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in this column do not require a subscription.
The
Best of The Measurement Standard!
 Here's
a birthday present for all you non-subscribers:
Fifteen favorite articles!
We've chosen our favs, and thrown in the most popular among the readers,
too. It's the best of the last three years. Happy birthday!
Can This Reputation
Be Saved?
 Tom
DeLay
As
of today, if you google Tom Delay and "scandal" you get 482,000
postings; "investigation" is up to 1.260,000; and "corruption"
is 546,000. That's a lot of noise and most of it does not favor the Speaker
of the House. Support for Delay appears to be waning. 45% of Texans in
a recent Houston Chronicle poll said they'd vote for someone
else. Leading Republicans have started to back away from full endorsements
and there's even a rumor that Karl Rove wants him gone. This is not a
sign of a reputation in good shape...
Update:
FCC:
Fake News Must Be Declared
Two
months ago, Can
This Reputation Be Saved
addressed the Bush Administration's habit of buying news coverage for
itself. In last month's issue, our Measurement
Menace was "News editors who run government-produced
VNRs and other propaganda without identifying the source." Here
is the latest on both those topics...
With A Bullet:
Last Month's Top Five Most Popular Articles:
(If these articles
were subscriber-only in last month's issue, you will need a subscription
to read them.)
 #1: Four
New Ways to Measure the ROI of PR
#2: The
8th Annual International Public Relations Research Conference
#3:
How to Measure Blogs
#4: The
Monthly Measurement Maven and Menace
#5:
Can
This Reputation Be Saved: Martha Stewart
Answers
to Last Month's Measurement Trivia
Quiz:
Media in the European Union
Which country was the first to put press freedoms into its constitution?
Denmark
Which country
has the greatest percentage of citizens who read print media? Finland
Which country's
best selling daily is a sports paper? France
Source: Burton
& Drake: Hitting the Headlines in Europe. Thanks to Measurement
Trivia Assistant Sandra Macleod.
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 Big,
Big, Big
Third Birthday
Edition!
New features in this issue:
cross-referenced back issues and gapingvoid comics.
The
articles below require a subscription.
THE
FUTURE OF MEASUREMENT
 Survival
of the Fittest:
Dinosaurs vs. Data Wonks
What's
the difference between the doomed-to-extinction and our future leaders?
There
I was, confronted by agency CEOs from the stone age who stated, literally,
"We hate measurement!" To claim they were measurement-challenged
is not enough; these guys were dinosaurs. At first glance, the common
denominator for this group of clueless communicators was that they were
all older white males who came from a fairly traditional PR background,
ran their own mid-sized shops and had succeeded on the strength of their
personalities. But the more I thought about it, the more there seemed
to be a set of distinguishable traits that differentiated these dinosaurs
from the more savvy future leaders of our profession...
NEW
MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY
Portable People
Meters
Will
this new technology mean
more accurate media measurement?
The
latest gizmo for monitoring consumers' media consumption is a little back
box worn on the belt. Jon Gertner wrote an enormous New York Times
Magazine piece on this new device and the future of communications
measurement. Here we have a synopsis of the article and the comments of
some of our Experts...
JENNY SCHADE'S MAKING IT COUNT
 The
Right Tool For The Job
Qualitative
and quantitative research are both powerful tools, the key is to know
when to use them.
One
of the most frequent questions we receive from companies interested in
learning more about their customers and employees is about methodology.
Should we do a survey? What about focus groups? Is qualitative research
really valid? And the answer is: That depends... on what you're trying
to do with the research, on the nature of your target audience and on
the type of insight you are seeking...
BOOK REVIEW
 Loyalty
Beyond Reason
Lovemarks
by Kevin Roberts
Starbucks, iPod, Guinness, the
Red Cross, M&Ms, Virgin. These are what Kevin Roberts defines as Lovemarks
-- names that inspire "loyalty beyond reason." And you can't
argue that it's a great idea. I recommend that all PR practitioners read
this book. Particularly if you are a PR person in a consumer company...
ASK THE MEASUREMENT GURUS
Is
A Placement On The Cover
More Valuable Than One On Page 15?
Also:
Why don't journalists do my surveys? and Where did the 10%-for-measurement
recommendation come from?
ALICE BRINK'S OBJECTIVE MEASURES
 Verdict
in Gold Quill Judging:
We're Guilty!
I'm just recovering from judging finalist entries in IABC's international
Gold Quill awards program, an experience that left me somewhat cranky.
Why? Because so many of the entries we reviewed lacked real measurement,
and a surprising number lacked clear objectives to measure against. And
these were the finalists...
THE MONTHLY MEASUREMENT MAVEN AND MENACE
The
Maven:
 James
Fetig
Vice
President Media Relations, Raytheon
Jim
Fetig has been doing measurement almost since he walked in the door at
Raytheon in 2002, and he's been a measurement maven longer than there
have been Measurement Mavens. Raytheon's PR team found that, after a year
of presenting results in a consistent and regular manner, not only was
their media coverage significantly improved, but senior management was
far more cooperative. They've turned a primarily hostile and negative
media into a generally positive and certainly receptive audience. Their
coverage consistently ranks among the most positive and least negative
in the industry...
The
Menace:
Agency
CEOs Who Say:
"I
Hate Measurement!"
I'd name names, but the meeting in which this astounding pronouncement
was made (by no fewer than three agency heads!) was a private one. Here's
what happened. PR News, one of the most respected publications
in the PR field, asked a panel what topics were not covered enough, and
what topics were covered too frequently. Three men, all CEOs of PR firms,
named "measurement" as a topic they wanted to see less of. Their
reasons ranged from, "I don't think any of it works," to "I
don't think you can measure PR..."
"CARTOONS DRAWN ON THE BACK OF BUSINESS CARDS"
by
hugh macleod
gapingvoid.com
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Articles
in this column do not require a subscription.
The Paine of Measurement
 Happy
Third Birthday!
On
a cold January day three years ago I had a brainstorm for a new business:
Use the Web to reach the people who rely upon PR research to make better
decisions, and provide them with all the useful measurement information
we can find. Three months later we launched both The Measurement Standard
and measuresofsuccess.com
and today we're publishing our 36th issue...
Down
By the River
 Paine
& Partners is now docking at a new location.
As
KDPaine & Partners moves into its third year, it is also moving into
a new office building. Actually more of a cottage, the new building is
still located at Shankhassick Farm in Durham, New Hampshire, but it's
way out back from the present cramped above-the-garage quarters, and perched
on the banks of the Oyster River...
 Missed
last fall's Measurement Summit? You can still see and
hear it, just order
the video.
Measurement Quote of the Month
"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness
to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children,
before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and
why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all."
--Thomas
Szasz
The
Measurement Standard back issues
include over two hundred articles you can now browse by subject matter.
Want to read through all the celebrities whose reputations we analyzed?
Here they are.
How about every Measurement Maven we've praised or Menace we've pilloried?
Here they are. See this
page for more.
New!
A State-of-the Art
PR Dashboard
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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