I could hardly contain myself this morning as I knew PR Week’s Digital Survey 2009 was out today.

It makes a lot of sense. Nothing revolutionary, all good common sense, mostly pretty obvious.

But it has one gaping void, and is a little behind the times in another important aspect.

The void: evaluation. The main difference between digital and conventional PR techniques when it comes to demonstrating returns on investment is that digital leaves an audit trail – and when there’s a trail, things can be tracked, and engaged with. As the slaughtered slugs in my garden this summer would posthumously testify.

So for the agencies questioned to come out with dribble like their methods are confidential (er, so the internet is one big closed shop?), AVE-like statistics or PR Week hits, glorious though they may be, are the forefront of evaluating success is utter bollocks. It undermines the other good content in the article about the innovation that is going on in the industry, and makes a mockery of PR’s endeavours to modernise and commercialise its work. Overall, the range of answers to the evaluation question highlighted how too many of us are fumbling around for the lightswitch rather than taking a step back and really examining what can be measured and how. Fundamentally though, it has to be clearer and more valuable than assessing a pile of print press clippings.

The behind the times bit is all about skills. Asking agencies whether they have a head of digital or a digital team is a flimsy way to gauge the degree to which the sector is embracing digital. In fact, I’d argue that those statistics merely show how many agencies may be masking their overall lack of digital understanding with a figurehead approach.

The better question would have been what investments agencies have been making to ensure all of their personnel understand and can excel in digital work.

But then again ‘agencies masking digital nay-sayers with geek camps’ is not really a PR Week headline I suspect. And unfair.

There is no magic formula for getting the transition to digital right. No-one has all the answers. But my bettering is that it won’t be long before digital is dropped from job titles and org charts altogether. Because everything will involve digital.

Let’s hope by then that no-one still warrants the title Head of Analogue.