The $1 billion increase in market value that Janus Capital Group Inc. got on news that Bill Gross had joined the company wasn’t the only windfall for the Denver-based fund manager.
The Bond King’s Sept. 25 move from Pacific Investment Management Co. also brought an onslaught of publicity that spanned the globe and brought an estimated $300 million of high-end media exposure to Janus, a relatively small financial brand.
“When a ‘PR home run’ occurs, the positive impact it makes on a company, an organization, or an individual can be pure gold,” said Hilary Kaye, president of HKA Inc. Marketing Communications in Tustin. “And when I look at the coverage that has resulted thus far from Bill Gross’ jumping from Pimco to Janus, I see this as a grand slam, not just a home run. Besides the immense monetary impact that will result from Mr. Gross’ arrival at Janus, the PR value alone makes this one of the year’s big financial media stories.”
Shares of Janus—which is less than one-tenth the size of Pimco, with about $180 million in assets under management—held on to most of its recent gains last week, with a market cap of around $2.6 billion.
Outflows
Pimco, meanwhile, reportedly had outflows from the Total Return Fund that Gross managed top $10 billion the day he resigned. Pimco is said to be girding for as much as $100 billion in withdrawals from the bond fund, which had more than $230 billion in assets under management before the move by Gross (see related OC Insider item on page 3).
Janus’ “earned media” totals—the unpaid publicity—in the first five days following Gross’ arrival were “pretty staggering,” according to Rebecca Hall, chief executive and president of Idea Hall, a public relations firm in Costa Mesa.
The hits kept coming, even as Gross remained out of the media’s glare and Janus let Pimco take the lead on announcing the news.
Some 11,000 articles—including multiple reports posted to the websites of the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg and the like—mentioned Janus and Gross’ departure from Pimco, according to a report Hall got from San Francisco-based online news tracker Meltwater News. The cumulative online circulation of the coverage came to 33.3 billion, which does not equate to pairs of eyeballs—some stories were presented to the same reader numerous times.
The value of the digital coverage is estimated at $309 million, according to Meltwater.
Print Coverage
The jury is still out on the value of print coverage, according to Hall, who said an estimate is “impossible to capture this quickly.” The number for print is likely to rise over time, she said, noting that major news outlets follow online stories with more in-depth coverage in their print editions.
Broadcast coverage for the first five days added up to 709 TV and radio clips on channels such as Business News Network, CNBC, CNN, Fox Business Network, BBC and others, according to a report pulled from Fairfield, Conn.-based TVEyes Inc.
The market tracker estimated the value of the broadcast time at $1 billion.
‘Millions and Millions’
Elias Dawly, chairman of Recalibrate Marketing Communications in Costa Mesa, said the publicity has likely “generated millions and millions of dollars of value” for Janus through broadcast and print. Dawly based his estimate on market rates for a “typical TV commercial,” and placements in the Wall Street Journal or Forbes Magazine that are “at least $100,000, $150,000 for a full page ad, so it adds up fairly quickly.”
“A typical radio commercial in the L.A. market on KROQ or KISSFM is $2,000 to $5,000,” he said. “Imagine if they got 30-40 seconds (of reporting) a day for the last week―right there, that’s $100,000. It’s … quite a bit of coverage that they received.”
Marc Altieri, cofounder of The Brand AMP public relations firm in Seal Beach, offered an off-the-cuff estimate for “comprised power of coverage” in the range of $5 million to $10 million.”
All of the estimates remain guesswork of sorts, with PR pros and others taking different views.
Brand Messaging vs. Publicity
Dawly, for example, draws a distinction between “brand message exposure” and publicity.
“In a commercial, you are selling something—you get to say, ‘I got a Sonata, it is the best Sonata on (the) planet,’ versus, ‘Hey, Hyundai opened new headquarters off the 405 Freeway,” he said. “In a news story, Hyundai gets the name exposure, but they don’t get the message exposure. We tend to … discount it by 50% just to be safe, because it’s not a straight commercial message, but still it’s exposure for the brand, and there has to be value there.”
Whatever the value, all the buzz wasn’t just happenstance, Hall said.
“In terms of putting together a campaign like this, they often appear spontaneous in the news, but I am certain that Janus spent a lot of planning and strategic thinking before making this announcement and the impact they would like to make on all of their stakeholders, internal and external,” she said. “Their timing was impeccable, and they were prepared on all communication fronts—media interviews and questions and (a) home page announcement on their website. I have not seen it, but I am certain that there are internal announcements at Janus as well as customer communications.”
