August 2011 – Articles written by members of the Institute for Public Relations’ Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation, that first appeared in the May 2011 issue of PRSA’s PR Tactics magazine, are now available on the IPR web site. They include: The Strategic Approach: Writing Measurable Objectives by Don W. Stacks, Ph.D. and Shannon A. Bowen, Ph.D.; Deliverable Objectives: Considerations for Creating Measurement Plans by Jackie Matthews and Pauline Draper-Watts; Speak Their Language: Communicating Results to the C-suite by Marianne Eisenmann; The Big Shift: Moving from Impressions to Engagement by Tim Marklein and; Measuring Influence in the Digital Age: Impressions, Likes and Followers by Katie Delahaye Paine. Thanks go to John Elsasser of PRSA, Marianne Eisenmann and Brad Rawlins of the Commission for arranging for the reprinting of these articles and to David Geddes, Commission Chair, for developing the special packaging.
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Thank you for republishing these articles in one place. They do contain some important ground rules and tips. But can I point out that the five articles are overwhelmingly focused on measuring media publicity. Surveys are mentioned only once once in the first article – in the final list of how to write objectives. Before that , the article discusses “press releases”, “VNRs” “content analysis of opinion columns, blogs …” and so on.
The second article refers to “understanding methodology” but only refers to “coding” which is mostly associated with media content analysis (interview transcripts sometimes).
Sorry Marianne, I acnowledge good points about speaking the language of the C-suite, but under “give them what they want” we only hear about “percent of overall media coverage’, “gains in share of voice”, “percent of media coverage”, etc. When the article moves on to urge “don’t limit your scorecard to media results only’, the first recommendation is “consider highlighting briefings with key journalists …”.
Overall, surveys are briefly mentioned twice, but not discussed; interviews are only mentioned in the Stacks and Bowen list at the end (point 3); focus groups are not mentioned at all – nor case studies, ethnographic research, etc, etc.
We have to get past our obsession with media publicity in the public relations field. We emphasise ‘relationships’, but you can’t measure relationships through counting media clippings, blog posts or even content analysis.
I use media analysis as much as anyone and congrats on all your good work (IPR and authors), but we do have to shift the focus of measurement and research.