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Getting the full attention and approbation of a respected ASX20 CEO and his direct reports – for a particular proactive community campaign - was a very rewarding experience for me as a young(er) communication professional.
It happened partly thanks to a really bad, and now much-maligned, form of media relations measurement – advertising value equivalents (AVEs). And while the campaign was about community relations, commercial outcomes and sponsorship leverage there was a definite kicker provided by the media relations element. Coverage was measured in a multiple of advertising space dollar equivalent. The numbers ran to millions. And the business leaders liked that a lot…
But (and it’s a big but) as I said to them at the time, using this measure is a bit like playing poker with matchsticks. Which is exactly what I did as a ten and 11 year old at the local convent where I spent several formative years. I’m not sure the nuns knew what we were doing, or would have approved, but it helped us keep score in a relative sense (benchmarked against ourselves and others in the game). When the game was over whoever had the most matchsticks felt great (that great feeling of having won the game) but couldn't actually buy themselves another packet of Twisties at the tuckshop.
So too with using AVEs to measure media relations outcomes. Our CEO and team might have had a great sense of winning, but as a manufactured “output” metric it didn't actually reflect the real value (impact) of the campaign.
“Impact” measures, on the other hand, do measure real value.
Real business value comes from things like change in behaviour, perceptions or sentiment that translate to commercial outcomes. Those commercial outcomes may be brand awareness, leads or ease of sales conversion. Or they may be valuable stakeholder support that leads to ease of doing business (e.g. with regulators or counter parties) or the outcome might be something as useful but hard to measure as “followership” for the CEO – permission to lead.
For more about how to get measurement right, see two global experts’ advice in PRognosis. Michael Ziviani is Australian-based and offers a service to those who want to get is right, and Barry Leggetter, Executive Director of the international measurement standards body, Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC).
