When I think of a traditional media coverage clipbook, my mind wanders to the set of Mad Men. I imagine a stack of paper piled high on a desk with an ashtray and a decanter. By comparison, today’s clipbooks have evolved to become leaner and greener.

The New Clipbook

Clipbooks have always been an important tool for sharing media mentions of campaigns and issues with internal audiences, usually senior management teams. In the past, the sheer heftiness of a clipbook was a satisfactory indicator of PR success and effort. In the not so distant past, clipbooks spoke to advertising value equivalents (AVE) or volume of mentions and focused on traditional print and broadcast media. Now clipbooks speak to an understanding of influence or relationship insight and focus on digital media such as blogs and social media, as well as traditional media.  As the popularity of AVE in measurement wanes, we are exploring new measurement possibilities for digital content, replacing volume as a key success indicator.

Digital means real-time global collaboration

In the past, the activity of finding and sharing news articles between groups in different regions presented a challenge for communicators trying to coordinate a cohesive corporate response. With clipbook content and publishing tools now available online, geographically disparate teams are benefitting from real-time collaboration. Groups can contribute to the clipbook during their working hours, regardless of time zones. Digital distribution makes it possible to share clipbooks at any time. A digital format is also easily viewed on mobile devices, keeping people in the field aware and up to date.

Saving trees and time

Digital means less paper and more trees saved, but digital efficiency also extends to workflow.  Today’s clipbook tools can and should be a simple extension of your media monitoring practise. Spending time cutting, pasting and formatting articles is almost as painful as it was to snip them out of newsprint and type up transcripts. So choose the tools that can make the tradition of clipbooks as lean and green as possible. And speaking of tradition, whatever happened to those office decanters?

What’s the role of a media clipbook in your corporate culture?  What is the balance between traditional media and digital media sources?

By Joanne Kern, Training and Education Manager, MediaVantage