KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

Eyeballs, timespent and cookies oh no!

In case you've been under a rock and haven't been paying attention to the earthquake rocking the eyeball counting business, USA Today has a really clear explanation of it here.  What's funny to watch is how the consumer is changing his/her behavior and the ComScores and Neilsens are desperately trying to catch up. My prediction is that by the time these guys figure out what to count, the landscape will have changed ten times over. As one of my political friends once said of a certain nominee for president  "There go my people, I am their leader, I must rush to follow them. "

Out of my Element

thanks to my friend Bob Cannon for that headline -- it was too good to resist.. but actually, now that the insurance company, Harlesyville, my second hero of the day...  has jumped in and solved the towing crisis, I'm actually think that the THIRD HERO is actually the Element itself. Here's this cute little car that slams into the back of a great big truck, and everything works as its supposed to. The airbags deployed, and other than a broken watch and a scrape on my knuckles I'm fine. Pretty awesome statement about Honda's safety features. Actually another hero was the flight attendant on USAir that gave me a back of ice that brought my swollen hand down to size in the hour that it takes to get from Manchester to Philly.

Good Friends Policy

As usual, Shel Israel has summed up one of the pressing dilemmas of the day in an incredibly succinct way. I was just considering the same conundrum and then I read his Facebook Friends policy and realize that I couldn't possibly have said it any better.

Boycott, no better yet investigate Queen City Towing in Manchester

This is the nightmare you get when you combine a 4 am start to my day + a business trip+ the Manchester, NH police and and evil towing service. On Thursday, I was on my way to Philly to teach an all-day workshop on creating Data  Driven PR organizations for PRSA. I headed to the airport early, thank god, and was stuck in traffic on the road heading into the airport. Not quite sure what happened, but the next thing that happened the airbags were popping out and I had crashed my Honda Element into the back of a very large truck. Needless to say the Element got the worst of it. In fact, after the smoke cleared, it clearly wasn't going anywhere, and I managed to roll it to the side of the road. Fortunately, the owner of the truck was as nice as could be, and he and I shared the same basic goal -- make our flights. The police were there in short order, as were the EMTs and the short answer was, yes we made our flights -- in fact -- this is New Hampshire for you, the guy I hit actually gave me a ride to the airport.  That's my hero of the week.
But every story needs both heroes and villains and in this case, the villain was Sam Vargabedian of the towing company which is who the Manchester Police calls when they want something moved in a hurry. Once he had my Element on his truck he informed me that unless I came up with $125 in cash he would only take it to his tow lot. Since I had did happen to have $125 in cash, I asked him if he would take it to  the closest Honda dealer. He then said it would be $125 PLUS clean up costs. I asked him how much that would be and he said "It depends how long it takes."  I had about $150 on my, and  clean up consisted of one shovel full of sand but he clearly wasn't interested in any discussion so he drove away.
I spent every spare minute of Friday filing insurance claims and trying to figure out where to have the Honda towed. By the end of the day, I'd gotten a recommendation for a body shop, called AAA to arrange a tow. However, when AAA called Queen City, they were told that they were closing up for the weekend, wouldn't open for anyone and my vehicle would have to remain there over the weekend, wracking up unspecified "storage fees."  Even the guys at AAA were surprised at how rude the Queen City people were.
At that point, AAA told me that I'd have to start the process all over again on Monday. I just did.
Now Queen City says they won't release the car at all without cash or a business check. I'm in Durham and car less (memo to self, make sure that your insurance includes rental car coverage)  and have no way of getting to Manchester even if I wanted to drive there to give them cash. They still haven't told me how much the bill is, AAA can't pick it up, and the only hope now is that the nice folks from Harleysville Insurance can sort it out. The question that I have for the city of Manchester and their police department is: what kind of kick backs do you get that would make you call such evil horrible people when someone needs help in your town?

and we wondered why PR isn't respected

The July issue of Harpers features a really depressing piece  by Ken Silverstein on the willingness of PR firms to flack for anyone and makes me echo W.T.McKibben's call for a divorce from PR. It's really depressing..

From the ridiculous to the sublime

It's been an interesting morning. First Kami Huyse introduced me to the MushyGushy gram which is just too much fun. That consumed waay too much of my morning playing with all the very fun possibilities. Then I stumbled upon the worst measurement program ever, and now, I find another gem from David Meerman Scott, author of my favorite new book on blogging, The New Rules of Marketing and PR. He's written a wonderful ebook on measurement called Align Corporate Communications to Achieve Business Goals. 
Yikes, I'm late! and now I've got to go pack for Philly where I'm doing a PRSA workshop on measurement

The worst measurement program ever

This description of measurement is so flawed I hesitate to even point it out, except as an example as to how NOT to do measurement. Between the use of multipliers, assumptions based on nothing more than personal opinion, and any lack of business goals, it's a little scary to think that this kind of measurement still exists and particularly frustrating in an era when so much better metrics are available.

A birthday gift from Shel Israel on the occasion of his birthday

I tried to explain to Shel that we're supposed to give him gifts, not the other way around. But this post is truly a gift. Wonderful words of wisdom from a wonderful writer and great human.

The state of PR Measurement in Canada

Alan Chumley has written a terrific, in-depth piece on the state of the Canadian PR measurement art in PR Conversations a terrific collaborative blog on global PR. If you're wondering how to measure your results in the land of the Maple Leaf, read this .

Got to love this thinking

This is an old story, but the headline "Lets Stop Measuring PR" caught my eye. Nick Wrenden thinks PR is too valuable to measure the usual way and suggests using lead tracking to show the ROI. That's a concept I was using back in 1982 at Fujitsu.