The Paine of Measurement

Counting What Counts
Lessons learned from
the Dean presidential campaign.

by Katie Delahaye Paine

For those of us who were supporting Howard Dean, the day he dropped out was a dark one indeed. But out of the gloom came an incredibly valuable lesson for all of us in PR: All that really matters is outcomes—in Dean's case, votes.

Joe Trippi is arguably one of the best PR machines on the planet. There wasn't a media outlet anywhere in the world that didn't have at least one story on the Dean phenomenon. In Turkey he got more—and far better—ink than Bush (or for that matter Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's own Prime Minister).

Even after Dean lost New Hampshire, he got equal air time with the President on Tim Russert's Meet The Press, and, one might argue, even did a better job communicating his key messages.

For years I've been arguing that ink doesn't count—message communications is what really matters. But Dean and Trippi have proven me wrong. They were great at message communication. Of all the candidates, Dean was the first one out of the gate with his messages and, having heard and seen him (remember this is New Hampshire) often enough, I know he is amazingly consistent in his messaging.

So he won on visibility, won on message communications, maybe even won on overall message communication efficiency. He certainly won on awareness, dragging thousands of people who had never before been involved in politics into the process and bringing even more of them out to vote.

But in the end he lost on the ultimate outcome. Sure, people believed and sent money and bought into his messages, but when they got into the voting booth they didn't follow through and cast their votes.

How often have we all settled for measuring outputs (column inches, ink, exposure and message communication) but failed to look beyond the outputs to the ultimate outcomes? And why not? One big reason is fear—fear of what we might find. In the end, the Dean example will make most PR people quake in their boots. No matter how good you are, if you don't ultimately sell the product, or the candidate, you've failed the client.

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