NEW YORK, June 18 /PRNewswire/ Porter Novelli, a global communications agency, today announced a strategic partnership with Crimson Hexagon, a Cambridge, Mass.-based social monitoring platform provider that helps brands understand what online conversations really mean to them.

The Crimson Hexagon platform goes beyond basic keyword volume or sentiment analysis to examine the proportions of key themes within any given topic and how those themes change over time. Porter Novelli is deploying and integrating the Crimson Hexagon platform throughout its offices worldwide.

“We believe that social media metrics are a critical practice area. Combined with internal social media expertise and deep relationships with relevant influencers, Crimson Hexagon can provide value above reach and frequency analysis,” said Brad B. McCormick, executive vice president, digital, at Porter Novelli. “Our client teams have another critical tool in the tool box to help understand this quickly changing space.”

Based on technology developed at Harvard University by Professor Gary King, director of the university’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Crimson Hexagon’s enabling algorithm identifies patterns of opinion from large quantities of unstructured text, whether it’s an in-house content repository or the vast blogosphere. King co-founded Crimson Hexagon and is actively engaged in its business.

Unlike first-generation listening services, Crimson Hexagon’s VoxTrot platform focuses on identifying the patterns in the forest, rather than diagnosing individual trees. The result is a faster, less labor-intensive, more accurate understanding of what the online conversation really means for a brand, product or market category, as opposed to what words it contains.

“This approach builds on our agency’s research heritage and fits perfectly with today’s need to cut through the clutter and interact more effectively with stakeholders who can influence behaviors, sell products and shape reputations,” said Gary Stockman, chief executive officer of Porter Novelli.

How It Works

Crimson Hexagon’s social media monitoring “dashboard” tracks what is said online about brands, organizations and issues. The program monitors all forms of social media, including blogs, video-sharing sites, opinion review forums, photo-sharing sites and microblogging platforms. It uses quantitative data to answer qualitative brand questions, such as what specific emotions consumers feel about a product or service.

�We are delighted to enter into a global partnership with Porter Novelli,� said Candace Fleming, chief executive officer of Crimson Hexagon. �We�re confident the company�s clients will benefit from our in-depth monitoring and analysis capabilities. Our solution�s unique ability to allow agencies to define their own formula weightings for ranking social media influencers will ensure Porter Novelli�s strategic intellectual property is embedded in the results they share with clients.�

About Crimson Hexagon

Crimson Hexagon helps big brands and small businesses understand what the online conversation really means to them. Based on groundbreaking work conducted at Harvard University�s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Crimson Hexagon is the only commercially available listening platform that distills meaning � with mathematical precision, about brands, products, services, markets and competitors � from the cloudy torrent of opinion, information and data available online. Founded in 2007, Crimson Hexagon is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, contact us at (617) 547-1072 or visit crimsonhexagon.com.

About Porter Novelli

A global public relations leader, Porter Novelli was founded in 1972 and is a part of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) . With 100 offices in 60 countries, Porter Novelli helps clients achieve Intelligent Influence�changing attitudes and behaviors by having the right conversations with the right people at the right time. Visit porternovelli.com.