Today, PR Week featured a story on the importance of personalizing corporate measurement programs
to meet client needs. I think that the story is spot on and highlights a number of interesting points.
For far too long, our industry has created “metrics in a box” products that plug client variables into a canned formula (that the measurement company creates). The formula is typically based upon what the “expert” consultant (measurement company) deems are the most important outputs to any successful campaign. This is done without giving much thought to the fact that every campaign is different and, thus, formulas and desired outputs will necessitate changes based on different strategies, approaches and goals.
To illustrate, I’ve actually seen metrics reports (costing one client upwards of $50,000) that claimed a year long media relations program was failing in almost every way, when in fact it was hugely successful. In one simplified but true case, the metrics company utilized its own “formula for success” which placed national feature stories about the client organization as the most important indicator of success (a typical circumstance). Therefore, those placements that fit this criteria were weighted almost 30 percent higher than all others. However, the media relations program was really geared towards obtaining big feature articles in the largest regional newspapers, while the hope was that any national coverage would be achieved through brief mentions alongside other larger industry competitors (because the other competitors had much greater visibility).
The program achieved over 15 major regional feature stories about the client and approximately 30 smaller national briefs (which featured other competitors as well). Because regional stories had such a low weight and sharing the spotlight on any type of national article was assessed negatively, this campaign was actually penalized for meeting many of its goals. What a waste of time and money.
Measurement products that don’t take personal needs into consideration also often create large snafus around the true tonality of the media obtained. This is because the measurement company often tells the client what it considers to be a positive or negative toned placement. When, in fact, it should be the client doing the reverse with the measurement company. After all, what advance degree gives the “expert” consultant (from the measurement company) the deep knowledge to understand this company’s subjective view of its own media tenor?
And then we come back around again to my favorite topic. Measurement within our industry can and should include much more than media. Entire programs including such areas as thought leadership, networking, trade shows, conferences, online media tenor and others can be measured as long as these variables can be effectively tracked. I promised that I’d stop this post before jumping back into the rant about outputs versus outcomes again…
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