PRJ-Archiv USA: Die Qualität der Beziehungen prägt den Unternehmenserfolg
Katie Paine, die Queen of Measurement im Gespräch mit dem "PR Journal"
Wer mit dem internationalen PR-Geschäft und noch dazu mit dem Thema Measurement vertraut ist, kennt den Namen Katie Paine. Von ihren Kollegen in aller Welt wird sie auch liebevoll als "Queen of Measurement" bezeichnet. Immer wieder hat sie sich mit Betriebswirten angelegt, wenn sie sagt, dass Umsatz und Gewinn weniger wichtig für den Erfolg eines Unternehmens sind, als die Qualität der Beziehungen. Deshalb müssen diese Beziehungen immer wieder gemessen werden, gerade auch was die ständig wachsenden Social Media angeht. PRJ-Redaktionsmitglied Dana Jumanca, Managing Partner von Achelis&Partner Bukarest und Leiterin des Forum for International Communication hatte Gelegenheit, Katie Paine einige Fragen zu stellen. Fragen und Antworten sind im englischen Original-Text belassen.
PR Journal: Katie, where did you start, and how did you become involved in strategic communications measurement and evaluation?
Katie Paine: I started measuring results back in 1982 when I was the Director of Marketing Communications at Fujitsu and realized that I needed numbers charts and graphs if I was going to my budget approved. I did a detailed media analysis plus a competitive analysis and voila, budge was approved. Then I went to Hewlett Packard and demonstrated that a $15,000 direct mail piece we did resulted in $1.4 million in new sales, then went to Lotus Development and in 1986 essentially invented what we know of today as PR measurement. I hired someone who was in the market for software and told him to read 2000 articles and for each one tell me whether it left him more or less likely to buy the product and if it contained one of our key messages. I then further analyzed the results to determine our best, most effective spokespersons and tactics had been. In 1987 I started The Delahaye Group and the rest is history.
PR Journal: How would you describe the history of public relations measurement and evaluation?
Katie Paine: Essentially a few companies like AT&T were doing some rudimentary PR measurement prior what I was doing at Lotus, but there was really nothing else when I started. Eventually there were a handful of us doing PR measurement and that part of the business hasn’t changed much.
In 1990 we added tradeshow, event and sponsorship measurement to the mix, and that became part of PR measurement. In 1992 with the formation of the EU you saw an explosion in international measurement, and we began to create DelNet, which was the first true international network of measurement firms. In 1996 we began analyzing what at the time would be called “The Internet” but what we know of today as consumer generated media and web sites. In about 1999 the first automated analyses came along with Biz 360. That was still mostly about traditional main stream media. In 2002 I created KDPaine & Partners and introduced the first low-cost measurement system in 2004. By about 2006 it was all about automated collection and analysis. And, of course, as social media exploded and the volume went thru the roof, so today you see mostly automated content analyses with human review.
What social media really means is that now media content analysis isn’t just for PR anymore but is seen as a way to listen to the voice of the customer (not just the media.)
Of course the passage of The Barcelona Principles was a major milestone when PR people worldwide agreed on some basic principles of research and evaluation.
PR Journal: If we look carefully at a majority of entries submitted at international PR competitions, we often feel that "evaluation is good in general, but most organizations are still not doing it in the right way". How do you explain that even after Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles there is a lot of evidence that big players are still using the AVEs?
Katie Paine: Agencies and vendors still use AVEs because they claim that “clients demand it.” But in my 24 years in business, no client has ever demanded bad research or flawed data. What they think they want is one easy number. But what they really want is an accurate reflection of the value they add to the organization. What the Barcelona Principles established is that AVE is not that value. Because in truth, the value of PR can not be expressed in one universal number because value is based on goals and every PR program has slightly different goal. So there is no easy answer. It requires work and PR people are traditionally overworked, and there’s never enough time, so they resort to AVEs because vendors and agencies provide them. It’s only when the realize how flawed the data is – especially now with social media becoming so important – that they will ultimately reject them.
PR Journal: How should PR professionals approach research, measurement, and evaluation in social media?
Katie Paine: Social media is really nothing new. People have been having conversations since before our ancestors came down from the trees. Cavemen grunting at each other and passing it along a trade route really aren’t that different than passing messages by courier or sending a telegraph or picking up a telephone or sending an email. The only thing that is different is that it is a lot easier (and probably more legal) to listen in on their conversation on Twitter or Facebook than it was to intercept a message from a guy on horseback. So as always, in any communications program, you need to start with a goal. What problem are you trying to solve? What messages are you trying to communicate?
Start with the stakeholders – what influences them? Where do they go for information? What are they seeing? What keeps them up at night? Figure that out, and then you measure whether your messages (social or otherwise) are coming across.
PR Journal: What are the most important future challenges for the PR evaluation and measurement practice?
Katie Paine: The biggest challenge we face is to measure what matters, not just what is easy. This means we must change the way we think about what it is we were hired to do. It is not enough to say that my goal is “to get on the BBC.” So what if you do? We need to ask the most important question which is “so what.” What does being on the BBC do for your organization? And don’t just say “generate exposure” because the next question is also “so what.” So what if 10 billion people see your brand, what does that accomplish? And more importantly, what if 10 billion people see your brand and none of them get your messages. I’d be willing to bet that 10 billion people saw the News Corp brand in the last month, and very few of those “impressions” did the Murdoch’s much good.