The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

The 7th Annual IPR Summit on Measurement Is Coming Right Up

 

It's coming up October 14-16 in beautiful and oh-so-hip Portsmouth, NH.  Read about it and register on the IPR website. (The photo above is from the Summit a couple years ago.)

Here's a highlight from last year:

"Some People Are Just Too Dumb, Too Cheap, or Too Scared to Do Measurement"

Register Now for the 7th Annual Summit on Measurement

Registration has opened for the 7^th Annual Summit on Measurement the Institute for Public Relations will be holding October 14-16, 2009 at the Sheraton Harborside Hotel and Conference Center in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

 

This year’s program features presentations from two of the world’s most highly respected corporate communications officers, a look at how to build a research-centered communications program from the ground up, introduction of a new methodological approach measuring the impact of online media coverage on business outcomes, a detailed look at how some organizations actually are measuring the impact of social media, a panel discussion examining the strengths and weaknesses of using AVEs in public relations measurement and a full-day of pre-conference workshops that this year are available to Summit attendees at no additional cost.

 

Complete details, including conference and hotel registration plus this year’s program schedule, are available at:  http://www.instituteforpr.org/education/summit_measure/.

 

This year’s Summit on Measurement is made possible, in part, through a generous grant from Royal Dutch Shell. Other sponsors already committed include event sponsors TNS and RF Binder Partners, platinum level sponsor General Motors and gold level sponsors Echo Research Ltd., KDPaine & Partners, Southwest Airlines, VMS and Vocus. Once again this year PR News is the event’s media sponsor.  Additional sponsorship opportunities are available. Contact Michelle Hinson (MHinson@jou.ufl.edu or 1-352-392-0280) for information.

PRNEWS' Measurement Conference Pre-Conference Survey Results

63 measurement conference attendees reveal what they are interested in and what they want from a measurement conference. Big thanks to PRNEWS and the PR Measurement Conference. --WTP

SXSW: All Party and No Measurement

The Paine of Measurement

 

 

It's time for social media to justify all the hot air and hype.

I spent a number of days at SXSW (South by Southwest Interactive), which is essentially an extended play date for social media types. Not much work gets done, but everyone has a lot of fun and you learn just enough to cover your expenses. Unfortunately, (with the exception of the panel that I was on), there was no discussion of accountability, measurement, or results. For this reason, I awarded this month's Measurement Menace to SXSW.

See these and lots more photos of SXSW here.

Sure, there was lots of great thinking and ideas.* But most of the conversations were advocating doing more conversing, spiraling around in a contradance of self-justification. And I began to wonder whether anyone really wanted to be held accountable. Thank God for my fellow panelists (on the non-profit POI Poetry Slam), as well as the Dell folks I met with, or I might have gone into measurement withdrawal.

Yes, social media is fun, and I don't want to stop doing it. And we all know it can, at times, be a very effective way to communicate and to do PR. But, given the economy and shrinking budgets, isn't it about time to figure out what is working and not working?

Should you really keep throwing dollars down a social media hole just because some consultant says, "It's all about the conversation?" Well, maybe the conversation is useful. But maybe it's crap. And maybe all the hype hides a lot of hot air.

And when the time comes to tighten those belts (with the big buckles we all bought at the SXSW All Hat No Cattle Party), how will you know what to cut if you have no data? If you haven't tied your results to some kind of organizational goal?

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, since you wouldn't be subscribing to this newsletter if you didn't believe in measurement, but we need to get the word out to the rest of the world. So here's a little cheat sheet you can use at the next SXSW. Or the next time you are at any conference or a cocktail party and you get into a measurement discussion with your peers:

When they say:
"I'm afraid that metrics will reveal that my program isn't working,"
your response is:
"If it's not working, why keep doing it?"

When they say:
"I'm afraid of what I'll hear,"
your response should be:
"If you're deaf to the conversation, only your enemies will hear it."

When they say:
"I'm afraid I won't be able to justify my program/existence,"
you respond:
"It's not about justifying, it's about improving."

When they say:
"I'm afraid I'll be fired for not showing the right numbers,"
inform them that
they should be fired for not showing any numbers.

Wishing you large measures of success,

*I especially liked the idea of how Twitter and Facebook and personal networks are replacing Google as the preferred search engine: Why get a recommendation from Google or a stranger, when you can get it from one of your Facebook friends or Tweeps?

4 Themes from the 12th Annual IPRRC

Measurement Conferences: The 12th Annual IPRRC 

  
See these and hundreds more photos from the conference here.

2009 International Public Relations Research Conference Round Up

To learn more about this year's IPRRC, which was held in early March in Miami, see this post on Katie Paine's Measurement Blog. To learn more about the IPRRC in general, see this page on the IPR website.

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Out of more than 100 public relations research papers presented at this year's IPRRC, there were four themes that stood out:

Theme #1:
Where in the World is Public Relations?

In Kyrgyzstan
The thing I love about the IPRRC is that it's one of the few places on earth, and certainly the only conference in the U.S., that someone will report on the state of PR in Kyrgyzstan. As it turns out the state of PR in Kyrgyzstan is pretty muddy, actually, according to research conducted by Elira Turdubaev. She surveyed 64 organizations with in-house PR departments, and got a response rate of 58% -- that's about ten times the average response rate from PR types in the states. Interestingly, 9 out of firms said that their PR Efforts were secret.

Like the US, most Kyrgyzstani firms say they use PR to manage their reputation and communicate key messages. Their PR mission is to promote the organization and form and support positive images of the organization. While half the participants said that PR is independent of marketing only one in four separate PR from marketing. In reality, it sounds like most Kyrgyzstani PR departments are publicity and lobbying machines. The biggest difference between Kyrgyzstani and Western PR is that paying for publicity is a standard, accepted practice in Kyrgyzstani, as opposed to the West where, if it happens, no one admits it.

In Guatemala
A similar study of PR practice in Guatemala was presented by Karina Garcia-Ruano, PHD candidate at Michigan State University. Her study focused on what variables impacted PR. Garcia-Ruana conducted in depth interviews with 10 experts -- all 1st generation PR professionals in Guatemala. Bribery (known as fafa) still exists, and there are other broad cultural differences between our view of PR and our peers in Guatemala. Overall, there is an umbrella role of culture, which Garcia-Ruanao described as a "feel-it culture," heavy on flower-language and informality. Garcia-Ruano also found that there is great importance placed on relationships and interpersonal trust, in part a product of the decade's long civil war that left the population with a low level of trust in institutions. There is little use of the Internet outside the major cities, and, as a result, there's a significant gap between rural and urban media.

Theme #2:
Measuring Relationships with Voters Redux

I'd expected more studies of the 2008 election to be presented, but in fact there was just one, conducted by Trent Seltzer and Weiwu Zhang of Texas Tech. They studied the impact of relationships maintenance strategies on relationships with political parties during the presidential election. What they found was somewhat surprising. It turns out that length of time spent in a relationship with a political party does not necessarily predict how you feel about that party. Nor does high level of party identification result in more favorable relationships. Interestingly the best predictor of favorable relationships was a high level of mediated communications (i.e., media coverage). What Seltzer and Zhang concluded was that more two-way communications results in more favorable relationships. While this is hardly surprising, it may explain why Obama won; his campaign was all about two-way communications, while McCain's was much more a traditional one-way approach. They also found that favorable relationships result in higher level of engagements, i.e., getting out the vote, and volunteering.

Theme #3:
Most Interesting New Tools

CSRPedia
Mary Ann Ferguson, a professor in the Department of Public Relations, College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida, did a wonderful study of 1009 corporations that have received CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) awards in the last two years. She put her findings into the CSRPedia – a database and wiki of CSR activities. What she found was that companies that receive at least one award for their CSR activities had significantly higher revenues and profits than those that don't win awards. Interestingly companies that win the most awards are in the US, Northern, Europe, Switzerland, Netherlands and the UK. Companies in Asia and Latin America were significantly less likely to win CSR accolades. PepsiCo, Marriott, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Kraft Foods and Nike were the biggest winners. More info is in the CSRpedia database that Ferguson created as a result of her research.

Digital Library for PR
Michael Daily teamed up with Benita Steyn of Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town to propose guidelines for a digital library/archive for the public relations function. While their research is still a work in progress, there's no doubt that this is a tool that is desperately needed in our profession.

Theme #4:
PR in Tough Times

Brigham Young University professors Kevin Stoker and Susan Walton presented a paper on corporate compassion in a time of downsizing that was among the most relevant and immediately useful. (I've already cited it half a dozen times since I heard it last week.) The paper focused on the corporate use of networks of ex-employees, also known as alumni networks, as a tool to survive a down economy. As they wrote, "Companies may view these relationships as temporary, expendable, and utilitarian, but survivors and victims of downsizing care about these relationships and act to maintain them"

Their premise is that, "Organizations that do not value or care about existing and former relationships damage those who remain with the company as well as those laid off. Through alumni networks, the public relations function of an organization can institutionalize an ethic of care and can protect and promote the reputation of the company even in times of dramatic downsizing."

They presented 4 basic PR imperatives for dealing with former employees:

1. Maintain stakeholder relationships
This is the primary function of PR, and to ignore alumni employees as a stakeholders is a mistake, Stoker and Walton assert. The notion that organizations only deal with people from hire to fire, rather than as part of a lifelong employee lifecycle, is obsolete.

Stoker and Walton suggest that maintaining good relationships with ex-employees not only mitigates negative chatter in the blogosphere, but also places value on workplace relationships. Especially since many Americans spend more time every day with their co-workers than with their spouses.

2. Identify and speak to audience self interests
PR departments and practitioners, Stoker and Walton wrote, can listen to the needs and interests of this stakeholder group and thus, "...serve in a counseling role to remind management of its responsibilities and obligations to all key publics."

Employee alumni groups, they say, can be highly useful as a source of trusted knowledge and information. According to Stoker and Walton, 42% of employees turn to a current or former colleague for information if they have a work-related question. Alumni networks accomplish this by enabling current employees to easily access knowledgeable trusted people.

Alumni networks are also a great way to provide job opportunities, to recruit experienced staff, and to sway prospective employees towards accepting job offers.

3. Articulate the value of what you are doing
Former employees can also help articulate the messages of their former employers. Stoker and Watson cite Select Minds, that saved $1.6 million in headhunter fees thanks to its alumni network.

4. Maintain ongoing communications
Companies who refuse to engage in conversation with their alumni do so at their peril: The conversation will take place with or without them. 

Effective Financial Communications During the Economic Crisis

Measuring Financial Communications

 

Lessons Learned from 13 Financial Communicators

This is one of a series of articles adapted from papers presented at the 12th Annual International Public Relations Research Conference. To learn more about this year's IPRRC, which was held in early March in Miami, see this article in The Measurement Standard, and this post on Katie Paine's Measurement Blog. To learn more about the IPRRC in general, see this page on the IPR website.

by Marcia W. DiStaso, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Pennsylvania State University

Financial communicators are experiencing the most trying and turbulent period since the Great Depression. During these times of uncertainty and instability in the world's financial markets, trust has been undermined, and the accuracy, clarity, and transparency of an organization's communications has become the lifeline for a number of constituencies, including employees, investors, analysts, customers, and vendors. Essentially, the current financial meltdown has placed financial communicators in the center of a crisis of trust.

Given the current economic environment, it can be difficult for public relations communicators to be proactive, especially with news breaking daily. Timeliness is critical and being reactive is a current fact of life. Ultimately, communicators must find a balance between being responsive and allowing the time necessary to properly construct appropriate fact-based messages. Plus, financial communicators have the challenge of balancing transparency without increasing a sense of urgency or emergency. To maintain credibility, companies need to communicate where the company is going, and this must include the good along with the bad news so a fair assessment can be made.

This article is an analysis of lessons learned from a focus group with 13 financial communicators on November 6, 2008. Each participant was responsible for financial communication for banking and financial institutions in the United States. The group discussion was focused on how to most effectively communicate during the current volatile market conditions.

Participants in this study said that they feel like they are being asked to "fix the world." This constant need to "get something out" is a big challenge for them. Everyone needs to be kept informed, but financial communicators have to be careful not to be overly focused on the "rumor of the day." To meet these needs, they are seeing a shift in the use of communication tools and even though this is not a traditional crisis, standard communication plans are being used concurrently with crisis plans. Then, as necessary, communication pieces are escalated. As one participant commented, "previous tools are being put on steroids," with the desired result of substantially more communication.

External Communications

The following are ways some of the financial communicators are working to meet external challenges:

1. Since some big, old companies have recently gone down, participants said that they can no longer just say things like, "We are a very old bank, as solid as can be." They now have to say more than that they are old; instead, they need to utilize things such as third-party endorsers (e.g., independent auditors and customers), quality studies (e.g., Voice of the Customer surveys), and ratings from ratings agencies (e.g., Standard & Poor's and Moody's) to back up their longevity and financial strength. One participant said that his company has started saying, "We didn't lay anyone off during the Great Depression, so why would we do that today," but he too found that it is not enough.
2. Web sites are being used more to talk to customers directly, and letters from CEOs are distributed and posted online talking about the company and the economy.
3. When it comes to media relations, financial communicators are not in this alone; most of the participants were working closely with their CFO (Chief Financial Officer), CEO (Chief Executive Officer), CIO (Chief Information Officer), and/or their chief economists to be responsive to media inquiries because they can help provide a clear perspective on what is going on.
4. Non-economic related communication is still possible, but because it is not what reporters are interested in, communicators must be creative. One participant stated that she angles pitches about non-financial topics such as products, services, events, community work, white papers, and customer testimonials to tie into the economic meltdown to help gain reporter interest.
5. While financial reporters have been so focused on the meltdown, some of the participants said that they are using this time to build relationships with local beat reporters.
6. Most of the participants anticipated changes in their annual reports. One stated that, "Considering that perception is reality, in this frugal economy, companies are going to want to be perceived as frugal, so less money will be spent on the bells and whistles." Another participant expects that readers will pay more attention to the chairman letter than in past years, since shareholders want to hear from the top and because there is more to talk about this year both company specific and industry wide.

Internal Communications

The following are ways some of the financial communicators are working to meet internal challenges:

1. Rumors have the potential to run wild right now. To try to stay out front of internal rumors, participants said that they are closely following their communication plans by sending out good, consistent communications and having informed leadership teams.
2. Talking face-to-face with employees is critical. Participants indicated that they are having more officer and employee meetings where executives such as senior economists, market presidents, CEOs, and business heads talk about issues that concern employees – specifically, the stability of the company, what is going on in the economy, and what everything means to employee 401Ks.
3. Given the state of concern, periodic communication is even more important now. Through the use of cascading communications (where executives communicate to their managers who then communicate the same messages to their team of front-line employees), executives and financial communicators are explaining what they are doing and why. They also provide employees avenues for questions both from themselves and their customers. One way this is done is through the use of electronic idea exchanges for associate discussions.
4. Participants indicated they are using more crisis communications pieces such as quarterly business reviews, cross business department teams, breakfast briefings with the chairman, brown-bag lunches, electronic chairman's letters, daily employee updates, and e-mail alerts.
5. Although companies can't monitor every conversation, one company has found a unique way to keep a finger on the pulse of their employees by offering free breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the onsite cafeteria. With everyone mixing and mingling in one place (including the CEO) they are able to pick up on some of the hot topics.
6. Two-way interactive communication at all levels can help to reassure employees. As one participant indicated, "It doesn't have to be the CEO or the officers of a company to reassure employees, but when a company is up front and transparent, any employee from the mailroom to frontline staff can carry the message, resulting in higher credibility." The example she shared was a story about a woman in her cafeteria talking about the stability of the company with a new employee.
7. One participant indicated that he expects to see some changes in the shareholder meetings this cycle, with executive compensation playing a strong role. Most participants are planning for an increase in attendance.

Finally, the financial meltdown has placed financial communicators in the center of a crisis of trust. For many investors, employees, and customers, trust has been undermined, but it can be rebuilt. Each communication must be timely, transparent and should explain what happened, what the company is doing to fix it, and why such actions will help. By making sure that the facts are accurate, financial communicators can work toward rebuilding trust.

Marcia W. DiStaso is an assistant professor of public relations in the College of Communications at Penn State. Her research focuses on investor relations, the use of research in public relations, and new media. She is on the advisory board for the International Public Relations Research Conference and an executive member of the Financial Division of PRSA.

© Marcia W. DiStaso

NewComm Forum 2009

Katie Paine has asked me to remind all you social media types out there that if you can be in San Francisco on Monday the 27th at NewComm Forum 2009 you will definitely enjoy the fabulous lineup of speakers, and she'll be happy to talk with you about social media measurement. In fact, she'll be very happy to talk with you about measuring your social media programs. --WTP

12th Annual International Public Relations Research Conference

 

This is a reminder of the 12th Annual IPRRC, a serious conference for PR measurement types, coming up March 11-15th, 2009. One hundred and six papers (!) on public relations research, sponsored by IPR, and Miami in the winter: What more do you want? (Oh, you want a discount on the hotel room? IPR will give you one, see that link above.)

Click here to download files for the 2009 IPRRC overall schedule of events, and for a detailed schedule of who is presenting what.

The Summit on Measurement, Part 4: Don Stacks and The Loneliness of the Measurement Mathematician

Mathematics is at the heart of a fascinating and frustrating contradiction inherent in public relations measurement. To do proper measurement, you need to use solid mathematics to reveal the patterns and trends in the data. But many -- probably almost all -- of those who provide or use or buy PR measurement services have little interest or inclination in understanding the complex mathematics required to answer their simple question: "Did the PR work?"

To those of us who enjoy mathematics, it is the beautiful and elegant bridge between messy nature and tidy logic, between a million human minds and a single line that reveals how they think. But to those who do not enjoy math, or who have no time to build the careful framework of knowledge required to understand the practical statistical methods of measurement, it is an opaque and confusing mystery. A mystery whose secrets are revealed only to Don Stacks.

Now, Dr. Don Stacks is not the only person in measurement who knows a chi-square distribution when he sees it. But he is one of the very, very few people in measurement with both the mad skills and the balls to announce to a Summit full of the best and brightest minds in measurement that, "If your measurement provider doesn't know what R-squared is, then tell them to take a hike." And of course most of those best and brightest don't themselves know what R-squared is, and don't really want to know what R-squared is, but are afraid to let anyone know it because Dr. Stacks is looking very severely at them all like they are back in Stats 101 and they forgot to do their homework.

"A good consumer of research," says Dr. Stacks, "needs to understand the concepts."

I sat in on the Measurement 301 pre-Summit workshop, a review of best practices and statistical methods. There were only three or four of us attending, while meanwhile next door about 40 people packed a session on social media. Oh the irony of it all: There are Don Stacks and David Michaelson (another major measurement math guy) reminding us that samples should be random and that research objectives should be well defined and I'm thinking, "Well duhh, this is such basic stuff why doesn't everybody already know it?" And then I'm thinking, "But this is the most important and basic stuff in measurement so why isn't this room jammed full of eager students?" Ah, Math: So beautiful, yet so lonely.

And the point here is that so few people can or will ever really understand the math behind proper measurement, yet if we want to do proper measurement, we have to know that the math is solid. And we can't all aspire to the skills of Drs. Stacks and Michaelson, who, after all, are the guys -- the guys who write the books and train the graduate students and in general make sure that the gleaming Temple of Measurement Math stays clean and tidy and available for us all.

But, even the most math-challenged among us can appreciate a graph with a smooth line that explains the data. There has got to be a way to provide the power of math without the intimidation of mathematics. Somebody please invent a Stats Box into which we chuck all the data and out pops the charts and graphs. -- Bill Paarlberg

Summit on Measurement, Part 3: Michelle Hinson and Don Wright

Here at the IPR Summit on Measurement, I sat down for a few minutes with Don Wright (IPR's Director of Forums, and a Professor at Boston University) and Michelle Hinson (IPR's Director of Development), the dynamic duo who put on this event each year. Actually, they put on several IPR events each year -- including the PR Leadership Forums, the PR Executive Forum, and the Summit on Corporate Communications -- so they know how to put on a conference, and what PR people want when they go to one.

They are clear that the major purpose of the Summit is to bring the best of measurement clients, agencies, measurement providers and academics together to exchange ideas and excitement. And that's what they do each year, attract a Who's Who of PR measurement and evaluation.

But they are also clear that a very important purpose of the Summit is to provide the opportunity for measurement people to meet and chat over coffee, meals, drinks and lobster dinner. And all this networking is truly where the action is, as old and new friends catch up, trade war stories and talk measurement. Every time you turn around someone is asking someone about how to do this, what does that cost, how can I get such and such? One attendee, a professor, told me that his students are thrilled to hear that he actually has drinks and dinner with the authors of their text books.

Don and Michelle agree that Portsmouth, NH, is a little trickier to get to than the bigger cities, but the environs are beautiful (especially this time of year) and the small-city prices make the event more affordable. They say they'd like to boost Summit attendance from the 100 or so at present to about 150. So email Michelle right now and reserve your spot for next year. --Bill Paarlberg