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The Measurement Maven and Menace
of the Month Awards

The Measurement Maven of the Month:

Sharron Silva
Director of Market Research
The American Red Cross

It's not often I'm called into a meeting to review an organization's measurement program and find nothing to add. In fact, I'm not sure that it has ever happened before. But last month, that's just what occurred when I paid a visit to Sharron Silva, Director of Market Research, and the comms team at the American Red Cross in Washington. I should have expected something like this would happen, since the first time I met Sharon she had a copy of my book, Measuring Public Relationships, on her desk, and was actually reading it.

Sharron and the Red Cross have clearly taken a lot of what I propose to heart and have actually implemented it:

• They do regular consumer tracking polls to measure their reputation and their relationships.
• They capture detailed web analytics to determine the impact of their various outreach programs on web site visits and donations.
• They track the degree to which their messages are believed and understood.

In short they have not just an excellent measurement system in place, but use it as a way to continuously improve their communications.

For example, when they were looking for ways to get information out to the victims of floods in the Grand Canyon, they determined that because of its ubiquitous accessibility via cell phone, Twitter was the best way to communicate with both the media and the victims.

I've been saying for awhile that non-profit organizations are doing some of the best measurement work around, and Sharron Silva, this month's Measurement Maven, is just one more example of it. --KDP

The Measurement Menace of the Month:

The "No We Can't" Crowd

The Measurement Menace Award this month goes out to all those folks that are hiding behind the "social-media-and-PR-are-unmeasureable" banner. In every speech, every conversation, and every discussion group, there's always someone who says that, "You can't measure this stuff!" because he or she doesn't have the budget, the brains, or the energy to work out some measurable goals and find a researcher to determine how he/she can measure those goals.

Many of these nay-sayers truly do not have the math skills, but that doesn't make their project unmeasurable, it just means they need to go out and find a statistics geek to do some calculations for them.

There are some really great discussions going on in the blogosphere these days about why you can or can't measure the ROI of social media. (See Todd Defren's post at PR-Squared, where he relates Andy McAffee's statement that "There is not enough ROI for figuring out ROI.")

There are some things that can't and shouldn't be measured -- like the ROI of your pants -- as Shel Israel pointed out. But I'm sure when pants first came on the scene, there probably was a discussion about whether they were a good or a bad idea. ("Hey, why should I go to all that effort to sew pants, when I can just wrap this woolly mammoth hide around my waist?")

My point is that, yes, at some point we can stop worrying about measuring these things because it will simply be an accepted fact that, yes, you need to listen to your customers on Twitter, or wherever. But right now, when organizations are trying to figure out what is working and what is not working, measurement is critical.

Another popular reason that PR/SM "can't be measured" is that, "You can't isolate PR from everything else the organization is doing!" But yes, in fact, you can. It might take some coordination with advertising, or some sophisticated ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) but it can be done, and is being done every day. The ever-brilliant Eric Peterson told an audience at e-Metrics that measurement was hard. And he's right, particularly for the math-phobic PR folks. It requires calculations and analytics and a bunch of things that PR people hate.

But, guess what? If you're a PR person who wants to keep your job in the next ten years, you better learn a new set of skills, and that skill set better include some math and lots of analytics. --KDP

Read Todd Defren's blog for a thoughtful and on-the-mark reply to this article: "More on the Menace of Marketing Measurement."

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