Quantitative “objectives” aren’t objectives in terms of outcomes. They are a volume measure, usually used by clients or employers to beat the PR advisers. When considering outpout, as in media analysis, PR evaluation should be measuring the message that is communicated, as interpreted by the media, its tone and the potential (but not actual) audience that might receive it. Maybe the PR people in UAE are getting the clients/employers that they deserve if they accept the volume imperative above all. Whether it is a mature market or not, developed or developing country, is irrelevant. The role of media analysis to is interpret coverage of messages and that doesn’t need to have opt-outs on a national or regional basis.

I’d be interested to see the statistical basis on which Mediastow (or any other analysis firm) can say that “brand recognition is strongly correlated to amount of coverage”. Correlation (and sometime causation) is often claimed but I’ve never ever seen any rigorously developed data to support these claims. It’s a big difference between imputing a linkage or guessing it and giving statistical proof.

Please post any information and we can continue the discussion. (BTW, I ran a PR consultancy for 18 years and chaired the UK’s Public Relations Consultants Association for two year, so I know all about the reality of dealing with clients on the delivery and measurement of value from PR programmes. We never resorted to AVEs or volume measures of media coverage and kept our clients.)

For example, in the UAE, 90%+ of articles in newspapers are copy/paste press releases. PR executives are tasked with fighting for column inches because, quite simply, if their client is not there, their competitor is.

When doing surveys for several clients, we have found that brand recognition is strongly correlated with amount of coverage, regardless of messages. This may not be true in a mature market, but I simply want to point out that not all markets are created equally.

With that being said, at Mediastow, we do NOT encourage clients to set that as an objective. We think that is a ‘means’ to achieve an actual objective (e.g. increase sales, etc.).

On another note, looking forward to the announcement of the awards!

You tease you!

But seriously, a great post giving a nice perspective of how things are changing over time in our industry.

At Metrica we totally agree with your comments about there needing to be a greater understanding of statistical terms. We find that too many of the newer companies in the media evaluation field – I’m thinking particularly of the press clipping agencies who now offer very basic evaluation – are particularly guilty of doing this.

Overall, there is still a long way to go with education in public relations on why measurement is important, and, for that matter, planning too. The two are intrinsically linked – anyone starting out on a new campaign should begin by thinking about what they are trying to achieve – which will then formulate the correct metrics that they need to analyse, which in turn will help them with their planning process.

As media outlets explode and our target audiences fragment ever smaller, these basic components of an effective PR strategy are becoming more and more crucial.

We look forward to November, and hope to see you on the night.

Regards, Richard