It’s an amusing sight, a group of PR practitioners at dinner trying to figure out the check and the tip. Most communicators don’t do math.
It’s a right-brain left-brain thing. Lack of math skills led most of us to writing as an avocation to begin with. I’m always glad when Angela Sinickas is at dinner with us. She’s a math whiz. But you’d expect her to be, since communication measurement is her area of expertise.
Angela’s not alone. Tudor and Ryan Williams also specialize in measuring the effectiveness of communication efforts. Both Angela and the Williams boys are excellent at what they do. I’ve often lamented that their businesses have not grown to the point where they need offices in multiple cities, but I haven’t been surprised. Measurement just isn’t important to most math-challenged communicators or budget-conscious companies. Communicators would rather churn out cool-looking and brilliantly written collateral while companies see measurement as an effort by consultants and agencies to squeeze a few extra dollars out of the project.
I’m equally unsrurprised by the lack of attention given to Andy Lark’s December 18 post about the reults of a Holmes Report “survey of more than 100 PR Agency principles-the results of which point to some of the problems that continue to make research and evaluation a major issue for the industry.” Measurement…math…yawn
Only three comments were submitted to the post-one by Auburn academic Robert French. You expect the professors to have a better grasp of math than practitioners. But the simple fact is that PR efforts will never gain the kind of respect we crave until we can quantify the results in terms that resonate with the people who hire us. Lark quotes from the survey:
“In general, their responses suggested that an failure of commitment- rather than the absence of necessary tools and techniques-is behind the industry’s poor performance.”
Lark’s conclusion mirrors precisely my own beliefs about measurement:
I just don’t understand how any PR department or practitioner can operate without a measurement program in place. Measurement isn’t monitoring. Monitoring isn’t measurement. What I am talking about here is a deep understanding of how communications impacts business outcomes. An understanding based on research not just of what occurred in the media, but also in the minds of your customers. Without that you shouldn’t expect resources, budget, even a job.
Still, there’s only one PR measurement blog that I’m aware of-the one from Katie Paine-and it isn’t updated nearly enough. What will it take to make measurement an integral part of any communicator’s planning process? I admire the hell out of Steve Rubel’s effort to get agency honchos talking about practical implementation of new media in their efforts. But maybe they need to worry about the fundamentals before they scurry on to the Next Big Thing. Whether it’s a traditional media campaign or a blog/wiki combo, it’s not complete without the measurement component.
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
