Comments on: Setting meaningful public relations objectives: authority interviewed

By: Week 5 Reading: Public Relations Research « David Hartigan's Blog for CMNS1290

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:21:23 +0000

[...] Article (2010): http://craigpearce.info/public-relations/setting-meaningful-public-relations-objectives-authority-in... retrieved 22nd August, [...]

By: Behaviour wins in PR strategy objective setting | Public relations and managing reputation

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:10:13 +0000

[...] aimed at changing knowledge or an attitude (that’s how we change behaviour). [...]

By: Lack of measurement holding PR back | Public relations and managing reputation

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 06:35:40 +0000

[...] exponent and a passionate advocate for the setting of objectives, Angela Sinickas, the areas of behavioral change being of uppermost importance and how to evolve objectives were included in the conversation. [...]

By: Learn how to set meaningful PR objectives! « THE EXPOSURE!

Learn how to set meaningful PR objectives! « THE EXPOSURE! — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:10:12 +0000

[...] Setting meaningful public relations objectives: authority interviewed [...]

By: Sean Williams

Sean Williams — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:19:34 +0000

Craig and Angela – There just is no argument!

When I was corporate-side (where I’ve spent most of my career, present 16+ months notwithstanding), unless the research cost nothing, it wasn’t ordered. One boss said, “that’s why we hired you. Your the expert.” I relied on environmental scanning, direct individual feedback, the Yahoo! message boards and other DIY methods to figure things out as I built the plan.

However, two years in, I convinced everyone to let me do a comms survey myself, and two years later for the followup, got a few bucks to spend on professional statistical analysis. As it worked out, we got a lot of actionable info and used our research to change what we did in the plan.

Keep fighting the good fight!

Cheers,
Sean
@commammo

By: Angela Sinickas

Angela Sinickas — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:32:59 +0000

And, as Plato said, “Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others” so even more people do the right things.

By: Andy O'Hearn

Andy O'Hearn — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:47:38 +0000

I love Angela’s emphasis on actions as the drivers of the other metrics. In one of the pioneering texts of interpersonal communications — Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J., Jackson, D. (1967). Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies & Paradoxes — and also in the works of anthropologist Gregory Bateson, they repeatedly make the point that you cannot really tell a person’s state of mind, but you *can* deduce it from their actions. Per Aristotle: “”We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”

By: Angela Sinickas

Angela Sinickas — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:49:34 +0000

I totally agree with you, Paul. Communicators don’t realize how easy and cheap highly effective evaluation can be. For example, a toxic waste disposal government entity each month placed ads in all local community newspapers and sent out news releases as well on a particular material they wanted brought in that month, like used engine oil or old car batteries. Of course, not all releases resulted in stories. I suggested a pilot program one month where they placed ads in only the newspapers serving the eastern half of the community. By comparing the percentage of the population who brought in the requested toxic material that month by postal code of the citizen, they could discover how much difference in impact there was in areas that had just an ad, just a news article, both, or neither. It cost less than a usual month’s budget because they spent only half their budgeted advertising dollars. The only time it took was to look at the computer report of postal codes from the forms people always needed to fill out at the waste dump and do the math to calculate the percentage of the local population that represented. No cost and very little time. I agree we need to stop making these excuses and just get more creative with our measurement approaches.

By: Angela Sinickas

Angela Sinickas — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:40:21 +0000

Craig, while clients may not need to measure the success of a project because their management doesn’t require it, I find it’s much easier to explain the need for doing audience research before the campaign to make sure it will achieve the client’s objectives. That research can include a lot of very low-cost steps, from scanning social media comments to having the client talk to 10 people in the target audience asking questions you give them. Often, when clients start hearing unexpected answers to questions, they begin to understand the need to do more formal upfront research, which could be focus groups or a survey, to be sure the campaign will be on point.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:52:18 +0000

Finally a conversation on measurement that does not mention AVEs. Agree that the only way to measure successfully is to set objectives and KPIs that can be measured.

Too often PR blame budget and time as a rationale for not measuring and evaluating a campaign – no other business department could get away with that excuse and neither should we. It just needs to become part of how we do things.