Katie Delahaye Paine's Measurement Blog

One more firm to take off your RFP list

In my own personal crusade to put some teeth behind the Barcelona Prinicples, I created a bit of a kerfuffle last summer by suggesting that people who really believe in the prinicples -- especially the one that says "AVEs are NOT the value of PR," -- should avoid doing business with companies who insist upon using them. 
Since then, a number of firms, especially some very major PR firms led by Weber Shandwick, have come forward and pledged to abide by the Barcelona Prinicples and eschew the use of AVEs. Kudos to them.
I also suggested that any organization that signed up to the Principles should also make sure that any one who uses AVE in an award entry is immediately eliminated, and there is movement on that front as well.
So SHAME ON PRWEEK for giving any exposure at all to crap like this.

What makes this particular annoucement so galling is that it actually uses AVE to declare Apple a "winner" for getting the highest AVE value in Q4 2010. What a complete and utter pile of horsepucky!
Never mind that that figure doesn't even consider the sentiment of a mention, so who knows how much of the $941 million assigned to Apple were complaints about reception or high prices or concerns about Steve Jobs health.
The point here, dear readers, is that if you are talking to a firm about monitoring, measurement or anything else these days, you need to make sure that they adhere to the Barcelona prinipcles, that they promise to deliver accurate and ethical metrics and that they don't try to BS by giving you data that has no basis in reality. And if you are a publication, you have an ethical responsibility to at least look into the hyperbole behind a press release and see if there is any validity to it at all.

The more things change, the more they remain the same

I was just chatting with my friend David Geddes, new chair of the Institute for Public Relations Measurement Commisssion about the state of the measurement art, and where we've come in the last ten years. Personally, I think we've come along way towards mainstreaming good measurement. More and more organizations of all sizes are realizing the necessity of having good data to make better decisions.  But more on that later.

Last weekend,  I stumbled across this piece, Download RDP Advertising Article from the December 5, 1958 issue of Printers Ink, kind of a cross between Editor & Publisher and AdAge.  Since it featured my father's smiling face on the cover under the words "Controversy rages as TV battles Fortune Magazine,"  I clearly had to read it. Little did I know that it would reveal the utter wrong headedness of both my sire and the magazine of which he was managing editor.

Swallowing the embarassment that accompanied this revelation, I read the piece and realized just how much the conversations of five decades ago mirrored the debates that rage today in the blogosphere. And who said there was more civility back then???

So, while realizing that I am purposefully putting egg all over the family name, I share it with all of you, in hopes that maybe we'll all learn something..