it's because the majority of their interest is making an announcement to create a certain perception in the market rather than the meat of what the announcement is really about.