 |
|||||
 |
|||||
February 27, 2003 Measurement Maven of the Month
Tamara
Gillis
Tamara Gillis was one of the lead-off speakers at last month's PR Coalition Summit (see this article in last month's issue), tackling the tough—and critical—subject of measuring trust. She nicely summarized the works of the Grunigs as well as the IABC Research Foundation’s Measuring Organization Trust study, urging us to understand and evaluate organizational trust. Calling organizational trust an “international business imperative,” she cited an organization’s ability to cope with change and crisis, attract and keep employees, and deal with litigation and legislation issues as key reasons to track and measure trust. (For more, read her article elsewhere in this issue.) The business world needs to not only hear a lot more from Professor Gillis, but to listen and follow her advice as well. —KDP Measurement Menace of the Month
Perhaps the title of this article should be: When is ROI not ROI? Return on Investment (ROI) is without a doubt the most misused word in the PR lexicon. Almost no one measures ROI accurately; indeed, most forms of ROI measurement wouldn’t even pass muster with Enron's accounting team. CCC is no exception. Here is their definition:
No wonder PR has a credibility problem! First of all, there is no evidence either on CCC’s Web site or in any reputable journal we’ve ever seen, that scientifically proves that “new product mentions” deliver the same results as a 1/6th page advertising unit. Did they actually monitor how many new units were sold? Did they measure the leads that came in? Did they measure any tangible benefit to the bottom line? Clearly, they didn’t. And that bit about “doubling any value figures you get”! What are they thinking? When I ran our in-house clipping service, we retrieved 95% of all clips, and even the worst of the clipping services averaged 65%. But here’s my real beef: This all falls under the heading “returned value,” but they are not demonstrating any value at all. If you spend $10,000 on PR and you generate $100,000 worth of sales on which you make a $50,000 profit, your net return is $40,000. Unless you tie your results to revenue, there is no “value” to demonstrate. Yes, $100,000 “worth” of advertising has a value if it sells product. But if it doesn’t bring any benefit to the organization, it has no “value” at all. And there’s no evidence that the equivalent in column inches of editorial delivers more or less “value” to the organization. So get
real, CCC. If you’re talking “value,” measure value,
not space. —KDP |
||||
| New
articles Articles with red arrows require a subscription:
Articles with black arrows do not require a subscription:
|
Sign
up now for your free monthly One-Minute Benchmarking
Bulletin and stay up to date on PR and marketing measurement around
the world. Just type your email address below and click on the Sign
Up button:
|
|||
Three Reasons Why You Should Subscribe to The Measurement Standard: 1. You’ll learn how to use hard numbers to prove the results of your PR efforts. 2. You’ll learn which are the right vendors for your measurement projects. 3. You’ll learn how to design your program right from the start to be easily measureable. Click
here to |
||||
|
||||
Stock
your reference library at the Measurement
Mall, where you'll find books, Buyer’s Guides, Complete Handbooks
and a selection of white papers. [let’s go shopping] |
||||
Struggling
to set up your measurement system?|
133 Islington Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801 |
|||
