Good PR Measurement and Delivering Bad News
I’ve just finished preparing a lecture for my upcoming class this week and have been culling some wonderful
information from Katie Delahaye Paine’s book, “Measuring Public Relationships.”
Among the absolutely useful and easy-to-understand advice Katie offers are nuggets like:
- AVEs - Advertising Value Equivalents are a bad measurement of value because, among about 50 other reasons, you can’t compare apples to oranges: As Katie says, “..there is no scientific evidence to demonstrate that a six-column inch ad has the same impact as a six-inch story in the same publication.” Amen.
- There are indeed other valuable, albeit not perfect, ways to measure the impact of, well, impacting relationship with stakeholders like CPMs (cost per thousand impressions - and maybe someone can explain to my mathematically-challenged self who the genius was who thought to throw a “1,000″ in the formula, and CPMCs - Cost Per Messages Communicated (better) that is based upon message impressions, rather than article impressions.
Measurement is wonderful, and in the field of public relations (NOT ADVERTISING, NOT MARKETING) something that I consider to be an evolving area. But here’s the rub:
Too often than not, I have seen fastidious and excellent research carried out (usually internally and not paid for through a vendor) that absolutely contradicts the thinking of a senior executive or company leader. And I have died a little internally when I have seen this wonderful research get treated like CIA secret documents headed for the burn bag.
What to do then? Katie mentions, importantly, to run the internal traps before planning a research program, but I have often seen that senior executives are fascinated with research — until it goes against their thinking.
Mark
No commentsLecture for Week #6 for MPPR-750
Hi everyone,
Below are the slides that will guide our lecture for Week #6.
Mark
No commentsNo Arm, No Voice
I have been offline for ten days or so because I had a little owie in my arm that turned out to be some pretty 
major surgery. While I was recuperating and emerged from a percocet-induced haze, it occurred to me that I was really lacking an outlet for ideas, expressed in social media.
I use this blog, Media Bullseye and Boston Hardball to express what happens to me on my mind that particular day or in that particular moment. Being robbed, temporarily, of the use of my right arm made me think how important user generated content (the user being ME) had become to me. I had a lot to say, and the only one to hear it was my new dog, Prince. And he just cocks his head and walks off.
So while I can’t type for long, this avoiding a typical diabtribe, it’s nice to be back in the swing with the ability to express myself using social media. I missed it.
Mark
4 commentsOops, I Did It Again
I have gained semi-notoriety this week because of my online-based apology tour, having said stupid 
things, apologized and my idiocy was well-documented and forgiven on CareerDiva.net, the New York Times, and I even did an interview yesterday with the Washington Business Journal (no link yet because it will be a couple of weeks, but you can count on my self-promotional side to pimp that too).
I have a semi-foul mouth, which has been curbed only through my parenthood, but for those of you who have read this blog, you’ll note that when I become particularly exasperated by something that I think is inane, my usual response is:
“Jesus.”
Well, now I have either an outlet for that, or an e-portal which may just ensure my eternal damnation. Tech Crunch reported recently on the launch of Gospelr,
…a microblogging platform for people who want to share thoughts, ideas, words of encouragement, prayer requests, daily scripture readings, and oh so much more.”
I am honestly not here to praise or condemn this, but one of the questions that I get asked frequently and was asked yesterday during the interview was “What is the next BIG THING?” Some people B.S. (there’s that foul mouth again), their way through this, but my answer was simple: Anyone who tells you what the NEXT BIG THING is is lying.
An example of this is the fact that Gospelr is based upon the Twitter platform and represents a segmentation of the Twitter audience. A year ago, who predicted that Twitter would launch, crash (literally), an then crawl back into our waiting arms? And what about that stupid whale?
I think that Gospelr represents the fact that microblogging has now become so intertwined with our lives, we’ll begin to see more and more platforms that are targeted towards a particular segment of the of the population who share common interests. Now THAT’S interesting.
I’ll avoid all other commentary as to minimize the flaming comments that are undoubtedly headed my way.
Mark
8 commentsMy Blog is in the New York Times?!?!
I had always hoped to be in the New York Times, but perhaps under somewhat different circumstances.
I wrote about it last week “I Was Wrong - Sorry Eve,” but the New York Times’ Marci Alboher picked up on the email blogging exchange that Eve Tahmincioglu and I had, which ended up with my feeling like a lunkhead.
Marci wrote a balanced, fair piece:
All this transparency and accountability led to a happy ending. Mr. Story did a follow-up post of his own, calling his original post a “cheap shot” against Eve (as support for this, he admitted that some of his own readers agreed with Eve’s original premise) and apologized to her. Eve included his apology in her follow-up post.
In addition to learning a few lessons about taking ownership for your words online, I also discovered a possible cure for social networking overload in Mr. Story’s original post — social networking aggregators, a new type of site that has sprung up to help people keep up with multiple social networking communities at once. Clearly, I have to get acquainted with these sites.
Thank you, Marci for providing balance and a measured tone — both of which would have served me well a couple of weeks back.
Mark
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