Newly Formed 'Gorkana Group' Rebrand and Launch New Service

LONDON, April 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The UK's leading media intelligence and analysis services - Gorkana (http://www.gorkana.com), Durrants (http://www.durrants.co.uk) and Metrica (http://www.metrica.net) have rebranded as 'Gorkana Group' (http://www.gorkana.com/group) and launched the first release of their ground-breaking integrated online media planning, monitoring and analysis service today.

The three businesses recently merged to form 'Gorkana Group' (http://www.gorkana.com/group), with an ambition to step-change the level and quality of media intelligence and insight available to the PR and marketing industries.

The new service features a host of benefits to help PRs plan their campaigns more accurately, keep track of their coverage and analyse the results even faster. The online portal offers seamless access to rich and accurate media and journalist intelligence and editorially reviewed print, broadcast, online and social media coverage and analysis.

Jeremy Thompson, Gorkana Group MD, said: "As former PRs, our team understands the daily needs of busy in-house and agency PR teams and have designed the service to help meet these. With the media landscape in a constant state of change, we know it will revolutionise the way they work, allowing them to be more knowledgeable about their key influencers, the media, their competitors and the effectiveness of their PR."

Getting a clear snapshot of how PR initiatives are performing on a day to day basis is made easy through a dynamic, customisable dashboard - helping to better inform and drive PR and brand reputation strategies. "You can configure your dashboard to display whatever is most important to you - volume, value and favourability of key campaign coverage, spokespeople, share of voice - you can also review multiple campaigns simultaneously," Richard Bagnall, Gorkana Group Director said.

An impressive feature of the service is the 'journalist coverage analysis'. These allow customers to understand what journalists are actually writing about through a dynamic feed of word clouds and graphs of top terms, organisations and people. PRs can build media lists based on real insight, saving them from hours of time-consuming research and helping them target their campaigns much more accurately.

Alexander Northcott, Gorkana Group Director, comments: "Our analysis on what journalists have been writing about is a great example of how Durrants has enhanced Gorkana's journalist profiles through integration. This sort of insight is like gold dust - it's exactly what we needed when we were PRs."

The ability to click through to Gorkana's accurate journalist profiles directly from media coverage is another great time-saving feature - ensuring PRs can look up and connect with the influencers behind their coverage quickly and easily.

The service also features an online media monitoring and analysis tool 'Metrica Radar' - helping companies gear up to tackle the challenges of monitoring brand conversations and reputation online.

Notes for Editors:

About Gorkana Group:

Gorkana Group (http://www.gorkana.com/group) provides integrated media planning, monitoring and analysis services to the PR and marketing industries. The company is comprised of three market-leading brands - Gorkana, the UK's most trusted media and journalist database and community network (http://www.gorkana.com), Durrants, a premium media monitoring service that provides fast, accurate and relevant editorially reviewed media coverage (http://www.durrants.com) and Metrica, an award-winning global media analysis and evaluation service (http://www.metrica.net). Together, they serve over 4,000 organisations around the world, including 200 of the FTSE 350.

The company also runs the UK's leading journalist and PR recruitment site (http://www.gorkanajobs.co.uk) and provides daily industry news, features and analysis to the PR industry through its community portal (http://www.gorkanapr.com).

Gorkana Group is based on Old Street near the Silicon Roundabout, an area of East London where more than 100 tech and design companies have set up over the last five years. Prime Minister David Cameron recently announced that he wants to establish an East London Technology City and lure Google, Facebook and Microsoft to new offices in Olympic Park, a few tube stops from the Silicon Roundabout.

Gorkana Group was formed after Durrants acquired Metrica in October 2009 and Gorkana in April 2010.

Gorkana Group is a private company and is backed by Exponent Private Equity.

    
    For more information and interviews please contact:

    Jeremy Thompson
    jeremy.thompson@gorkana.com
    +44-20-7674-0356

    Nilam Randall
    nilam.randall@gorkana.com
    +44-207-420-6848