PR Measurements should be more business outcome driven: Experts

PR measurement, accountably and ROI are increasingly becoming more important in Public Relations. More and more clients are seriously viewing this, so that they get to know if their campaign is working or effective and producing the desired impact. Especially with the advent of social media, reputation management  has become challenging. While technology and data analytics has helped to bring in some accuracy in measuring, there is still a debate both with the clients and agencies that are, we following the right approach for measurements when it comes to evaluating a PR campaign.

To debate, discuss and share their views, Adgully organised a very interesting Webinar on ‘Are We Approaching PR Measurement the Right Way?’, where experts from the industry were asked to share their views. The panel was moderated by Ashwani Singla, Founding Managing Partner, Astrum. After welcoming the panel, the first question that was thrown open to the panellists was – ”What is wrong with public relations measurement in today?”

Giving his views, Bharatendu Kabi, Head – Corporate Communication, Hero MotoCorp, said that the way organisations define the scope of public relations or corporate communication

if it is not realistic, then obviously the flaw starts with that because then the measurement gets limited and restricted to how one defines the role and scope of public relations. “Then each activity or each event that you want to do or each initiative that you have, has a different sort of outcome. Therefore, the objective has to fit the outcome that you based on the desired objectives. The other point that I want to make is when it comes to large global companies with large set ups in different parts of the world where you have different stakeholder groups that are distinct where there is a different challenge. Here, most of the times your initiatives are focussed to that particular stakeholder group and here there is a problem applying the same kind of parameters and the same kind of measurement tools to all your activities across the board,” he added.

Abhinav Rahul, Corporate Vice-President, Corporate Communications, Max Life Insurance, saw measurement in three parts – input, output and outcome. According to him, “The biggest problem is that the PR world is still a lot depending on output and not outcomes, which is ultimately what is important for business. When I talk to my CEO and my board, they are keener to see an impact on the business. And therefore, we need to more closely look at outcome measures and also look at what the business goals are and create our strategies in line with the strategic objectives. Today, when it comes to measurement our outcomes are not talking to the outcomes of business so we need to move in that direction and ensure that the public relations outcomes are related to the business outcomes.”

Sonia Huria, Head- Corporate Marketing, Communications & Sustainability, Viacom18, was of the opinion that, “PR industry’s focus has shifted from AVEs to business impact but the current measurement system has unfortunately not yet adapted itself to actually measure the impact. While mapping of success metrics for both new age and traditional media exists, what is missing is the ability to directly correlate a successful PR campaign to actual business outcome. Currently the processes followed are derivative and hence, a more direct approach is needed in my opinion to monitor the success/ failure of a campaign. The need of the hour is to measure both qualitative and quantitative impact.”

Agreeing with Rahul and Huria, Valerie Pinto, CEO, Weber Shandwick, noted, “Business today has moved much a head in its value of communications and I think somewhere we have still not caught up with how do we represent what we do in a very contextual business outcome related manner. The three aspects of measurement which Abhinav stated are very valid because if we don’t have the right input which we still struggle with, if you look at it from a measurement standpoint, there’s very little listening that people really do, to formulate their predictive narratives. We need to look how we are leading our vision of what we are going to do for our employees, for our communities, to the government, etc. and PR is really central to everything that we are doing. So, I think there’s a lot of change that we’re seeing from a measurement standpoint and today what we get from most of the measurement companies today is very output driven and not business outcome driven, which is what Abhinav mentioned.”

The discussion then moved to the measurement issues. Starting with his comments, Aseem Sood, CEO, Impact Research & Measurement, and Director – International Board, AMEC, said, “We have the opportunity to work with Public Relations consultant and corporates. Three things that I would like to share what we see wrong in public relations measurement today. The first point is in most of the campaigns, public relations measurement is always an afterthought. So, there are times you will be surprised that we get a request from the client after the campaign has been completely executed. And now, they come to us and say, can you now help me measure it?”

The second point that Sood presented was that the objectives that clients set are not measurable at times, and as a result, the measurement campaign is likely to fail if the measurement objectives are not defined properly or set in a measurable way. “The third point is that a lot of people look at measurement only as a report card of the work that has been 

done. Whereas nowadays, many clients have started looking at measurement as a source of insights so that I can make improvements to my program going forward. So, these three things are I think the main, reasons why several measurement programs fail,” he added.

PR service providers and PR measurement service providers to come forward and say let’s start differentiating, defining and educating the industry.”

The panel also touched upon some of the other important aspects related to measurement, which were discussed at length by the panellists.