I’ll Take Cleveland…by 10,000 Points
Why PR Agencies Ought to Back Out of the Measurement Game
Christopher M. Nahil,
Nahil Communications Group
(appeared in “The Measurement Standard” June 2003)
The end of the quarter was always a nightmare. No, not for the usual reasons. Our agency’s financials were always immaculate, especially during the Great Technology Boom that is today responsible for so MFA candidates and barristas. Rather, the end of every quarter brought “measurement season” — the point on the account service calendar when one member of the account team would suddenly remember that we had to appear before all of the firm’s clients in the span of a couple of weeks to personally justify our dazzling retainers. “Accountability,” we’d hiss. “Damn the ur-client who first uttered the phrase.” Then we’d set about making ourselves accountable, as only a bunch of PR people can.
Regardless of what agency is involved, usually this requires an application of some “proprietary measurement methodology” to produce all kinds of snazzy charts, graphs and tables, all of which are notable for a distinct tendency to surge upward and to the right. The work that goes into creating the gripping measurement presentation that is to be delivered to the client involves insane amounts of manual labor, invariably on the part of the most junior members of the account team. The team thrashes through notebooks, clipbooks, desk drawers, filing cabinets and gym bags in an effort to collect every last conceivable shred of media coverage on a client, even if the agency had only a tenuous connection to the appearance of said coverage. Often, the modus operandi for much of this spasm of clip collection is sheer volume generation – miles of column inches. It’s axiomatic that agencies shoot for maximum “thump” factor when those clips hit the conference table in front of the client. Sure, many agencies will tell their clients that quality beats quantity everyday, and some clients may actually nod their heads in affirmation. However, it is equally axiomatic that if the client has 10 clips and their primary competition can claim twice that many, the agency has a problem on its hands.
Still, the agency team will also work hard at divining the content and message playback in the material before the client, too. This will serve as the basis for crafting some type of storyline around the presentation that addressed such conversational black holes as growth of coverage, the increased depth of understanding among key audiences, media play as compared to competitors, and the correlation of coverage volume to media-worthy events such as shareholder fraud lawsuits and unfortunate chemical spills at the Tonawanda plant. There will also be quotes from influencers, lots of them, that show how certain important people (alright, certain breathing people) have begun to change their opinions about the client for good or ill. Now, opinions that show either positive or negative movement are good for the agency in any case. If positive movement is evident, the agency can take credit for effectively getting the message out. If negative, there is certainly some client-side snafu, commercial malapropism or market flatulence that the agency can blame. Remember, PR people are policing themselves, here and we can find three different ways of convincing you that a statement such as, “If your client was a dog, it would have to be put to sleep” is not a bad thing.
From a client’s perspective, depending on the number of PR agencies they have engaged over the years, they’ve probably seen enough tables, charts, figures and quotes to fill a “History of Global Business” text book. I’m willing to bet that little of it means anything to them, as it all sits in the abstract and has virtually nothing to do with most business peoples’ two main life objectives, which are: a) making lots of money; and b) keeping the boss out of their hair. The aforementioned “thump factor” clipbook often accomplishes the second objective and frequently that’s all that is required of an agency-run PR program measurement. But that’s not nearly sufficient to justify the effort, or to build any sort of meaningful relationship between client and agency. There are no objective standards on which to judge progress. While measurement methods may be roughly the same from agency to agency, the application and mix can be completely different and lead to varied interpretations of the same data. Even if a client is paying attention close enough to follow the program, the result will still deliver meaningless conclusions. Or, more to the point, the conclusions that are drawn are strictly those to which the agency has steered its client.
Simply, agencies should never be allowed to measure themselves. That’s like letting gamblers in Vegas determine their own point spread. Clients must take the lead on the measurement front. Clients must be involved in setting the parameters of success, so that they can be assured that their PR programs really are helping them drive their business forward. Clients need to look past the phone directory-sized clipbooks and make a hard determination about what aspect of the communications program is of actual importance in helping their company succeed. In that way, “businessperson life objective a)” -- that would be the money part -- is much closer at hand.