The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

Public Relations Measurement: Creative Destruction, but Without the Disaster

As usual, I was reading the NY Times this morning, and came across Eric Zencey's editorial about the GDP and creative destruction. And I was thinking about the idea of creative destruction, and how bad times can and do tend to prune away old, outmoded or inefficient systems. And then I was thinking about public relations measurement: Doesn't measurement often function like creative destruction?

Public relations research and measurement is a way to determine what is working and what isn't. It can help you prune away inefficiencies. And it can achieve much the same ends as the creative destruction that comes with a disaster. But you don't need the disaster to force the changes. 

(Of course, sometimes it is easier to wait for a disaster than it is to force yourself to do measurement. I'll bet some people think doing measurement is a disaster.) -- Bill Paarlberg

MetricsMan: "Public Relations Measurement 2010: Five Things to Forget & Five Things to Learn"

Great overview of where public relations measurement is at from Don Bartholomew on the MetricsMan blog.

What Happens When Public Relations Measurement Provides Unwanted Results?

Back in March, this blog ran a three-post series on the subject of office politics and public relations measurement: Why should we go to the effort of doing proper public relations research if we know our results are going to be buried or distorted?

• Concerning "The Wire" and Measurement: How does politics affect public relations measurement? 
• Office Politics and Public Relations Measurement: Are we measuring the wrong thing?
• How Can We Take Office Politics Into Account When Doing Public Relations Measurement? »

So it was very interesting to find this article in yesterday's NYTimes, U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving. Apparently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was pressured -- or felt pressured -- to not publish research about the dangers of using cell phones while driving:

"The former head of the highway safety agency said he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states.
Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking."

Our point here is not to wax all righteous about the pitfalls of government-funded research, but to point out, once again, that public relations measurement is only as good as what people do with it. If you do good measurement and nobody wants to hear the results, is it still good measurement?

The public relations measurement industry often laments that people don't measure enough: Not enough budget or time or expertise. Well here's another idea: Maybe they don't measure because they feel sure the news will be unpleasant, and they don't want to hear -- or deal -- with it. --Bill Paarlberg

Six Defining Characteristics of the Successful Public Relations Professional of the Next Decade

The Future of Public Relations Measurement

PR Stars of the Future

by Katie Delahaye Paine

I had a great lunch with Tom Nicholson, Executive Director of the Arthur W Page Society, recently and, like most people these days, we talked about change. Change in the political environment, change in the communications environment, and change in the PR profession.

Tom speculates that, in another decade, the job of PR within the corporate environment will either be seen as more important than legal, finance and facilities combined, or else it will be as irrelevant as one of my old jobs now is: making sure the 35 mm slides showed up on time for the Sales Meeting presentations. (Yes, I'm old enough to have actually produced 35 mm slide presentations!)

He's right. I think that, ten years from now, many people currently occupying the office of Public Affairs, Public Relations, and/or Media Relations will find the new world order just too weird, too strange and too out of control. For those people -- who grew up thinking they could control the message, manage the media, and spin their way out of a crisis -- this new environment will ultimately be overwhelming, and they'll retire to their eBay businesses, their consultancies, or their organic goat farms.

For the others, adapting will be a rough but ultimately healthy transition, involving a lot of confrontations and personal emotional battles. For still others, they will be (and are right now) growing up amidst the new world order, and they might not notice the transition. (Or, they will be dealing with their own transitions that we can't yet predict.)

At any rate, the public relations environment of a decade from now will require talents and personality traits somewhat different from today. Here are six characteristics of the PR Stars of the Future:

1. They'll know that it is all about relationships.
A PR person who approaches the market from a relationships standpoint will win. They'll understand that the market is a conversation, and that building and maintaining healthy relationships is the foundation of any strategy.

2. They'll make decisions based on data, not gut feelings.
Yes the gut will still be a powerful tool, but in an environment that morphs faster than you can say "Utterli, Seesmic, Plurk, and Twittergrader," the gut will be a very difficult thing to read and rely upon.

3. They'll listen first, listen more, and listen more carefully than did any of their predecessors.
They'll constantly keep an ear to the ground, listening to every whisper of what the customers, media, influencers, analysts, employees, neighbors, and community are saying. They spend at least as much on listening as they do on shouting.

4. They'll design programs, strategies, and messages around the needs and perceptions of the target audience.
Not around the product features, or the whims of a boss.

5. They'll value truth and transparency above all; there will be no secrets in this new era.
Anyone can fact check anything and probably will.

6. They'll stand up for their ethics and values.
If asked to lie, to obfuscate, or to conceal, the successful PR person of the future will quit.

I realize I am not the first to write on this topic, read John Bell at the Digital Influence Mapping Project. I'm curious to know if you have other traits that should be on this list… Please feel free to email them to us.

Recent Public Relations Research Sets Up Conflict Between PR Professionals And The Old School Bottom Line

The Paine of Measurement

The Old Bottom Line Collides with the New Public Relations
New public relations research -- old corporate mindset.

Rumor has it that there is an ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.* If "interesting" can be translated as "full of conflict," then there is no doubt that modern Western business is now feeling the full effect of this curse. PR people in board rooms all over are headed for a confrontation that makes recent skirmishes between presidential candidates look like scuffles in the proverbial sandbox.

For years, the vast majority of organizations have been driven by a single bottom line, profit. This was relatively easy to calculate. You added up what it cost to make something, plus a bit extra for administration and overhead, then subtracted that from what you charged the customer and you had your bottom line.

But life in the 21st Century is anything but simple. Recent research has demonstrated that the old bottom line is not the whole story. First we found out that the way to make bigger profits is to have more loyal employees, and that we have to do good deeds to gain employee loyalty. Then we found out that good communications is a leading indicator of an organization's financial performance.

And now, most recently, Brad Rawlins has demonstrated that in order to best win the trust of our employees, we have to open our kimono to the world and be completely transparent. (See the article in this issue, and my blog post.)

So here's the conflict: Today's diligent and capable PR person walks into the board room urging better communications, more transparency and open, honest conversations with stakeholders. But the room is full of Machiavellian power brokers who believe in secrecy, stonewalling and the single bottom line. This old-fashioned corporate mindset still insists that the only reason to do something is because it makes money or gains a competitive advantage.

We now know that such an approach is outdated, and those who are stuck on it will soon find their businesses as dead as the dinosaurs they resemble.

The reality is that good communications does make money, it just doesn't do it quite as simply and directly as the old bottom line arithmetic implies. Openness and transparency translate into money saved in legal bills, into efficiency gains because information is more readily available, into lower turnover rates and higher customer loyalty. If trust has a value, transparency is its currency in today's marketplace.

Wishing you large measures of success,

* It is supposedly the first of three curses, each escalating in severity. The other two are: May you come to the attention of those in authority, and, May you find what you are looking for.

Isn't it wonderfully paradoxical that those curses are so similar to the job descriptions of most American PR people, and to the results they typically strive for: crisis control, the attention of those above you, and news? And these curses, mind you, are part of the social heritage of the largest, fastest growing and probably soon-to-be-most-powerful society on earth.

Jim Grunig: Research is Key to a Seat at the Table

This article was published in our Feb 8 issue
LETTER FROM THE EXPERT
Research: Key to a Seat at the Table
Jim Grunig shares evidence for the strong correlation between use of research and a strategic role for PR.
Studies are beginning to show that research is the answer to the question of how public relations can get a seat at the table, become more strategic, and serve a counseling rather than a messaging role...