PR(e)View

USC Annenberg and Ketchum recently released study Media, Myths & Realities reports that only 24 percent of communicators report having a word-of-mouth program in place, even though advice from family and friends is the No. 1 source that consumers turn to when making a variety of decisions. 

Some other interesting facts from the study are:

Communicators rank their companies’ own Web sites as the most effective way to share corporate news or issue a response to a crisis, but consumers rank company Web sites sixth and seventh among places they turn to for corporate news and crisis response, respectively.   

With digital media giving rise to increasing media choice, fragmentation and personal empowerment, the term “mass market” is being outmoded. As a result, it is imperative that communicators view their audience as distinct groupings of individuals. While local television news was seen as most credible, it dropped from 7.4 last year to 6.9 on a scale of 0 to 10. Celebrity endorsements ranked last, at 3.7, down from 4.7 last year. Cable network news ranked 6.8, compared to 6.4 in 2006.

Media preferences are more personalized than ever. The study reveals that 22 percent of U.S. consumers use social networking sites, up from 17 percent in 2006, and 19 percent of consumers use blogs, up from 13 percent. Among consumers over the age of 55, use of blogs and social networking sites more than doubled. At the same time, use of most other media outlets slipped from a year earlier. 

Search engines continue to be a gateway to consumer choice in information, with 60 percent of U.S. consumers using them to find and select the news and other information they want to receive. The trend toward more personalized media is even  stronger among “influencers” – the 10 to 15 percent of the population who initiate changes in their community or society through a variety of activities – with 35 percent using both social networking sites and blogs and 72 percent using search engines.