I am gravely concerned about the paucity of effective measurement (as would befit a member of the Institute for PR Measurement Commission!). On Wednesday night (8 Sept) I did some judging of entries for two IABC chapters.
Even for “Online Communications” — Websites — nearly all lacked basic measurement: measurable objectives! For the love of our profession, please read “Guidelines for Setting Measurable PR Objectives” from the Institute and authors Forrest W. Anderson, Linda Hadley, David Rockland and Mark Weiner.
This update from a paper by Anderson and Hadley from 10 years ago (a “Gold Standard” paper in its own right) is approachable and designed for use by you and me, not just the academic world.
Regardless of whether you’re into internal or external communication, using social media within or without the enterprise, you need to have solid objectives. (end of rant!)
Judy Gombita pointed out your post to me as I’ve been ranting to her by email about a similar experience judging Awards this year. I will write a blog post too – but one of my points is that surely these professional bodies have to take a stand on specifying what is expected for objectives (as opposed to vague goals) and distinguish between outcome-oriented objectives (what will be achieved) and task-oriented ones (what will be done).
And that’s without considering how rubbish most entries are in respect of evaluation. Again, the Award running bodies have to walk the talk in endorsing the Barcelona Principles by getting really tough on the entries.
I would throw out any that cite AVE – let alone a PR value figure which appears to be a multiplying factor of the entrant’s own choosing. All of which is then claimed to reflect return on investment. Simply shocking.
Heather – thanks for your comment. There no doubt is a big balancing act that the associations have to perform. If you make the awards too demanding, you lose participation. These programs are huge moneymakers for chapters, regions and for the main body. Look at the difference between, say, the Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award (the sine qua non of measurement awards) and any other competition. Fewer entries, fewer winners (sometimes none) and a lower profile. Most communicators can’t wrap their heads around the concept, let alone the practice of effective measurement.
Och, I’m ranting again.
Appreciate your stopping by.
Cheers !
Hi Sean,
One cannot stress enough the importance of measurable objectives. I had a very similar experience as a judge for a major PR competition. 90% of all the entries did not have measurable objectives! If your readers don’t have time to read the white paper, here’s a short blog post called Objective Failure I wrote back in April 2006 that provides simple guidelines: http://metricsman.wordpress.com/2006/04/17/objective-failure/
-Don B @Donbart
Don – thanks for the comment, and for providing a quick recap on how-to. It’s a bit depressing that we cannot get our professional associations to truly embrace measurement as essential, not nice-to-have (see my comment above). We have to keep pushing!
Thanks again Don — always a pleasure.
Sean
The REALLY depressng thing was that when I was Chair of the Measurement Commission, back when you were in Kindergarten
we approached all the organizations and begged them to follow what is essentially today the Barcelona Principles.. starting with setting measurable objectives. Obviously you can judge our success by the results 
Katie — It’s not fun to take away the punchbowl. As per my comment to Heather, above, which do you want? Lots of entries and winners, or strong standards? It’s activities versus results…and we wonder why we’re still trying to win and keep our seat at the table!
thanks for stopping by!
Cheers.
Thanks Sean, a great resource and timely reminder of how we should be measuring what we do day in and day out.
O for the day of consistency in the profession globally in this regard.
[...] taking measurement seriously, which means starting at the end, i.e. measurable objectives [...]
[...] whilst a lack of clear, measurable objectives (ideally based on research) as noted in a post by Sean Williams, compounds the limitations of Award entries to reflect professional best practice. This is a huge [...]