When will they blow up the silos

Forget bunker busting bombs, I want Silo-busters. It never ceases to amaze me how corporations manage to erect such perfect barriers to efficiency and effectiveness. I've been told by three major Fortune 500 companies in the last few weeks that they don't or can't integrate PR metrics with their overall corporate and marketing dashboards. "Oh, we're not given access to that data" they say. Or better yet, "we don't where to find it." I'll tell you where it is. It is in market research, or customer relations, or sales, or with your webmaster. Trust me, they are all sitting on volumes of data that can and should be part of a PR measurement program.

The silo-ing of information makes me nuts. People, you have web analytic data taking up terabytes of information, and at the moment it only measures activity. You have marketing data that assumes that all outcomes are a result of advertising, when all you have to do is read a newspaper to know that traditional advertising is losing its impact, and that word of mouth and media are as much responsible for outcomes. But unless you integrate your PR and media data into the rest of the analysis, your data is fundamentally flawed. You are assuming that PR has no impact, when of course it does. Just ask the ASPCA what impact their proactive release of information regarding pet food safety had on on-line donations. Ask Dell what impact the negative chatter in the blogosphere had on their reputation and their stock price. Or how much PR contributes to ticket sales for Southwest Airlines. They can all tell you – A LOT. But all these Six Sigma programs, marketing mix models and other dashboards that do NOT integrate PR metrics into the equation are missing a major factor – and one which may have far more impact.

Granted, it takes more than basic math to do the correlations and test necessary to prove the connection between PR and outcomes, but its not rocket science, its basic statistical analysis. And yes, I'm sure most PR people are allergic to stats, but walk down to the next cubicle, and I'll bet you'll find a statistical analysis expert somewhere in the finance or research departments. Or ask us, we'll talk to them, we speak their language.