Editor’s note: This is the fourth post in a series of guest commentary pieces from PRSA 2011 Leadership Assembly Delegates focusing on five key strategic areas within the public relations profession.

Public relations professionals need to build greater credibility through better measurement. That’s the assessment made by a group of senior public relations professionals at PRSA’s 2011 Leadership Assembly in Orlando, Fla.

It’s no secret that public relations professionals have long desired a quick and standardized method for measuring the value of their work. We still use advertising equivalents that are problematic, but alternatives are often very costly. Public relations professionals need more statistical training. For example, is it possible to distinguish public relations from other strategies through regression analysis?

Another challenge is trying to identify those crises or other organizational issues that do not occur as a result of public relations efforts. In these cases, can the organization compare itself to similar ones within an industry? An additional issue is return on investment pressures that focus on short-term results when measurement should really be occurring six or twelve months later.

Former PRSA Chair Michael Cherenson, APR, Fellow PRSA, noted one way to address the need to increase statistical courses for business and public relations students is through PRSA’s outreach to MBA programs. The group discussed a possible certification in statistical analyses and how it might be instituted. In addition, the delegates said we often discuss measurement, but not specific application of it. Additional initiatives might include specific Silver Anvil awards focusing on measurement and evaluation.

Continue reading " Measurement as a Path to Credibility for PR "

With 2011 nearly complete, and thoughts (and client budgets) turning to the New Year, we continue our tradition of annual PR industry prognostications. This year, we feature contributions from 12 creative thinkers in public relations. We asked for insight into trends they believe will fundamentally change the PR industry in 2012.

Below is a compilation of their thoughts. Starting Jan. 3, 2012, and running for 12 consecutive business days, we will publish each trend as a full blog post.

We hope you find value in reading these predictions. Please add your own in the comments below or by using the hashtag #PRin2012. We’ll capture the best contributions and publish those in a special baker’s dozen post in late-January.

Related: Read the top-11 PR trends for 2011 in this Dec. 22, 2010, PRSay blog post.

The Predictions

1. Business Increases its Voice in the Digital Space

If 2011 was the year of brands getting their owned-media properties in order, 2012 will be the year of PR professionals empowering business leaders and experts to get involved. As we look to the year ahead, it’s important for communicators to understand the methodology and value in this and be prepared to work with business leaders, decision makers and subject experts to get them up to speed and involved on digital platforms if they aren’t already. (Aedhmar Hynes, CEO, Text 100)

2. Convergence Continues

The recent news about Johnson & Johnson appointing Michael Sneed as vice president of global corporate affairs, overseeing global marketing and public relations, stands as yet another indication that brand and reputation continue to converge and create the need for joining forces. Always a hot-button issue in PR, the reality is that organizations will continue to merge their brand management functions (marketing) with their reputation management functions (PR).

If PR professionals are going to continue to work closely with their marketing brethren and generate significant results for clients, they need to get more comfortable with analytics. (MaryLee Sachs, former U.S. chairman, Hill & Knowlton; author, “The Changing MO of the CMO”)

Continue reading " #PRin2012: 12 Trends That Will Change Public Relations "

If you’ve been following the measurement world within the PR industry over the last year or so, you’ve seen a fair amount of news coming out of first Barcelona in 2010, and then Lisbon this year. It may have caused you to wonder: How come the measurement folks meet in cool places on the Iberian Peninsula, and we get stuck with conferences in Detroit, Orlando and Philadelphia? Well, we welcome more people to the measurement tribe at any time, and in fact, the 2012 version of the European Measurement Summit will be in Paris.

However, maybe measurement or Paris is not your thing, but you want to at least understand the state of play. Here is what you need to know:

First, in Barcelona last year, around 225 measurement people from 30-plus countries agreed to the Barcelona Principles at a conference organized by the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC). These seven Principles are the foundation of good measurement. PRSA played a big role in developing those Principles by bringing to the party much of the language and ideas from “The Business Case for Public Relations™.” In broad strokes, the Barcelona Principles say a few simple things:

• Set goals before you measure;
• Measure media with quantity and quality metrics, not AVEs;
• Understand how people and business results change as a result of PR;
• Social media is another channel and the same measurement ideas apply; and
• Make sure all measurement is transparent.

Continue reading " Measuring PR: Beyond the Barcelona Principles "

The recent announcement by Ogilvy PR that it is abandoning the use of Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) in favor of value metrics is only the latest in a movement across the global public relations industry to refine and improve measurement standards.

As PRSA recently wrote in response to a Wall Street Journal article exploring progress being made to measure the value of PR, “[The global public relations industry is] beginning to devise relevant, credible and valuable global measurement standards that will help us move well beyond AVEs, which were never a very good value indicator to begin with, and have held back reforming measurement standards for a number of years.”

That’s the good news. But public relations practitioners, anxious to pursue the brave new world of better, more relevant, more valuable metrics, may nevertheless be struggling with how to find a better way. Now that public relations has pulled up anchor and is sailing briskly away from the Island of Misfit Measurements, where is it going? When we move beyond AVEs, where are we moving to … and what are the alternatives?

Here are some thoughts on where to start if we’re trying to break the AVE habit:

Link measures to business objectives. A wise PR practitioner, whether agency or company-side, will also make sure when designing measurements that the communications objectives are tied to the organization’s objectives. We can often gain management support for new ways of measuring — and for moving away from AVEs — if we can reassure management that the purpose of the measurement process is to help achieve company goals.

Continue reading " Kicking the AVE Habit: Where We Go from Here "

Once upon a time there was a shiny new object called the telephone, and the first person to manage the telephone in an organization was probably the CEO. Then, sales and customer service and marketing and everyone else started clamoring for this shiny new object, and management was very scared. They worried about who would control communications management, or if the function would become too fragmented. Eventually, they looked around and realized that companies with telephones were growing faster and making more money than their unconnected counterparts.

And there is no longer any discussion about why we need to measure the effectiveness of a telephone.

A few decades later, there was another shiny new object called the computer. Originally, the computer sciences managed all things computer. Then sales and marketing and customer service and all the different divisions who needed business intelligence started clamoring for computers. And Management was very scared.

They worried about who would control the proliferation of all these new objects and who would decide who would or would not have access to these newfangled computer things. A few years later, CEOs and CFOs realized that departments with computers were more efficient and more profitable than ones without them, and soon everyone in the company was online, using computers to facilitate work flow, manufacturing, customer service, sales, HR and marketing.

Continue reading " Eight Great Myths of Social Media Measurement "