The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

Jack Felton is the Measurement Maven of the Month

Jack Felton

by Katie Delahaye Paine

This is one of those months when we have an over-abundance of Measurement Mavens to celebrate. The long list of praiseworthy people includes: inductees into the PR Measurement Hall of Fame, members of The Conclave, and all the presenters at last week's PR News Measurement Conference and Bulldog Reporter webinar. A big round of applause to you all: Thanks for being role models for everyone trying to bring more and better measurement into their programs.

But this month there is one Measurement Maven who trumps everyone else: Jack Felton, who passed away early in May at the age of 84.

Thomas Herndon Is The Measurement Maven of the Month

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Thomas Herndon is the UMass graduate student who found a spreadsheet error and thereby rocked the foundations of today's economic austerity movement. In recognition of his devotion to the data, his Excel skills, and the importance of his findings, we present him with our Measurement Maven of the Month Award.

The Measurement Mavens and Menaces of the Month, as Revealed by Ragan's Survey

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Ragan and NASDAQ OMX just released the results of what could be the most comprehensive study of attitudes about measurement in a decade. Click here to download the Ragan_PR Measurement_study. They surveyed 1467 public relations professionals, asking them everything from how satisfied they were with measurement, to “Do we need standards?” The results could be incredibly depressing if there weren’t a few signs of progress. For example, most respondents said that measuring outcomes was more important than measuring outputs. 

The Atlantic City Alliance Is the Measurement Maven of the Month

by Katie Delahaye Paine
We want to honor a group that we’ve had the pleasure of working with recently, the Atlantic City Alliance. They are doing an exceptional job of learning to make the best use of a great deal of data. Congratulations to Atlantic City Alliance, our Measurement Maven of the Month.

The Honor Role of Measurement Mavens, 2012

From time to time, The Measurement Standard selects outstanding public relations or social media measurement professionals to receive our Measurement Maven or Measurement Geek awards. (Visit this page to view the complete list of Mavens, going back 11 years to the beginning of The Measurement Standard.) We are proud to have had an exceptional group of Measurement Mavens and Measurement Geeks over the past year, and so here they are once again. Congrats to them all!

Honorable Mention for the Measurement Maven of the Month is Upwell

Upwell is an amazingly innovative nonprofit that embraced data from day one. They approach the subject of measurement with great discipline, and they track everything. While they acknowledge that their metrics aren't perfect, they work hard to improve them. They have even gone so far as to issue an RFP for ideas around better metrics. So while they are trying to figure out the perfect measurement system, they continue to measure what they can. That's doing measurement right. --KDP (Full disclosure: They treated me to a totally delightful cocktail party at their very cool headquarters down on Water Street in San Francisco.)

Daniel Wagner and the Obama Cave are the Measurement Mavens of the Month

This month's Measurement Mavens are Daniel Wagner and the rest of the staff at the Obama Cave, the re-election campaign's data-crunching headquarters. No other presidential campaign has analyzed so much data, or used data analysis so efficiently, for such desirable outcomes. And no other campaign has so comprehensively incorporated analytics into its decision-making -- from finding volunteers, to emails, to ads, to voter registration. See this month's Paine of Measurement for more details.

Jayashri Namdar of Canon Middle East is Measurement Maven of the Month

by Katie Delahaye Paine

I could argue that all the 100 people who showed up at my workshop on social media measurement standards last week in Dubai were Measurement Mavens. They were all smart and attentive. And they were all there on short notice, as the invite had only gone out the week before. They all asked great questions, but one person in particular resonated with me. She began by listing in detail all the metrics that she had accumulated; she knew exactly what mattered and how to get at that data. She then voiced a very familiar refrain: "I just don’t know how to connect the dots.”

The Measurement Mavens of the Month: Robert Hastings, Bridget Bishop, and William Shroeder of Bell Helicopter

Robert Hastings has been on my list of measurement mavens for some time, as I have followed his measurement advocacy from BAE Systems to Northrop Grumman, to Bell Helicopter. In fact, I owe “Kick Butt Index,” the name of our popular measurement product, to him. He came into a meeting and very succinctly described his need: “I just want a number I can use when the boss comes in and says, 'Damn it, Bob, we’re getting our butt kicked!' What does 'kicking butt' mean?"

Over the years Bob has continued to invest in measurement wherever he’s gone, and has continued to push the envelope in terms of measuring what matters and divining insights from his data. 

So it was no surprise when the Bell Helicopter team gave us a new challenge that would inspire some great conversations. We had been tracking Bell’s traditional media as well as a selection of online coverage, but Bob wanted to expand our efforts to include more social media. As a place to start, I pulled up their latest Traackr A-list that identified the top 50 influencers in social media.

“Why isn’t there just one list for all influencers, regardless of media?” they asked. Great question. And, I have to admit, I didn’t have an answer. So we’ve spent the past month or so working on exactly that problem. The answer is both technological as well as theoretical. A bit like trying to use a wooden ruler and a GPS at the same time. Traditional media has established norms and methodologies, but social gives you great tracking tools that can’t be replicated in traditional media. 

So we’ve developed an index for them, but it will need to be tested over time before we can share it with the world. In the meantime, we are honoring the communications team at Bell for pushing us, the conversation, and the industry to new heights.

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Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements. Katie and Beth Kanter are authors of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to be published this year by Wiley.

The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners, will be glad to talk with you about measurement for your organization.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.

 

Measurement Geeks of the Month: Manal Abbasi and Rejani CJ From SocialEyez

SocialEyez Takes the Prize: Sarah Nahawi, Mazen Nahawi, Rejani CJ, and Manal Abbasi

by Katie Delahaye Paine

There were lots of fabulous measurement programs honored at the AMEC Awards Dinner at the Summit on Measurement in Dublin. Gratitude to Ninestars for sponsoring the event in the fabulous Guinness brewery. Read more about the award winners at the AMEC site.

The most exciting program for me was the one that garnered the Grand Prix International Award for SocialEyez (a MediaWatch sister company) of Dubai for work for Etisalat UAE. To have such a new company win such a prestigious award is the equivalent of Shirley Temple winning an Oscar at age 7. SocialEyez monitored Etisalat-related discussions generated in the UAE, provided analysis of user perceptions, satisfaction, expectations, and complaints, and assisted Etisalat in its social media engagement activities.

SocialEyez is a division of News Group that was started in 2011 in response to client demand for social media and engagement measurement. What they quickly realized was that monitoring alone was insufficient, so they needed to have a way to help clients respond to issues that came up. And, in full transparency, I was fortunate enough to be called in in the early days to do a bit of observation and training for the group. So with all the pride of a kindergarten teacher, I have to honor Manal Abbasi and Rejani CJ with our Measurement Geeks of the Week Award for their incredible accomplishment.

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Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements. Katie and Beth Kanter are authors of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to be published this year by Wiley.

The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners, will be glad to talk with you about measurement for your organization.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.

Measurement Mavens of the Decade: The Employees of KDPaine & Partners, the Paine-iacs

by Katie Delahaye Paine

For a decade my staff at KDPaine & Partners has been defying the odds and measuring that which seems unmeasurable. When a client calls them and says, “We need to measure this event or that initiative,” they’ve always said, “We can do that!”

And then we’ve all huddled together and figured out just how to do it.

From Intel calling to say, “How do you measure IR when the stock price is irrelevant?” to, “We need you to provide benchmarks for this new social media stuff,” they’ve never flinched and always come through. (We've done a lot of innovative and first-ever research, and you can read about it here.)

So, to all those employees and partners who have worked through the long nights, given up their weekends, and pissed off their kids and families to forge new paths in measurement, I pay you the highest tribute: You are the Measurement Mavens of the Decade. It's been an honor to work with you. Now, where's that report I'm waiting for?

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Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements. Katie and Beth Kanter are authors of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to be published this year by Wiley.

The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners, will be glad to talk with you about measurement for your organization.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.

Antonia Antonopoulos of UNICEF Is Measurement Maven of the Month

Antonia Antonopoulos is Measurement Maven of the Month

I first met Antonia Antonopoulos, Communications Specialist at UNICEF, at the AMEC Summit last summer in Lisbon. She immediately impressed all of us with her understanding of and passion for public relations and social media measurement. So I was particularly delighted to get to work with her on two projects.

The first was to help define standard Key Performance Indicators for the entire UNICEF Division of Communications. (Which, when I put it into a single sentence, belies the enormity of that project). Note that UNICEF is one of a growing number of non-profits that have pledged to make their results public as part of a movement towards greater transparency and sharing of information.

The second project was far more experimental in nature: To define and measure meaningful engagement for UNICEF -- with the emphasis on "meaningful." A brand as strong as UNICEF has no shortage of fans and what most people would define as “engagement.” They currently have some 1,751,280 likes on Facebook and 971,020 followers on Twitter.

But like any good Measurement Maven, Antonia asked “So what?” three times:

1. So what if we have lots of likes and followers, what does that tell us?
2. And if that says that certain posts are more popular than others, what do we do with that information?
3. Most importantly for an organization like UNICEF, what is all that activity doing to help advance the mission? It’s great that lots of people liked that picture of UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador David Beckham (I would too), but did it actually inspire any passion and support for David and UNICEF’s mission? 

The results are still preliminary, and final results of that study will be debuted at the AMEC Measurement Summit in Dublin this summer. Suffice it to say that Antonia has raised the hot topic of measuring engagement to a whole new level and opened our eyes to subtleties that we hadn’t even thought about measuring. --KDP

MomsRising Is The Measurement Maven of the Month

Twenty plus years ago my mission was simply to get people to measure. Once measurement became more common, I focussed on getting people to measure correctly and accurately. Now, thanks to the Barcelona Principles and other efforts, there is official recognition that there is a right way and wrong way to do things. That’s real progress.

Today’s big problem is that there are so many measurement tools and so many measuring systems that most communicators are overwhelmed with the data. They just don’t know what to do with it all. So now the issue is getting people past the data overload so they can actually gain some insight from all their raw information. 

MomsRising has not just solved this problem, but has become a magnificent role model of an organization that uses data effectively. We are proud to recognize MomsRising as our Measurement Maven of the Month.

You can read MomsRising’s full story on Beth Kanter’s blog. (And, of course, in the book that Beth and I are now writing, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to be published by Wiley early next year.) The short version is that this grassroots networked nonprofit has grown to millions of members primarily because it is a data-driven organization.

MomsRising measures all of its activities, but far more importantly, it uses the data to decide what to do next. It reviews the data, kills programs that don’t work, and then puts more efforts towards those programs that the data supports. What a concept! Who says that non-profits aren’t savvy businesses? --KDP

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Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements.

Jorge Portugal is Measurement Maven of the Month

Jorge Portugal
Advisor on Technology to the Republic of Portugal

Jorge Portugal’s official title is “Advisor on Technology to the Republic of Portugal reporting to the president of the Portuguese Republic in innovation and knowledge society.” He was one of the presenters at AMEC’s 3rd Annual European Summit on Measurement, speaking on the use of social media in political campaigns. (Download his presentation “Presidential election 2011: The Economics of Attention of the first full-scale digital campaign in Portuguese electoral history” here.)

The best way to describe him is the Portuguese equivalent of a cross between
Eli Pariser (“The Filter Bubble”) and David Plouffe. He orchestrated the digital media strategy for the reelection campaign of Portuguese President Aníbal Cavaco Silva. Cavaco Silva won by a landslide winning all 18 districts. 

The best part of his Summit presentation was how he continuously improved the campaign by measuring—and then really using—the data from social media. As you know, anyone who not only measures, but uses the measurement data to make better decisions is always a Measurement Maven in our book. Congrats to Jorge Portugal, Measurement Maven of the Month. —KDP

(In the photo are Fatima Rubelo, Katie Paine and Jorge Portugal at the Summit. Thanks for the photo to David Clifford.)

Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements.

Erin Hawkins and Leah Cook are the Measurement Mavens of the Month

Leah Cook, Internal Communications Manager, Thomson Reuters

Erin Hawkins, Communications Specialist, Thomson Reuters

Like much of my profession, I must plead guilty to not devoting sufficient thought or ink to internal communications measurement. Which is why I was so thrilled to hear Erin and Leah speak at the IABC Minnesota Spring Conference. They reviewed their use of a variety of metrics, research, and surveys to track the reach and influence of Thomson Reuters’ internal communications programs.

They took a comprehensive approach, going well beyond the employee attitude survey to include measurement of their intranet, push e-mails, all-employee Town Halls, webcasts, Yammer, and internal blogs. To the right is just one chart from their presentation. You can download the whole pdf of their presentation here: IABC-Thomson Reuters_May2011_final

Congrats to Erin Hawkins and Leah Cook, our Measurement Mavens of the Month.

--KDP

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Erik Brynjolfsson is Measurement Maven of the Month

Erik Brynjolfsson is the Schussel Family Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business. His recent paper, “Strength in Numbers: How Does Data-Driven Decisionmaking Affect Firm Performance?” is the single best argument for what I have spent the last two decades trying to get people to do: Make communications strategy decisions based on data not on gut instinct.

Eric, along with his coauthors Lorin Hitt and Heekyung Hellen Kim, have assembled a fascinating set of data that shows that overall financial performance is higher in firms that emphasize decisionmaking based on data and business analytics. They found that firms that adopt data-driven decisionmaking have output and productivity 5-6% higher. 

So, my friends in public relations and social media marketing, take that to your C-suite. If they want to improve productivity, they should invest in a good measurement system that doesn’t just show off the number of Facebook friends or your uptick in “positive sentiment,” but that correlates those shifts in behavior and sentiment to real business impact.

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Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements.

Matt Kelly and Dustin Supa are the Measurement Mavens of the Month

Matt Kelly is one of the founding members of the public affairs social media team at State Farm Insurance. He and Dustin Supa of Ball State University presented a paper at the 2011 International Public Relations Research Conference (click here to download it) in Miami that illustrates how social media could be an effective tool for State Farm, or other large regulated corporations. They are seen in the photo here accepting The Peter Debreceny Corporate Communication Award from the IPR’s Dr. Don Wright.

Kelly and Supa posit that State Farm has set up a social media team that could effectively conduct best practices campaigns to get messages out and to respond to customer issues. So when a trending topic on Twitter became “statefarmwasntthere,” the public affairs social media team was able to quickly jump into the conversation. They responded in line with the conversation and mitigated what could have become a larger reputation crisis.

Kelly and Supa are currently looking to take it a step further with statistical analysis of social media business impact. Congratulations to Matt Kelly and Dustln Supa, our Measurement Mavens of the Month. —KDP

Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements.

Todd Morgano is Measurement Maven of the Month

Todd Morgano, Public Information Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Our Maven of the Month Award usually recognizes people who are doing innovative research and measurement. (See this page for a list of every Maven since we this award began in 2002.) But Todd Morgano’s metrics aren’t all that unusual. (Full transparency: My company, KDPaine & Partners, provides his research and measurement.)

What makes him a true Maven is that he is actually using his metrics. Measurement companies like mine produce hundreds, even thousands of research reports. Too often, we ship them off and have no idea what happens to them.  We constantly wonder whether anyone actually reads our reports. And, like everyone else on the planet, we like to know that we’re needed and useful.

So when Todd told me recently about all the decisions his team had made based on the data we were providing—the insights the data provided and how it was shaping their 2011 plans—it literally made my year. Too often people think of measurement as a  way to get the proverbial gold star, not as a way to improve their programs. So when someone does actually use it to make better decisions and drive improvements, we think they deserve our gold star. So congrats to Todd Morgano, our Measurement Maven of the Month.
(Thanks to jericl cat for the image.)

Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements.

Alexandra Carmichael, Kevin Kelly, and Gary Wolf are Measurement Mavens of the Month

We are proud to recognize Alexandra Carmichael, Kevin Kelly, and Gary Wolf as our Measurement Mavens of the Month. These three are the folks behind The Quantified Self blog, and they have a brilliant idea. Measure your life, share it with friends, and become more efficient, healthier, or happier. (See especially “The False God of Coffee,” “Quantifying Myself,” and “ Arithmetic and Butter.”)

Turns out there are lots more measurement freaks out there than I thought. People who measure every aspect of their lives. Read ”The Data-Driven Life” in the NYTimes.

The idea is to track your behavior using your mobile phone or whatever mechanism you chose, and then use data rather than gut instinct to make personal decisions on basic behaviors like drinking or not drinking coffee. 

Okay, I can feel many of you shuddering out there at the horrible thought that one would reduce one’s life down to a series of data points. 

But oh, just imagine the possibilities if you used this system in business:

The Honor Role of Measurement Mavens

To celebrate The Measurement Standard's 100th issue, we present here the Honor Role of all the recipients of our Measurement Maven of the Month Award. They are listed in chronological order, beginning in March, 2002. Congratulations to them all. Click on each name to view the original article about the Maven.

Visit this page to view an up-to-date list of Measurement Mavens of the Month.

 

Mark Klein of Loyalty Builders

Samsop Jo

Beth Baldwin

Alice Brink and Vollmer PR

Jim Macnamara

Gary Getto and Angie Jeffery of Surveillance Data, Inc. and PRTrak

South African PR Professionals

Wilma Mathews

Singapore Government Measures Its Success

The Internet Advertising Bureau

Tamara Gillis

Roberta Carleton

Ward White, Northwestern Mutual

Alfred J. Lautenslager

Ragan Workshop Attendees

Debi Miller, Bank of America

Wilma Mathews

Jack Felton

Dennis Bender

Dr. James Grunig, Dr. Larissa Grunig & Dr. David Dozier

John Gilfeather

Col. Michael Daily, U.S. Marine Corps

Ashlee Stokes, ING DIRECT

Lucie-Anne Fabien, APR

Jerry Mikorenda, JP Morgan Chase

Steve Singer

Andy Lark

Joe Marconi

The Speakers at This Month's Measurement Summit

All the Attendees at the Measurement Summit

Axiom Marketing Communications

Ernest F. Martin, Jr

The Winners of the First IPR Golden Ruler Awards: Alberta Medical Association with twisurveys, and Comalco with Burson-Marsteller

Angie Jeffrey and Gary Getto

Sandra C. Duhé, Ph.D.

James Fetig

Alicia Klosowski

The Integrators 

The Center for Media and Democracy

Teresa Streit and Jill Zieske

Kaplow Communications, Inc.

Kathryn Yates and Watson Wyatt

Dr. Judy VanSlyke Turk, Doug Newsom and By Yimin Wang

Charlotte Otto, Procter & Gamble

Shel Holtz

Mark Rogers

Dr. Tina Carroll

Judy Stokes

Shonali Burke, ABC

Andrew Laing, CEO of Cormex

William Ryerson

Wayne Clough

Mazen Nahawi, Managing Director, MediaWatch ME

Michael Hakkert, Senior Director of Corporate Communications, Juniper Networks, Inc.

Brad Rawlins, Associate Department Chair,
Brigham Young University

Charleen Wheeless, Vice President of Communications for Intelligence and Information Systems, Raytheon Company

John List, Professor of Economics at University of Chicago

Kami Huyse, Communications Overtones

Misty Moyse, Director of Media Relations, Mothers Against Drunk Driving

All the Measurement Wonks out there in Blogging Land...
...that everyone interested in measurement should be reading on a regular basis. Including:
Leo Bottary, Alan Chumley, Don Bartholomew, Avinash Kaushik, Metrica, and Jeremiah Owyang

The Brits

Sharron Silva, Director of Market Research, The American Red Cross

Kenneth Duberstein, White House chief of staff from 1988 to 1989

Participants in the Non-Profit ROI Poetry Slam at SXSW:
Danielle Brigida, Carrie Lewis, Wendy Harman, and David Neff

Mark Stouse, Global Communications Leader, BMC Software

Procter & Gamble

Nora Barnes, Director, Center for Marketing Research, UMass Dartmouth

Philip Sheldrake, Influence Scorecard

The Comms Team at CarMax:
Trina Lee - Director, Public Affairs and Communications
Chris Wilmore - Assistant Manager, Public Relations, New Media
Elia Imler - Assistant Manager, Public Relations
Michelle Ellwood - Coordinator, Public Affairs

Jim Sterne, Target Marketing of Santa Barbara

Holly Allison, VP of Marketing, Vico Software

The Delegates at the Barcelona Summit 2010

Beth Kitzinger, Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff, Euro RSCG

Cherreka Montgomery, Director of the Evaluation and Measurement Unit of the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources at the U.S. Department of State

Alexandra Carmichael, Kevin Kelly, and Gary Wolf, the folks behind The Quantified Self blog

Todd Morgano, Public Information Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Matt Kelly,  State Farm Insurance

Dustin Supa, Ball State University

Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business

Leah Cook, Internal Communications Manager, Thomson Reuters

Erin Hawkins, Communications Specialist, Thomson Reuters

Jorge Portugal, Advisor on Technology to the Republic of Portugal

MomsRising, a grassroots networked nonprofit

The Attendees at the Social Media Measurement Standards Conclave, September 2011