The Paine of Measurement
by Katharine Delahaye Paine

There’s a great line from a song in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate that says, “If your baby is thirsting for pleasure, then give her your measure for measure.” And while Mr. Porter would probably spin in his grave if he knew that it inspired an article about marketing accountability, I do think it describes our industry at this particular time. The more we measure, the more pleasure, in the form of great results, we derive.

I recently had the privilege of judging PRSA’s Bronze Anvil Awards for Research and Evaluation, and I’m here to tell you that there is great stuff going on in our business. Blame it on the economy, or on the efforts of PRSA and the Institute for PR to raise the visibility of PR research and evaluation, but agencies and clients are embracing measurement in some incredibly interesting ways.

Some of these developments are being driven by vendors like Delahaye Medialink and agencies like Applied Communications who have responded to the needs of clients to go beyond simple media content analysis and explore correlations between effort and results. Their work prompted the article you’ll find elsewhere in this issue, “Measuring the Process of Doing PR.”

But even more gratifying to someone who’s been preaching the gospel of PR evaluation for almost two decades, were the programs submitted by agencies demonstrating the measurement systems they are using to prove results.

There wasn’t a clip book among them! Almost all submissions looked at competitive data to show “share of mind,” “share of discussion” or “share of favorable positioning.”

Many used survey research data to continuously test their work with their constituencies. Entries ranged from evaluation of employee communications to tracking trash on the highways and developing communications programs around the type of trash discarded. Along with standard launch measures, one entrant had developed some of the most detailed tracking matrixes I’ve ever come across. (I’m dying to find out whether they ever really got adopted as standard operating procedures.)

The irony of all of this is that the documentation of results was far superior to the results submitted by many winners in the “bigger” categories like Silver Anvil. Despite all the ranting and raving and guidelines submitted by awarding organizations like PRWeek and PRSA, aspiring winners continue to submit gross impression counts and ad value equivalencies as measures of their success. Meanwhile, some of the same agencies are submitting far superior work for a Bronze Anvil in Research and Evaluation. As Plato said, “What is honored in a country will be cultivated there.” Shouldn’t we as an industry reward solid, demonstrable results over flashy campaigns with questionable research and fuzzy evaluation?

But I digress, and promised when I started writing this letter that I would reflect on all the great stuff that is happening right now in our industry. And if PRSA submissions are any indication, there is a great deal of great stuff going on in boardrooms and agencies alike. To all aspiring PRSA winners, thanks for your efforts and congratulations on your programs.

Measure on …

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