The method: Persona-Based Insights, MRS and SIGNAL

01 · Discover

Persona-Based Insights™

Before you measure anything, understand who you are measuring for.

I spent years producing comprehensive monthly reports that almost nobody read. They took two weeks to build and influenced very little. The break came at a quarterly business review, when a regional president interrupted me mid-slide.

He gestured at my share of voice chart. He had a specific problem. They were losing the digital transformation narrative in key markets, competitors were being seen as innovation leaders while his company was perceived as legacy, and he needed to know whether they were gaining or losing ground and what he should do differently.

I had global sentiment. I had worldwide share of voice. I had competitive benchmarks against five companies. I had nothing that answered him.

He had a decision to make. I had data. Those are different jobs, and my report was excellent at the second one.

What PBI produces

The persona statement

As a [role], I need [signal], so that I can [outcome]. Borrowed from product development. If that sentence cannot be completed for your top stakeholder, the program does not yet have a target.

Priority markets

Not global coverage. The specific regions where the competitive battle is actually being fought, so a global average does not water them down.

The competitive set

Not everyone in the industry. The three or four companies contesting the same narrative space, which differs by region and by stakeholder.

Source authority

Which outlets shape perception for this person, ranked, so a tier-1 mention on the priority narrative outweighs ten in tier-3.

The reputation drivers

The narratives this business must win, and their relative weight. One stakeholder's 40 percent is another's 15 percent, and a single unweighted score hides that entirely.

The scope

Which outlets and markets are in scope for human verification, and therefore what the measurement covers. This is printed on every report that follows.

Why it comes first, and why it is paid. The drivers, the weights and the priority outlets from PBI define scope for everything downstream. Without them nobody can say which coverage matters, so the reporting cannot be scoped, quoted or defended.

02 · Measure

Media Reputation Score™

Score every article on four pillars, roll them into the narratives the business must win, and benchmark against the peers contesting them. Volume enters nowhere.

Sentiment35%

Distinction25%

Authority25%

Amplification15%

A company's pillar score is the mean of its article scores, so more coverage cannot raise it. Pillars roll into drivers, drivers blend into one number weighted to that business's own priorities, and rank is distance from the sector median, not raw score.

The full method See it on 100 companies ↗

03 · Act

SIGNAL

Intelligence that does not reach the executive in a format they can act on is just data with better packaging. SIGNAL is the brief that crosses an executive's desk and produces a decision in hours rather than weeks.

Signal Detected

What changed. Specific, quantified, with a timeframe.

Implications for Business

Why it matters, tied to their outcomes, not to communications metrics.

Gap Analysis

Where you stand. Competitive context, drawn from the MRS data.

Narrative Recommendation

What story to tell. Specific enough to act on.

Action Required

Who does what by when. Named owners and specific deadlines.

Lift Expected

Anticipated return, quantified wherever it can be.

Urgency is declared, not implied

Every brief carries one of four levels, so the reader knows the clock before they read the detail. Critical means same day. High means this week. Medium goes in the weekly report. Low goes in the monthly.

Write the executive summary last. Place it first.

You cannot summarize a recommendation you have not yet reasoned through. The summary is the last thing written and the first thing read, and that order is the difference between a brief that gets acted on and one that gets filed.

Before a finding earns a place in one

The test I use with comms teams.

Your monthly report lands on the CEO's desk on Monday morning. What decision does it change? Not what does it tell them. What decision does it change. Four things have to be true before the answer is "one."

It names a decision

Not awareness. Not sentiment. A decision someone is actually trying to make, with a person attached to it. That is the S and the I.

It carries owner, cost, lift

Who acts, what it costs, what it is expected to move. That is the A and the L, and a finding without them is an observation.

It separates the narratives

Before it combines them. One number is an average, and an average hides the driver that decides your bad day. That is what the G is drawn from.

It survives “where did that come from?”

Every figure traces back to the article behind it. Nothing is asserted without a source that can be opened.

Teams rarely clear all four the first time, and it is almost never because the team is not good. Nobody ever asked the report to do the other job.

Build one with the free SIGNAL Brief tool

Three ways to use this

Learn it, build it with me, or have it delivered.

Learning it is free. Building it and having it delivered both start with a PBI scoping session, because both need to know which coverage counts.

FREE · NO GATE

Learn it

The book publishes the whole method and its nine tools are free in your browser. The index demonstrates it every month on 100 companies, on open data.

The toolkit · The index ↗

90 DAYS

Build it with me

Assess, scope, build, hand off. Twelve weeks that end with your team running the loop themselves: the scoring discipline, the review gate, and the translation into decisions.

The 90-Day Build

DELIVERED

Have it delivered

The Brief, monthly or weekly, on your existing licensed coverage. Scored, verified against the PBI scope, and ending in a decision with an owner.

See a live brief

Questions

What is Persona-Based Insights?

Persona-Based Insights (PBI) is a discovery method that establishes who a measurement program serves and what decision that person is trying to make, before any scoring exists. It produces a persona statement, the priority markets, the competitive set, the source authority ranking and the reputation drivers with their relative weights. Those outputs define scope for everything measured afterwards.

Why does discovery come before measurement?

Because a measurement program with no named stakeholder and no named decision will answer questions nobody is asking. This is where most reporting fails, long before the analysis. Without PBI nobody can say which coverage counts, so the score cannot be scoped or quoted.

What is SIGNAL?

SIGNAL is a six-part brief format for delivering reputation intelligence to an executive: Signal Detected (what changed), Implications for Business (why it matters to their outcomes), Gap Analysis (where you stand competitively), Narrative Recommendation (what story to tell), Action Required (who does what by when) and Lift Expected (the anticipated return). Every brief also declares an urgency level, and the executive summary is written last and placed first.

Can my team learn to do this themselves?

Yes, and that is one of three ways to work together. The book and the public index are free and ungated. The 90-Day Build assesses what you have, scopes it, builds the scoring on your own coverage and hands it over, so your team runs the loop themselves afterwards. Or the Brief is delivered on your coverage each period. The Build and the Brief both start with a PBI scoping session.

Do I have to use all three frameworks?

They run in order and each needs the one before it, so skipping discovery and going straight to scoring reproduces the problem the method exists to solve. The depth of each varies by engagement, but the sequence does not.

The method, in the open.