Cosmo Strategy

Leveraging “Media Analysis” for Successful PR Strategies

2024年11月15日 Cosmo Report, Cosmo Strategy, Cosmo Survey

Recognizing environmental changes, understanding opinion trends, and capturing feedback for your business

Disseminating information via the media remains a central pillar of corporate PR activities. However, with the rise of the internet and social media, the different types of information we now encounter diversified significantly. Besides increased online media presence, personal opinions and anonymous posts on social media often gain traction through media coverage, in turn influencing public opinion. So amid all these changes, how should corporate PR departments best go about approaching “media”?

In this newsletter, we explore the theme of “media analysis,” a crucial element when planning any PR activity. Using an example from COSMO’s own work, we will explore what exactly media analysis is, what it can achieve, and the steps you can take to ensure that it is effectively integrated into your own PR strategies.

What do we mean by “Media Analysis”?

Creating any media analysis requires defining a theme, target media, timeline, and analytical focus. However, the most critical factor is ensuring that the analysis also speaks to the company’s priorities and objectives.

There are typically three main approaches when conducting media analyses:

Quantitative Analysis
This measures how a specific topic is covered in the media and tracks trends in the number of mentions. It allows for competitor comparisons, topic-based article analysis, and characterization of media outlets. Article size can also be converted into equivalent advertising costs. Online media coverage and social media impressions on platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube can also be analyzed.

Qualitative Analysis
This focuses on the tone of articles, categorizing them as positive, neutral, or negative.

Combined Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis
This approach merges both methods to analyze changes in tone by topic.

COSMO’s Lung Cancer Media Analysis

Let’s look at an example with COSMO PR’s “Press Analysis Report – Lung Cancer,” published in November 2024. Using “Nikkei Telecom” as our database, we analyzed media coverage during August 1-31, 2024 on “lung cancer” across approximately 500 outlets, including newspapers, magazines, and industry journals. A total of 180 articles were identified.

Topic analysis of these articles revealed eight key topics, with the highest number of articles focusing on patients and treatments/devices. Analysis also highlighted distinct reporting trends by media category. For example, trade publications tended to focus on product approvals and development, while general newspapers covered more patient-centered topics. Additionally, comparing the company names mentioned showed that 22 companies were cited during the selected period, with a significant number of articles mentioning Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd.

Using these findings to review articles by category and company enabled us to not only understand market trends, but also which media outlets are most likely to report on specific topics. In this example the analysis focused on a single month, but media monitoring and analysis should ideally be conducted continuously, as tracking trends over time yields deeper insights.

Tailoring the Analysis to Your Business Needs

Press analysis frameworks can be customized based on each client’s PR objectives, with tailored themes, target media, monitoring periods, and analytical axes. This allows for a detailed analysis specific to your company’s products and services, with findings that offer actionable feedback for crafting effective PR strategies.

In addition to tracking how much coverage your company’s news generates, media analysis can also address questions such as:

Are your key messages being properly conveyed to the target audience?
What factors might be preventing them from reaching the audience?
How does the media view your company’s strengths and weaknesses compared to competitors?
What specific aspects of your company is the media praising or criticizing?
What topics trigger strong media reactions, and why?
How is your company and its products perceived on social media?
Can you more quickly identify changes in public opinion, the social environment and the business environment surrounding your company?

Corporate PR encompasses a variety of challenges. By aligning these challenges with a custom-made media analysis and examining the results, you can equip yourself with valuable insights.

What is “Stakeholder Monitoring”?

Companies are supported by and influence a range of stakeholders in their operations. “Stakeholder monitoring” is a method for tracking key stakeholders’ trends and statements through news and social media, helping inform PR and public affairs activities.

This involves setting search keywords, similar to news analysis, to extract the activities and statements of target stakeholders from media and social media. For example, it can identify who spoke about high-cost pharmaceuticals, at what opportunities, and what media covered it. This allows for understanding stakeholders’ “awareness” and “activities” on each topic, providing insights for planning future external actions.

Analyzing the views of stakeholders that may be expressing negative opinions allows us to understand what their current view is, their concerns and which areas must be addressed if we are to shift their opinion. In this way, stakeholder monitoring is a valuable tool for objectively understanding stakeholders’ views based on publicly available information.

Staying True to the Purpose of PR

While media analysis is valuable for planning PR activities, it is also still valuable for evaluating the effectiveness of PR activities and persuading internal stakeholders about the importance of PR. Media analysis can be leveraged in various ways, not only just to track numbers, but also to provide deeper insights by combining quantitative and qualitative analysis and crafting specific analytical axes. Additionally, since analysis is merely a tool, it’s essential to go beyond the numerical results and always return to the true purpose of PR – actively “utilizing” the analysis results.

Making Use of External Support

It’s not necessary to handle the entire media analysis process in-house, from planning and designing to reading results, identifying issues, and developing strategies. If you have limited PR staff, lack the necessary expertise, lack experience in media analysis or wish to approach media analysis from a new perspective, you might consider leveraging the expertise of an external organization.

COSMO PR offers customized “News Monitoring and Analysis Reports” and “Stakeholder Monitoring Reports.” In addition to news sources included in Nikkei Telecom used in the lung cancer medial analysis this time, we can monitor and analyze social media platforms (X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, LINE, etc.). These services not only include monthly periodic reports, but also annual reports that retrospectively analyze past coverage as well. They can be customized to meet a diverse variety of needs, so please feel free to contact us to discuss how they can be applied to your business.

If you would like to receive a copy of COSMO’s “News Analysis Report – Lung Cancer” (published November 2024), or more information about COSMO PR’s media monitoring services, please contact us at info_cosmo@cosmopr.co.jp.

Online Seminar Co-sponsored by Insights4 Pharma and Cosmo Public Relations

2021年5月19日 Cosmo Report, Cosmo Strategy, Events, Patients

Aligning pharma business objectives with patients’ life goals

-Applying the patient insight approach of drug development to communications-

Healthcare in Japan is undergoing drastic change. To address these shifting trends, COSMO co-hosted an online seminar with global pharmaceutical news media Insights4 Pharma.

The seminar succeeded in spotlighting the crucial role of patient insights, particularly:
• The pursuit of patient insights leads to early detection of disease, prevention of serious illness, improved adherence, and improved healthcare outcomes.
• A solid understanding of patient insights enables the provision of appropriate information to patients, which leads to a positive cycle in which patients are satisfied with their treatment choices and continue their treatment.

COSMO publishes second Patient Insight Report, focusing on women’s cancer

2021年2月10日 Cosmo Report, Cosmo Strategy, Cosmo Survey, Healthcare, Patients

– How patient empowerment affects gynecological and breast cancer patients
– The influence media and patient groups have over patients’ attitudes and behaviors toward treatment

COSMO’s Patient Insight Report series launched in July 2020. The second volume has now been published, this time focusing on women’s cancer.

The report offers quantitative and qualitative insights into how information affects the choices women’s cancer patients make.

It first analyzes attitudes and behaviors toward treatment selection, as observed among patients of the three main gynecological cancers – ovarian, cervical and endometrial, as well as breast cancer. Specifically, it examines how their physicians explain treatment options to them, how and what they research, and their willingness to participate in clinical trials and patient group activities, drawing data from a nationwide online survey conducted in March 2020 of 300 patients affected by ten primary cancer types.

Secondly, the report explores how patient empowerment affects women’s cancer patients and how media coverage and patient groups influence their attitudes and behaviors, based on separately conducted research into empowerment among patient groups and analysis of media coverage for women’s cancer.

Medinew and COSMO Joint Webinar: What Patients Expect of Pharmaceutical Companies Today; Insights on Appropriate Information Provision

2020年12月9日 Cosmo Report, Cosmo Strategy, Cosmo Survey, Healthcare, Patients

On October 28, COSMO co-hosted a joint webinar with Medinew, a leading medical marketing magazine with a large readership among the pharmaceutical industry. Highlights from the session have now been made available online as a Medinew seminar report (Japanese language only).

Setting out to establish answers to the event’s topic of “What Patients Expect of Pharmaceutical Companies on Appropriate Information Provision Today,” Mr. Yoshiaki Kaneko, CEO of Medinew’s operating company, Pharma Information Network, Inc., opened the webinar with a presentation on “Communication with Patients for Pharmaceuticals Marketing.”

“Promotion efforts have until now focused on improving disease awareness and patient education to increase sales, but due to changes in pharmaceutical companies’ business models and the impact of COVID-19, it is likely that we will see a shift toward more patient-centered promotion in the future. Business areas will also be required to broaden their scope from a focus on product offerings to information service offerings,” said Mr. Kaneko.
Findings and recommendations from COSMO’s “Patient Insight Report”

The next speaker, Tomomi Nagasawa, Managing Director of Cosmo Public Relations Corporation, spoke on the topic of “Patient Awareness and Behavior during Treatment Selection and Prescription: Results of a Survey of 300 Cancer Patients.”

In March this year, COSMO conducted a nationwide online survey of 300 male and female patients across ten major types of cancer in order to gain insights into how cancer patients select treatment options, as well as measuring the behavioral differences among patients with different types of cancers. Patient awareness and perceptions of 19 major pharmaceutical companies were also measured to understand how corporate reputation affects the selection of prescription drugs. The results were compiled and released in July this year under the title of “Patient Insight Report: Cancer.”

Speaking on the decision to undertake such a survey, Ms. Nagasawa explained, “In recent years, treatment options for cancer have increased. [New practices, including] informed consent, in which patients receive explanations from physicians and then decide whether or not to consent; or shared decision-making, where physicians and patients share information on evidence and decide treatment options together, are becoming mainstream. Healthcare is transitioning from a service that patients passively receive from their physician, to one that patients themselves understand and choose.”

Ms. Nagasawa then introduced key findings from the survey. For example, unmet needs when it comes to information may be inferred from the fact that while 80% of patients research treatment options, 30% cannot understand the information and still end up relying on physicians’ explanations.

When selecting prescription medicine, patients are concerned about negative news on drug manufacturers; they research manufacturers of any prescribed medication and assess the company’s reputation. This reveals patients’ desire to proactively select better treatment and implies that the reputation of pharmaceutical companies does affect to some degree patients’ evaluation of treatment options and effectiveness or safety of therapies.

Importantly pharmaceutical companies potentially stand to bridge the gap between healthcare and patients. Supporting patients’ understanding of medical information can help them to positively consent to treatments or actively decide on treatments and thus affect their level of satisfaction toward treatments.

The presentation then concluded with specific recommendations to help pharmaceutical companies fulfill their role of providing information to patients, divided into:

1. Two practical ways pharmaceutical companies can provide easy-to-understand medical information to patients.

2. Three essential elements expected of pharmaceutical companies at all times when developing corporate reputation and communicating messaging.

■ Interested readers who were unable to join the webinar or are interested in reviewing the information introduced may access the full Medinew seminar report available online here, which includes a selection of slides and graphs used during the presentation.

■ Cosmo PR’s Patient Insight Report: Cancer is available for purchase in both Japanese and English language. “The report offers detailed survey results on corporate reputation according to cancer type. It can be used to understand patient perceptions of pharmaceutical companies, including awareness levels and corporate image as manufacturers and distributors of cancer therapies. The report also provides detailed analyses of cancer patients’ thoughts and behaviors that offer valuable reference material for pharmaceutical companies when planning and implementing promotional activities.” – Medinew Japan.
Click here for an overview of the survey and details on how to purchase the report.

We’d like to thank you for your continued interest in Cosmo PR and encourage all our readers to share these links with others who may also find value in them. It is our hope that the webinar discussion, cancer patient survey, and report benefit as many people as possible.

<Topics>

COSMO announces Patient Insight Report at the 12th Japanese Association of Health Communication

The 12th annual conference of the Japanese Association of Health Communication was held online during September 26 – 27. Joining the “Communication with Patients and Families” segment, Cosmo PR offered a presentation on survey results from its Patient Insight Report, under a theme of “Search Behavior of Patients When Selecting Treatment Options and When Medication is Prescribed; Potential Effects of Corporate Reputation on Patients’ Selection Behavior.”

COVID-19: Countering the Impact and Navigating Your PR Response

2020年3月19日 Cosmo Strategy

– Disclosing Sensitive Information and Planning Media Events –

The global spread of COVID-19 is showing no signs of abating. Companies are faced with the challenge of taking sufficient measures to prevent transmission and minimize impact, while simultaneously sustaining their business. In these circumstances, how should those of us in the field of public relations respond?

In today’s newsletter, we will apply some of the basic tenets of public relations to this unique situation and focus on two key areas with practical tips. Firstly, how to disclose sensitive information if an employee becomes infected and secondly, the critical decisions that must be taken when considering whether to go ahead with a press conference or media event in Japan.

COSMO Holds Reputation Risk Management Seminar

2020年2月5日 Cosmo Strategy, Events

COSMO held the seminar, “Proactive Reputation Risk Management,” on November 15 spotlighting its renewed “Reputation Risk Management” core offerings.

As the pharmaceutical and medical device industries grow increasingly complex, demand for reputation risk management also increases. Even risk-averse companies have inevitably faced incidents.

Instead of approaching communication as an add-on service, COSMO recommends proactive reputation risk management, which involves strategic actions based on two cornerstones: The first cornerstone is to upgrade “risk intelligence.” It is important to take a data-driven approach to quantify reputation, including potential risks, on a regular basis. Visualizing specifics and how to fill which gaps illuminates clear strategic directions and enables planning of concrete actions.

The second cornerstone is improving the “risk management” process. This involves proactively identifying risks and bolstering resilience. A bird’s eye view of the whole process is needed to ascertain internal alignment of risk awareness, clarity of governance, and team responsibilities, and training standards.

Kumi Sato Speaks on Communication Strategy Frameworks at COINS Retreat Camp 2019

2019年11月7日 Cosmo Strategy, Events, Kumi Sato

Cosmo Public Relations Corp. President, Kumi Sato, joined the Center of Open Innovation Network for Smart Health (COINS) and the Innovation Center of NanoMedicine (iCONM) to lecture on communication strategy. The COINS/iCONM event included a series of seminars under the central theme, “Looking ahead to the arrival of globalization and the AI era.” The COINS/iCONM event was attended by doctors and researchers specializing in smart nanomachines.

Sato’s lecture was entitled, “How to Effectively Communicate – Communication Leadership.” In her presentation, she instructed participants how to consider healthcare communication strategies beyond ad hoc tactics by harnessing COSMO’s communication framework. She began by introducing how COSMO uses an “umbrella framework” to approach core healthcare communication challenges.

COSMO社長の佐藤玖美、COINSリトリート合宿2019 に講師として登壇　

2019年11月7日 Cosmo Strategy, Events, Kumi Sato

株式会社コスモ・ピーアール社長の佐藤玖美は、2019年10月18日、スマートライフケア社会への変革を先導するものづくりオープンイノベーション拠点（COINS※）および公益財団法人川崎市産業振興財団ナノ医療イノベーションセンター（iCONM）の共催イベントに参加し、コミュニケーション戦略について講演しました。イベントでは、「グローバル化とAI時代の到来を見据えて」をテーマに複数のセミナーが開催され、医師やスマート・ナノ機器専門研究者が参加しました。

佐藤は「How to Effectively Communicate – Communication Leadership（効果的なコミュニケーション方法とは－コミュニケーション・リーダーシップ）」について講演し、COSMOのコミュニケーション・フレームワークを用いて、場当たり的な戦術を超えたヘルスケアコミュニケーションの戦略を策定する方法について説明しました。まず、ヘルスケアにおけるコミュニケーション課題に取り組む上で、COSMOでは「アンブレラ・フレームワーク（傘型のフレームワーク）」を活用することを紹介ました。

Campaign Magazine quotes COSMO President and CEO, Kumi Sato, on how corporate leadership should manage crises

2017年2月3日 Cosmo Strategy, Kumi Sato

弊社社長佐藤玖美がビジネス・ブレークスルーにおきまして、コミュニケーション・リーダーシップの講義を行います

2016年3月18日 Cosmo Strategy, Events, Kumi Sato

弊社社長佐藤玖美がビジネス・ブレークスルーにおきまして、コミュニケーション・リーダーシップの講義を行います。

コミュニケーション・リーダーシップ
～「人を動かす」技術を磨く、白熱ライブ授業～

日時：　2016年4月15日（金）
（19:10開場）　19時30分～21時00分
会場：（株）ビジネス・ブレークスルー　麹町オフィス
東京都千代田区二番町３番地　麹町スクエア
会費 3,000円（書籍、懇親会込）
※ご参加者には会場受付にて、講演者近著「コミュニケーション・リーダーシップ　考える技術　伝える技術」をお渡しします。
お申込方法：http://goo.gl/iGR8hu

■ 申込締切：3月31日(木) 23：59まで
　※ 受付期間中であっても、定員に達した場合は受付を終了いたします。
　※ 昨年1月実施時と同様のセミナー内容となります。前回参加の方は
　　恐れ入りますが、参加をご遠慮下さい。

BLOG: Utilizing Social Media

2015年9月11日 Cosmo Strategy

「コミュニケーションリーダーシップ」のKindle版が発売されました

2015年8月31日 Cosmo Corporate, Cosmo Strategy, Kumi Sato

弊社社長である、佐藤玖美が執筆いたしました書籍「コミュニケーションリーダーシップ」のKindle版が発売されました。

詳細はAmazonの商品ページをご覧ください。

Cosmo Strategy

Leveraging “Media Analysis” for Successful PR Strategies