DummySpit

Jim Nail of the US media evaluation provider TNS is arguing against the use of the three evaluation categories - Output , Out-take and Outcome - as being too generalised and non-specific. Here’s the link to his blog, http://blog.cymfony.com/2007/10/outputs-and-out.html. These terms were developed by Walter Lindenmann in the early 1990s as a neat categorisation and have been promoted through many books and industry/academic papers.

Output is the production of the public relations effort (messages sent). This is the Presentation stage and may include measurement of press releases and other communication methods

Out-takeor Out-growth is the understanding and retention of messages by publics. It looks at the attention, comprehension and acceptance.

Outcome is the effect of the PR effort on attitudes, opinions and behaviours. This measures the actions of the target groups.

There is also a more recent Out-measure, called Outflow that considers the build of value by improvements to reputation and the creation of organisational/stakeholder relations.

This group of Out-measures is convenient and, as far as I can see, widely accepted. What’s your view?

David Phillips has just posted a podcast on his site about ROI and the measurement of online PR. It follows on from earlier discussion on DummySpit about “pullability” as a measurement of the associative referencing of online communication. From this discussion, the concept of “out-pull” as a measure was proposed. It has received a very positive reception from practitioners and academics.

Is ROI a relevant measure? Listen to David’s views. As he says, analysis shows that the measurement of online PR and communications is not an easy task and not given to financially-based measures.

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

David Phillips kindly sent me a posting on the role of ROI in Marketing from Brian Carroll’s B2B Lead Generation Blog -  http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/2007/05/the_difference_.html - which discusses the difference between ROI and marketing accountability. As this is an issue in public relations, I have posted this comment:

Part of the problem with ROI is that a financial concept is applied to a non-financial activity. Sure, marketing and sales activity should result in financial results but the misuse of specific business language in an effort to get understanding from the Board is only piling pressure on marketers and communicators.

One of the definitions of ROI is the ratio of how much profit or cost saving is realised from an activity against its actual cost, expressed as a percentage. In reality few marketing or communication programmes can be expressed in that way because of the problems in putting a credible financial value to the results achieved. In 2004, the UK’s Institute of Public Relations said, “this (use of ROI in PR campaign) is not only confusing but misleading” when the term PR ROI is used loosely. Unless the objectives of the activity are solely to achieve a sales or financial outcome, ROI is meaningless.

For marketers, the application of ROI limits their role to sales support and ignores the brand and reputational issues. In PR, I’ve long argued that the use of business language is a fundamental sign of insecurity and a lack of confidence. It seems that marketing has the same affliction.

To read more on my views on the role of ROI in public relations, see this article on the PRism online academic journal,  http://praxis.massey.ac.nz/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/Journal_Files/Issue3/Watson.pdf