I posted a comment to this effect on PR Moment, but one thing that strikes me about the AMEC 10 PR evaluation discussions and grandesque declarations (though the intention is spot on) is that if the PR industry begins a gallant guest to put pound signs in front of everything it does to enhance reputation, it will fail.
The Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles represents baby steps, so this is absolutely no criticism of what last week’s debate aimed to achieve. And it’s absolutely agreed that outcomes and business results are what need to be measured.
But in the interests of modernising the long view of PR evaluation, we need to recognise that quantifying, in a clinical and pound sign-oriented way, precisely what PR investment does for brand value and hence shareholder/stakeholder value will always have limitations.
Commercially, reputation’s value lies in its ability to get customers to spend or recommend. And the only way you can truly measure reputation levels in order to gauge that is to go and ask everyone who could potentially be a customer what they think of you and whether they will buy/recommend. And do so frequently. Even then, there are no assurances they will give you the right answer or any degree of clarity.
Further point: AVEs dead? Not dead, no; but of increasingly limited value in the modern media world. It may be useful to know what the equivalent ad exposure would have cost. But it does not allow you to measure PR value, and anyone who ever claimed it did that was grasping at straws in the absence of something better.
Comparing bought media costs to what earned media costs only helps you to highlight that they’re different beasts, rather than drawing some sort of comparison that allows relative value to be assessed. That in itself is an aide to better understanding how PR has value and how it can be used as a commercial asset. But it’s a crude tool and only useful as an aside to the quest for better, grown-up measurement.
The main thing that PR agencies need to be when modernising their evaluation, and that the industry needs to be in pulling people together to crack this, is honest. Just because media is digitising and the resulting audit trails give us far more to go on does not mean that we can put pound signs against everything and be absolutely convinced that we’re right. PRs need to be clear with clients on what can be measured, what can’t be measured and why you’d even want to measure some of these things in the first place.
We need a single approach to unequivocal proof, not just a way of winning the case through sheer weight of argument and personality.
AMEC 10 and the glass ceiling of measuring reputation value http://goo.gl/fb/6OLfl (@mynameisearl)
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Steve,
I think you say AVEs are not dead on the basis that practitioners still use them. The Barcelona Principles assert that AVE does not represent the value of PR, period, and so are “dead” in that respect.
As you can hear on my audio interview with AMEC’s Barry Leggetter and Katie Delahaye Paine of KD Paine & Partners at the URL below, the delegates in Barcelona last week did moot ACE, Advertising Cost Equivalent, as the acronym / term best applied to the situation you describe above. And it has no multiplier plucked out of thin air. But then this was just relegated as representing something some people might just want to know, and plays no role in modern measurement and evaluation whatsoever.
With the debate moving on from outputs (eg, column inches) to outcomes (eg, sales, ability to recruit in a tight market, etc.), numbers with pound signs remain difficult to pin down, but not so much as they did in the pre-digital days.
The CIPR is hosting AMEC early July in a kick-off meeting to update the CIPR’s guidance and policy in these regards. I’m part of that process, and will be sure to keep everyone posted
http://www.cipr.co.uk/blogs/5867/2010/06/19/barcelona-principles-end-ave
http://www.cipr.co.uk/content/cipr-social-media-measurement-group-launches
Steve, thanks for posting about the Barcelona Principles. They’re an important first step for us as an industry to overcome the “PR has no measurement standards” myth — which hasn’t exactly been true, but we hope is now definitely dead and buried.
Re: your point about outcomes, I entirely agree that the potential outcomes for PR go well beyond sales to include things like relationships, reputation, loyalty, advocacy and other organizational outcomes that can’t easily be translated into pounds/euros/dollars. However, I would argue that it’s critical for us to embrace ways to measure in pounds/euros/dollars when we can and where it’s appropriate. For example, demonstrating that a product PR campaign increased online and offline sales in a particular region, or that a non-profit campaign resulted in a 20% growth in fundraising among its stakeholders, etc.
Doing so doesn’t imply that *all* outcomes can be measured in pounds/euros/dollars. But if the company’s marketing or PR goal is to drive 100 million pounds in quarterly sales, the PR leadership should do everything it can to demonstrate PR’s impact on that outcome.
Thanks both – and particularly Phil for the typo spot
I agree with everything you say. I hope the rest of the PR sector does too.
Stripping some of my usual fudge and froth from the prose to make myself clearer, what I was intending to say with this post was:
1. AVE has no real place in the future of PR measurement, and indeed has never really been effective PR measurement, but it can be useful to know what the equivalent ad space might cost. Not for all PR campaigns, just occasionally, and even then just as an ‘out of curiosity’ point. Incidentally, I’d welcome input on how clients wedded to AVE can be best weaned off it – the debate helps build our case, but any clear statements from the CIPR and PRCA on it would be an asset.
2. Beyond outcomes, there is the point about lasting brand reputation. We shouldn’t lose sight of that, but should appreciate that placing a sterling value on it can never been wholly accurate. Ultimately you can only truly gauge reputation by asking the right people the right questions. But this is a point for later, once the outcomes bit has been well and truly cracked.