One of the things about being an old communicator is that you’ve seen such an awful lot of it before – and never more so than in the field of evaluation and measurement. Without wishing to bore the pants off of anyone, in the nigh on three decades that I’ve been a jobbing spin doctor, no-one – but no-one – has come up with a robust and meaningful method of measuring the results of communication/public relations activities.
There have been attempts, sure, some more successful than others. Six years ago the Association for Evaluation and Measurement of Communication formed to address the issue, led by some of the biggest names in the global communications industry. Credit where credit is due, they made a good fist of it and, for those who want to have a look at the results, here’s a link for you.
Problem is, I’m afraid, that it is unutterably complex and, unfortunately, carries with it considerable cost – even if it is just the cost of the human resource that you have no choice but to allocate against it. You see, complexity and cost are the downfalls of any half-decent attempt at cracking the evaluation and measurement conundra.
The communication function has never enjoyed the budgets that are allocated to the marketing/advertising functions and thus the proportion of total budget that meaningful measurement would suck up is far greater. Given a straight choice between greater levels of activity or a nicely-produced report measuring the effectiveness of much lower levels of activity – well, rightly or wrongly, it’s more activity, every time.
And did I say that meaningful measurement is also very complex? Meaningful measurement, simply put, revolves around understanding the impacts of your activity against your varying target audiences and aligning the impacts against the various goals that you agreed at the beginning of the campaign.
And that’s in its simplest form. Never mind – should you wish to examine your return on investment – putting a price on the attainment of those goals (which won’t always be increased unit sales, or net promoter scores, or share price increments) and then balancing that cost against what you paid for the campaign. And it is, I am afraid, an eternal truth that the more complex it is, the less time the intended audience (senior management, of example) will spend trying to understand it.
Which is why, for so long – and still today – Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) is many communicator’s measurement of choice. Even I have used it – albeit apologetically, and with a full disclosure of the system’s inherent limitations and less-than-robust nature – because when you can’t afford anything else, something is better than nothing. If you don’t show some form of evaluation, you don’t get accorded any value and if you’re not accorded any value, then you’re not going to be top of mind when the FD’s divvying up next year’s spend.
So I was interested to read about Earned Media Value (EMV) – via Stephen Waddington’s excellent blog – which is, to all intents and purposes, AVE brought up to date. Or at least, AVE for the PESO media environment. (OK, OK – Paid, Earned, Social, Owned.) It’s still hogwash, it’s still fatally flawed (some might say meaningless) and it’s still chock-full of limitations. But – if you’re all out of alternatives…………..
Let’s be clear. Right at the beginning of the planning cycle, we need to ensure that we (or our client, dependent on whether we’re in-house or agency) are lobbying for a budget allocation that allows for proper measurement and evaluation.
Very, very simply put – we need to explain what proper measurement is and get the blessing of the exec directors and the board. This will be difficult first time round and then progressively easier as it becomes accepted. We need to shield them from the complexity of it and present the results to them in top-line findings aligned to the agreed goals – which, clearly, should be, or should closely mirror, the overall corporate objectives.
The problem is – if you’re not successful in this course of action, what do you do? I am not advocating listening to the snake-oil salesmen who would make AVE or EMV industries in themselves and money-spinners for the unscrupulous.
But you might look at them and think – without any form of measurement at all, no matter how flawed, what we’re doing is simply tactical, not strategic and of little perceived long-term value.
But that’s another can of worms.
thewordmonger 