Institute for Public Relations

I’ve been on the front lines of PR measurement for over 10 years in my role at General Motors.  In that time, I’ve sat through more vendor pitches than I care to remember and watched many squirm uncomfortably as I poked at the black box that is their particular proprietary methodology. To make matters worse, everyone has their own definitions for what you would think would be common terms so you truly have to poke and prod to make certain that you know what each vendor’s system is actually measuring .  As an example of the lack of clarity in definition, ...

In a Five Minutes With … discussion a year ago, Professor Tom Watson of Bournemouth University in England mentioned that he was researching the history of public relations measurement and evaluation, with a particular interest in the source of AVE – Added Value Equivalence – which he called a “persistent weed”. Next month, Tom will be presenting a paper on his AVE research at the International Public Relations Research Conference at the University of Miami (March 8-10). In this Conversations contribution, Tom investigates where AVE came from, and finds some surprising answers. David Geddes — It is quite astounding that AVE has persisted for so ...

As a public relations professor who teaches a research and evaluation course, I know firsthand the challenge of keeping up with research, measurement, and evaluation developments in public relations.  New and improved digital metrics keep emerging.  Clients and organizations are demanding greater accountability from communication initiatives. Public relations professionals and clients are advocating for the adoption of standardization in measurement and evaluation. Research approaches must be cost-effective, aligned with organizational goals and strategy, and actionable. Frankly, I consider the research and evaluation course to be one of the most rigorous and important courses in the public relations curriculum. To ensure that ...

Does academic research matter to public relations practitioners? Be not afraid. Come into the light with me, a non-PhD practitioner who finds value in academic research. In this series of posts, I will seek out quality academic and other research, drawing insights for communications practitioners. Communicating in an environment of risk is one of the more difficult roles for senior communications strategists. In larger organizations risk assessment often is managed by Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), which sets the risk agenda based on its discipline-specific quantitative tools and processes.  But communicators may find that ERM tools rarely predict reputation risk and often ...

Last week I made a case for the need for an action-oriented set of priorities for the public relations research, measurement, and evaluation function. Our goal at the managerial level, is to quantify public relations’ contribution to meeting organizational goals and building organizational value. To achieve that goal, we – research measurement, and evaluations professionals  – need to attend to issues of a measurement framework, standards, and data quality. This week I address three the first related topics: a measurement framework, metrics, and standards. 1. A measurement framework. First, we must adopt a common measurement framework based communications theory and public relations theory. ...