Posts filed under ‘Campaign evaluation’
Presentation in Vienna: Evaluating Advocacy and Communication: Challenges and Solutions
Next Wednesday afternoon, 9 May, I am happy to announce that I will be making a presentation for the Vienna Evaluation Network on “Evaluating advocacy and communication: challenges and solutions”. Further information is available here. All interested persons are welcome to attend!
Face-to-face 34 times more effective than email
For those interested in camp
aigning and its effectiveness, here is a very interesting article that found that face-to-face contact is 34 more time successful than email contact. This has interesting implications for campaigning and advocacy today, that increasingly relies on online communication to persuade people and organisations to take action.
The authors comment:
“People tend to overestimate the power of their persuasiveness via text-based communication, and underestimate the power of their persuasiveness via face-to-face communication.”
Advocacy Evaluation Event: 14 June 2017, Washington DC
An evening reception for the launch of Annette Gardner and Claire Brindis’s book: Advocacy and Policy Change Evaluation: Theory and Practice that I mentioned last week.
With a great panel for the event:
ANNETTE L. GARDNER is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.
CLAIRE D. BRINDIS is Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy and Director of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.
DAVID DEVLIN-FOLTZ directs the Aspen Planning and Evaluation Program at the Aspen Institute and serves as the Aspen Institute’s Vice President, Impact Assessment.
JULIA COFFMAN founded the Center for Evaluation Innovation. She has more than 20 years of experience as an evaluator, and now specializes in the evaluation of advocacy, public policy, and systems change efforts.
SUE HOECHSTETTER is the Senior Advisor for Foundation Advocacy and Evaluation at Alliance for Justice and helps amplify citizen’s voices in the policy process.
New book: Advocacy and Policy Change Evaluation: Theory and Practice
Another great new book – this is the first ever book that looks in-depth at concepts, design, tools and methods to conduct advocacy and policy change evaluation – with plenty of practical examples and case studies. I also happy to report that I provided input for one of the case studies which is on an evaluation I carried out on Oxfam’s GROW campaign.
Learn more about the book>>
How Awareness Campaigns Fail
A very interesting article from the The Stanford Social Innovation Review : “Stop Raising Awareness Already”.
The article critiques a number of awareness campaigns and how they do not achieve what they set out to do – and in some cases may even do harm.
One campaign they look at is the “Dumb way to die” campaign focused on reducing the number of rail accidents in Victoria, Australia. This campaign was much appreciated for its quirky video and song:
However, the campaign failed to address the main cause of railway accidents – the majority were suicides. And as the article states:
“It is worth considering that the video’s charming figures and catchy hook may have actually made death seem more appealing or normal to those already at risk.”
But it’s not all criticism! The article provides some lessons for campaigners:
- Target your audience as narrowly as possible;
- Create compelling messages with clear calls to action;
- Develop a theory of change;
- Use the right messenger.
Resource: Evaluating Policy Influence and Advocacy
The website Better Evaluation has many great resources and explanations of evaluation approaches, processes and methods.
I just came across this page on Evaluating Policy Influence and Advocacy that details well the methods and types of advocacy/policy influence – well worth a read!
My PhD on communication evaluation in 10 slides…
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to present the findings of my PhD in 30 minutes (!) to the Geneva Communicators Network. I titled my presentation “communication evaluation: challenges and complexities” – and you can view it below – it’s a very summarised version of my PhD! If you are really keen, you can view the full PhD thesis here.
Tracking Use of Campaign Evaluation Findings
This week I made a presentation at the European Evaluation Society conference on a tracking study on the use of campaign evaluation (that I had carried out). For those interested in this subject, my slides are here for your consumption!
communication evaluation event in Zurich – 28 April 2016
For any readers in the Zurich, Switzerland area, I will be giving a presentation for the EMScom Alumni Association (of which I am an alumni of..) on communication evaluation; here is a short description:
Evaluation of communication activities is consistently named as one of the top concerns of communication professionals. Yet paradoxically not even half reportedly undertake any evaluation. Drawing from his recent PhD studies and over a decade of experience in evaluating communication campaigns and programmes, Glenn O’Neil will set out the challenges and complexities of evaluation and offer insights into solutions and approaches to ensure that evaluation brings value to communication professionals and their organisation
Thursday, April 28, 2016, 18h30-21h00
Widder Hotel, Zürich
Cost: 50 CHF (free for EMScom alumni)
Hope to see some of you there! Further information >>
Register also by email: emscomalumni@usi.ch
Glenn
Beyond online vanity metrics
Here is a very interesting study (pdf) from the Mobilisation Lab on what counts and doesn’t for online metrics and campaigns.
The study looks at what they call “vanity metrics” for online campaigns that they define as “data that are easily manipulated, are biased toward the short-term, often paint a rosy picture of program success, or do not help campaigners make wise strategic decisions”. Examples of vanity metrics include: number of petition signatures; web traffic, number of “opens” (of emails I guess).
So what do they recommend campaigns should be measuring?
They have plenty of good suggestions and insights. Here are some of the metrics they mentioned that could be more significant (and possible to measure online):
- Monthly members returning for action
- Actions per member (rather than size of lists)
- Number of members actively part of a campaign
intelligent measurement 