Communication & Measurement

We participated in a two-day AMEC Summit 2021 held last week which gave us exposure to the practices and trends in measurement and evaluation in the age of digitalization, offering new perspectives and metrics being put to use, globally.

Our industry has gone well beyond AVE (AMEC runs a “Say No to AVE” campaign). This is indeed good news. What is clear then, is that the Public Relations Industry has been slow in establishing new norms of measurement in this age of technology and we must get off the starting block without any further ado.

The Focus on Truth and Purpose

The fallout of the prevailing Infodemic is that the Public Relations industry is reinforcing the focus on truth and purpose. In their book “Truth be Told”, authors John O’Brien and David Gallagher, called out that truthful purpose-led stories are not “made up in the marketing sector, but originate through behaviors and the culture across the organization”.

However, as several speakers opined, getting to the truth and purpose cannot happen without “probing” and asking “why” over and over again. This was a refrain throughout the two-day Summit. As Nikhil Dey, Executive Director of Adfactors exhorted, “if we keep getting frustrated with poor briefs and unclear objectives, we are missing the point; the important question is do we have the will and the skill to navigate difficult questions and help those objectives emerge?” Good point. As was demonstrated effectively by Deepshikha Dharmaraj, CEO of Genesis BCW that when data marries creativity, magic is created. 

Deep Fakes – From Fear to Acceptance

The rising number of social media outlets and their burgeoning user base have led to the sharing of an enormous amount of content. Until recently, engineered or synthetic media was considered taboo. Termed as ‘Deep Fakes’, the AI-generated content about fake events/occurrences roused fear and concern among Public Relations professionals. The rise of a widespread practice called “vishing” is one of the negative fallouts of Deep Fakes, which makes it relatively easy to create videos of a person where it appears they are saying or doing something they never said or did.

This has led many to question the authenticity of communication. Showing popular content on social media by propagating instructions to bots or making a # trend is part of the synthetic media communication strategy. The infamous West Bengal elections found mention at the Summit when a speaker cited how operators were able to get #AmitShahInBengal up to the 6th place using instructed supporters’ tweets and bots so it could appear as a popular topic to a layman on Twitter. It was ‘real’ that Amit Shah was rallying in Bengal but was it ‘authentic’ that it mattered to so many people to post about it on Twitter?

Interestingly, the perception about synthetically generated media is seeing a change with more and more people embracing it. In fact, it has been put to good use by brands with AI-generated personas as trending influencers who can connect with target audience in a fluid manner. Despite the current ambiguity around ethical implications, this is something to be watched out for in the coming years. In fact, a deep fake influencer has made her mark, with several thousands following her and lauding her “authenticity”. 

Exploration of New Evaluation Metrics

The confluence of data, technology and communications experts paved the way for the future of measurement. It is clear that the three cohorts have to work closely in order to usher in the next- gen evaluation and measurement metrics that are a means to an end, and not the end in itself. Think of planning, execution and measurement as a virtuous cycle. 

An interesting concept that has been doing the rounds was brought up in the form of Share of Search. It is the number of times your brand is typed into a search engine, divided by the number of times all brands in your category are typed into a search engine. In other words, how many searches does your brand have vs the competition. There is evidence that this is a good predictor of Share of Market.

The need for clean data was repeated time and again as sifting through vast sets of data to arrive at what will actually help us glean insights seems to be a challenge for everyone. A strong word of caution about surveys which are seeing an increase in our times. An eye-opening presentation by Pew Research revealed how bogus respondents corrupt online opt-in surveys that generated bogus/biased findings and hence called out the need for repeated quality checks.

Media Relations and its output continues to be a big part of what our industry does globally. It was interesting to see how various companies in Europe (especially), are digging deeper into assessing the correlation between media visibility and business outcomes. A presentation by Hard Numbers, a UK based firm, revealed that companies that saw the largest increase in financing between their first funding round and their Series B, generated more media coverage, on average and not surprisingly, those companies who saw the lowest increase between their first funding round and their Series B also generated the lowest amount of coverage, on average. More details can be found here

There was enough of deep-geek in Day 2. Despite not being familiar with terms like term frequency and correlation, N-gram and conversation mapping, the case study on GameStop, Reddit and Robinhood was intriguing. The role of voice-print, sentiment analysis to understand how Robinhood did not listen adequately, and therefore paid a price.

Virtual Events and Summits

Virtual events are not as raw and overwhelming as they were in 2020, and many realised their potential to break boundaries of time, place, and duration. The Summit, itself had Public Relations professionals joining in from different countries with participants logged in at 3 am, and others like our PRactitioners logging out at 11:30 pm. However, engagement and focus are the key quotient behind the success of digital events in the new normal as this hybrid model is here to stay. At the planning level one must ask the questions – who is my audience, how will I integrate the event and participants, and how will I measure participation and analyse engagement and understand its impact, leading to better planning for the next event.

Extending Measurement to Various Aspects of Public Relations

It is clear that most measurement and evaluation metrics are oriented towards marketing. Influencer engagement, digital engagement and integrated communications have a few takers, however, other aspects such as analyst relations, stakeholder engagement etc were not addressed adequately. An interesting element was the Employee Net Promoter Score that measures the outcome of internal communications when it is tied in closely with the company culture. Something we can use at The PRactice as we launch our culture audits.

As digitalization become the universal truth, ethics is driving actions of the brands and public perception towards them. In addition, effective content, emotional connect, and personalization are set to define the Public Relations industry in the near future.  

To sum up:

?  Start measurement at the beginning, it should not merely be an exercise done at the end

? Take time to probe and challenge the brief to arrive at clear objectives

? Keep it simple

?  Use clean data

Are we doing any or all of the above?

Contributed by Nandita Lakshman, Pooja Chauhan and Sayesha Arora