An industry-wide measurement standard for online PR is about as real as the fabled Emperor's Clothes. Yet PR's reputation continues to suffer when agencies clutching fists full of client's promotional dollars are unable to prove that their e-communication efforts have changed public opinion.
"Measuring the effectiveness of online PR is no small undertaking - nor is it an exercise that can be likened to other forms of measurement. With so many pages, links, links to hyper-links, and hyper-links to one another, tracking the activity on the World Wide Web (as well as how other mediums relate to it) can be like visually tracing a single strand of spaghetti through a bowl of pasta. "The fact that I have seen an article in Time and it triggered me to do something on the Internet, I don't know how to connect those dots. That's a fundamental problem [for measurement,]" says Tim Meadows, vice president of marketing for NetRatings.
Bruce Jeffries-Fox, AT&T's director of public relations research who was recently appointed chairman of research and measurement for the Institute for Public Relations, breaks the problem down even further. "Relationships are a key aspect to what PR people do, whether it's with the journalist, or the investment community, or the local community," he says. "And we really at this point don't even have an approach to how you measure relationships, even though it's at the heart of PR."
Problem? What Problem?
Perhaps all the scribble on standards is overblown. For as the Zen masters teach us, "You cannot receive what you do not request." And since many clients are not asking for online measurement, maybe they don't want it. "I don't think it occurs to them to ask for it," says Nancy Voith, director of business communications for EDS (Electronic Data Service). "I think [clients] have a lot of other things they are dealing with. Or maybe they just assume we're doing it anyway and if it was important enough we'd bring it forward."
Of course, there is another philosophy stemming from New York City that warns, "What you don't see coming is more than likely armed and will take you for all you're worth." With this possibly in mind, Voith adds, "If we don't have some hard measurement, we're really coming up against a stone wall. It takes so much more argument to get your point across when you don't have objective data supporting you."
The overriding problem with measurement is that methods and media are not universally compatible - yet Web-venturers continue their attempts to shove square-pegged measurement strategies from traditional media into round-holed Internet platforms. A strategy that measures print will not necessarily have the same applications online, where readers behave differently. And as much as traditional media metaphors help to explain Web concepts to clients, clients are left equally confounded when off-line measurement strategies deployed in a new media environment produce results that are ambiguous and unreliable.
Advertising is not PR
Along the same vein, measurement strategies that work for one business discipline won't necessarily work for another. Experts are now debating whether advertising equivalent tests hold water in proving the effectiveness of PR campaigns.
"It's something that has been used for years on the PR side as a way of trying to relate the column inches we get to the possible effectiveness of that ink," explains Fox. "Now that's really goofy. And anybody who's been in the business long enough knows that it's goofy. I mean, you can run the exact same ad, controlling the content, over and over again. It's quite different on the PR side. You can't control what the journalist will write and it's not reported time and time again." Firms use the method because it's easy to calculate and PR clients expect to see it. "But," says Fox, "it's totally meaningless."
So far, the greatest strides in online measurement have been seen in tools formulated specifically for the Web. Pioneers like Delahaye Medialink and eWatch have brought a new level of sophistication to the playing field - offering more competitive knowledge about digital behavior than the sheer number of hits on a Web site. Both firms offer online clipping services (eWatch recently announced its ability to index over 1,000 Web-based newspapers, magazines, e-zines and other editorial news sites, while Delahaye touts its ability to monitor who has accessed a client's news and what they did with it.) And both vendors eavesdrop on behalf of their clients and report back about chat sessions covering everything from stock trends to new products to poor customer service experiences.
Customized Options
But even those measurement tools created exclusively for the Web have their limitations. To the extent that they measure only certain behavioral patterns online, they can only churn out certain forms of comparative data. Many clients want customized options that simply don't exist.
"I have spent the last year trying to wrestle the [measurement] tiger, trying to figure out the best way to integrate existing standardized measurement tools with the needs of our company and then melting those two elements together to make them relevant to senior management. It has been a really interesting process and a very challenging one," says Kathi Nestor Mishek news bureau manager for greeting card giant Hallmark.
Mishek's mission is to inform the public that Hallmark is more than just a card store. The company also offers gifts and is the world's largest producer of family movies, through Hallmark Entertainment. The measurement efforts for this awareness campaign began last June and cover online as well as other media.
"When we talk about how well or not our messages are reaching [their targets], we have some base line things we are trying to overcome and measure ourselves against. So, we had to develop our own criteria,"says Mishek. "We have our own internal tracking mechanism that we developed ourselves, which is proprietary. [Once the information is retrieved] we can slice or dice it according to what ever we want." Mishek declined to offer specifics on their slicing and dicing, but she was happy to talk target audiences.
There are two groups, and obviously one is the consumer. "We have a whole series of tactics to reach these people," says Mishek. "Both one to one [via off-line surveys] and more mass efforts [like services similar to tracking clips]."
The other group is individuals who have the power to sway consumers' mindsets. "We have a group of influencers who have an impact over our consumers," she says. Influencers include individuals who, in their daily work, say and do things that consumers ingest. "[The influencers] are a small group of online analysts and a small group of really visible media people who either write about e-commerce or have an online media outlet like The New York Times' Cybertimes," she says. "There, we have identified a couple of columnists as our influencers."
It took 12 months for Hallmark to build a system that could effectively measure what it needed, Mishek says. Relying on the industry to supply a standard was not happening. "One size does not fit all. What I've learned is that the best thing is to look at the macro measurement tools that already exist, but know you're going to have to do a certain amount of customization to meet your company's needs."
Satisfaction Not Yet Guaranteed
For professionals like Mishek, what measurement boils down to is impressing those who maintain control over PR operating budgets. Whether it's the client, or, in her case, the boss, the data gathered needs to be presented in understandable language (e.g., "CEO-speak") and in accordance with company-wide goals and objectives. A promotional effort can only be supported and move forward if the people supplying the cash feel confident it's working.
Is management convinced? "We haven't connected those dots just yet," says Mishek. "We know that that is our next step."
The good news is that measurement will get easier once the digital world becomes more universal. More and more people are getting used to the Internet and its penetration. And online research is growing, making the demographics more representative of all the people who use the Web. But relying on demographics to better understand the results of measurement is still a ways off. In most arenas, computer-generated facts are sketchy. "If you're a software maker and you want to get the opinions of people who use the Internet, [measurement] is terrific," says Fox. "But, if you're targeting the general public I would say [online demographics] are no good because the penetration is not there." Soon, though, it should be. As Meadows explains, "You have to remember, 10 years Internet time is like 50 years anywhere else."
(Bruce Jeffries-Fox, Institute for Public Relations, 908/221-8191; Tim Meadows, NetRatings, 408/941-2904; Kathi Nestor Mishek, 816/274-7630; Nancy Sharp Voith, 972/605-6780.)