Conducting a Perception Audit

When should a Company Conduct a Perception Audit?

Perception Audits are of greatest use when a knowledge led communications or business strategy is needed. As a high value activity, our clients ask for perception audits most often around significant transactions – in preparation for a listing or refinancing, a product launch, a restructuring, a merger or an acquisition: any activity where influencing perception will be a key part of the success of the activity. Perception audits can also be used to benchmark audience views at the start of and at the end of important PR or marketing campaigns. Our client Epigenomics, a Berlin based listed diagnostics company,  recently used a perception audit in combination with a messaging meeting to take an intelligence led approach to the process.

For the purposes of this tutorial we describe how we would approach a corporate perception audit on behalf of a client.

Getting Started

The first thing to decide is what audiences the company wishes to address. In most cases there will be more than one audience – for example analysts, investors, VCs, pharma-licensing, peer group, business partners sector journalists or present or prospective customers. Once the groups have been decided on, the next task will be to generate call-lists: to get 20 quality calls you would need a call list of around 80 distributed across all the audiences. This is because some will not be available, too busy or unwilling to participate.

Next the questions will need to be decided on. Perception audits should always be scripted – in order to ensure that the interviewer does not “lead” the answers. The first few questions establish the level of awareness of the company. The best way of doing this is for the interviewer to introduce themselves and what they are doing but not who the company is and then lead into general questions like “Can you name me any companies in the Netherlands?”, “Can you name me any Dutch oncology companies?”. If the company name is mentioned the interviewer can move on to the next section. The final question in the first section for those who have not said the company name is “Have you heard of [the company name]”. If the answer is “no” the interview should stop there.

In the next section where all the interviewees should know a bit about the company, the questions are open questions directed at getting as much rich information about the perception: “Tell me what you know about [the company name]”, “What do you think of the management?”, “What strategy do you think they should adopt in the future”. In this section, if there are specific facts or messages you wish to probe about, these can also be built in as follow up questions.

Conducting the Audit

Once the call list and the script of questions have been generated it will be time to start the calls. We always stress to the people we call in a perception audit that their opinions will be anonymised as generally this means they are more likely to be honest. A call is admissible to the analysis when at least section 1 has been completed – even in cases when the final answer is no and the interviewee has no knowledge of the company. A detailed transcript of every call is taken and recorded for later analysis. Once the target number of valid calls in each audience has been reached the audit calls can stop.

Output

The transcripts of the calls are then analysed to generate percentage awareness of the company or specific messages as well as a more detailed consideration of trends and sentiments in the replies. Careful attention is always given to important audiences with low or inaccurate views. The final report first lists all the individuals with valid calls and their affiliations and the anonymised transcripts alongside the analysis. Depending on the quality and the content of the calls, it is likely that the report will conclude with communication or strategic recommendations.

Why do you need a PR Company to do this?

Perception audits are labour intensive and need a certain discipline matched with experience but most importantly they require objectivity. It is important that the subjects of the audit can get their views over to the company without any fear that they will offend the person on the end of the phone or that their views will be held against them in future dealings. At College Hill we have ample experience at delivering quality perception audits and would be happy to talk to any company wishing to conduct one.

September 2011

If you would be interested in hearing more about College Hill’s approach to perception audits, drop us a line at:

Douglas Pretsell, Associate Partner
+44 (0)20 7457 2020
douglas.pretsell[at]collegehill.com

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