Monthly Mavens and
Menaces of Measurement

This month's Maven is Samsop Jo, a doctoral student at the College of Journalism and Communications of the University of Florida, and the 2002 winner of the Lindemann Scholarship Award from The Institute for PR. Mr. Jo will use the award to undertake Structural Equation Modeling of relationship dimensions in PR. As of the time of this writing, this award had not yet been made public. Contact Michelle Hinson, Director, Development & Administration, Institute for Public Relations, for more information.

The Menace of the month is Enterprise Marketing Services, Ltd. based in Straffordshire, UK. Their web site is full of "Case Studies" that boast of how many articles they've generated and the equivalent ad value. Of course they don't say whether the "placed" articles contain key messages, position the product correctly, or even leave the reader more likely to purchase—characteristics of any of the ads that would have been purchased with the equivalent dollars. Nor does the site give any indication of what evidence they have that the placed articles had any impact at all on consumer belief or behavior. Until PR agencies cease and desist with this sort of meaningless self-promotion, they'll never get the respect they deserve. On the other hand, maybe what this tells us is that EM doesn't deserve our respect. (For a discussion of some legitimate uses of ad rates in measurement, see "AVEs Are AOK?" elsewhere in this issue.)