KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

Great podcast about measurement

If you haven't listened to Inside PR's podcast, they've done some interesting stuff. The lastest interview with Andrew Laing raises some very interesting points about ROI for PR>

Money does not make you smarter

In a yet another wonderful example of how clueless PR people can be about social marketing, you have to read this story about Google.  If this were Acme manufacturing in the middle of Iowa, I might understand. But this is one of  Silicon Valley's success stories, where theoretically they can buy the best of the best and you'd think they'd read the Cluetrain Manifesto. Guess they're so busy counting  the money the don't have time to read. 

Some really good perspectives on measurement from the trenches

Leo Bottary, another one of H&K's numerous interesting bloggers, has been doing a series of posts on measurement that are well worth reading.  They really give a good perspective on how measurement plays in the agency/client relationship.

On a separate note (yet another reason why the premise of Naked Conversations is dead on)  I have to say that I've never liked Hill & Knowlton. They always seemed to me to be the worst of a bad litter -- PR firms that would do anything for anyone. I had issues with many of the clients they took on and found them bureaucratic and not entirely ethical. But thanks to their bloggers, and the numerous interesting things I've learned from reading them, I now find my opinion changing.  Who knows, I might actually recommend them one day.

How will they measure results

Found an interesting tidbit in PR Week that informs us that the PRCA, the UK equivalent of CPRF is starting a campaign to " boost the reputation of PR consultancy".  My question is: How are they measuring results? My guess is that if they get enough PR hits they'll be happy, but we sure would love to see them do a real reputation study on PR consultancy. Here's the full story:

The campaign, under the auspices of new chairman Richard Houghton, was agreed by the board last week.

Houghton wants to ensure PRCA members are featured when the media run articles on issues such as return-on-investment and CEOs’ reputations.

Whether or not the PRCA is name-checked, Houghton said, ‘the campaign will contribute to the PRCA’s remit to raise the reputation of PR consultancy in general’.

Houghton wants around 12 account directors from member agencies of different sizes and regions to help run the campaign.

Interesting perspective on the value of reputation

There's a fascinating exchange on the openresource blog about how to measure success. The premise is that financial success trumps all -- which we can all debate. What's more interesting was the customer's response who basically said that ethics and reputation drove his purchase decisions.

ROI is the new AVE

For years, people would try to convince me to provide AVE (Ad Value Equivalency) numbers because  “the clients DEMAND AVE numbers,” and I would say, no. Just because Barry Bonds requires steroids, is it my job to deliver them? And if the client demanded heroin, would you deliver it? Whatever happened to doing the right thing, i.e. delivering data that is accurate, meaningful and relevant?

So, now that most rational humans in the PR profession have finally rejected AVEs as an irrelevant silly and inaccurate measure we need to take a good long hard look at ROI, and equally irrelevant acronym.Over what may have been one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten (at an incredible restaurant called Mildred Pierce) Andrew Laing, CEO of Cormex (the Canadian version of KDPaine & Partners)  and I came to the conclusion that ROI may be the new AVE. -- a term as misunderstood and frequently miscalculated as WMD. 

People are throwing around the term “ROI” these days, the way Brazil looks at a soccer ball. It doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you reach the “ROI” goal. But Togo has a better handle on a soccer ball than most PR people have on ROI. Now I’ll freely admit I haven’t balanced a check book since1973, and finance isn’t my strong suit, but I have a pretty good understanding of ROI. ON the other hand, Andrew’s got a degree in business, and a better hadle on PR research and measurement  than the vast majority of PR people on the planet. And the more we talked about the various “ROI” measures that people thought were valid, the more we realized just how misunderstood and wrongly used the term is in PR.  Return on investment means you take the dollar amount that you have invested in a program and subtract from it the cost of said program. In contrast, at recent conferences, I’ve heard ROI defined as “happy employees,”  “impressions,” “attendees,” MRPs, and of course AVEs. In all of these various scenarios, there was no demonstrable ROI No costs were factored in, no true calculations were conducted. People are still just looking for a magic number – that holy grail. If memory serves me right,  in the quest for the Holy Grail, lots of people died pretty horrible deaths, and there’s considerable question as to whether anyone ever found it. So STOP LOOKING !

What part of "stop trying to justify your existance and start using solid data to make decisions" don' t you understand.? Start measuring your results and using the data, and let all those other slackers out there who don' t measure their results try to explain why they're NOT measuring.

  It’s not that ROI for PR doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist in clip counts, column inches, clicks, hits or anyting else that doesn’t make money. And even if I calculate that my campaign launch costs at $100,000 and I sell 100,000 widgets for $1 a piece, there is STILL no ROI. I have broken even. Period.

So stop trying to cloak other silly measures under the “ROI” gauge. What PR does is help you avoid legal costs, lower the barriers to sale, reduce complaints, reduce turnover, raise investor loyalty, and yes, sell product. All these things have a very tangible return. And if you must, put a value on it, subtract the cost of your program and see if you come out ahead. And if you don't that's okay too. Because chances are, the PR you are paying for today, may not have a "return" for a year or 18 months. PR value isn't something you calculate at the end of every quarter like a balance sheet. It's a long term investment not a quick fix and slapping a label like "ROI" on it is not going to make it better.

More from our neighbor to the North

Just heard alto more of the back story behind the new MRP standard recently endorsed by IABC Canada and CPRS.  When the folks behind it surveyed the audience, they learned that 99% of Canadian PR professionals would use a standardized measurement system and 90% wanted standardized reach figures (what we call opportunities to see.)  Those are really interesting statistics, and something we all need to listen to. As much as us measurement snobs might pooh pooh the MRP system, it is a clear case of listening to customers and delivering what they need. Is it the best system, no, but they aren't claiming it is. Is it the only measurement system you need? No, but the developers admit that they're only measuring media, nothing more, nothing less. Is it going to solve the PR credibility/accountability problem? No, but it does scratch a very specific itch --- the need for standardized circ figures, and makes it easier to keep track of your coverage in a standardized way.

That having been said, I see one enormous flaw with MRP, and that is the lack of standardized definitions of "positive" and "negative."  PR people tend to decide that they "like" articles and therefore rate them positive, and forget that they should be analyzing them from the perspective of the target audience. But PR people don' t read the media like normal people. We tend to be media junkies and bear little resemblance to a typical member of a target audience

At KDPaine & Partners, we use a standard formula of "does it leave a reader more or less likely to do business with the organization,"  (or do whatever else the PR program is designed to do.) If it does leave the reader more likely to buy, do business, go to work for, subscribe to, the service/product etc. we consider it positive. If it leaves the reader LESS likely, its negative. Simple, but effective and a standard I've been using for 20 years, so there's a lot of consistent data that can be  compared over time.

Like any system or "Standard," the results are only as good as the data going in. If the data going in is flawed, biased, or incorrectly entered, the results are worthless, no matter how cool the software might be.

So to the MPR team, I hate to tell you, but your job isn't over. You've created a good useful tool, now you need to teach people how to use it correctly. If not, bad data will result, and ultimately the C-suite will have less faith in PR results than they already do.   

I just got whacked on the side of the head by reality

The problem with my job is that I tend to spend time with a self-selecting audience of smart people who care alot about quality and accuracy. Its one of the reasons I still love doing this stuff after 19 years. But when you only talk to the people who really care about doing measurement right, you tend to forget about the people who don't care about doing measurement at all.

I'm blogging from the Canadian Institute's Communications College (more about MRPs to come) but a woman just told the story of how she began inserting regular metrics into a report to her boss and her boss told her to stop, that he just wanted highlights. Can there still be people who don't care how they stack up against the competition, or what value they're getting for their dollars (Canadian or otherwise?)  The sad reality is that there are. The people I talk to tend to have already made a commitment to measurement. And if I talk to 1000 of them a year, that leaves countless thousands of others who really don' t care. With luck and more pressure from the C-suite, more and more will realize how useful metrics can be, how they make decision-making easier, and how they improve your team and your management skills. In the mean time, reality is a little ugly.

The age of true transparency has dawned

Its getting to be a weekly occurrence.
A blogger gets angry, posts a comment, gets a bunch of other angry bloggers to agree and the main stream media picks it up. The latest kerfuffle featured a blogger that tried to cancel his AOL account. After 45 minutes -- all of which the blogger taped -- about the blogger that tried to  cancel his AOL subscription. He posted the entire call on line, and inevitably MSNBC picked it up. AOL issued an apology and fired the customer service rep. But the point here isn't that something from the blogosphere found its way to MSNBC, but the point it makes about AOL as a corporation.  Clearly it wasn't just the one blogger that was having a problem canceling his account, otherwise there wouldn't have been hundreds of sympathetic postings. Just as the inner weaknesses of Dell's support were revealed, so this incident demonstrates the systemic problems within AOL's customer service line.

In cases like this, an apology from the head of corporate communications -- even if it says all the right things  -- even a token firing won't help. Fixing the organization is the only thing that will work. That's what intrigues me. Is it possible that the blogosphere might ultimately make corporate America a better employer?

The ABCs of Measurement

I awoke this morning to an NPR report on how school districts are starting to sell naming rights to buildings the same way sports arenas do.  I have to wonder, what's in it for the corporations that are putting the money up? It makes perfect sense to name an arena, since its gets you name recognition and no doubt boosts your overall "impressions" -- you should see what the NBA finals did for American Airlines numbers.  But a school auditorium? Do they really think that a reporter is going to write about "the 8th grade production of Macbeth in the KDPaine & Partners Auditorium?"  -- of course I could be being overly cynical.  The organizations may honestly just want to support the local school system. But someone somewhere is bound to ask, what is this doing for our bottom line? So someone enlighten me, what's the ROI from naming a middle school gym?