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The Paine of Measurement

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall
Sometimes the hardest part of measurement is learning from my own data.

"You must accept the truth
from whatever source it comes."
--Moses ben Maimon, philosopher (1135-1204)

Congratulations: If you're reading this, you're part of a very elite group. As it turns out, our recent readership survey (see Bruce Aube's report for all the results) shows that not everyone loves my column -- in fact, 6% of the readers out there ranked it fair, and another 2% ranked it poor.

Why am I telling you this? Because we in this business are really good at presenting data for you all to digest, but how often do we make the effort to learn from it ourselves? I believe that the best thing you can do with research is to learn from your mistakes. And the most recent survey of TMS recipients tells us a lot about what we're doing right -- and wrong.

First the good news...
The good news is that the demand for accountability is clearly up. Nearly two-thirds of you have felt the demand to be more accountable, compared to just over 50% two years ago.

More importantly, while two years ago only 14% said they studied the subject, this year over 44% cracked the books and went looking for more information. Far more of you are implementing in-house measurement systems and conducting formal media content analysis programs. And you're even demanding more accountability of your agencies.

All of which is good news for the profession, since more accountability means more respect, more trust and greater appreciation for the value of what we do.

...then the, well, less-good news.
But enough self-congratulatory pabulum; What we really need to look at in our most recent numbers is what isn't working. Here are two examples:

• While blogs are proliferating left, right and center (and I'm contributing via my measurement blog), only 4% of you actually prefer to get information from blogs. And, most of you only read blogs once a month or less.

  So while I sit around navel-gazing, spending time and effort trying to update my blog daily, you folks are telling us that you prefer to get measurement information from websites and trade publications. (Hey, there's something to blog about...)

• Our readership data shows that most of you have PR budgets of under $250,000 a year. That means that, even if you devote an industry average of 5% to measurement, you're only spending a whopping $6,250 a year (on average) on accountability.

  So, as we sit around the conference table discussing pricing and sales, what does that tell us about the leads provided by The Measurement Standard?

My purpose here isn't just to flaunt the foibles of KDPaine & Partners, but rather to point out an example of the vast treasure trove of information we sit on every day and don't use. (Read more about almost free data in this issue's measurement-on-a-budget Seminar of the Month.)

Us PR people love to squawk about nifty statistics like, "1.5 billion eyeballs saw our announcement last week." But until we compare these numbers to those for the previous announcement -- and realize, perhaps, that for half the cost we reached twice the eyeballs -- we haven't really learned anything.

Wishing you large measures of success,

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.

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.

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