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Can
This Reputation
Be Saved?
 Headache
Pills:
Merck, the FDA and Vioxx
Merck's
alleged crime is that they were too good at PR. It was the excellent PR
they did around the results of earlier studies that caused the kafuffle
in the first place...
Try
our new contest!
READ IT & RATE IT:
A
Lavish Party Makes Friends But Draws Criticism
An
organization's relationship with the town improved dramatically after
it invited town officials to a major party. But the press and others
slammed it for being too lavish. Read the facts then send us your decision:
Was the event a success or a failure? The best answer wins a
prize...
With A Bullet:
Last Month's Top Five Most Popular Articles:
#1:
It Was The Biggest Measurement Program Ever: Four measurement lessons
from the election
#2: Human
vs. Computer Content Analysis: Five measurement experts tell us what works
and what doesn't.
#3: I,
Robot? How to chose a measurement system that’s right for you.
#4: The
Measurement Maven: Axiom Marketing Communications
The Measurement Menace: Enviromedia
#5: How
Measurement Changed My Life: Andy Lark talks about adapting to Six Sigma.
Measurement
Trivia:
 Xmas
Tinker Toys
Frustrated
at the lack of interest in his new toy invention, Charles Pajeau hired
several midgets, dressed them in elf costumes, and had them play with
"Tinker Toys" in a display window at a Chicago department store
during the 1914 Christmas season. This stunt made the construction toy
an instant hit. A year later, over a million sets of Tinker Toys had been
sold. Source: www.corsinet.com
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Your
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Buyers' Guides and dozens of articles...
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The
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 Extra
Large
Holiday Bonus Issue!
More articles, more measurement, more eggnog...
—FEATURE
ARTICLE —————————————————————
The Best New
Idea in Measurement
An automated technique to judge
the effectiveness of press releases.
After
18 years in this business, you think you've heard every new measurement
metric anyone could think of, but Ernest Martin, has come up with a new
one that everyone in media analysis should pay attention to...
—MEASUREMENT
INSIGHTS —————————————————
FREE NEW
SEX NOW FROM HP!
Why
PR people need to keep their perspective.
For
decades, research has shown that advertisements containing one or more
of the words "free," "new," "sex" or "now"
are consistently recalled more frequently than ads without those words.
In Silicon Valley, the joke was always that if you added "From HP"
to a headline that would really put you over the top. The reality is that,
in public relations, if it's not New! or Now!,
it certainly won't make the news...
—CASE
STUDY
————————————————————————
Winning
Big with the Wheel of Fortune
How the biggest cable system in Arizona
used employee relations measurement to set and exceed goals.
In
2003, the Cox Arizona Senior Team established a set of critical goals
for the year that would serve as the foundation of every activity the
system undertook. For the company to reach these very aggressive goals
would require the full understanding, support and effort of employees
at every level...
—JENNY
SCHADE'S MAKING IT COUNT———————————
 When
Measurement Goes Bad
How to avoid research pitfalls and live to tell about
it.
Poorly designed or interpreted research is
a slippery slope. Once you start down, it can be difficult to recover
without embarrassing admissions or reversals. This month, we share two
common pitfalls of research, suggestions on how to avoid them and several
case study examples...
—THE
SEARCH FOR ROI———————————————————
 What
is the Real ROI for PR?
Jim Macnamara says ROI is
the achievement of clearly established objectives.
ROI,
or Return on Investment, has become the latest buzzword in modern management
and its precise meaning is unclear and its use widely confused. Two fundamental
characteristics of any ROI measure are outcomes (not outputs), and alignment
with overall organizational objectives...
—MEASUREMENT
STRATEGY——————————————————
 Tell
Me Again Why We Are Doing This?
Alice Brink discusses
four planning errors
that explain why many measurement programs fail.
Many
times, what we view as a failure to measure really comes down to a failure
to define clear objectives. How can you quantify the results if you haven't
set quantifiable goals? In my years as a PR counselor, I have seen four
types of errors in initial planning that make quantifiable measurement
down the road difficult if not impossible...
—THE
MEASUREMENT INDUSTRY———————————————
Moves
and Shakeouts
Biz360
and IPR Announce new Leadership,
Alice Brink Launches New Venture, and Golden Ruler Award entries are available
on-line.
—THE
MONTHLY MEASUREMENT MAVEN AND MENACE—————
The
Maven:
Ernest
F. Martin, Jr
Anyone
who can make us reconsider our measurement metrics has to be considered
a maven. We love Martin's proposed new metrics to measure the effectiveness
of press releases and we sincerely hope that we see it widely adopted
within the next few years.
The
Menace:
The
Worst Kind of Award Entry
This
sort of award entry sets the profession back a decade or more, because
someone somewhere confused activity with results. The client and agency
are quite prominent, but to protect the guilty we'll kept them anonymous...
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All
We Want For Xmas
KDPaine's List
Santa
Baby, please bring me some Measurement Xmas toys, uh, tools.
The
Experts' List:
We
asked the experts: What measurement tool, service, solution or development
would you like Santa to bring you this year?
 Call
for Entries:
The
Measurement Standard Third Annual Product of the Year Awards.
Once
again we honor the best products of the year in our annual year-end review.
You may nominate your favorite; here are the rules:
1.
The product must have been introduced, announced, or made available in
2004, and
2.
It must be real and in use, and you must furnish a client's name that
we can interview.
Please submit entries no later
than December 15th 2004. Winners will be announced next month in The
Measurement Standard.
 Missed
the Measurement Summit? You can still see and hear it,
just order
the video.
Measurement
Quote
of the Month
"The
greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."
-- Thomas
Carlyle
New! A State-of-the Art
PR Dashboard for $50 a Month
You know you need to measure your results,
but chances are there’s never been enough money in your budget for
evaluation. Until now.
KDPaine & Partners’ new Do-It-Yourself Dashboard system combines
a Web-based application with professional consulting to enable PR professionals
to customize their own PR dashboards. Look
here for more information.
The
Measurement Mall
Just
can't get enough measurement? This
is the place to shop for all the books, Buyers' Guides, Complete Handbooks
and reference material you can use right now to improve your
effectiveness.
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