The Paine of Measurement

Pay-Per-What PR?
Paying per clip is all well and good, but clips are not usually what we want from PR.

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Until PR people realize that what matters to management isn't just a good clip, but a positive business outcome, they will forever be seen as publicity flaks. So our job here at The Measurement Standard is not only to promote accountability, but to promote accountability based on the right measures of success.

Here's an example: Among the myriad of press releases that we received this week was one from a new PR firm called PayPerClipPR.com. In general we welcome any announcement or any organization that emphasizes accountability. Paying for PR performance is nothing new; I seem to recall that an agency started the concept some two decades ago in California and did quite well with it. Periodically, clients have foisted the concept on their agencies and the agencies have gone along with some rudimentary clip counting to prove their worth.

In fact, I even tried it once for an agency that worked for me and we saved tons of money on agency fees. We didn't get much exposure and didn't increase our visibility in the marketplace much, but it certainly cut down on expenses. The overall problem was that while we achieved the short term goal of making the agency more efficient, we ignored our long term business goal -- to increase awareness and preference for our brand in the marketplace. Oops.

So the big point here is that PR stands for Public Relations, that means relationships with the various publics that are important to your organization: Customers, communities, shareholders, influencers and yes, the media too. If PayPerClipPR is only doing media placement, then their customers are buying only a small piece of the whole PR picture. If you're really determined to only pay an agency for its performance, then improved relationships are what you should be paying for. ("Pay-per-improved-relationship-with-your-publics.com" is a bit of mouthful, though.)

Most pay-per-clip PR services can only be in business if PR people are confused about the performance they want to achieve. Here's an example to show you why: At one of my recent speeches, I asked an audience what they would be celebrating if the boss delivered a case of Dom Perignon to reward the best year they'd ever had. Specifically I wanted to know what would have changed in terms of the publics they were dealing with.

But in response I got a number of wish lists concerning how they'd like their PR departments to be bigger or better funded or more credible. The point they missed was that unless they figure out what really matters to management, they would never get the bigger staffs, better budgets and credibility they so longed for.

Yes, it is possible that your CEO, COO or CMO would value a good clip more than improved relationships (or greater market share, more sales, better message acceptance, improved efficiencies and/or greater likelihood to purchase), in which case PayPerClipPR.com is right on track. But you have to wonder just how long those business managers will be around. And more to the point, just how long their PR departments will be around.

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