The measure of PR

At the beginning of every campaign, brands and agencies need to be very clear on what they want PR to achieve and what success will look like (PR Strategy, MWlinks.co.uk/ PRMeasurement). Is it about awareness and education, for example? Is it about changing perceptions? Is it about creating fame or is it about keeping news out of the media? Measurement needs to be wholly based on these objectives.

We all agree the advertising value equivalent metric is not that accurate and, as a result, I don’t know many good PRs who continue to use it.

Having a grading system for media is a good start to demonstrate the effectiveness of the targeting, but you need to dig a lot deeper to get a more insightful, useful and truthful picture. The focus should be on evaluating reach, based on target audience, key message delivery and tone.

At a time when marketing budgets are under ever greater scrutiny and PR has to fight against historically more measurable channels, it’s imperative that we continue to push for new ways of demonstrating the undoubted value that PR brings to both the bottom line and shaping consumer behaviour.

It’s good to hear the Public Relations Consultants Association and the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication are looking into this.

Tara Munda
Head of PR
Haygarth

Recommended

Finding an AVE alternative

Marketing Week

Our PR Strategy cover story sparked plenty of debate on how to tap into the true value of PR. Read the feature at MWlinks.co.uk/PRMeasurement, and extracts of reader comments below:

Mind the gap in the free sample method

Marketing Week

The article ‘Offering a bit more than a free sample’ (MWlinks.co.uk/FreeSample) highlighted some of the data from our research project: Building Brilliant Sampling Campaigns, which uncovers what consumers value in the live environment and what encourages them to sample more and purchase. The real opportunity for marketers is in plugging the gap between sample and […]