intelligent measurement

Number 1 value of communications – connecting it to organisational objectives?

May 25, 2017 at 6:36 am Leave a comment

The USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations has released key findings from its second annual Global Communications Report (GCR17), a survey of more than 800 public relations, communications and marketing executives from around the world.

In the survey, they asked executives how they felt public relations (communications) could increase its value in an organisation – and the top response was “demonstrate how PR programs achieve measurable business objectives” as seen in the graph below, two points I’d make:

• Linking communication/PR programs to business organisation objectives is a long standing “bugbear” that academics and practitioners have been grappling with and is recognised as such in principle 3 of the Barcelona Principles for PR/Communication evaluation. The best work in this area I’ve seen to date is from Jim MacNamara with his ‘“toe bone to the head bone’ logic model to connect public relations and corporate communication to organisation outcomes” (pdf).
• My own “bugbear”- I finding irritating that the second value of PR/communications is “Deliver creative solutions” – but what if these creative solutions don’t work? Ah ha… people are often wowed and impressed by creative ads, texts and ideas – but they are only useful if they achieve your communication goals – and how to know that? Well measurement! I love the example of the Got Milk? campaign in the US that was lauded as creative and won many advertising awards – but it failed – it did not increase milk consumption as it did not address the key issues why people were drinking less milk, read more here.

Notes to the graph: the three bars represent: Marketing=marketing staff working in organisations; Agency=communication/PR staff working in PR agencies; In-House=communication/PR staff of organisations.

Entry filed under: Communication evaluation.