In the evolution of PR measurement, many have taken the easy road and blamed SENIOR MANAGEMENT - that faceless nemesis - as the main culprit blocking the path to research nirvana. But a straw poll taken at last week's PR NEWS "Best Practices in PR Measurement" seminar indicates there may be more insidious forces keeping measurement practices from being all they can be.
In a live electronic survey conducted by the Minneapolis-based firm Moss Cairns, 68 percent of the event's attendees reported that they are currently measuring the effectiveness of their PR efforts. But only 23 percent said their research is yielding useful results. Nearly half confessed that they either didn't know how to evaluate the data they were collecting, or were still too early in the game to reap any numbers of real value.
If measurement has been slow to catch on in PR circles, the lag may have as much to do with comfort levels and skills among practitioners as with a lack of budgetary support from CEOs. Early adopters aside, most PR professionals are still getting used to their new skin - playing the role of statistician in a historically right-brained industry that has hinged its past successes more on relationship-building than number-crunching.
Ads and Ends
Another roadblock in the measurement equation may well be the tools that are currently in use to gauge PR's effectiveness. The verdict is still out as to whether advertising equivalency ratings (i.e., calculating PR's worth in terms of what the same amount of ink, air time or Web hits would cost in ad dollars) are an accurate measure of media relations ROI. Another live survey of seminar attendees - the majority of whom indicated expertise in media relations - revealed a dead-even split between ad equivalency believers and non-believers.
"If you count column inches in the good times, you'd better be prepared with some way to count them in the bad times," said panelist Rod Irvin, director of corporate communications for Eastman Chemical. Not all media coverage isn't an automatic cause for kudos.
Nancy Bavec, director of media relations for telecom giant GTE, concurred. The issue isn't simply the quantity of the ink, but also the quality and context of it, she said. GTE counts its press hits, but rates each bit of coverage based on the degree to which the reporter has positively communicated GTE's key messages, as stated in its bottom-line business goals. "My entire department's compensation is tied to our ability to elevate our media scores," Bavec added.
The challenge to measure PR efforts in terms of targeted message delivery - as opposed to the successful courtship of prize pig media outlets - was underscored by Katie Paine, president of the research firm Delahaye Medialink. Paine cited one colleague who, in pitching a line of computer software geared toward teenage boys, received pats on the back for coverage on ABC's Good Morning America. It was a juicy placement, Paine said, "but how many 12-year-old boys watch Good Morning America? She was essentially encouraged and rewarded for missing her target."
Egos and Ergo
Perhaps the most strident argument against advertising equivalencies came from Jim Beasley, a registrant representing the Blythewood, S.C.-based software maker Policy Management Systems Corp.
During an open discussion, Beasley chastised the measures as little more than "vanity equivalencies" geared toward appeasing limelight-hungry CEOs. Coverage on CNN or the Wall Street Journal may initially impress investors, he said. But if your target audience is teenage boys, those news venues won't help your bottom line as much as, say, SI for Kids.
The million dollar question is whether your news coverage will sell product, Beasley told PR NEWS in a subsequent conversation. "And the fact is, investors are ultimately going to put their money in the company that shows results in the bottom line. So we have to make sure we're getting the best bang for our buck. I want a substantial percentage of the people who see my message to actually be qualified as the people I want seeing my message."
Supply and Demand
As the theoretical debate over ad equivalencies rages on, the practice of counting column inches remains a lucrative business. The proof is in the spending. "We've expanded the services we offer, but [press clippings] are still the main thing our clients are paying us for," bemoaned one vendor in attendance, whose efforts to contemporize his firm's offerings have been stunted by clients who still want the same old same old.
It's not the PR people who want the [ad equivalency] numbers, he added. "It's the CEOs who are asking for them."
Right, we know. CEOs are to blame for the fact that PR measurement isn't progressing at a faster pace. Or rather PR practitioners, preoccupied with the not-so-trivial matter of keeping their jobs, are continuing to supply their bosses with data that may or may not be useless, in an effort to at least demonstrate performance improvements over the previous year.
Anyone who's ever taken Economics 101 remembers the standard theory that's pounded into freshman heads on day one: Money is only valuable because we say it is. Perhaps the same is true of the rote ad equivalency formula, which estimates that one third-party endorsement in print is worth three times its weight in advertising. The valuation holds water because we say so.
But the non-believers will tell you it's only a matter of time until CEOs wise up to the fact that this formula has never been proven. "I'd hate for a CEO to misinterpret the worth of an ad equivalency," Beasley said. "After all, there are a lot of bad dollars spent in advertising, too."
(Bavec, 972/718-6913; Irvin, 423/229-4008; Paine, 603/431-0111; Beasley, 803/333-3317)