by Emma King (@EmmainSA) Back in the prehistoric days of public relations (where we used to fax out mass press releases to long-suffering newsrooms), clients measured us purely on the thud of press cuttings we dumped on their desk at the end of each month.
Those clients that knew a thing or two about PR would also measure us against AVE (the dreaded Advertising Value Equivalency measure).
Our calls for PR as a discipline to be taken seriously, with the gravitas of others in our field (read: advertising, design, etc) were balanced 
upon a random way of measuring success, based upon how many mentions in the traditional media we could land — often without any understanding of the role that relationships, news creation and creativity could play.
Have we progressed?
How fabulous, you would think, that in this day and age, with our understanding of integrated communications and of how people are influenced, we have progressed, and have stood up to play a serious and meaningful role in the communications game.
Oh wait…
Just when we think that we have moved on from being deemed a success purely against a bunch of newspaper clippings, I find myself coming time and time again against scenarios that make little sense. And these bore me to death and make my heart sink a little.
What the boss wanted
I had a conversation the other day, for example, with a client who admitted that what it wanted (and needed) was for a PR partner to drive conversations about its brand and start people reconsidering it again. But that the boss just wanted “a pile of press cuttings delivered to them with a thud each month”.
And, yes, press coverage about a brand can and does have value.
But measuring success purely on the quantity of media cuttings is silly at best, and problematic at worst.
Variables to take into account
This is because it doesn’t take into account many variables, such as whether that media coverage is “good” or “bad” for the brand. Whether it delivers against key messages. Or even if that messaging is effective in driving whatever behavioural change we are wanting.
And what about those cases when a bad story has been kept OUT of the media or minimised? How is that measured, when quantity wins over quality every time?
So, if this is problematic, how should we be thinking and how should we be measured?
What we have to do
First, we have to stop operating in silos, and PR has to be part of the initial creative and planning process. If we continue, as an industry, to allow ourselves to be dragged in at the end of campaign planning, we will always be relegated to simply “sending out a press release about the campaign”.
This means we will always be seen as a support act, only bringing value to the table by being able to bring in “free advertising”.
Secondly, we need to show our value by being more than just about media relations and press releases. This means, on one hand, moving from thinking like journalist to acting like journalists — which means creating content that can be consumed, rather than feeding ideas to the media for them to create and curate.
It also means, on the other hand, that we need to use our talents — for building relationships, measuring reputation, steering conversations and knowing what is newsworthy — for more than simply getting press cuttings in a newspaper, instead of, say, digital and social media outlets.
Thirdly, and most importantly, we need to start looking at how we can measure success over and above the dreaded AVE. For me, that means measuring ourselves against actual business or communications objectives — whether that be, for example, driving sales, growing awareness, driving engagement (which doesn’t mean getting a million ‘likes’ on a Facebook page) or changing legislation.
When briefed by a new client or on a new campaign, why not ask “What do we want people to actually do?”, along with “What does success look like?”, instead of “How much media value do you want?”
In this way, we can create campaigns based on interrogating what value we can add, and we can start to be measured against tangible objectives that make sense.
Starting block
If we are to allow our discipline to have the gravitas that others do, we need to start acting like serious, and clever, consultants.
We have a great starting block — we inherently know how to form relationships and we understand what news and content is interesting and what isn’t.
But we need to move on to adding real value. Sending out press release to all and sundry, and wafting around at an event with a clipboard, are just not going to cut it anymore, I’m afraid.
Emma King (@EmmainSA) is the owner and MD of The Friday Street Club (@TheFridayStClub). Previously, she was head of PR at The Jupiter Drawing Room (Cape Town). She contributes the monthly “The Dissindent Spin Doctor” column on PR and communication issues to MarkLives.com.
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