Time for PR to deliver – together

PR has always struggled to justify significant budgets relative to other elements of the marcomms mix. Why? Basically because when the advertising, DM and digital guy sit round the table for the monthly catch-up with the FD, the other areas can all come up with a cost per accusition number. It may be pie in the sky, no more than an estimate, but they come up with a figure. When the PR guy is asked, historically they come up with some internal,arguably loosely relevant metric, and if things were really bad they might have even come up with AVEs. What PR has always lacked is a universally accepted metric, on which we can all draw a line in the sand and measure how good we are. Happily, due partly to the bonus ball that social media has thrown PR, and partly because some important PR people have realised that we need to finally nail this issue, there is a little known, but important conference taking place in Barcelona this week. Organised by The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) this conference has some pretty lofty objectives. The plan is for a worldwide collection of industry leaders to unveil a set of principles that will set the criteria upon which PR evaluation must be based. Not a final solution, but an important first step for PR to justify its contribution. “Until now, public relations has been undervalued due to its inability to measure itself”, says Ketchum Pleon Partner David Rockland. “The goal of this summit is to establish consistency in order to increase credibility”. There are clearly a couple of hurdles to overcome. For example, the profile of this summit amongst PRs in the UK is not what it should be, and I have to say that most PROs are still either bored or non plussed by this debate. The organisers seem to recognise this though and Barry Leggetter, executive director of AMEC, says, "we believe organising this debate shows leadership and new thinking. We hope the global PR community will now get behind this issue and contribute to the development of the new industry standards”. So, there is an education program required on various levels. But Ketchum Pleon’s Rockland adds that “We need to leave Barcelona with a set of standards for which every organisation –whether government, non-profit or private enterprise – should expect to be accountable and show proof that their programmes are working”. So, there does seem to be a movement at senior levels, both in house and in consultancies, that PR must finally nail this issue. Partly because we need to ensure we are not gobbled up by other areas of the marcoms mix, and partly because we’re all bored of the debate and recognise the need to move things on.