Measuring Results and Establishing Value

Jenny Schade has an interesting article “Measuring Results and Establishing Value” on her website. The article focuses on how to establish effective metrics and determining measures of success in communications programmes:

At the end of the day, how do you know you’ve been successful? What value are you providing to your organization or clients? In today’s climate of budget cuts and lay-offs, it’s particularly important that you establish clear measures of success before embarking upon any venture.

Read the full article here >>

Glenn

Does Creativity Equal Results?

Last week I gave a presentation on evaluation at the First ISO and IEC Marketing and Communication Forum which took place in Geneva. The forum gathered communications and marketing professionals from all over the world working in the field of standards development.

My presentation focused on some of my favourite topics of evaluation, notably:

• Why don’t marketing/communication professionals evaluate
• The need for clarity in setting marketing/communication objectives
• How low cost evaluation can be undertaken
• The risks of being over creative in communications

On the last point, I used the example of the Got Milk campaign which has been lauded as one of the most visible and creative ad campaigns of all time (notably by the advertising industry). However, did the highly creative ads actually help achieve campaign objectives? That is, to get people to drink more milk? Well, milk consumption continues to decline and the ads have been criticised for not addressing a key concern for teenagers – that they consider milk to be fattening.

And that’s the point I tried to make, that creativity all is well and good – but it has to help communicators achieve their campaign goals – and be measurable.

My full presentation can be downloaded here:
Presentation: Effective Marketing & Communications through Evaluation (pdf – 1 MB)

Glenn

Acknowledgement: the example of the Got Milk campaign comes from the book “The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR”, A & L Ries.

To Monitor or Evaluate – or Both?

In the latest issue of KD Paine’s Measurement Standard, you will find an article I wrote, here is an extract:

Many communication professionals approach PR measurement with an end game attitude — as something that’s done once a programme or project is concluded. But this is an error; PR measurement also needs to take place before and during a project.

Read the full article here >>

Glenn

Measuring Relationships: A Future Auditing Measure?

Now this may not seem gripping… but I wanted to talk about future global financial reporting and public company auditing procedures – no, please do read on.

There has been a recent initiative “Global Public Policy Symposium” from all the big accounting / auditing firms and regulators to look at how company financial reporting should be done in the future.

They speak about the value of “intangible assets” that should figure in future reporting:

“The value of many companies resides in various “intangible” assets (such as employee creativity and loyalty, and relationships with suppliers and customers). However information to assess the value of these intangibles is not consistently reported”

If you are really keen, read the full report here (pdf)>>

And they go on to conclude that company reporting should in the future include measures on customer and employee satisfaction – and – relationships with key publics.

The idea of measuring relationships and their value is nothing new: there are a number of studies in this area – with the most well known being the Linder Childers and Jim Grunig guidelines on measuring relationships (although a number of points have recently been disputed by Joy Chia (pdf)).

And let’s not forget that David Phillips was way ahead of the auditors when he wrote in 1992 that relationships should be included as intangible assets of an organisation.

Will the auditors adopt a standard measure for relationships? Well, at least they have plenty of work already to draw from.

Glenn