The PR measurement conundrum!

In most of the recent communication conferences that I attended, one common banter that I have heard taking precedence over all others, has been around the topic of PR measurement. Sometimes talked about loosely, sometime seriously, the questions I keep hearing are; how do we show value? How do we get a bang for the buck? How do we convince management to invest more on PR… so on and so forth? However, the fact remains, even after so much expert commentary by so called PR measurement gurus, it still remains an enigma for most of the PR practitioners.

Way back in 1998, as a sales engineer with direct sales targets, when marketing tried to claim its credit for a good deal, I would go out of my way to attack it. The hard work and toil was all mine; how could a mere marketing campaign win an order! When after a few years I moved in to marketing communications and branding, my struggle started with the PR team, who even then were attempting to prove their contribution of having created a good perception. How could I give credit to them; after all, the creative idea and insights came from my agency, they just did a press release and a conference. When I worked in the strategy team, I came from a thirty thousand feet view and a long term attitude, yet, got some acclaim as the top management had a direct hand. The PR team was still talking tactical events and press release dissemination. Now in 2017, when I lead PR and communication of a large conglomerate with innumerable brands, am I still fighting the same battles, albeit now to defend the credit for PR contributions? Yes, to an extent. So what has changed?

The pace of change in the past decade has been significant. In a fast evolving business environment with multiple external stimuli impacting business performance, and with multiple disruptive modes of communications and platforms for data consumption by the stakeholders, the operative scope of a PR professional has favorably amplified. Today, we significantly impact multiple levers – corporate reputation, employee retention, crisis mitigation, sales, product brands, stock price, stakeholder engagement and many more. We as a PR community (and even Marketing, Finance, Strategy, Sales, HR and other functions) know it with conviction that PR works. Then, why do we seem so apologetic? It cannot be just the fact that we have not done enough PR for PR, the way we have done PR for other functions.

While musing over this paradox, only one question comes to my mind. Do we generally have that posture and talk the language that is understood by our business leadership or the C-suite. The language understood by them is most often based on numbers and the general phrases that work for them are “shift in perceptions”, “sales growth”, “brand preferences”, “Stock performance” or “ROI”. A disconnect happens when the hard working PR practitioner banters only about headlines, photographs, a busy tradeshow or any other efficiency parameters. To shift the needle, PR and communications professionals need to start talking a business language that resonates well with the management, and is impact or outcomes based.

One can debate that the outcomes approach becomes a bit ambiguous as business outcomes are generally the result of efforts by multiple functions. Also, I feel, PR is a very dynamic process, involves multiple variables and most often outcomes cannot be predetermined with a high level of confidence. So evaluating outcomes without any firm pre-determined goals (as in a sales target, based on statistical forecasting) may just seem like a retrospective performance review of tasks carried out. More so, if there are no benchmarks, they would be all the more useless.

PR industry hence, finds itself fumbling when it comes to establishing uniform, universally accepted measures which translates in to the larger question of how do we demonstrate value add towards the organizations growth. Hence, it is just a pity that most of the times ROI of millions of dollars spent on advertising are never questioned the way ROI on a fraction of that amount spent on PR is.  

Perhaps the importance of a good communications department or a PR campaign is best understood by simply imagining what things would be like in its absence. With multiple stakeholders across businesses and geographies; within and outside the organization enabled by a global information landscape, the PR measurement conundrum can be complicated. Trying to quantify could be even more. Can one quantify the cost of reputation saved due to effective PR? Can we assign a monetary value to it or the frequent crises a PR team mitigates silently and claim it as the ROI?

The Barcelona principles that have been recently updated have also made certain changes. I personally like the fact that when the communications environment is becoming integrated, it is all the more important to make the measurement integrated across tactics and channels. The PR channel would not flourish in a silo, neither would its measures. The committee has also reinforced the focus on qualitative measures that add context towards understanding the reasons behind the quantification. Advertising value equivalent (AVE) is still quite prevalent in the industry as it is a measure that creates a feeling that PR is delivering but in reality does not measure the real value that PR can delivers. Even if I personally do not advocate AVE’s, I reckon, it’s going to take a lot of time for us to move away from this instant gratification.

While I fully agree with the seventh principle viz. “measurement and Evaluation should be Transparent, Consistent and Valid”, my favorite is the principle number one. It states that “Goal setting and measurement are fundamental to communication and public relations”. I cannot agree more.

I feel, the best way for a PR function to create and showcase value is to align its strategy to the top organizational goals, articulate business/brand related PR objectives in line with this strategy, set the expectations right with the C-suite by jointly agreeing on the objectives and measures of success for these objectives and then go all out to ensure that the objectives are met hence demonstrating maximum Return on Objectives (ROO).

I feel fairly bullish towards the adoption of a ROO approach for the following reasons:

1. Crisp objectives are a strong foundation for any PR success story. Measures are easy to attach if one knows, “what success looks like”, “desired behavioral changes are” and other well-articulated objectives. Measuring progress against each objective then becomes more realistic and believable. A good approach for this could be to set clear PR objectives aligned to the corporate goals. Worked out in conjunction with the business leaders, they become co-owned and get tracked regularly. Understanding of the overall corporate / business goals and figuring out how PR can help fulfill them also puts PR in the strategic zone. The focus then shifts towards outcomes and not outputs of the PR team. Good part is that there are techniques available to evaluate PR with respect to corporate / brand goals viz. shift in perception, reputation, brand tracks, leads, and employer brand scores, just to mention a few.
2.  Course corrections, if needed can be done at every step of the PR process if step wise objectives are known and measured. This can lead to a better quality of final PR outcome. Monitoring and listening plays an important role in this. So apart from the qualitative analysis of the news clips, Share of Voice vis-à-vis identified competition set, key message delivery, appropriate audience and priority market segmentation, coverage in specific genre of media and endorsements by stakeholders are some more measures that can lead to an informed change in PR strategy. Innumerous tools and agencies, for tracking and monitoring traditional, online and new media are available easily.
3.  Measurement becomes easy as each objective is a standalone one with respective measures, collectively they lead to a larger PR success. A robust increase in the ROO’s (exceeding the PR goals) would eventually lead to a larger ROI contribution from the overall PR campaign – be it corporate or brand related.
4.  Lastly, as PR ROI means effect of PR on increasing revenue or profits, I personally feel, calculating it in real terms is not a straight equation.

So, while it is a no brainer that goal setting and measurement are fundamental to communication and public relations, the question is, how many of us actually do robust goal setting before every campaign? Do we set objectives before every new PR blitz? If we do, then I feel, ROO (Return on Objectives) would be a much more significant measure than a vague ROI for PR. How can one measure just the PR ROI when the final organizational goal achievement could have been basis multiple approaches of communications, factors and other functions. There is a need to change the terminology. ROO can be that twist that can raise the bar and respect for PR.