PR managers asked to employ measurement, evaluation to justify campaign budgets

As global businesses become more anxious  to establish the correlation between their investments and accompanying impact on bottom-line,  it has therefore become imperative for Public Relations managers and agencies to justify their budgets and explain in clear terms how public relations contributes to the bottom-line.

This they could do by embarking on measurement and evaluation exercise before and after campaigns and determine the outcome of the campaigns from beginning.

This was the view of one-day workshop on ‘Communication measurement and evaluation’ organized by CMC Connect Burson Marsteller, a public relations firm based in Lagos in conjunction with Ornico, a brand intelligence research company with headquarters in South Africa.

The workshop attended by top corporate affairs managers of banks, telecos and FMCGs and CEOs of Public relations agencies was principally designed to enhance practitioners knowledge and bring to the fore the importance of measurement and evaluation as integral part of marketing campaigns in determining how public relations adds value to the overall success of businesses.

It was held on the background that Nigerians professionals plan well but don’t execute well because they rarely measure, monitor and evaluate progress along the way.

In his presentation, the head of operations, Ornico, Francois Van Dyk, said measurement and evaluation should be a whole lot of the marketing process. This guides managers on what they should be doing and expecting from a communication perspective. It is not just pre-thought or after-thought exercise.

“Public relations practitioners must learn to make measurement and evaluation part of the planning and strategic process from communication perspective”, he said regretting that  what some practitioners  do now is engage in some campaigns and marketing exercise and later they start to ask what the outcome was without defining the success from beginning.

He said that result of campaigns which should not necessarily be financials  depends on the marketing objectives. “If the objective of a specific campaign is to sell a product, yes, it needs to be represented in financial figures. But if the objective is to change perception or change the decision of a community, this would not result to immediate financials. The marketing personnel need to report it in line with the objective of the campaigns”.

Also speaking, Country managing director, Accenture Nigeria, Niyi Yusuf said while it is clear that communication plays a significant role in protecting the positive image of an organisation or brand, top management in most organisations often require the internal communications team to justify their budget.

He said that in our current economic climate, businesses tend to be more bullish when there is a visible correlation between their investments and accompanying impact on the bottom-line.

Yusuf agreed that a PR specialist or firm helps companies to create and maintain a good reputation among both the media and the customers by communicating on their behalf and presenting their products, services and the overall operation in the best light possible. “A positive public image helps create a strong relationship with the customers which in turn increases the sales”, but said that CMOs are becoming less satisfied with services provided by PR agencies as they sometimes find it difficult to quantify the value.

He listed the common challenges of PR agencies in providing facts for CMOs to gauge PR impact on bottom line. These include lack of funds (61%), uncertainty in how to measure (35%, lack of standards (34%), lack of interest (18%), lack of need.

To break through this barrier is the concept of micro-measuring and macro-measuring. Macro-measuring refers to measuring over-arching organisational outcomes against desired objectives. Micro-measuring refers to the determination of the results of specific communication activities such as events, product launches, media publicity, analyst briefings, etc. PR agencies must be strategic and must use macro-measures to gain increased relevance, not micro-measure the number of insertions done, press releases sent.

He cautioned PR practitioners never start a campaign without a formative research at the beginning and close with the campaign evaluative research when presenting to clients and they should think of outcome instead of thinking of output measurement.

Also speaking, the CEO of CMC Connect, Yomi Badejo Okusanya said that measurement and evaluation is a challenge practitioners need to overcome as the concept is becoming important globally.

Daniel Obi