Being wrong has seldom been so punishing. In the current business climate, PR pros need the intellectual capital to improve PR performance and demonstrate PR's value to senior
management. With that in mind, PR News recruited Mark Weiner, CEO of Delahaye Medialink Worldwide, to create a PR IQ Test. (This will be the first in a series of tests.)
The following statements about the current state of PR may or may not be true. Read each statement and then answer "true" or "false." Rather than guessing and getting it
wrong, it's better to say, "I don't know," just like in real life.
A reasonable way to set the PR budget is to take last year's figure and adjust upwards for the cost-of-living.
False. This assumes that the budget set in the prior year was proper to begin with. In fact, most PR budgets are set based on the spending levels of the prior year, simply
because "that's the way it's done." Those who negotiate PR budgets ought to ask, "What will we get for our money?" Budgets should be set freshly and independently each year
based on the budget needs and the outcome desired. One Delahaye client earned a 500% budget increase one year only to voluntarily cut more than half of it the following year; he
had embarked on a waste-cutting initiative that enabled him to lower his budget without losing staff. At the same time, his department surpassed its goals and achieved results
well beyond the previous (more highly-funded) year.
PR is an art, not a science.
False. Today, PR is as much science as it is art. And rather than inhibiting creativity, the science of PR actually fosters the creative process. Remember: good research
allows one to focus one's creativity through channels that are most likely to have the greatest impact on the target audience. And for those who ask, "how do you measure art?"
let's just say that if art couldn't be measured, you'd have never heard of Christie's or Sotheby's...they measure art every day.
Many measurement methods in widespread use today are flawed.
True. Regardless of how imprecise, two of the most commonly used and most widely abused measures are "Ad Value Equivalency (AVE) and what I call the "PR Multiplier."
Unfortunately, PR people are drawn to these measures because AVEs attach a dollar figure, and "PR Multipliers" magnify the reach and impact of a particular campaign based on some
vaguely conceived notions about how much more credible PR is than other forms of marketing. But these measures do not properly represent PR's unique value within the marketing
mix:
On the one hand, AVE's falsely assume that PR is only as powerful as advertising when, in fact, it can be much more so. AVEs can also be risky because they assume that ad
buyers actually buy advertising according to the rate-card, which they don't, and if they did, they'd probably be fired as a result. "PR Multipliers," on the other hand, are
dangerous because they assume that PR is consistently and geometrically more powerful than advertising, which is false. Every PR person - large budget or small, big staff or no
staff - has the power to accurately represent PR's unique role within the company's marketing and communications plan, so why assume risk by doing it any other way?