I have been looking forward to my visit to Vilnius and my participation to the PR Impact Awards 2017 and it was so great!
It was at Lina Jakucioniene‘s invitation, an ambassador of the European Association of Communication Directors and Chairperson of the Board of Lithuanian Public Relations Specialists Association, that I went there and I am so glad I had this opportunity. Lina and the team did an excellent job in bringing together an informative conference with a celebration of successful PR work in the Baltics.
In that context, my talk was a reminder of the importance of measurement of communication as an essential step into the strategic planning of activities and not as an afterthought. I started as usual, with brandishing AVEs (Advertising Value Equivalency) for the reason that they are outright misleading (they have nothing to do with the actual activity carried out nor its outcome) and that they are also perpetuating the myth that PR cannot and should not be measured.
In the end, my talk boils down to 4 points:
- measurement should be included in the strategic talks from the beginning
- measurement is “hidden” into the simple question of “how does success look like”
- practitioners should get very clear on their vocabulary (there is a difference between output, outcome and outtake)
- practitioners should brush up their research skills (most of them acquired when writing a BA and MA thesis).
The talk then included several examples and frameworks, including those proposed by the German PR Association and AMEC. The slides are below.
