Whilst I am an advocate of organisational change – short-term pain for long-term gain – to help create better stakeholder relationships, without the initial important component of listening being applied in an exacting, scientific manner, change and impact in any context will not be fulfilled to its best possible level.

The value of listening pre-crisis for PR and reputation management

In an issues & crisis management dimension there are a range of excellent reasons to have a sophisticated set of organisational listening protocols in place. Listening enables you to:

• pick up on organisation mentions and the context (very important) in which this has occurred
• identify and understand issues
• identify stakeholders, as well as key influencers on your target audiences
• proactively build up database of those who are either fans of the organisation and its issues, have an interest in them or who can positively influence others, enabling you to build programs targeting those receptive to information and giving you a good opportunity to amplify your content across the internet
• identify and develop relationship management strategies for those who are critical of the organisation
• gain fresh perspectives on how organisational and stakeholder change could occur, facilitating continuous organisational improvement (communication-specific or broader business-relevant)
• identify topics and issues of interest to target audiences that an organisation can create communication programs from (including inbound marketing and content marketing approaches)
• put in place planning to address potential issues come crises, including reaching out to relevant stakeholders before issues escalate into crisis territory. These potential issues could have been identified through stakeholder monitoring.

Why listening helps PR during a crisis

If you have an effective stakeholder listening process set up you will hear, and you can react to, the issue and where it came from. You can do this accurately and with speed, thus saving time and helping minimise issue/crisis escalation and negative reputation impact.

PR-driven social media helping organisations post-crisis

Social media is a boon for issues management, crisis management and continuous organisational improvement. This is because once integrated into an organisation’s listening strategy, it can provide deep information to help an organisation:

• understand and assess stakeholder reactions to crises
• determine what elements of the crisis stakeholders responded to most significantly (e.g. nature of organisational crisis management and response; what elements of the crisis generated greatest concern/relief)
• who the most active commenters were (both positive and negative), thus helping determine influencers and programs that can be put in place to leverage supporters and educate/inform/build more positive relationships with negative commenters/influencers
• prioritise stakeholders that could potentially become champions or advocates of the brand
• reach out to stakeholders to further explore their positions
• emphasise post-crisis organisational change that is occurring and continue the conversation
• anthropomorphise (give it human qualities) the conversation and, hence, the organisation
• determine the ROI on crisis actions undertaken, ultimately helping identify opportunities for the organisation to change its operations/crisis communication to create more positive relationships with stakeholders.

All of this information provides a valuable resource for continual whole-of-organisation improvement and, by extension, organisational cultural and – of course – communication change.

Stop press: In a few weeks a new, free whitepaper will be launched on this blog called The Holy Trinity of public relations: thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances. Spread the word! #PRholytrinity

What other activity can take place – communication-specific and more broadly business-relevant – as a result of effective target audience and stakeholder listening? Do you have examples of how an organisation has changed its communication and business as a result of listening to its stakeholders that you can share?

If you found this post of value, please share it through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Groupthink is an insidious organisational and human trait. It destroys both, primarily because individuals did not have the courage to articulate their convictions assertively enough and/or bullies acted to suppress perspectives alternative to the status quo, or what was deemed appropriate by the (enter drums of doom) ‘hierarchy’.

Groupthink characteristics include:

• a desire for harmony in a decision-making group overriding a realistic appraisal of alternatives
• the loss of individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking.

Symptoms of groupthink include:

• rationalisation
• peer pressure
• complacency
• taking the moral high ground
• stereotyping others
• self-censorship (often the result of bullying)
• the illusion of unanimity.

Two of the most oft-referred to examples of groupthink include:

• Challenger Space Shuttle disaster: engineers knew about some faulty parts, but they did not want negative press so they pushed ahead with the launch anyway
• Attack on Pearl Harbour: Japanese messages were intercepted by the US hierarchy; US Pearl Harbour officers were warned; but these officers failed to take heed of these warnings due to, among other reasons, complacency about the perceived intent of the Japanese.

Strategic power of public relations to stop groupthink

PR should be the master of evidence-based market research within organisations when it comes to reputation and stakeholder relationships. Formal research needs to be periodically undertaken (no less than every five years – and that’s being generous) to identify and explore:

• best ways to communicate with target audiences
• issues and individuals/organisations influencing, and of importance, to target audiences
• status quo of knowledge of the organisation, perceptions towards it and behaviour related to what will benefit the organisation and its relationship with target audiences.

There should also be other, ongoing means of identifying target audience knowledge, perceptions and behaviour in regards to the organisation, both at an overarching strategic organisational level and at a more prosaic program/promotion level.

This information should be more than enough to, paraphrase an Australianism, ‘keep the bastards honest’.

In other words, make it crystal clear to (uh oh, drums of doom again…) organisational hierarchy what is and what isn’t acceptable to target audiences and what may impact on organisational reputation.

This is an example of the ‘boundary spanner’ dimension of the public relations discipline, where PR helps organisations and their stakeholders understand each other and build bridges between them.

Applying this methodology assertively and, yes, with bravery, will help the organisation not fall victim to groupthink.

Narrative building by PR: a tactical anti-groupthink weapon

One of the core strengths of PR is in telling stories, articulating narratives. An excellent organisational narrative will resonate with its stakeholders and, in many cases, prompt them to become organisational advocates. And a profoundly important element of creating narratives, not to mention an invaluable upside of public relations overall, is challenging the status quo by exploring the status quo’s rationale and adding value and perspective to it.

A result of this approach will be thought leadership content, certainly, but part of it is also articulating the organisational story – or manifesto even.

And whilst marketing can do this to a degree, the act of writing and exploring the different dimensions of an organisation – hence its positioning and differentiation – is generally the remit of public relations. I don’t think marketing does this; it essentially identifies opportunities for products and services, develops them then sells them – it isn’t really a profound organisational orthodoxy challenging type activity.

The ‘challenger’ characteristic of PR is an excellent way of enriching narratives. It deepens them and helps foster creativity. It is a fundamental way of building brands that has more meant that ‘logos’ and other such organisational accoutrements.

What other ways can you think of that public relations minimises the likelihood of groupthink taking place? Have you personally experienced groupthink in an organisation and can you tell us something about it? do you have an experience of challenging the status quo when building an organisational narrative and what was the outcome?

If you liked this post, let others know by Tweeting about it or sharing it through Facebook or LinkedIn.

This post revisits some of these memorable posts that have each provided highly useful advice.

Angela Sinickas

Setting PR benchmarks

The visit to Australia in recent months by highly respected, world renowned PR guru Angela Sinickas was perfectly timed for this blog (though I hardly think that was the motivation for her visit!). Angela has particular expertise in the ‘niche, but sadly under-discussed, area of setting PR benchmarks.

A  lack of measurement is holding PR back, said Angela, and going by the larger than normal number of retweets (in the context of my blog) this post received  I can only assume that, firstly, many people agree with her and, secondly, this is an area that PR professionals are interested in and concerned about.

I interviewed Angela prior to her visit to Australia. One of the most impressive aspects of Angela is that she hasn’t sat back in frustration moaning about this weakness of PR, but she has proactively identified sensible, inexpensive ways in which PR can set benchmarks and evaluate them.

One of her punchlines? It’s all about behaviour, she said. Impacting on understanding and opinions are useful, but behaviour is where it’s at.

Guy Downes visualises

Visual communication helping business communication

Despite there being a prevalence of research that clearly indicates visuals facilitate understanding and communication; PR folk in particular aren’t great at incorporating this dimension into their work. Marketing does better at this. Maybe because of its larger budgets, but it’s also a stronger part of its heritage.

Guy Downes, however, wrote a series for my blog about where visual communication can help public relations in storytelling. Now storytelling is an area that public relations is strong in. But not strong enough, according to Guy.  His posts offer an entertaining point of view on how we can get better.

One reason why Guy is well worth listening to is that he is an ‘ex’ PR pro. I say ex, but despite focusing on his own illustration business, he hasn’t lost his savvy PR skills. So when he writes on visual communication, you just know he’s conscious of its application as a potentially very effective tool in the strategic PR and marketing toolkit.

What it takes to work in public relations: a recruiter’s perspective

Now this is one post that went off! And whilst I expected people to be interested in this discussion, the manner in which it went viral surprised me somewhat.

It was an interview with two of Australia’s leading PR recruiters, Richard Whitington and Di Treble from Talent2. So these are two people who seriously know what they are talking about. They have a lot of credibility and I have always found both of them very helpful and very insightful with their thoughts.

I guess lots of people in PR were very, very interested to hear from leading PR recruiters. They certainly contribute to making – if not actually breaking – careers; so it makes sense to me that people want to hear what they think ticks the boxes of a PR professional.

I think there were more than one or two people who raised a literal and metaphorical eyebrow when Richard and Di observed that, up to this point, having social media skills has only rarely emerged as being a mandatory qualification for a PR role – and this is determined by organistaions that hire Richard and Di, remember, not the pair themselves.

Graham White, a highly respected PR pro from Howorth, offered a different perspective on the necessity of having social media skills to work in PR than the Talent2 perspective, with both being well worth reading.

Laura Fayers

Annual reports as really useful communication

There are a lot of us in PR who have spent our fair share of time hunkered down over the tome known as an annual report. Sometimes mind-numbing, sometimes interesting but just about always a marathon-like process where you are left wondering: “Am I doing anything useful here?’

Well, an ex-colleague of mine, Laura Fayers, persuasively argued over two posts that annual reports DO make a contribution to winning the PR war. Laura provided us with plenty of useful tips – including focusing on that basic requirement of PR pros: telling stories – to help enhance annual reports’ utility as a communication mechanism.

Market research: can a PR pro afford not to do it?

One year ago I claimed market research is one of the most fundamental and important aspects of public relations. Without undertaking scientifically rigourous market research, it is not possible to precisely know target audience/stakeholder:

• knowledge
• perceptions
• behaviour
• issues of concern
• influences on their knowledge, perceptions, behaviour
• communication modes that they utilise and/or that contribute to influencing them.

To support my argument and add a considerable degree of value to it, I interviewed market research expert Adrian Goldsmith over a series of posts. In summary? Market research is totally a ‘must have for PR pros. This series provides an excellent complement to the perspectives of Angela’s flagged earlier.

Toni Brasch

Event management – getting it right

Visual communication, annual reports and, with this guest post, events. Three dimensions of public relations that are sometimes underestimated in their potency.

As always, what communication works best for organisational stakeholders must be considered. But then again, what has meaning for the organisation itself is also a critical factor.

Toni Brasch, who is an incredibly talented events manager (though this meagre description doesn’t do justice to the strategic approach she applies to her craft or the contribution it can make on a strategic level to an organisation’s stakeholder relationships), wrote a guest post for this blog on how events are marketing’s killer app.

Summary of PR/marketing thoughts

This is but a small selection of the rich contributions that have been made to this blog since it started by professionals other than myself. They have enriched the blog immeasurably and, as this is a social media mechanism, it seems only right that views other than my own are explored in greater depth than each post’s comment section allows.

If you want to hone in on two resources, generated at least partially by this blog that capture a range of professional communicators’ perspectives, I recommend you check out these two free and extensive reports:

• PR at war – opinion explosion at social media summit
• Crisis communication & social media summit 2009: a report

Would you like to write a guest post for this blog? Or be interviewed? If so, let me know! And of the posts noted above, which did you glean the most value from?

I have written before on the utility of market research, but want to discuss the above elements in a little more detail.

Best possible PR strategy

It is a no-brainer that to produce material of the highest quality the ‘producer’ needs to have information that will educate him or her as to what direction that material should go in and/or what shape it should take. This certainly applies to producing a business communication strategy.

There are three categories of information that are of great utility. They include organisational stakeholders’:

• knowledge
• perceptions
• behaviour.

This can be knowledge, perceptions and behaviour in regard to an organisation or its products or services. The principles remain the same regardless of whether the communication strategy is an holistic organisational one or a strategy for a product or service.

Complementary areas that the research should delve into includes:

1. who or what are the influencers on stakeholder knowledge/views/behaviour?
2. what are the issues which influence views/behaviour of stakeholder knowledge/views/behaviour?

Identifying stakeholder influencers might prompt you to develop stronger relationships and/or forming strategic alliances with them.

Identifying salient issues might influence the way your organisation operates and cause it to modify its approach to certain non-communication related, business processes.

In the area of communication conduits or mechanisms, the research should uncover what communication mechanisms stakeholders rely most on to get information that influences their  knowledge/views/behaviour  (e.g. media, industry associations, websites, conferences, social media – note that the more specific, rather than generic, the information is the greater its utility).

Setting communication strategy benchmarks

The question (or issue) of what constitutes meaningful, business-relevant benchmarks for public relations strategies is a profoundly vexed one. I have seen some discussions on this issue but, in general, I think it is an area that has been toyed with rather than addressed in a thorough, useful manner. And this goes for the academic environment as much as the business one.

Having said that, as I have identified knowledge, perceptions and behaviour as the three core areas of information that are needed to form the best possible communication strategy, it is these areas which will often, similarly, form the substance of strategy benchmarks (or objectives).

The trick is figuring out what relates most effectively to the needs and wants of your organisation (i.e. its vision, its business strategy and its marketing strategy).

The core area of greatest relevance, clearly, is behaviour. Whether that behaviour involves buying a product, voting a certain way, catching a bus rather than driving, not taking drugs or many more behavioural manifestations, it is this area where your organisation wants to see traction more than any other.

A singular beauty of setting benchmarks is that they can be measured over extended periods of time. This allows you to gauge the impact of your communication and stakeholder engagement. Information you collate over time should influence the nature of your communication strategy to allow it to achieve these benchmarks.

One of the biggest mistakes that organisations make is constantly changing key benchmarks. Adding new ones is fine over time, but removing fundamental ones simply does not allow a rigourous, scientific approach to be taken to communication measurement.

I am a big fan of integrating the dimension of advocacy into communication strategy benchmarking:

• Measuring advocacy of an organisation/product etc is a useful means to determine its positioning
• It provides an insight into the behaviour of a stakeholder, not just opinions or perceptions, so it is evidence of a stakeholder’s tangible action (one analogous to actually buying a product, for instance)
• This is particularly important when researching the behaviour of ‘influencers’, as opposed to those who purchase a product, for instance. This is because of the ripple effect, or impact, than an influencer can have on target audiences
• Research around this notion should explore the context/rationale for recommending or advocating an organisation or product etc.

Advocacy is very relevant for organisations that rely on stakeholder support, but don’t actually have any product or service to sell to certain stakeholder groups. Examples of these types of organisations are government departments or NGOs.

The value-add to market research

Sometimes the ability of the market research to uncover information and to deliver statistics that can be used in proactive stakeholder communication is ignored.

It’s pretty simple, really. There are two dimensions I can think of where market research can help you come up with one of professional communication’s holy grails – producing content for your communication activity:

• Identifying salient issues that can be integrated into thought leadership platforms
• Producing statistics.

Thought leadership platforms and the use of statistics to highlight certain issues can be used across a diversity of communication mechanisms (e.g. speaking engagements, website, direct mail and more) but they are very much a media relations 101 approach.

Media LOVES this sort of material. It provides POD (if done well!) and for some reason (maybe it’s human nature) they love numbers and their comparative nature. Maybe it’s the ranking aspect of statistics, or their inherently competitive (us vs. them etc) quality. Whatever, it achieves cut-through again and again and again.

So if your sample is big enough and your questions interesting and topical enough, you can create additional value and impact for your market research by integrating a few questions that will give you some statistical oomph.

Do you always integrate market research into your communication planning and activity? How do you go about formulating objectives/benchmarks? Do you get support from those that run your organisation when setting objectives/benchmarks? What other uses can market research provide a professional communicator? Do you think PR folk generally do market research well…or not?

Other relevant posts on this topic:

• Evaluation is a critical and fundamental element of the profession’s practice
• Market research is a strategic communication must-have
• Tips on best practice market research
• Market research as an important element of strategic PR

For Angela Sinickas, measuring business communication is all about creating a “chain of evidence”, linking the tactical activities we do on a daily basis to the financial bottom line of the organisation.

This is chain is created by looking at:

• communication activities: messages we send/channels we use
• audience perceptions: did the audience receive the message/do they understand the messages?
• audience actions: what changes, what did they do more/less of?
• The financial impact on organisational goals.

Paul Cheal

Communicators can move along this chain, from lower (activities/perceptions) through to higher (actions/impact) levels of measurement by simply asking the target audience!

What did they read, see hear? Did it change their behaviour? And we do this through research.

PR crying poor over market research dollars

If you’re like me, especially in the world of PR consultancy, the initial instinct is to be sceptical once the term ‘research’ is mentioned. Who has the time, budget, resources to conduct research?

But Angela reinforces that a lot of our answers can be found in “observational research” – asking a random sample what they thought of the internal newsletter; tracking accuracy of coverage in target media; or using existing research conducted by other parts of the business.

“We’re so creative in everything else we do but we need to be creative about measurement as well,” said Angela.

All about business communication objectives and goals

It’s interesting that, in a workshop on measurement, Angela spent the first half of the session talking about objectives. This emphasis demonstrates the importance of getting the objectives right not just to illustrate the impact and validity of your communication strategy, but also your worth to your organisation.

If we don’t start with the correct objectives, we can’t determine what success looks like. (It doesn’t hurt in helping you win an IABC Gold Quill award either, Angela joked – alluding to her role as an IABC Gold Quill judge).

What business goal does this support? That’s the first question Angela says should be asked with any piece of communication – internal or external.

As a practitioner in the realm of financial services, I understand firsthand the importance of demonstrating value in the language of the client – numbers. For Angela, ROI is simple to prove: “Start with a small project, where changes can only be attributed to communication and prove yourself. Then move on to bigger projects. Communication is usually such a small part of the overall budget of an organisation that we only need a relative small change in revenue – even 1 or 2 per cent – to prove the ROI of communication.”

When Angela got into more granular detail in regard to objective setting, she said we need to examine how we can help achieve the business goal through communication – these form your communication objectives. They should be:

• SMART – how many times do we hear it, certainly, but how often do we do it?
• linked to parallel measurable results
• aimed at changing knowledge or an attitude (that’s how we change behaviour).

Practical takeaways from measuring business communication

Some of the elements of Angela’s workshop that I have taken back to my workplace include:

• Identify audience behaviour (current and ideal) before developing messages. What is the current behaviour and what is the ideal behaviour/attitude/action we want to achieve? Once you understand this you can develop the messages that will encourage this behaviour and from there what are the best channels to communicate this behaviour?
• Don’t only measure media success by volume, tone or accuracy alone. Think about measuring times you ward off negative coverage (sometimes the unsung hero of our roles), as well
• Communicate like every other department – in numbers. How do we calculate it: start with total financial value of new sales/increase in share price, improved productivity etc; take credit for a percentage of the financial value based on the impact your audience attributes to the communication (as identified through research); divide by the cost of communication; the result is your ROI. 

It all sounds so simple and, surprisingly, it is. Some valuable food for thought.

Connect on LinkedIn with Paul Cheal.

What do you think about Paul’s perceptions of Angela’s points and Angela’s assertions themselves? Who can tell me the difference between an objective and a goal? Which one are you able to measure?

Have you read this blog’s interview with Angela? They are on setting meaningful public relations objectives and PR’s lack of measurement holding it back.

“Relationships are a means to getting more of the behaviors companies want,” said Angela. “I think most PR people don’t realize this and therefore don’t build the right relationships or build them in ways that will directly benefit the organization tangibly, not just intangibly.”

Angela spoke with me prior to presenting a half-day workshop on Measuring ROI on communications for IABC NSW (sponsored by Ogilvy Public Relations Australia and St George Bank).

She agrees that the lack of consistently applied, and business-relevant, KPI development and utilisation is a key factor in holding back PR from sitting at the executive leadership table.

“We’re not speaking their language,” Angela said.

Marketing and PR: KPI setting comparison

CP: Is there a parallel between the way marketing sets KPIs and the way PR does, or should, set KPIs? What should PR be doing that marketing is already doing and, conversely, what are the mistakes marketing is making in KPI setting that PR should not do? What can the disciplines learn from each other?

Marketing has been doing audience research forever—they take the time to figure out in advance what would motivate people to take the desired behaviors, and they use a variety of measurement techniques afterward to validate what works best.

PR rarely does research before developing campaigns and measures mostly useless stuff like clips and hits and AVE—if they measure anything at all. What marketing can learn from PR is the art of the soft sell, the long sell.

Measuring PR-driven relationships

CP: Much of public relations is about just that: relations, or relationships (a notion emphasised by the relational dimension of social media). By extension, this means it is about brand awareness and reputation, rather than specifically making a sale. Does this introduce a dynamic to PR KPI setting that is unique? How do you go about setting KPIs for reputation/credibility etc and, for that matter, evaluating reputation/credibility?

I completely disagree with a lot of recent writings that relationships are the ultimate outcome for organizations, and most CEOs would too. I have written about this before.

Business relationships are not pursued just for their own sake. As individuals, we don’t pursue relationships just for their own sake either, but to gain friendship and love, which can increase security and decrease loneliness.

Businesses value relationships, reputation and branding as means to various ends as well—yes, more sales overall, but also to:

• keep shareholders loyal
• keep their share prices high
• attract better qualified job candidates and keep them productively delivering results longer before leaving for a competitor
• be able to charge higher prices for what are essentially commodities
• get happy customers to convince non-customers to try the company’s products, etc.

Measuring advocacy

CP: One of the dimensions I have had incorporated into market research for an organisation I worked for (based on excellent advice from leading market researcher Adrian Goldsmith)  was stakeholder ‘advocacy’ (i.e. the chief behaviour measured was how willing a stakeholder would, without prompting, speak positively of an organisation). What are your thoughts on this sort of behaviour providing a meaningful KPI for an organisation?

On customer surveys I usually include an 11-point question on how likely they are to recommend the company or its products to others, with 1 being “Extremely unlikely,” 11 being “Extremely likely” and 6 being “Neutral.” You subtract the percentage of people choosing 1-6 (the detractors) from the percentage choosing 10-11 (promoters). (Those choosing 7-9 are called passives and ignored for the calculation.)

This is known as the Net Promoter Score® (NPS) invented by Satmetrix Systems. Apparently it has been validated by the company that developed it as a good measure of overall customer satisfaction.

However, it’s only useful if the survey includes a great many other questions that quantify satisfaction with various aspects of the company so that the company knows what to fix in order to get a better score in the future.

For example, I’m working on a report this week where the business-to-business manufacturing company received an overall negative NPS. However, 74% of customers said the company met or exceeded their expectations for quality. On the other hand, only 56% said it met or exceeded expectations for on-time delivery. These more detailed questions help you understand what to fix and what to leave alone.

PR program evaluation

CP: Are there issues relevant to the setting of different PR programs (e.g. media relations, speaking programs, website communication, social media) that need to be borne in mind and, if so, what are they?

One issue is to be sure, through research, that we understand which channels are working best for different messages, for different stakeholder groups, at different stages of the relationship/sales process.

CP: When there are a range of PR programs being implemented, is it important and relevant to ensure there is consistency between the KPIs and the approach taken to determining what the KPIs actually are? What are the issues relevant to this process?

Absolutely. If we’re going to measure multiple campaigns, survey questions should be parallel in construction, from wording to response scales.

We can’t just ask if people like those communications, but we need to identify how much each one influences different desirable behaviors—from calling the company for more information or to set up a sales call, or to influence the selection of the company for a contract.

For one client, we not only used consistent survey questions for each of their marcomms and PR campaign elements in the customer communication survey, but we also asked their sales force very similar questions about how much influence they thought these vehicles had. While there was a great deal of internal/external alignment, there were many communication vehicles that the customers said influenced their behaviors far more than the sales force believed.

Since the sales force controlled distribution of many of these vehicles, they were shooting themselves in the foot by not giving all their customers access to these vehicles. The company made a lot of changes based on the survey results.

What did you think about what Angela said? Do you set what you consider to be meaningful KPIs for your communication strategies and programs? What are the issues you have in setting these KPIs; what are your challenges?

About Angela Sinickas

Angela Sinickas, ABC, IABC Fellow, is president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., an international consulting firm that helps organizations plan and measure successful communication, including 23% of Forbes’ Global 100 largest corporations. She wrote the manual How to Measure Your Communication Programs and has earned 17 IABC Gold Quills. She also teaches an online graduate class on communication measurement for Northeastern University. Over 130 articles on communication planning and measurement can be read at www.sinicom.com Angela was in Australia presenting a training session on measuring communication straegy ROI for IABC NSW, with the support of Ogilvy Public Relations Australia and St George Bank.

Angela Sinickas is an internationally renowned public relations exponent and a passionate advocate for the setting of objectives – that have utility and are consistent in their application. Angela has been awarded 17 International Association of Business Communicators Gold Quills, teaches a graduate class on communication measurement and is widely published.

Angela Sinickas

Prior to her presenting a half-day workshop on Measuring ROI on communications (see below for free ticket if you are quick and have an insight) on 3 August for IABC NSW (sponsored by Ogilvy Public Relations Australia and St George Bank), Angela kindly answered a number of questions on this vexed issue.

A consistent KPI methodology

CP: Is there a straightforward methodology that can be applied to setting KPIs for public relations?

I think so. Start with a business goal.

Figure out which stakeholders need to change their behavior to better reach that goal. Research what knowledge and attitude messages will encourage the changed behavior, and which channels are most preferred for those messages.

Set targets for all of the above. Measure results through surveys and/or pilot/control groups.

Behaviour at the heart of PR KPI setting

CP: Considerable PR discussions and articles talk about PR KPIs being linked to organisational objectives, as well as them being “meaningful, reasonable and quantifiable.”^ To me, a lot of this discussion doesn’t provide anything of real substance and utility. What are your thoughts on the academic and business discussions on best practice meaningful KPI setting and the effective measurement of public relations activities?

I agree with you. They describe characteristics of good KPIs but not what you should set KPIs for. That’s why I always go back to my mantra above of knowledge, attitudes and behaviors—but created in reverse order. First figure out the behavior desired to make sure you’re working on the right knowledge and attitudes.

What are the primary notions to bear in mind when crafting KPIs for public relations strategies and programs?

Focus on measuring the desired outcomes first. Then measure only the activities (inputs) that your research identified as leading to those outcomes.

CP: Evaluation and KPIs tend to focus on the practical manifestations of a communication strategy (e.g. media relations, sponsorship). What are the implications of a relative lack of focus on measuring the strategy behind the tactics? How can we reduce the emphasis on the messenger being examined when, often, it should be the entity that crafted the message?

I don’t think we stop often enough to ask ourselves what we’re hoping to achieve, what will change, because of tactics like media relations and sponsorships. Until we clarify how we want to change the behaviors of people touched by our tactics, we won’t structure the events properly, or have the right key messages.

If we’re not doing the right things with our tactics to create intentional audience changes, it’s useless to measure the tactics themselves.

CP: You have written about how behaviour is the most important of the three potential dimensions resulting from communication-related activity (behaviour, perceptions, knowledge). Do you think this is forgotten in PR KPI setting sometimes and what are the fundamental reasons for prioritising behaviour over perceptions and knowledge?

If you don’t start with behavior, you’ll miss some of the most important key messages.

I often use an example from Malcolm Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point, where he describes a university health care clinic where the communicator wrote a brochure will all the key points the clinicians wanted on why students should get a tetanus vaccination:

• They even pretested the brochure, and the students scored very high on knowledge of all the key messages
• However, only 4% actually got a vaccination
• When they asked some of the original students why, with all this correct knowledge in mind, they didn’t get vaccinated, the most common answer was that they didn’t know where the clinic was.

Now that was a key message for the audience, though it never occurred to the internal client and communicator because they worked there. Once they added a map to the brochure, with no other changes, 28% of the students reading the brochure got vaccinated. If they had just asked five students what they needed to know and believe in order to get the vaccination, at least four of them would have said, “I need to know where to go.”

Many of our clients’ key messages are usually totally unnecessary, and they’re often far enough out of touch with their stakeholders that they don’t know what messages might be missing.

How to evolve KPIs on an ongoing basis

CP: Once KPIs are set for PR programs, what methodology should be applied to their ongoing evolution from, for instance, year to year? I think a factor especially relevant to the change in KPIs is that knowledge, perceptions and behaviour can, arguably, only change so much. How do you determine when the change that has been achieved is optimum and from that point it might be more relevant for the knowledge/perceptions/behaviour to be maintained, rather than changed? What are your thoughts on this?

It’s easy when you start from a low baseline to set targets, but as you say, the annual increases will become smaller and smaller as you reach more of your audience successfully. I’ve covered this in more detail in an article.

The “optimum point” would very well be different for different things you’re measuring. For example, if you’re trying to improve the knowledge of employees on something, your best possible percentage score is going to be seriously limited by the rate of annual employee turnover.

If only 75% of the people with your company in January when you start your campaign are still with the company by the next January, 75% would be your maximum possible target (though still not a realistic one). You need to work down from levels that reality limits.

Another way to look at the optimum, or highest realistic, target is to look at benchmarks.

I have clients where we index their success on metrics captured through surveys by determining that they would receive the maximum number of points for an item if they reached the previously highest score achieved by any company on that same metric. They’d be doing an average job if their score was near the norm (average) for that question.

For metrics based on things like online usage, we’ll look at the number of page views or visitors for the previous year. We look at the highest number of visitors/visits for any particular webcast or publication and set that as the top possible score that we could receive the following year as the average for the year.

What did you think about what Angela said? Do you set what you consider to be meaningful KPIs for your communication strategies and programs? What are the issues you have in setting these KPIs; what are your challenges? NB. Angela also talks about a lack of measurement holding PR back in a future post.

Attention: a free ticket to Measuring ROI on communications, being presented on 3 August by IABC NSW, with the support of Ogilvy Australia and St George Bank, will be given to the person who provides the most interesting, value-adding comment to this post.*

About Angela Sinickas

Angela Sinickas, ABC, IABC Fellow, is president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., an international consulting firm that helps organizations plan and measure successful communication, including 23% of Forbes’ Global 100 largest corporations. She wrote the manual How to Measure Your Communication Programs and has earned 17 IABC Gold Quills. She also teaches an online graduate class on communication measurement for Northeastern University. Over 130 articles on communication planning and measurement can be read at www.sinicom.com

*The comment must be submitted by 9am Monday 2 August, Sydney, Australia time. I (CP) am the sole judge so don’t moan if you don’t like the arbitrary and subjective adjudication process! The winner must also be able to make the workshop, so unless you are willing to fly from Perth (Australia or Scotland), Southampton or Athens, don’t expect to win the ticket.

This post explores these dimensions with the input and assistance of two of the globe’s most astute public relations minds, Craig Badings and Sean Williams, both of whom provide plenty of insights on their own estimable blogs.

The ugly communication canards

Starting with the eye rolling, it never ceases to amaze me what some wankers in the advertising/marketing world come up with and their justifications for it. Australian readers will be familiar with the Toyota debacle, where a sexist, incest-implying entry into an advertisement competition was repeatedly justified by marketers, then needed to be pulled out of the fire by public relations experts.

Arguably even more devastating due to the impact it is literally having on people’s lives, is how one of Australia’s largest banks, Westpac, raised home loan interest rates way in excess of our Reserve Bank’s guidelines (unlike some of their competitors). This was bad enough (avarice, completely contradictory to the Westpac’s supposed – and now obviously shot to pieces – CSR positioning) but it was made worse by an ill-judged video using banana smoothies as an analogy for the excessive interest rate hike…unbelievable.

Craig Badings found the GFC tiresome (hey, and who can blame him! It got me retrenched, so I know what he means). “The impact of the GFC on communication service companies has had a profound impact in many respects,” he says.

“I am nervous that some of these will become de rigueur moving forward. For example, some companies have become extremely process driven in their approach to comms. This is all well and good when used to measure outputs and impact on ROI but when it comes as the expense of innovation and creativity I start fearing for the relationship. These approaches, if taken too far, inevitably kill the passion.”

Sean Williams, on the other hand, took the other major elephant in the room over the past year to task. “Crap social media claptrap. There is a ruling class in social media consulting who regurgitates the same old, tired canard of gobbeldy-gook that makes social media out to be the reinvention of the structure of society itself, declaring the End of News Media and accusing anyone who disagrees of being stupid, corrupt or worse.”

Examples of best practice public relations

On a more positive note, Craig looked back with satisfaction on a campaign he had worked on with law firm Henry Davis York. This…“resulted in the government of New South Wales settling with a family whose home was situated on an old radioactive waste site.”

Sean pointed out an excellent campaign by The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, called ‘Drawing Board’. “They are my client for measurement, so I can’t take credit for the single best and simplest explanation of financial regulation I’ve ever seen [unintentional banking and video connection noted...!]. They’ve also done a follow up video on the consumer price index…”

Getting better (at communicating) all the time

There is nothing that we all can’t get better at, but Sean and I would love to win more new business for our consultancies and I am sure Craig empathises with this as well. I question whether really profound, organisation-changing work can be done from the consultancy position, as opposed to working in-house in a PR capacity, but there are certainly plenty of exceptions to this position.

Sean, like most of us, had a big social media learning and ‘doing’ time in 2009. “Twitter and blogging make up a huge part of my day/week,” he says. “And the amount of information (some good, some not) I’ve gleaned from reading others in our field has been great.”

Plenty of us would have the tools to get better at our jobs by reading Craig’s book, Brand Stand; seven steps to thought leadership, which was published this year, whilst professional communication blogs by the likes of Karalee Evans and Trevor Young make an ongoing contribution to professional PR learning.

Incorporating the perspectives of others into my work and approach is always one of the more interesting and enriching dimensions of a professional life. Of course, embracing the views of others is analogous to public relations so it’s hypocritical not to bring such a mindset to our work.

And for 2010?

“I think more and more executives and communication professionals are beginning to understand the true power of good thought leadership and, if done properly, it’s ability to impact sales,” postulates Craig. “The biggest battle, however, is getting some people to understand that the focus of thought leadership doesn’t have to be on the product or service and that it is perfectly OK to ‘give away’ or share information and insights.”

The ‘giving away’ of information is similar to social media best practice. But social media still remains a war zone, according to Craig. “Many of the large corporates are still battling with the concept of engaging online. Speak to Dell, Walmart, Kryptonite locks, Pizza Hut and a host of others to find out just how important it is, if only as an early warning device for issues and a way to help manage crises.”

Sean says, “2010 could well be the Year of Measurement – that means doing long-delayed internal comms research, reducing dependence on ‘more more more’ in media relations in favour of better targeting and generally looking critically at how communication affects the business.”

It was reinforced for me during 2009, and I’ll be applying this in 2010 and beyond, how important flexibility and believing in yourself is. I was retrenched during 2009, I started my blog, I was forced to start my own business and now juggle a permanent role, my own business and this demanding blog baby.

An upside out of this was meeting, networking and collaborating with a wide range of public relations professionals, many of whom provided me with a great deal of support, inspiration and professional education. It reinforced to me what a rewarding, worthwhile profession I work in.

 So tell me, what were the highs, lows and ‘learnings’ of 2009 for you – and what do you think the professional business communication world will bring in 2010?

Marketers are often much better at public relations professionals at getting these dimensions right and do not, to me, seem so precious about what is or is not a better communication mechanism or approach to use. This perception really crystallised for me a couple of years ago at a national Australian industry association public relations conference.

The organisers did what I thought was a really smart thing: they invited a bunch of experts from different marketing fields to speak to us: digital marketing, direct marketing, advertising, branding etc. Perfect, I thought. Something to broaden the mind and challenge public relations assumptions about what is the best way to achieve our objectives.

So what happened? The marketing sessions were virtually empty. The vast majority of conference attendees stuck to the tried and true and, to me, dead boring as I’d heard it many times before, presentations on topics like ‘how to best deal with a journalist’. The marketing sessions, meanwhile, were vibrant, even electrifying, in the information they presented and the rationales on which they based their approaches.

So, public relations advocate that I am, here are some thoughts on where I think PR people should take a leaf out of marketers’ books.

Business relevance

Too much public relations is activity without a driver. You won’t find much marketing that is not implemented without a very specific business-relevance. Marketing is a tighter, tougher and more disciplined game than public relations.

Marketers know where their activity is being directed and why. Public relations can be a rebel without a cause, crying out for funding and resources without being able to present a business case to support its request.

Evaluation

Marketers are great at crunching numbers and providing a transparent reason why a particular communication or stakeholder engagement approach should be taken. They get creative, then undertake research to determine if this is the best approach to take, both in the creation of products and services and the communication that is used to sell them. A similar mindset informs their brand-focused communication.

Measuring ROI is a critically important issue for them, whilst public relations is still agonising over how best to evaluate its effectiveness. This is despite market research experts like Adrian Goldsmith purporting that reputation can be evaluated and measured.

I also think (and maybe it’s because they have bigger budgets to play with, but they probably only got these budgets because they proved they came up with the goods) marketers make better use of market research than public relations practitioners.

Sure, they use it to test ideas/products/services and to measure their success, but they also use it to come up with target audience insights that help the business relevance of their activities and to stimulate and profitably direct creativity. And we are talking creativity which engages here.

Database and direct communication

One of my favourite areas. There is much to be said for 3^rd party endorsement (i.e. through media editorial placement and strategic alliances) and the credibility/brand enhancement it generates, but surely it is a no brainer that any half-decent holistic (really, a tautological application of the word in this context, but…) communication strategy will feature means of communicating with target audiences that are unmediated.

Unmediated communication allows an organisation to frame its communication in the precise terms that it wants its target audiences to hear:

• Customised to target audience needs, wants, culture and point of view
• No compromise in articulating the information an organisation wants its target audiences to hear, which might otherwise occur if there are the delicate sensibilities of the media, for instance, to be considered.

Having a database of target audiences and those that influence target audiences is a fundamental resource to enable this to occur. Tools that can then be used include hard copy and electronic newsletters, direct mail and even phone calls.

Brand vs sales

Marketers tend to be much clearer when defining whether their communication is brand/reputation or product/sales related. Public relations is much more nebulous in this regard, flaky even. This is related to the points above about business relevance and evaluation. I think this is something of a forgotten topic in the public relations dialectic. It doesn’t rate highly in my recall of academic discussions on the issue.

KPIs/objectives

You’re flat out finding a public relations practitioner that understands that objectives are KPIs (i.e. set, measure, go!), let alone one that is willing to actually set meaningful, business-relevant ones before implementing communication strategies/activities.

[Here’s a scoop (irony dripping...): some PR practitioners will set objectives retrospectively when entering industry awards to do two things – make their work look more effective than it may have been and to make it seem that evaluation was an important part of their thinking...when, plainly, it wasn’t.]

Marketing lives and dies by the KPIs it sets. Whether it’s a clear linkage to sales generation, brand awareness, hits to websites etc. It’s one likely reason why you’re more likely to find a marketer around the C-suite decision making table than a public relations professional.

Also, and this is an area where I would personally like to get a lot better, public relations really struggles with determining what are meaningful objectives to set in the first place. It’s not just stories placed in the media, it’s not just the amount of speaking engagements that are procured for the CEO – it must be more related to genuine business outcomes. Perhaps the topic for deeper discussion on another day.

Integrated communication

Dare I posit that marketers are better multi-taskers than PR folk? Well, considering marketers often design and implement integrated marketing campaigns that might use an array of tools simultaneously in concert with each other, it is tempting to think so. Examples of tactics include:

• Advertising (through multiple mediums)
• Competitions (as above)
• Media relations
• Digital communication (social media, website, e-newsletter)
• Database and direct communication
• Point of sale
• Sponsorship.

Of more import is that public relations professionals can learn a lot from the way marketers employ a diversity of tools to achieve a singular outcome.

PR vs marketing upshot?

Look at all of the above and you will get some idea of why marketers have more access to the C-suite than public relations practitioners. Marketers make sure their work is business relevant and they can provide proof into the effectiveness of their work. PR professionals would be wise to take a similar approach more often than they currently do.

Quelle horreur!

To help us understand why market research is a no-brainer for best practice communication, leading Australian market researcher Adrian Goldsmith* comments in this post on issues such as the ethical dimension of market research, ROI and the relevance of market research to reputation evaluation. In the previous post, Adrian provided insights into the general salience of market research and its value to organisations.

As in any article on strategic communication, it’s important that we first focus on an issue of importance to all of us: death. Adrian explains…

“I recall one study that was unusual from the outset and provided some profoundly interesting results. It involved a mausoleum that was part of a cemetery owned by one of the local councils in Melbourne. They wanted to know whether they should use some land in the cemetery to create burial plots or build a bigger mausoleum – essential to determine whether the current burial practices of mausoleum users would continue into the future with sufficient consistency to warrant the investment.

So the key was to speak with first, second and third generation southern-born Italians to determine their likely behaviour. However, this needed to be done sensitively given a high degree of superstition relating to speaking about death and burial practices.

The research needed to talk in general terms about the practice, but also obtain a robust assessment of behaviour. The approach was carefully planned, beautifully executed and provide a sound basis for decision-making. The end result – a larger mausoleum, well patronised and financially successful too!”

Are there any areas in particular where you think it’s likely to be of no use to undertake market research?

“Research is only of value when you are able to act on the findings – make a change, keep doing the same thing, vary, evolve, respond. If you have no intention of responding to the feedback or insight you’re wasting your money and the time of those involved at every level.

There are also some situations where the answer cannot be obtained by asking the punters – they are ill-equipped or unable to provide sufficient information or insight to enable the right decision to be reached. In these situations, it is probably better to run an internal workshop with the key people from within the organisation involved than go to the wider audience.

Again, in recent times, I’ve spent a great deal of time discussing when research is and isn’t a worthwhile investment – it’s an important discussion to have given the increasing cost and complexity of doing good research.”

Some communicators and marketers tend to go more for the gut-feel approach rather than a rigourous market research approach. Is there a time when gut feel alone is the right way to go?

“Gut-feel really only works when the decision is so obvious and so grounded in past experience that there is no risk in the decision – that the decision essentially makes itself!

Even so, I’ve had situations where the speed of the decision required a pure gut approach from the client. In these situations, I counselled the client to ask around to get a consensus of opinion from as wide a range of people as possible – to essential validate by convenient methods in lieu of formal research.”

ROI in marketing, but probably more so in the arena in diverse but related fields of public relations/reputation management/brand equity is critically important, yet quite problematic. What value does market research offer in this sphere? Can reputation and the quality of relationships with key stakeholders (e.g. industry peers, government, and consumer ‘influencers’) be accurately measured and can a business value be attached?

“Without doubt, reputation and relationship quality can be measured in absolute terms and in the context of return on investment.

Identifying what the underlying constructs of a relationship are and their differential role in delivering connection and relationship strength / quality is an acknowledged and powerful extension of simple customer satisfaction measurement. It takes the concept of measurement to another level by identifying the most profitable activities to focus on and the payoff from doing so.

A defined value can be put to their current behaviour and the impact of improvements or changes in the behaviour coming about through better relationships. This highlights the best use of (typically) scarce resources.”

Do you ever counsel caution to communicators when using the information/insights that market research has identified? Can you explain?

“Recently, far more of my time was spent discussing the merits of research, its potential to assist (in most situations, but not all), when it is inappropriate to use research and how best to optimise the investment (not cost) that is required to conduct and deliver great research.

Even so, it is particularly important that communicators make appropriate use of information and insights when preparing materials and approaches for the publics they are seeking to engage. From simple presentation of the most appropriate information to appropriate interpretation of results, to translation of insights into messages – a great deal of the modern researcher’s time is spent ‘bedding down’ the findings to ensure they hit the mark.

Beyond being a requirement of the industry’s Code of Professional Behaviour, successful use of research in the public domain encourages others to make use of research in the future.”

Have you ever had concerns that your market research findings have been used for less than ethical purposes or in a less than ethical way?

“As a research professional, you are bound by the industry’s Code of Professional Behaviour which has provisions relating to the use of research findings in the public domain. Put simply, we have a responsibility to review and sign-off on any research findings used in press releases or other public communications.

 If you suspect the potential for misuse, you are bound to raise it with the client beforehand and put in place processes to prevent it from happening.  If it comes to light afterwards that a client has misused the research two things need to happen.

The first is to communicate with the client that what they have done is contrary to the industry code and that they should not use the information that way (and seek to correct any misconception created.

The second is for the researcher to communicate with the industry body that they were unaware of the client’s actions until after they occurred.

However, we have a clear responsibility to ensure that findings are not inappropriately used within or outside client organisations (for example presenting only findings that support a position when there are clear opposing findings that are relevant to the decision or misrepresenting findings to deliberately mislead). To this end, we are often consulted in the presentation of findings, the use of research and the decisions that are to be made to ensure the client is reading it right.

Typical practices in this domain include sending files in PDF format so they can’t be tampered with, insisting on the right to review materials and just generally ‘watching over’ the client as they take the research back into the organisation.”

What have you found to be the essential differences, if any, between when marketers and public relations/strategic communication professionals utilise market research?

“In the past there has been a wide chasm between the two types of professional – exacerbated by a lack of understanding and a lack of willingness to understand each other’s perspectives and domains.

However, with the advent of closer relationships between researchers and communications professionals (brought about largely by client demands and expectations) and an aggregation of many research agencies into communications businesses, it would seem the chasm is closing and mutual understanding and respect are flowing naturally.

It’s exciting to be able to do your thing, be respected for it and to enable others to take your work and do their bit to it / with it to achieve the wider aim. This endorses the research process, the communications strategy process and the client’s faith in the professionals – all good outcomes.”

Do you think market research benefits the health of society as well as help achieve positive business outcomes? How so?

“Without doubt, the practice of market and social research delivers enormous benefit to society. Market research helps:

• save money on product / service development
• ensure the products / services customers need are developed and launched
• provide vital feedback about products / services to enable their improvement / enhancement
• ensure effective deployment of scarce resources in the public sector.

These all provide a sound return on the relatively small investment that it takes to undertake high quality research.”

What do you think about Adrian’s thoughts? What ethical issues with the generating and utilisation of market research have you encountered? Where (if ever) does ‘gut-feel’ rule over scientifically gathered market research? Have you ever hesitated over using, or not used, perfectly reasonable market research findings – why?

[The third and final instalment of the interview with Adrian will have a strong social media-relevant dimension.]

[Adrian Goldsmith has worked in the market and social research arena for nearly 20 years – four years with AGB McNair and nearly 16 years with Quantum Market Research as a principal, director and part-owner for most of this time. His primary role was in the planning and conduct of market and social research for a wide range of public and private sector clients across Australia. He spent much of his time undertaking a diverse array of studies and providing strategic advice to organisations as varied as state and federal government departments and agencies, leading financial services organisation and major events organisers. For reasons of confidentiality, the names of the organisations for which he has worked cannot be revealed. He departed Quantum in July 2009 to pursue new and different interests.

He has developed research expertise in a number of areas including reading public opinion, identifying the nature and extent of opportunities, clarifying the impact and effectiveness of communications, measuring client / stakeholder satisfaction and providing wise counsel to a vast array of organisations. He has spent the majority of his time providing timely, robust and reliable information on which organisations can make high quality decisions.]