For three days last week, I had some of the world’s best and brightest “Measurati” at my house to talk about the future of measurement.
On Wednesday, Shankhassick Farm hosted the IPR’s annual Measurement Summit, followed by a traditional New Hampshire lobster and clambake.
The two-days of meetings began with Don Stacks
discussing a provocative topic: Ethics in communication research. Respondents and research subjects are increasingly concerned about privacy. Further complicating the issue is that as data proliferates and the pressure for good metrics increases, clients are not asking the right questions of their research suppliers. As a result they are getting bad data, or worse – incorrect conclusions.
There were far too many disturbing stories of how data is glossed over or ignored in an effort please the clients and/or come in at the lowest price.The general conclusion is that Ethical standards for research, especially in social media, need to be established.
Stacks was followed by, Mark Stouse, Global Vice President at Honeywell,
discussed the details of his groundbreaking work integrating CRM and communications data to show the direct connection between communications and revenue. Essentially he delivers a monthly and quarterly report that measuers how communications delivers qualified leads and account wins.
His message was that yes, PR and Social Media CAN be measured, and that having the right strategic framework for your measurement is far more important than the tools you use.
For me, the highlight of the week was Bob Garfield's keynote
Garfield in person is even better than his book, Can't Buy Me Like, co-authored with Doug Levy. Garfield stark messaget -- that it is the end of the media world as we know it, is delivered with a wonderful mix of sardonic humor, wit and charm. Essentially his message is that the media as we know it is over -- the the endless pursuit of impressions, and our tendency to just keep shouting ever louder, will no longer work in what he calls The Relationship Era.
Despite his prodigous persuasive abilities, I'm guessing from the faces that there were at least a couple of people in the audience that weren't quite ready to read an obituary of the metric most of them have been using for decades.Even more fun was sharing a lobster and a beer with him afterwards.
On Thursday, the Conclave, a group of industry associations, clients and their agencies, www.smmstandards.org. met to discuss the latest developments for social media measurement standards. The Conclave was born in my living room in October 2011 when talk about establishing standards for social media measurement began to be heard in corporate corridors around the world. On June 6th of this year we published the first ever, industry-approved Standards for Social Media Measurement.On October 3rd, the group, which includes social media managers and research heads from GM, Ford, Procter & Gamble, McDonalds, SAS and Southwest Airlines among others, agreed on three major points.
1. Our work was not done yet.
While the standards were approved, commented on and published, we understand that technology and societal norms would change, so as much as we like the idea that they are set in stone, we realize we will have to continue to update them as technology progressed. Specifically we will be doing minor iterations to the standards for sentiment, adding to the Transparency Table to make it more of a check list of questions that a client must be sure to ask their research supplier.
2. Our purpose is to promote, as well as set standards
The purpose of the group isn’t just to set the standards, but to promulgate tem and help others implement them. To that end we pledged to take the messages back to our companies, agency staff and associations that are key to spreading the wor
3. Examples need to be part of the standards
We will be adding examples for all the standards of both good and bad measurement – illustrating what is standards compliant and what is not.
4. We have, and will add a standards dictionary
We will add the newly published I{R dictionary o public relations measurement and research to the standards, since definitions are key to establishing standards.All in all, I'd say it was a pretty productive week!
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