Editor's note: Welcome to our Barcelona Summit coverage. This article is a general survey of the Summit and what people have been writing about it. Also read our other three articles about the Summit:
- For a practical guide to improving your public relations and social media measurement based on the Barcelona principles, see The Barcelona Principles Checklist.
- For a discussion of what the Barcelona Principles mean for the measurement industry and how you can spread their acceptance, read 5 Things You Should Do With the 7 Barcelona Principles of Public Relations Measurement.
- For a discussion of the next steps after Barcelona, read Barcelona Was a Great First Step: Here Are 5 More Issues to Tackle.
A couple hundred public relations measurement professionals met at the 2nd European Summit on Measurement in Barcelona last week to agree on the first global standards for public relations measurement. Sponsor AMEC (The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication) has posted this summary:
BARCELONA DECLARATION CREATED
The "Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles" to achieve a global standard for the measurement of communications programmes has been created at the 2nd European Summit on Measurement.
The Declaration was created by delegates from 33 countries meeting in Barcelona, after the leaders of five global PR and measurement and evaluation bodies and 200 delegates voted overwhelmingly to adopt seven key principles. The ‘Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles' are:
1. Goal setting and measurement are fundamental aspects of any PR programmes.
2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality – cuttings in themselves are not enough.
3. Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity.
4. Social media can and should be measured.
5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results.
6. Business results can and should be measured where possible.
7. Transparency and Replicability are paramount to sound measurement.
AMEC brought five global organisations together for the Declaration debate. They were: The Global Alliance, IPR Measurement Commission, AMEC, PRSA and ICCO.
The Summit was organized by the Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) and the Institute for Public Relations.
You can get full copies of what was passed in Barcelona on the AMEC or IPR websites. To comment on the Principles, write to [email protected] or [email protected].
Our publisher, Katie Delahaye Paine, was there. You can read Katie's live blogging report from the Barcelona Summit here on her PR Measurement Blog. She also posted the final tallies for the votes on the Barcelona Principles. She notes that these standards were a long time coming: "It was October of 1995 when what is now the IPR Measurement Commission first met. Then in November of the same year there was the first ever European standards meeting."
As you may know, Katie is very big on relationships as the foundation of successful public relations, and (with myself as editor) has written a book on measuring relationships in PR: Measuring Public Relationships. So it was with some understandable disappointment that she reported from the Summit that: "Not a word in the principles or any of the presentations about measuring relationships. Nothing about measuring trust, or commitment or satisfaction or any of it." As she is fond of saying: "Sometimes you're not wrong, just ahead of the times."
And, speaking of relationships, note that Paul Holmes, editor and publisher of The Holmes Report, has posted his report from Barcelona, and includes a strong plug for relationships as the foundation of public relations measurement: "I believe the best measure of success is the impact a campaign has on relationships." Hear, hear.
Metricsman Don Bartholomew has interviewed the leaders of the Summit: Barry Leggetter (Executive Director of AMEC), Pauline Draper-Watts, (Chairperson of the Institute for Public Relations, Commission for Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation), and David Rockland, (PhD, Partner/CEO, Ketchum Pleon Change and Managing Director, Global Research).
The IPR has extensive coverage and discussion of the Summit and its principles.
Jay O'Connor reports in CIPR's President's Blog "Barcelona Principles - the end of AVE?" on the CIPR blog, "the standout headline from the principles is that "AVEs are not the value of public relations" - a strong statement that participants hope will allow the PR profession to move forward and to develop more sophisticated techniques that measure organisational impact." Also included are a couple of audio interviews with Katie Paine and AMEC's Executive Director Barry Leggetter.
Philip Sheldrake, chair of CIPR's measurement group, posted on the Summit here.
Another good summary of the Summit comes from Ben Smith at the PRmoment blog: "The AMEC Principles of PR Evaluation" and "The Future for Media Evaluation."
Richard Houghton has posted his thoughts at the PRCA blog.
The Holmes Report has a post on the Summit.
Cision Wire has a report on the Summit.
See also PRWeek's report "First Global Standard Of Proving Value Of PR Created At European Summit On Measurement." And their article "Charter Sets 'Global Standard' For Calculating Value Of PR At European Measurement Summit."
See 214 photos from the Summit on Katie Paine's Flickr set. One of them is at the top of this post.
To see 457 photos from the Summit on Gabriel Cazado's web site, visit this page and use the password "summit2010". They are without captions, but, if you travel in measurement circles you'll recognize a few people. 
“I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false.” --Lawrence M. Krauss
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