DummySpit

The debate over ROI and accountability has taken an interesting turn in the Advertising column in this week’s Media Guardian. The advertising grandee Simon Marquis reviewed a new analysis of advertising effectiveness, Marketing in the Era of Accountability, written by Les Binet and Peter Field, and published by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.
The focus is wholly on marketing and advertising but has interesting messages for those involved in PR and related marcoms activities. Most notably, it is about how ROI and accountability have not necessarily improved advertising effectiveness.
Marquis says: “The obsession with accountability has, the IPA says, actually prompted marketers to pick on single things that can be easily measured. In truth, effectiveness is not predicted by any one metric but by a whole range of them. As we have long suspected, success in advertising ain’t that simple.
And that is the case with PR and marcoms, too. The search for the ’silver bullet’ of a simple, single metric or a financially-based construct called ROI doesn’t give the answer to effectiveness in below-the-line communications either.
Marquis continues: “A proper focus on profit-generation makes the report authors a bit sniffy about the fashion for ROI (return on investment) in marketing. I’m not convinced the two are incompatible. Indeed, Antony Young, president of Optimedia in the USA, concludes in his new book, Profitable Marketing Communications, by saying: ‘Marketing ROI is not just an alternative term for effectiveness, impact or results. Nor is it a magic equation or formula. It is an attitude about creating profit.’”
To paraphrase Simon Marquis, “success in PR ain’t that simple”. This column recall the CIPR’s 2005 paper that said evaluation and measurement are complex matters in all organisations that aren’t solved by simple, simplistic metrics. Too true!

http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,2105117,00.html

In commenting on my blog, Time for awards to ban AVEs, Simon Wakeman asked, “The big question I grapple with is what are the measures that we can replace AVE with? Given the fixation with measurability and accountability how can PR prove its worth alongside other more easily accountable disciplines?” So this blog answers that question and points to sources for alternatives. What do AVEs prove as a measure of PR effectiveness? Nothing in relation to achievement of objectives as a false correlation of value is used. The PR programmes and campaigns I worked on for 25 years had measurable objectives in terms of getting support, helping reach sales targets, building awareness of an issue or cause, but none had “getting £XX,000 in advertising equivalent spend of coverage”. Any media coverage was generated to support the campaign objectives and wasn’t an end in itself. PR professional and trade groups have strong views on AVEs, too, 

CIPR: Many problems stem directly from an over-simplified view that ‘PR is basically free advertising’.  This leads to ‘measures’ such as AVEs (advertising equivalents), which continue to be used despite being completely discredited. PRCA: They (AVEs) are weak and imply public relations is a substitute for advertising, when the two disciplines have different roles. AVEs take no account of positive or negative coverage, or the value (or damage) of editorial endorsement (or criticism). High quality editorial endorsement cannot be bought, so to put a value on it by using equivalent advertising space costs is misleading. 

British evaluation expert Dermot McKeone says “the whole concept of AVEs is based on false assumptions and any conclusions based on them are misleading and dangerous.” 
US PR educators Wilcox, Ault & Agee say this methodology “is a bit like comparing apples and oranges”; because advertising copy is controlled by the space purchaser while news mentions are determined by media gatekeepers and can be negative, neutral or favourable. It is also inherently absurd to claim a value for something which was never going to be purchased in the first place.  What can replace them? There is a wide range of measurement methods which can and should be used, because public relations deals with complex issues and relationships, so a single metric can’t give clear answers. Any PR text has chapters on evaluating PR programmes. Modesty aside, there is “Evaluating Public Relations - a best practice guide to public relations planning, research and evaluation”, written by myself and Paul Noble and published by Kogan Page. It has a wide discussion of research methods and evaluation methods. As well, the CIPR has its range of PR Evaluation Toolkit publications, the (US-based) Institute for Public Relations has an excellent set of publications on its website, www.instituteforpr.org and there are many blogs developed to the subject of public relations measurement and evaluation. Further reading: The CIPR also made a major report and statement on PR evaluation in 2005 which says that all the evaluation methodology is in place and it’s time for practitioners to use it. It does argue that there is a place for a Return on Investment (ROI) measure but only in relations to campaigns where the objective has a specifically financial objective, for instance to reach a sales or fund-raising target. I have problems with the use of financial language to express PR outcomes but you can read this paper at www.cipr.co.uk/research . 

Finally, as David Phillips comments in reply to my blog on AVEs, the value of advertising space in print and broadcast is falling as spend shifts to click-through online advertising. How long will the dinosaurs in PR cling on the AVEs when the value supposedly being generated is dropping?

Just when you thought that Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) had been buried as invalid measurements, they pop up out of the ground.In the UK, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has led the way in promoting best practice in public relations planning, research and evaluation with its PR Evaluation Toolkit which has appeared in three versions. But no-one seems to have told its members or awards judging panels that AVEs suck.The Pride Awards for 2006/07 which have rolled out over recent months have such howlers for its regional winners as:“Advertising Value Equivalent of more than £409,000″