Award for Excellence in PR Measurement & Evaluation

  If you are “into” PR/communication research and measurement, and have used it extensively in one of your PR campaigns this past year, you might want to consider entering the Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award for Excellence in PR Measurement & Evaluation.  Entries of all types are welcome – including research using social media!  The award recognizes superb examples of research used to support public relations practice. Winners are feted at the Institute for Public Relations Summit on Measurement in October in Portsmouth, NH, and it’s quite a big deal. 

 Be quick –  Entries are due August 15th.  Here’s How to Enter, and see these  examples of previous winners’ entries: Padilla Speer Beardsley’s Winning Entry 2007 or Shell’s Award Winning Entry 2008  for ideas – and there are more on the site - also good if you want to see some best practices in communication / PR evaluation.

Is it possible to create a ROI on communication?

   Is it possible to create a ROI on communication? Only if you pursue truly strategic goals…

Given the huge interest in a workable tool to measure ROI on communication, and the amounts  of hot air generated on the subject in the two Berlins, I would like to propose a simple blueprint:

It goes like this:

Calculate  the  value of whatever it is you are trying to promote, sell or protect and the cost of failure.

From this you allocate a  reasonable proportion as a budget, enough to  enable success at selling, promoting or protecting, etc., recognising the price of failure. (In other words, if it’s not strategic or crucial, think about whether you really want to do it at all).

Measure your inputs – time, resources, materials.

Measure your outputs  qualitatively  (reach, tone, influence, prestige)

Measure your outputs quantitatively (impressions, views, footfall etc).

You may need to assign a value to your outputs, because PR is not the only game in town. Other communications disciplines will also have played  their part.

Measure your outcomes. Not as tricky as it seems. Did you sell any more product? How many people came to the event? Did you save the chemical plant from closure? What was the value?

Don’t get hung up on opinion shifts, unless the shift contributes directly to the achievement of your strategic goals. If it does, then measure it. 
I leave it to someone cleverer than me to calculate the golden ratios and percentages and a single number index that will make this work.
It may not be ROI, but it will be a measurement which could become meaningful.

I quote  Katie Paine: 

“If everyone is so darn hot on ROI, why aren’t they measuring it? I say the reason is, again, lack of knowledge about measurement and measurement tools. Because, there are measurement tools out there that will provide ROI (albeit, not simple or easy to use). So if they really, truly wanted ROI, then they would use measurement techniques that would allow them to calculate it. But instead, they focus on exposure-based methods like clippings and AVEs, because they are afraid of actually learning what the ROI of their programs is. They might find that their programs yielded considerably less R than the I that was put into them.”

I Agree. It’s because so many communications programmes do not have truly strategic objectives in the first place. “Raise awareness”, Increase visibility”, “improve customer feedback” are not strategic objectives, and it is impossible to calculate the value of success or the cost of failure.
Convince legislators on a particular course of action, convince a population that a plant should or should not be built, sell x million units of a new product, persuade us that a particular engineering material is non-carcinogenic and safe, or that a proprietary medicine works – now those are what I call strategic objectives.

They would all merit very grown up budgets, and it would be a dereliction of duty not to measure whether taxpayers or shareholders funds had been wisely spent.

Richard

Berlin stirs up a hornet’s nest

Did you know there are two Berlins?  The other is in New Hampshire, USA, and is where Katie Paine, a *PR measurement guru / blogger / twitterite* is based.  

Katie has been busy in Berlin, NH writing up her thoughts on what was said in Berlin, Germany at the recent Measurement Summit, and in particularly on the global measurement survey of communication professionals undertaken by Benchpoint for the Summit.

Read her take on it here>>

Highly recommended!

Richard

Measurement is an integral part of PR – global survey

As mentioned on K.D Paine’s blog and the Institute for Public Relations website, a new international survey of PR professionals has found that more practitioners than ever are measuring the effectiveness of their communications programmes.

The survey carried out by Benchpoint for AMEC, the international Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication and the Institute for Public Relations, was presented at the 1st European Summit on Measurement in Berlin held from June 10-12 and attended by nearly 200 delegates from 28 countries.

The survey was carried out amongst a sample of 520 PR professionals internationally.

Key findings were:

• The overwhelming majority of PR professionals, 88%, believe measurement is an integral part of the PR process (70% believe this strongly).
• While 77% of respondents claimed to measure their work compared with 69% in a similar survey five years ago, the survey results show that the PR profession are still not agreed on the best tools and methodologies.
• Measuring ROI (return on investment) on communications is viewed as an achievable goal by the overwhelming majority of professional communicators taking part in the survey. There is, however, very strong agreement that it is possible to calculate ROI on communications, and that demonstrable ROI would enhance the budgets (and status) of PR practitioners.
• PR Professionals still tend to judge their success criteria more by their ability to place material in the media rather than on the impact such coverage might have on shifting opinion, awareness, or moving markets, although there is evidence that this is changing.
• The survey found that the tools used by PR professionals includes press clippings – still the favourite – closely followed by AVEs (Advertising value equivalent) and more rigorous tools including Internal Reviews, Benchmarking, and the use of specialist media evaluation tools. Various forms of opinion polling and focus groups also remain as popular tools.

 Read more findings from the study>>

Glenn

Latest trends in communications evaluation

At the AMEC Measurement Summit in Berlin, Richard Gaunt, co-author of this blog (pictured next to Glenn O’Neil, co-author at the Summit),  presented some key findings of a survey on evaluation practices amongst communication professionals worldwide (0ver 500 respondents). Some of the key findings were:

• 77% of communication professionals are doing some type of evaluation
• Most communication professionals are measuring “outputs”, using media clipping services to monitor visibility
• Two clear groups emerge amongst communication professionals, those who are interested in measuring “outputs” (distribution, number of media mentions) and those who are interested in measuring “outcomes” (changes to knowledge, attitudes and behaviour).

We will be posting more results in the coming days…

Photo – blog authors Glenn and Richard at the AMEC Measurement Summit – photo by K D Paine, see more photos from the Summit >>

Communication evaluation – recession proof?

In a new report released by the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, one of the findings is that a large majority of clients are demanding greater proof of programme effectiveness, with 77% of AMEC members identifying this trend. At the same time, clients are becoming more price sensitive:

Key results of the study include:

• Increasing client interest in measuring social media reported by 92% of AMEC members;
• Clients becoming more price sensitive (92%);
• 69% of members taking part in the study also report that procurement specialists are becoming more involved in the purchase of measurement and evaluation services.

Further information>>

New guide to evaluating communications for non-profits and foundations

The Communications Network has just published a new guide “Are we there yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide (pdf) “. The guide has been written for communicators working in non-profit organisations and foundations – it contains interesting case studies and useful advice.  Download the guide here (pdf)>>

Communications evaluation – 2009 trends

Last week I gave a presentation on evaluation for communicators (pdf) at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. A communicator asked me what trends had I seen in communications evaluation, particularly relevant to the non-profit sector. This got me thinking and here are some of the trends I have seen in 2008 that I believe are an indication of some directions in 2009:

Measuring web & social media: as websites and social media increasingly grow in importance for communication programmes, so to is the necessity to have the capacity to measure what their impact is. Web analytics has grown in importance as will the ability to measure social media.

Media monitoring not the be-all and end-all: after many years of organisations only focusing on media monitoring as the means of measuring communications, there is finally some realisation that media monitoring is an interesting gauge of visibility but not more. Organisations are now interested more and more in having some qualitative analysis of data collected (such as looking at how influential the media are, the tone and the importance).

Use of non-intrusive or natural data:  organisations are also now considering “non-intrusive” or “natural” data – information that already exists – e.g. blog / video posts, customer comments, attendance records,  conference papers, etc.  As I’ve written about before, this data is underated by evaluators as everyone rushes to survey and interview people.

Belated arrival of results-based management: Despite existing for over 50 years, results-based management or management by objectives is just arriving in many organsations. What does this mean for communicators? It means that at the minimum they have to set measurable objectives for their activities – which is starting to happen. They have no more excuses(pdf) for not evaluating!

Glenn

New portal on communications evaluation

A new portal has been launched on evaluation communications – with plenty of interesting resources. The Communication Controlling portal is supported and updated by experts from Leipzig University and the “Value Creation through Communication” working group of the German Public Relations Association (Deutsche Public Relations Gesellschaft, DPRG). Visit the portal>>

PR Measurement – Catch 22

PR Week has recently published their Marketing Management Survey (pdf). Amongst other subjects, the survey asked US-based marketing excutives about measurement and their activities. Ed Moed of the Measuring Up blog points out that the survey “rehashes many of the same weary and misguided perceptions” on PR measurement, notably:

“PR is a difficult one to measure.”

“ Clients value PR, but question its value because they think it can’t be measured”

“In an economic climate where budgets are tight, research and measurement are very often the first portions of a PR budget to be cut. Yet measurement is necessary to prove ROI, which can help increase budgets, providing a Catch-22 situation…”

As Ed points out “People, public relations can be measured.” I couldn’t agree more, read Ed’s full post on his blog.

Glenn