Publications
Standardization in Public Relations Measurement & Evaluation
September 2011- Dr. David Michaelson and Dr. Don Stacks, Research Fellows at the Institute for Public Relations, co-wrote the paper, “Standardization in Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation”. This article was published in the 2011 Spring edition of the Public Relations Journal. As the public relations profession continues to focus more and more on outcomes associated with campaigns or public relations initiatives the question of standards has shifted to the forefront of discussions among and between professionals, academics, and research providers. Making this shift even more important to establishing impact on business goals and objectives is the fact that standardized measures for ...
Charting Your PR Measurement Strategy
August 2011 – Articles written by members of the Institute for Public Relations’ Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation, that first appeared in the May 2011 issue of PRSA’s PR Tactics magazine, are now available on the IPR web site. They include: The Strategic Approach: Writing Measurable Objectives by Don W. Stacks, Ph.D. and Shannon A. Bowen, Ph.D.; Deliverable Objectives: Considerations for Creating Measurement Plans by Jackie Matthews and Pauline Draper-Watts; Speak Their Language: Communicating Results to the C-suite by Marianne Eisenmann; The Big Shift: Moving from Impressions to Engagement by Tim Marklein and; Measuring Influence in the Digital Age: Impressions, Likes and Followers by Katie Delahaye Paine. Thanks go to John Elsasser of PRSA, ...
Isolating the Effects of Media-Based Public Relations on Sales
June 2010 – This paper defines marketing mix modeling, shares approaches for incorporating public relations results into the model – primarily through media content analysis – and provides a recent case study. The featured case study confirms what PR professionals believe to be true: PR is a most powerful marketing agent. What is more, public relations consistently surpasses the return-on-investment and relative selling power of other MARCOM activities within the marketing mix, including those which command much larger budgets. Today’s marketers, with the benefit of advanced mathematical methods along with new technologies for data-collection, data-warehousing and data-mining, are unraveling marketing’s mysteries ...
Using Web Analytics to Measure the Impact of Earned Online Media on Business Outcomes
February 2010 – For some time, communications teams have been measuring PR ROI through outputs, such as media coverage volume, coverage sentiment, and share of voice, rather than business outcomes. With the relatively recent developments in web analytics, organizations are now able to directly measure how prospects and customers find information that lead them to a brand’s web site or other digital assets -whether through search, paid media or earned media. As a result, it is becoming possible for organizations to identify which types of channel drive the most value across all media, not only paid media. This paper focuses ...
A New Paradigm for Media Analysis: Weighted Media Cost
2010 – Over the past two decades, Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) has been correctly denounced as a measurement technique. The many shortcomings of this old methodology will be described at length within this paper. However, recent studies yield evidence that using the cost of media space and time provides a very useful evaluation of the news medium itself in which a story resides, similar to the way the cost of real estate impacts the overall value of a house. The cost of media space and time appears to improve correlations between media coverage and business outcomes demonstrably over other popular ...
Guidelines for Setting Measurable Public Relations Objectives: An Update
2010 – This paper expands on and updates the thinking of the Institute’s original Setting Measurable Objectives paper which was drafted in 1999 by Forrest W. Anderson, Independent Consultant, and Linda Hadley of Porter Novelli, along with contributions from members of the Institute for Public Relations Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation. In every business case – whether the organization is large or small; for-profit or nonprofit; local or global – there is an objective. Objectives may include generating a profit, approving legislation or giving back to the community. To advance the organization, those doing so need a clear understanding ...
Measuring “Company A”: A Case Study and Critique of a News Media Content Analysis Program
July 2009 – This case study analyzes a financial company’s media content analysis program and its impact on brand and reputation.
Using Public Relations Research to Drive Business Results
2008 – This paper will primarily focus on tying public relations programs to business results. It examines how a variety of organizations have used PR measurement systems to demonstrate the business outcomes of their efforts. Its purpose is to encourage the use of data-driven decision-making within the PR profession. It considers the setting of measurable goals and objectives and provides six case studies from the technology, defense, retail, airline, utility and healthcare industries in which research has been used to further business goals and communications objectives.
The Fork in the Road of Media and Communication Theory and Practice
2007 – Industry and professional studies show that public relations and corporate communication practitioners continue to not use research to plan and measure their activities in a majority of cases despite management demand. The reasons advanced for this are primarily lack of budget and lack of time to undertake research. This paper argues that there are other more fundamental underlying factors that need to be recognised including a ‘fork in the road’ in the development of modern public relations and corporate communication practice that is a critical issue to address.
Exploring the Link between Share of Media Coverage and Business Outcomes
April 2007 – Building upon a foundation established in “Exploring the Link between Volume of Media Coverage and Business Outcomes,” this paper looks at the effect of competitive share of media coverage volume on business results. Through four case studies on a non-profit hospital, a pharmaceutical brand, a B2B service and a package goods manufacturer, the authors make the case for using competitive media analysis to see stronger correlations to results.
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