The Paine of Measurement

Happy Third Birthday!

"Every new business takes twice as long and three times more money than you think."
-- Gary Hirschberg, CEO of Stoneyfield Yogurt

He's absolutely right. It was a cold January day three years ago when 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. Just goes to show you the power of ideas and bullheadedness.

The new Paine & Partners' office cottage.

It's been a great three years, full of pitfalls, triumphs, course corrections and the exhilaration of knowing that our readers, visitors and clients have responded to our products and to our passion. As of right now, business has never been better. We have recently added new employees and will soon move into our new office building. Life is good. Here's a big "Thank You!" to our thousands of readers and hundreds of subscribers and especially to everyone who comes up to me at conferences and seminars and says how much they enjoy our work. That last one is my personal favorite measure of success.

Of course, life is never always a rose garden. There have been a thousand times in the last three years when we've come to the conclusion that the numbers don't add up and the business plan doesn't work. But for a lot of reasons we've kept going, not just because we think this is just a good idea, but because we really feel that the world of communications research needs an independent source of information.

Sure, there are now half a dozen free measurement newsletters out there (one of which I started 18 years ago), and they're all filled with good information. The difference between them and The Measurement Standard is not so much what's in them but what they leave out. In those other newsletters you'll never see a story promoting "ways to do research for free," or stories about research services the company that publishes the newsletter doesn't offer. You'll never see an industry roundup or product review or quotes from competing vendors. And you shouldn't. The intent of a company's free marketing newsletter is to sell more of the company's services. The intent of The Measurement Standard is to create more and better informed measurement consumers. (We'd say we were the Consumer Reports of the communications measurement industry, but the last time we did, the lawyers from Consumer Reports were all over us.)

So as we celebrate our third birthday, I'd like to reiterate some promises we made to you three years ago:

• We will, first and foremost, listen to and give ink to your experiences, your concerns, your issues.
• We will provide an independent voice to critically examine new developments, products and services in the industry.
• We will always strive to provide the latest research developments.
• We will provide a forum for other points of view, even when they conflict with ours.
• We will not shy away from telling you when a product or service doesn't work, and we will not hesitate to tell you when one is great, even if it's from one of our competitors.
• We will do all this in a way that is clear, fun and easily understood (yes, we've read the Cluetrain Manifesto).

Wishing you a large measure of success,

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51 Durham Point Road, Durham, NH 03824
603-868-1550 fax: 603-868-3346 www.measuresofsuccess.com