From changing technology and volatile business conditions to rising internal and external scrutiny and elevated expectations despite a flat budget, the challenges are many for communications leaders. But every challenge comes with opportunity.

On that note, Mary C. Buhay, Ragan’s chief growth officer and head of councils, kicked off a Nov. 13 roundtable discussion at Ragan’s Future of Communications conference in Austin, Texas. The hourlong conversation, sponsored by Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council, focused on how communicators can assert their position as strategic value creators.

Communicators are at the forefront of change, Buhay told the group of more than two dozen communications leaders, and the opportunity to share practices and learn from one another is essential to success.

Highlights of that conversation are below. Insights are unattributed to allow the group to share freely and candidly.

How communicators demonstrate value

Buhay asked the group of internal and external communicators to share how they express the value of their work to the organization.

Responses ranged from specific performance indicators like followership on social media and growth in the number of employee brand champions to less concrete factors like a lack of negative publicity and a lessening of impacts from a crisis.

Quantitative measures are critical to proving value, said one roundtable participant.

“Define the outcome that stakeholders would like to see and then work forward to measure against that,” they said. “It’s a success if you can get business leaders to see that we are bringing forth those outcomes and changing behavior.”

The biggest challenge, another communicator said, is how to show value internally. They are working with HR and IT teams to show progress to shared business goals, such as how communications helps drive higher productivity or recruits qualified job candidates.

Communications as an intangible asset

The prevailing notion of how value is created in the organization doesn’t do communicators any favors in that effort. The classic value chain model ignores the role of communications entirely. Functions like logistics, operations, financing, product development, marketing and sales dominate.

“Communications should be integrated throughout but it’s often an afterthought,” said one communicator.

Communication is about moving a critical piece of information from one place to another, said another roundtable participant. The value is created in moving that information from point A to point B.

“It’s difficult to record long term value of things that aren’t traded in a marketplace or lack physical dimensions on income statements,” Buhay said. “Communications falls into this category. Relationships are hard to quantify.”

The language of the C-suite reflects the short-term results that investors care about, she added, but the work of communicators is long term and measured in how they increase the value of intellectual property, grow corporate reputation, and build strong relationships with customers or top talent.

Those assets can be assigned a value and help a business command a premium from customers or a potential buyer sizing a company up for an acquisition.

Establishing communications currency

Leaders care deeply about how they are perceived, said one roundtable participant. Their company conducts an annual leadership survey and sends a report to every leader’s organization with a comparison of how they perform against their leadership peers.

“Leaders really care whether their year-over-year metrics are increasing,” they said. “There’s direct value when a leader moves up because direct reports place more trust in them.”

Leaders wear their employee engagement score like a badge, they added, and other team leaders will often approach the communications team to find out how they can improve their results. That trust becomes a valuable commodity.

Sometimes leaders are too far into the weeds, said another communications executive. As strategic advisors, communicators ask good questions, clarify goals and analyze results to build trust. But that’s not enough. Communicators need to network and actively market their services inside the company.

Find executives you helped and demonstrate to others how communications became the problem fixer, said one roundtable participant. That includes translating qualitative data to quantitative results and showing a throughline to communications.

Communications may not appear on the classic value chain model that is commonly taught in business schools, Buhay said, but the way that value is created and exchanged is different than it once was.

“If we don’t assert the value of communications now, will we be squandering our golden opportunity?” she asked.

Mike Prokopeak is director of learning and council content for Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council.  Follow him on LinkedIn.

Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council offers an array of in-depth resources and networking opportunities for communications leaders. Learn more about joining here.

Future Comms Playlist

As an icebreaker, roundtable participants shared a song that described the challenges and opportunities of their work in 2025. Here are their recommendations:

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In any business, communicating about the work you’re doing with the public and your internal stakeholders is critical. At the closing keynote panel of Ragan’s Future of Communications Conference last week, a panel of communications industry leaders discussed how communications professionals can better position their efforts and have a tangible role in decision-making company-wide. Hosted by Ragan CEO Diane Schwartz, the discussion featured thoughts from Michelle Russo, chief communications officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Amy Jaick, chief marketing and communications officer at the Columbia Business School and Jennifer Thurman, chief communications officer at Dow Jones. Each panelist had insightful approaches about how to further integrate communications functions into critical decision-making processes.

Changes in approach during COVID

Life has changed so much since the outset of the pandemic, and the last few years have also informed the way the panelists approached the roles of their communications departments. For some, the need for clear and frequent communication during uncertain times helped place more value on the comms function.

“One of the opportunities that came out of the pandemic was a firmer seat at the overall table of the organization,” Russo said. “It made things very clear in terms of what was important. Comms pros do a lot every day, but our main missions became readily apparent.”

In addition, the panel discussed how communicators helped spread a message of wellness during some of the lows of the pandemic.

“There is an element of psychological safety that some organizations didn’t place emphasis on at the outset of the pandemic and you can see the after-effects,” Jaick said. “We need to help encourage wellness at work as communicators. It’s easy to let go of when the pace of work quickens, but we do better in reaching the proper audience when we have teams that feel their best at work.”

Influencing the C-suite

The function of communications, in the simplest of terms, is to tell an organization’s story both internally and externally. However, there’s a great deal that goes into getting that story told the right way, including lots of outreach, research and experimentation. Since perception of a company is such an integral part of how they’re able to function in the larger world, it then makes sense that communications should have some say in how decisions are made within the C-suite. Sometimes making this happen just takes an adjustment in tactics.

“When I came to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it was very D.C.-centric and reactive. I modernized the team to make our communications department more proactive business partners within the overall organization,” Russo said. “The team had been trained to be order takers, and it was all about output. It’s important that we focus on the outcome rather than the output. We need to determine the strategy rather than just making it about putting a message out there because we have to. It’s important to show up really ask what you’re trying to achieve with your message.”

What lies ahead

Although the panel spoke at length about the many ways that communications is gaining more perceived value from organizational leaders, they also discussed how to keep the trend of comms as a critical business arm moving along.

“My CEO hired me because I’m a strategist. I want to have a seat at the table to communicate not only the decisions that have been made but have a say about the decisions themselves,” Thurman said.

Additionally, the panel noted that backing up research on comms trends and patterns can help sway the powers that be.

“I think sometimes there’s a misperception that if you put your message out there, the audience will or read or interact with it,” Jaick said. “That’s not always the case. But when you can say what the research behind a decision is, or point to a shifting trend the C-suite should be aware of, it gives the powers that be the confidence to know that your input is highly valuable.”

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports, a good pint and ’90s trivia night. Follow him on LinkedIn.

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Under “normal” (whatever that is) circumstances, 2022 would be a year where the professional communicator would be focused on major messaging opportunities like the Olympics, FIFA’s World Cup and a bunch of important elections.

But 2022 will be anything but normal. Brands are tossing their “return to office” plans into the shredder. Most of those elections appear to be a hot mess as far as brands go – nothing good will come of any messaging around them. And who knows what sporting events will actually happen. Just dealing with the vagaries of daily life will occupy most professional communicators.

But if I put on my communications prognosticator hat, I’ll venture a guess that a few of these scenarios will be highly likely to occur in 2022:

1. Employees will continue to tell employers to “take this job and shove it.”

Communications will be increasingly tasked with both retention and recruitment.

Media efforts will be focused on polishing corporate images to help attract the best and the brightest, even though they have no control over the monetary incentives offered. Brands will also increasingly turn to the communications experts as they try to retain their internal staff. Messages around flexibility, empathy and advancement potential will take precedence over the usual brand benefits and feel-good sentiments.

Talent today wants to work for a brand that isn’t going to wreck the planet or degrade civil society, and the reputation protectors will be called into the breach.

2. Diversity will dominate audience discussions.

Diversity will influence communications, not just in terms of recruitment but in terms of the stakeholders that are important, the messages that need to be crafted and the reception that both have with your new, more diverse target audiences—both internally and externally. The people we are selling to and the editors we pitch will both be increasingly diverse. As a result, comms will be expected to do more than just talk about diversity intentions.

They will expect actions, diverse voices among your spokespeople, and new messages, as well as diverse faces pictured in the media we distribute.

3. Mistrust and skepticism will continue to define your “key media.”

A large swath of the population no longer trusts “media” as we know it. They rely on like-minded “friends” in social media, or their neighbors and friends for recommendations. That doesn’t mean you can ignore mainstream media, but it does mean that you have to pay attention to interest-specific Facebook groups and local sites and influences like Nextdoor.

The great divide in our society will impact your audience regardless of who they are or where they reside.

4. Data analytics will replace writing ability as the most sought-after skill for communications pros.

If an artificially intelligent bot can write articles, it can also write press releases. As a result, excellent writing skills will be much less valuable than an ability to optimize messaging for SEO and measure results in G4 (that latest version of Google Analytics.)

New tools can far more quickly identify influencers, create media lists, and craft SEO-friendly messages, so the value of your digital “rolodex” will vanish. Instead, the 2022 ideal new hire will be someone with Google Analytics certification, experience in data analysis and who is a whiz with Excel.

5. Do you want to be “right,” or do you want to be persuasive?

You can throw out your Strunk & White. What will matter in 2022 is speaking in a voice that sounds empathetic and authentic to your target audience. If that means abbreviations, emojis or contractions, with all due respect to Miss Vicary, my most excellent 8th grade English Teacher who taught me the very best “proper English”—in 2022 I will never let perfection get in the way of persuasion.

6. ESG is your new reputation.

Increasingly ESG (environmental social and governmental) scores drive stock price as more and more investors rely on ESG scores to assess corporate risk. Additionally, new talent is looking at your environmental record before it even considers apply for your jobs, and, if you aren’t delivering on social promises, the Twitterverse will come after you.

Therefore, you will need to prioritize those efforts in all of your communications. If you don’t, either your enemies or your competition wlll.

7. #winterOlympics, #blackhistory month, #TedLasso—oh dear!

Whatever is in the news will bring a flurry of bad puns, worse hashtags and a lot of brands trying to capitalize on the news of the moment in vain hopes that people will “engage” with them. It’s much more likely that they will cause kerfuffles on Twitter and fail to make a difference to their profits. As long as communicators believe that likes are all that matter, they will strive in vain to create content that will win our hearts.

I predict, however, that sometime in 2022 communications will come to terms with its obsession with the wrong metrics, wake up and realize that you have to measure your impact on the business, not just on your Instagram account.

Katie Delahaye Paine is publisher of The Measurement Advisor and CEO of Paine Publishing, LLC.

The post What 2022 will bring to communications appeared first on PR Daily.

Anthropologists will tell you that baby dogs and cats have evolved over the years to be to be intentionally irresistible. By being impossibly cute when they are young, they are more easily assimilated into human society, enhancing their chances of surviving, thriving and perpetuating the species. Anyone who has adopted a small critter will know that nature is right.

Who can resist a puppy? Apparently not even the most hard-core hound hater.

For about 60 years, I hated dogs. It was a learned response; I’d been bitten and attacked and knocked over repeatedly by numerous members of the species. To me they were all smelly, loathsome creatures—far too co-dependent for my liking. Cats were my kind of pet.

Then, I met Princess Leia and I fell in love, unconditionally and forever. She could poop on my rugs, dig up my flower beds, bark me out of bed at 4 a.m.—it didn’t matter. I was her biggest defender and supporter until the day we lost her to cancer. And the lack of her presence is intolerable.

Which is why I, the dog-hater, am now shopping for a new puppy.

As I pondered my metamorphosis, it occurred to me that many folks feel about measurement the way I used to feel about dogs (and yes, how many people feel about cats). They see it as a loathsome thing, the love of which is incomprehensible, that also takes too much work and costs too much money. Which is why measurement is too often relegated to the bottom of the to-do list, a task assigned by some higher-up that is invariably seen as the heaviest lift and least fun task on the list.

The question is, how do you make math and data as irresistible as a puppy?

Here are a few ideas:

1. Call it “assumption testing” and “market research.”

Too many campaigns are launched because someone higher up the ladder comes up with what they see as a “great idea” that you get to implement. The problem is that ideas are only great if they are based on solid assumptions, which is why any good communicator knows that when you begin a new campaign or initiative, you need data in order to create an effective plan.

Good, relevant, and regular measurement provides that data. It will tell you what has worked or not worked in the past.

So, when some muckety-muck comes into your office with an order to run a misguided campaign your response should be, “Wouldn’t you like to test those assumptions? Give me a chance to look at some data and we’ll get back to you with our recommendations.”

Now you’ve become part of the strategy, instead of being relegated to justifying the expense. And you’ll get your benchmarking metrics funded.

2. Call it “risk avoidance”—the accountants will love it.

Princess Leia’s barking was loud and incredibly annoying, but generally there was a reason for it. Most of the time, she was alerting me to the fact that someone was in my driveway, or that a predator was about to consume my chickens.
Regular measurement performs a similar professional heads-up function. If you know what is “normal,” you’ll also be able to spot the abnormal. So, before a potential crisis erupts, regular reporting metrics will alert you to potential problems before they become your worst nightmare.

Additionally, measurement enables you to avoid wasting money or courting disaster. Having regular standardized and predictable metrics shows you what’s working and what isn’t.

To paraphrase a Mastercard ad: “Having a good measurement system in place: A rounding error in the company budget. Knowing how to stave off a crisis: Priceless.”

3. Still not cute enough? Call it “opportunity identification.”

Too often measurement presentations sound like a request for a bigger budget. Instead, you can use measurement data to point out an opportunity: an issue where the competition is absent, or where a potential market is ignored.

One of my clients regularly looks at their share of voice in specific industry topics. When there’s a new hot topic or issue that is relevant to their business, they jump on it before anyone else does. They analyze their resources, determine if they can offer a solution or a unique perspective and then identify relevant spokespeople to talk about it. Now they’re seen as a crucial element of market development and revenue generation.

4. An even more irresistible moniker: “Investment in brand reputation.”

Measurement ensures that the communications you do and the content you produce are effective in achieving your goals, which more often than not comes down to building or protecting your brand. Unless you measure the impact of what you are doing, you have no idea whether your efforts are helping or hurting your brand—until it’s too late. So, pitch your program as an investment in the future, rather than a cost for examining the past.

Within the last month I have used measurement data to do all of the above. Yes, I know measurement is not as cute, or furry, or as good in a selfie as a puppy or a kitten. But it can be just as reliable and just as welcome when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the CEO of Paine Publishing LLC and publisher of The Measurement Advisor. Find her on Twitter @queenofmetrics.

The post Measurement needs rebranding appeared first on PR Daily.

Years ago, I was greatly honored to receive an Athena Award. On the statue itself was a quote from Plato that seared itself into my brain:

“What is honored in a culture will be cultivated there.”

In other words, what we reward, whether in the form of statuettes, raises or promotions—is what we want to grow more of. Simply admiring an attribute is not enough, we have to reward good behavior that fosters that attribute.

If you’ve ever participated in judging an award ceremony, you’ll be familiar with this process. I remember judging an award for an association that fights heart disease. We were judging newspaper coverage and told to award our points based on the accuracy of the information in a story, whether it contained specific heart-healthy messages, and its persuasiveness at getting people to act healthier. The reward was a hefty prize, with the idea that it would cultivate more people to write such stories. It worked: Year after year the stories got more frequent and more compelling.

Given the events that have taken place in the last couple of years, society seems to be demanding that we cultivate authenticity, integrity and diversity. If recent Grammys and other award shows are any indication, we are also finally starting to honor diversity in the arts.

Re-imagine business

In business, what is being honored, at least with higher compensation, stock prices, and support, seems to be starting to fall in line with other cultural changes.

• Investors and advisors are increasingly using ESG scores to decide which stocks to buy or recommend.
• More and more enlightened CEOs are increasingly focused on their “Triple Bottom Line”, i.e., looking not just at profitability and financial performance, but also their performance relative to their people and the planet.
• Watching recent hearings on Capitol Hill ,it is also clear that our political leadership will no longer tolerate (never mind honor) profit or growth as single infallible measure of success.
• Organizations are coming to grips with the fact that the young talent they want to hire won’t work for them if they aren’t seen as diverse and inclusive. Worse, it is clear that the cost of a toxic workplace culture is very steep.

As we begin to see a future beyond COVID, all kinds of businesses are “re-imagining” their work forces, their office spaces, and their ways of doing business. All of which will change what they measure, reward and honor. PR needs to do the same.

Re-imagine communications

The more I thought about this phenomenon, the more I realized the truth of employee communications guru Mary Miller’s catch phrase: “Every business problem in existence can be traced to a communication breakdown.” And in fact, while communications can’t solve everything, it certainly plays an enormous role in the changes that have recently engulfed our business lives.

Internal communicators were on the front lines of getting the word out to countless employees as to whether they needed to stay home, come to work, work from home or never come to work again. And, they also had to ensure that those who were working knew how to do so safely.

Corporate communicators may not have their names attached to grand statements in support of voting rights—or democracy or Black Lives Matter or Mother Nature—but we know who wrote the words and got them out there.

And then, of course, there are all the communications professionals on the front lines during the COVID-19 crisis, brand managers for Lysol, Clorox and whoever else was unfortunate enough to unexpectedly trend on Twitter. (If you haven’t seen Rachel Maddow’s epic bit on the PR team at Lysol, it’s well worth watching; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a TV host’s eyes get that wide.)

No matter what the issue or cause, communications is at the heart of a strategy’s success or failure—which is why it’s time to also re-imagine and rethink what we as a profession honor, cultivate, and reward. And, of course, measure.

Re-imagine measurement

It’s not just me that thinks that better metrics have to be at the core of these changes. Bill Gates appears to agree:

“I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improve the human condition.”

So, if we want to improve both the human condition as well as our organizational conditions, we need to change what we measure. No amount of column inches, impressions—or, God forbid, AVEs—is going to help you maintain your culture, your credibility or your trust.

If you are measured by placements or AVEs, then you don’t care about the perceptions that you are creating or the potential animus you may be generating with potential customers. Just ask Toyota – I don’t know how they measure their PR success these days, but if it is by counting AVEs and impressions, their summer is off to a great start. (Perhaps it was the threat of tanking Prius sales that got them to change their mind, but in the meantime, look at those impressions!)

Sadly, that’s been the attitude of far too many consumer brands for far too long. All PR needs to do is make more noise and get more attention. On the other hand, brands like Southwest Airlines that judge and reward success on perceptions or preference make every decision based on what will improve perceptions and generate preference.

So, what should we measure? Consider these metrics:

• Percentage of your stakeholders that find you trustworthy. Let’s start with trust—we’ve known how to measure it for a decade or more—and never has trust been more important to an organization. Whether it is getting people to trust you enough to heed your safety warnings, get vaccinated, come into your store or restaurant, or forgive you for your mistakes, you need to know if you have sufficient amounts of trust so that people will pay attention to what you say.
• Percentage who find what you say credible. Credibility is trust’s younger sister. People may not know you enough to trust you but could still find you credible. Just ask a hundred startup life science companies that have no track record but have enough credibility to raise millions in venture capital.
• Percentage who perceive your actions to be authentic. For a consumer-facing brand today, authenticity is key to acceptance. A generation raised on paid influencers have little patience for big brands that come across as green- or woke-washing.

Re-imagine compensation and the sales funnel

Many, if not most communicators I encounter believe that they are compensated and rewarded based on an outdated marketing model of the sales funnel. (PR generates impressions; impressions generate leads; leads generate sales.)

Logically, if communicators are rewarded for generating placements, or random inquiries and irrelevant social engagements, they’ll invest their time sending out press releases to anyone whose email they have. And, if communicators are rewarded for people opening their emails, they’re going to send more emails rather than getting employees or potential customers to actually understand what is in the email and being willing to act on the contents of these emails.

They’ll count as a victory a placement in a media outlet that has nothing to do with their organizational strategy. Do they care whether the “placement” is seen by the target audience, or whether that target audience is persuaded to consider doing business with the organization? Of course not. They get paid either way.

The problem is that today’s customer journey today is much more convoluted. Today’s path to purchase involves trust, credibility, online reviews, word of mouth–all things that depend on good communications. So, let’s start compensating PR professionals for what they do best—build  trust, credibility and improve relationships with key stakeholders, all of which we know how to measure.

Re-imagine what we honor

And, speaking of honoring, how backward is it that our profession (are you listening PRSA and IABC?) still doles out prizes for programs that generate impressions, hits, and AVES? If that’s what wins awards, then that’s what our profession will cultivate.

Just imagine if they gave out prizes for achieving actual change in behaviors or beliefs? We might then be rewarded for the role that we can and should and must play—if we ever are to become what we truly wish to be honored for. Without effectively measured corporate communications, it can’t happen.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the CEO of Paine Publishing LLC and publisher of The Measurement Advisor. Find her on Twitter @queenofmetrics.

The post How we should re-imagine what we honor—and measure appeared first on PR Daily.

For AXE, the fragrance brand owned by Unilever, the issue of vaccination in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a time to lean in.

While the issue of vaccination might be hot topic, some younger demographics have been hesitant to get the jab. AXE’s big idea? Convince its young fans to “get axeinated.”

“More than half of Gen Z adults said they were not in any hurry to get the vaccine,” AXE shares in a press release. “With young guys dropping the ball on their grooming routines during quarantine combined with their vaccine hesitancy, guys don’t have the tools to engage in a summer of attraction.”

The campaign is in part inspired by consumer data showing that vaccination status is playing a big role in online dating and dating apps.

“We’re seeing that getting vaccinated is a trending topic in dating profiles, and saying ‘fully vaccinated’ is one of the newest relationship statuses to spark attraction,” says Mark Lodwick, AXE brand director. “We also know that there’s some hesitancy among some young people to get vaccinated. As a Gen Z brand rooted in attraction and fragrance, we want to play a part in motivating young guys to get vaccinated, smell great and feel confident and get back out there in the dating scene. And we’re doing that with Get Axeinated.”

Axe is supporting the effort with an ad spot (“a light-hearted parody of a traditional press conference”) and “Axeination Kits”:

(Image courtesy of AXE)

Joining the conversation

Why did AXE feel it was appropriate to join the vaccine conversation? In large part, it was an alignment with the needs of its core consumer audience.

“AXE prides itself on being an approachable brand to young guys, so it felt natural to get involved in the vaccine conversation—one that is now opening up to younger guys as COVID-19 vaccines become more readily available to younger demographics,” says Lodwick. “As we look toward guys getting back out there as more CDC guidelines are lifted, we know that young people are looking to get close again and date in-person. AXE is all about inspiring young guys to smell their best and feel confident while navigating attraction. Vaccines are now playing an important role in that, so we wanted to get involved to motivate young guys to get vaccinated.”

To support vaccination efforts, the brand offered an “Axeination Station” in Atlanta, Georgia, where vaccine efforts have not successfully reached young, diverse communities. The effort was a learning moment for AXE and its partners, with unique challenges to be faced in an ongoing pandemic.

“This was our first in-person event since the pandemic, so we had an extra set of hurdles and protocols to go through,” says Lodwick. “We made sure that the event was following local regulations and CDC guidelines to ensure the staff and attendees’ health and safety.”

The virtual lens

To add a virtual element to the campaign, AXE worked with Snapchat Lens to create an experience where users could get “axeinated” virtually and order their axeination toolkits.

The press release detailed the partnership:

Debuting this week, AXE will launch a Snapchat Lens that enables Snapchatters anywhere in the US to digitally visit Axeination centers to get Axeinated with AXE Body Spray. Snapchatters will also have opportunities to grab the limited Axeination kits directly from the Snapchat Lens through a button feature. When clicked, the button will open up the Axeination.com landing page for everyone to claim their kits.

The virtual component is essential when targeting young consumers, and Snapchat as a platform was a logical partner, says Lodwick.

“We’re seeing younger people gravitating toward Snapchat, and we wanted to communicate the news on a platform that would really excite our guys. With the first-ever Axeination Station localized to Atlanta, we wanted to convert the event into a Snapchat Lens experience so that young people had the opportunity to participate in the Get Axeinated program virtually. They can even redeem the Axeination Kits through the Snapchat Lens button feature.”

For other brands looking to use Snapchat to engage young consumers, Lodwick and the AXE team have this advice: “We’d recommend that others utilize Snapchat to help action something for good, similar to how we’re motivating young people to get vaccinated. Snapchat is a great platform to reach young people, and we’ve seen it can be used to help drive change.”

Spreading the word

To get the message out about the campaign, AXE and its partners are working through several channels, including the news conference ad spot, the Axeination Station in Atlanta, an Axeination Kit giveaway, the virtual Snapchat Lens and a partnership with influencer Tray Bills.

“We are sharing details on ‘Get Axeinated’ through social, via organic and paid media,” says Lodwick. “The ad spot will also be running on digital OTT. The Martin Agency is managing digital, social and handled the activation in Atlanta, and the ad spot was concepted by LOLA MullenLowe and will live on digital platforms across the U.S. Edelman is leading the influencer partnership.”

Success will be measured on how the distribution of the kits leads to increased vaccination numbers in target markets and demographics around the country. “We’re spreading the word through multiple campaign elements, but success looks like distribution of our kits to help generate awareness around the vaccine,” Lodwick says.

Advice for others

 For other brands looking to join the conversation on vaccines, AXE and Lodwick recommend a fierce devotion to authenticity.

“Be authentic to your brand voice,” says Lodwick. “Our goal is simply to motivate guys to get vaccinated so we can all get back out into the world safely. We’re giving guys the tools they need to smell great, so they can reenter the world with confidence.”

How are you talking about vaccines with your external audiences, PR Daily readers?

The post How Axe Body Spray is joining the vaccine conversation appeared first on PR Daily.

1. Impressions will go on life support.

We’ve said it before, but this is the year that even the most impression-addicted folks will seek alternatives. Not only is senior leadership skeptical of meaningless numbers that don’t connect to corporate profits, but increasingly leadership, clients and others who control checkbooks are demanding to know exactly who the people, buyers and influencers behind those numbers are. If you can’t provide those details, you’ll be thrown out of the board room.

The good news is that there are a ton of tools out there that can help. The bad news is that they probably aren’t part of your toolkit yet. Tools like Spark Toro help you find the publications, people and hashtags that your target audience is actually reading. Others, like One Count integrate all of your audience data into a single source that then tells you exactly what they pay attention to and, more importantly, what they respond to.

If you haven’t got the budget for a new tool, you’ll be spending 2021 getting really good at Google Analytics, tagging everything you do, upping your SEO rank and running a lot of pre/post surveys to show you’ve moved the needle.

2. You will never leave crisis mode.

Whether you are preparing for a crisis, fearing one or recovering from one, adverse occurrences are going to occur in 2021. Whether it’s your CEO or one of your employees being positively identified as an insurrectionist.

Or discovering that you are now the target of millions of dollars of ads from The Lincoln Project, you’ll be spending more time defending your brand than you will on promoting it.

No matter how large or small the company, in highly-volatile, polarized politicized news cycles like the one we are in, it won’t take much to be the subject of a negative tweet—at best—and a prolonged investigation at worst. Never mind all the lawsuits and issues that COVID-19 will bring.

3. News junkies and journalists will probably ruin your weekends.

Millions of Americans—journalists and otherwise—have grown addicted to news alerts, twitter trends and a bunch of other technological wizardry that has turned too many of us into news junkies. As a result, journalists have to keep finding new stories to ensure that our phones regularly vibrate with the latest scandal, which is why they aren’t going to be satisfied with your happy little press release about your latest new product. And, frankly, the dumber the press releases you put out, the more likely they will be to question your credibility.

Don’t think you can get away with playing ostrich and avoiding the press altogether. That is certain to cause journalists—real ones and citizen journalists—to wonder what you’re hiding.

4. On Zoom, no one knows where your desk used to be.

We are one highly connected world these days, whether or not your organization has officially or physically eliminated silos. The modern, efficient organization will embrace this democratization of communications and realize that all kinds of people outside of legal and PR teams can be great communicators for your brand.

If you haven’t noticed, employees are your most visible brand ambassadors. Whether posting with pride on Instagram or griping about a horrible workplace on Glassdoor, your employees will be out there. So, you need to ensure that you have a communications plan that incorporates them.

The same goes for what used to be that ultimate silo: investor relations. The truth is that whatever happens with communications these days impacts your stock and vice versa, which of course also impacts employee morale, government affairs and community relationships, not to mention your customers.

5. Empathy and trust will be essential.

The experiences of the past 12 months—whether it be the deaths from COVID-19, the losses in fires and hurricanes, the horrifying death of George Floyd and subsequent protests, or the attack on the US Capital—or any of the dumpster fires were witnessed in the last year, these events rocked us to our collective cores. Regardless of our politics, beliefs or locations, we all witnessed too much in 2020 to easily forget all those events.

Therefore, we all know a lot more about empathy than we did a few years ago. Whether it was for nurses, victims, teachers, police or just regular humans, we witnessed corporations coming forward in remarkable ways to communicate empathy towards those suffering or in need. We all know how that made us feel, and we all want more of those feelings.

Brands that show their humanity and stand for something will stand out in 2021, and consumers will make sure they do. Organizations that lead with purpose and convictions do better in terms of shareholder returns, stock price and the ability to attract and keep talent than those that don’t. So, start figuring out how you can join that club.

6. You’ll hire more cartoonists and comics than industry experts.

The other survival skill we all appreciated in 2020 that will have ramifications for 2021 is humor. We laughed at memes, videos, late night comedy bits—it was a universal balm to soothe our anxious minds.

The companies that did it well made a lasting impression. When Georgia Pacific needed to calm a worried public that was hoarding toilet paper, Meg Fligg, their director of corporate communications rolled out the potty humor to make their point. The result: their messages made it into and onto every major media outlet.

Your audience doesn’t want more lectures or more people telling them what they should or should not do. They want to laugh. Smart communications pros will learn a lesson and ditch the typical boring corporate consultants and industry experts and put comics into their lineup.

7. Niche and issue-specific influence will be critical.

Speaking of influence, local and issue-specific influencers with fewer followers will make far more difference to your brand in 2021. In order to influence anyone, a person has to have credibility, empathy and trust.

In 2020, many influencers lost much of their trust for posting tone-deaf photos or saying stupid things. Obviously, there are many that emerged from 2020 with more credibility than ever, but only the richest of budgets can afford them. The key to efficient influencer marketing in 2021 is going to be to identify experts in niche areas—specific breeds of dog, specific types of food, or specific genres of culture—if they want to move the needle.

8. Platforms and people, you’ve never heard of will derail your plans.

I’m willing to bet that few corporate communicators were on TikTok or even knew what Parler was prior to 2020—but suddenly that’s where everyone had to be. I haven’t a clue what the 2021 version of those phenoms will be, but there will be one, and you had better be prepared. You don’t need to jump on every platform, but you do need to do the research necessary to make informed decisions about whether you should be on them, and if so, what kind of content will work.

9. Local and CSR will trump pricing, features and delivery.

We had a hint of this in 2019, when purpose-driven brands were able to attract better talent and grab more market share. In 2020, it was organizations that conveyed empathy and showed that they care. 2021 will see a lot more of the same. Good behavior and connections to local markets will drive consumers back into stores more than sales or gimmicks.

As people saw friends and neighbors lose jobs and their favorite restaurant, hardware store or gift shop shut down, the importance of buying local and supporting local businesses hit many in the face. That loyalty isn’t going anywhere in 2021. Sure, we’ll still shop on Amazon, but it’s interesting that Etsy’s sales were up 71% in the first half of 2020. And we’ll continue to order takeout from local restaurants, shop more often at the local farmer’s market and buy gifts from local merchants.

Price features and other standard USPs aren’t nearly as important in a pandemic-driven economic crisis. Smart brands will figure out how to tie their stories and their products to local niche audiences.

10. Events will continue to be virtual.

As excited and hopeful as we all are now that COVID-19 vaccines are available, the simple availability of a vaccine does not guarantee that people’s minds and perceptions will change sufficiently to allow you to conduct events profitably and successfully in person.

First of all, from the organizers perspective, until we have some sort of reliable, trustworthy and credible system to certify that attendees are vaccinated, your organization can’t assume the liability of hosting an in-person event. And even if you do provide proof of vaccination or three negative tests, you still need to overcome attendee fears. If your stakeholders perceive travel to be dangerous, or even inconvenient, they won’t want to attend in person.

If you can afford to do a “hybrid” event, with all the costs involved for an in-person event plus all the costs and personnel of managing a virtual event, you’ll be fine. A better solution is to rethink why you are doing the event, look at your data and figure out what the most cost-effective solution really is,

Looking for more insights on the latest in social media and digital communications? Don’t miss our virtual event March 16.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the CEO of Paine Publishing LLC and publisher of The Measurement Advisor. Find her on Twitter @queenofmetrics.

The post What trends will shape the future of measurement? appeared first on PR Daily.

I can’t tell you how many clients have told me in recent days that when their agency presents results, they know they are “B.S.” because the numbers are ridiculous.

We know that professional communicators are far more than just flacks for bad people or cheap alternatives to advertising. Public relations as a practice can and does educate and persuade, provide context and perspective, whether in a crisis or advocating for a cause. But it gets a bad rap because it reports its results in trillions of impressions or billions of clicks.

What it should be measuring these days are the things it is best at: saving money by building relationships, trust and empathy; framing and positioning the organization on relevant issues; nourishing loyalty; protecting and enhancing reputations; and helping your organization get found when someone is looking for you.

Sadly, none of those wonderful benefits are measured by what most people use for metrics these days.

The good news is that there are a number of tools available today or on the near-term horizon that can measure what needs measuring right now. The bad news is that very few practitioners realize they need them in their toolkits.

1. You need a little AI love in your life.

Tech platforms have been touting their artificial intelligence and “machine learning” capabilities for years, but until very recently no one had actually delivered a usable tool that used either one. In fact, after a heated discussion last October at our Summit on the Future of Measurement in which half the people there mentioned AI as part of the future, I dismissed the entire notion by saying that AI wouldn’t be useful to PR pros until it could tell them how to respond to a potential crisis.

One of the attendees, Fullintel CEO Gaugarin Oliver took the challenge, and six months later I stood corrected.  Oliver teamed up with Texas A&M Professor W. Timothy Coombs,  who literally wrote the book on crisis response (actually several of them), and used Coombs theory to teach his AI system to detect a brewing crisis, identify the type of crisis it was (according to Coombs SCCT theory) and select the best possible response, defined by which produced the fastest return to neutrality after a spate of negative press.

In a time when crises happen every day and sometimes every hour, your need help from AI to get you through.

Talkwalker has also turned its AI tools onto helping out brands in these new and unsettling times, developing a “Love Index” that identifies America’s favorite 50 brands. Far more important, however, is that in the process of identifying the top 50, they were also able to identify the specific things that those brands do to be come so lovable.  So next time the haters get you down, you can turn to their report and figure out how to get the love back.

In a similar vein, Signal.AI optimized its platform to provide insight into how you and your peers might be positioned on key issues. What used to be a laborious manual process—and far too expensive to include competitors—is now accessible through a couple of clicks.

2. You need your own Magic 8 Ball.

Even if you don’t face the threat of constant crisis, it always helps to be able to predict the future and your toolbox definitely needs a personal Magic 8 Ball (if you’re too young to remember them, you’d ask the 8-ball a question, turn it upside down and find your answer).

There were 20 pre-programmed answers which was pretty limited. In contrast Proof (proofanalytics.ai) is designed to analyze years of communications, marketing and financial data to inform you on where you should spend your budget going forward. Most recently, it’s identified 80 of the most frequently asked problems or questions that communications professionals have, and provide the answers using your own proprietary data.

Conversus.ai is another handy dandy prediction machine. Conversus.ai not only analyzes your data to tell you what happened but based on that data can predict what’s coming next. They’ve already got modules designed to address specific issues like trust and mistrust, CSR, advocacy and loyalty.

3. You need to connect your results to the bottom line.

Perhaps the biggest trend today is integration of multiple disciplines and data streams into a single dashboard that can show contribution to business goals—a process that used to take a tremendous amount of technical expertise, money and time. Now tools like Google Data Studio make the process fast and easy so you can spend your time gleaning insight from your data, not copying data between Excel sheets.

And speaking of Google, Google Surveys now provides all of us with a way to conduct surveys for free.  You can no longer claim it’s too complicated or expensive to measure trust, or empathy or employee engagement these days. Just pick 5 or 6 statements from any number of existing survey instruments like the Grunig Trust Survey (also free) set them up on a 1-7 Likert Scale (Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) in Google Surveys, and send them out.

4. You need to know if you can be found.

Increasingly, for PR folks, search rankings are becoming the go-to metric to replace that vague, ubiquitous goal of “awareness.” The best way to gauge whether you are making progress on any of those fronts is to check Google. If Google turns up mentions of your progress in the first page, congratulations, you’ve been successful. If you’re down on page 10 you need a new strategy. You also need tools like MOZ and Spy Fu to measure your progress and Answer the Public to figure out what terms you should use to be more relevant.

Those are all tools that are available today for your reimagined toolkit—but new ones are being introduced every month, and expect a flurry of new developments in November, Measurement Month, and around the PRSA International Conference at the end of October.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the CEO of Paine Publishing LLC and publisher of The Measurement Advisor. Find her on Twitter @queenofmetrics.

The post How to reimagine your measurement toolkit for the ‘next normal’ appeared first on PR Daily.

Here are some lessons communicators should take from the recent election cycle:

1. Polls are only as good as people who answer them.

For the second time in four years the media and their pollsters are once again wringing their hands trying to figure out what went wrong. As anyone who has ever done any surveys at all, the truth is that  you have to get a large enough representative sample and a large enough sample size of any particular cohort before you start drawing sweeping conclusions, never mind redrawing the political map of the United States.

The reality is that this year, even more so than 2016, people were less likely to answer phone calls from unknown numbers. Think about it. People are using their phones today less and less as a communication device and more as a way to shop, bank, track their kids, check their health and figure out if they’re getting enough exercise.  Why would you want to stop all that productive activity for a call from a number you don’t recognize?

Secondly, for the past 4-5 years there’s been a steady drum beat from the president and his followers not to trust the “Lame Stream Media.” If you are part of the 40% of the country that watches Fox News or follows President Trump, and you get a phone call from someone saying “I’m from the New York Times (or NPR, CNN, etc.) and I’d like to ask you a few questions,” chances are good you will hang up.

As a result, the actual pool of people who responded to polls was smaller, and while statisticians account for that through their models, the old saying is still true: “Garbage in, garbage out.”

Compounding the problem is that people who are engaged in politics and keep up on the news are far more likely to answer a poll, and they tend to fall into the “highly-educated” demographic, not the “without a degree” demographic. No matter how much you adjust for education, pollsters still started with a much smaller pool of Trump voters.

Now we’ve all been there. You put out a survey, send a bunch of reminders, and still only end up with 100 responses. So, you make do with what you have, ignore the data that isn’t statistically valid and draw what conclusions you can. Perhaps you resend the survey or put lots of caveats around the analysis—which is fine, unless you are planning the election of the next leader of the free world.

The real problem with bad polling is that we’ve become far too addicted to it. Yes, I too, like many of my friends, spent much of the week before the election refreshing www.fivethirtyeight.com, just to reduce my anxiety.  It didn’t work.

I doubt that Americans, never mind PR people, will ever have the patience to ignore the polls and just live with not knowing, but it’s probably preferable to believing something we know is unreliable.

The better solution, of course, is for researchers to figure out how to get the opinions of those who aren’t picking up the phone. Implanted sensors into the amygdala? Hacking into home security cameras to find out what they’re reading and talking about? Mall-intercept surveys (assuming malls will still exist by 2022)? Seems like a good area for artificial intelligence and the technology gurus to explore.

2. Money can’t buy you love—or votes—but relationships work really well.

Early estimates are that some $14 billion will have been spent by campaigns in the 2020 elections—a staggering amount of money. (Try not to think about what else it might have been spent on: the climate, schools, nutrition, health and/or housing for those in need.)

Was it worth it? Some of it was. The credo in campaigns is that “early money screams, and late money whispers,”  In other words, money that comes into a campaign early enables campaigns to be innovative and try new things, find new voters, experiment with different forms of persuasion. Money that comes in late in the game—think of the flood of donations after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg—only helps to repeat and reinforce what the campaign has already done. And the worst part is that they have no idea whether anything works. Without actual votes, the only metrics either come from the polls (see No. 1) or from less valid metrics like social engagement that doesn’t really reflect the intent of the voter.

There’s a big lesson for us in all of that. When you are on a tight budget and need to carefully target your communications, you can be more innovative, think differently and very likely have great impact. When you throw money at a “general public” it lands on deaf ears.

What we’ve heard from the campaigns is that grass roots organizing, house parties and other ways local people bring local messages to a neighborhood works. PR people have known that for years, and never gotten the credit they deserve. Instead, marketers like to spend big bucks on splashy things and claim attribution when it’s not there.

The problem for 2020 Democrats was they decided to observe CDC guidelines and eschewed door knocking and in-person gatherings and the Republicans didn’t. Which is why in some cases, even though Biden won the state, down-ballot Democrats lost big.

What that tells us is that when you have a well-coordinated effort that includes paid, earned and owned efforts focused on building relationships – you get measurable results.

3. Quantity does not equal quality.

“Quality” media coverage does not derive from the circulation of a media outlet or even the credibility of the media outlet. It includes a combination of the right message reaching the right audience at the right time. Throwing millions at TV audiences in the last two weeks of a campaign has little effect, if your target audience is getting all his/her information from Reddit, TikTok or podcasts.

In order to succeed you need to listen to your target audience, figure out what messages resonate, and then put money behind the right messages, targeted at the right audience, via their most credible sources. The Wall Street Journal has great reach and credibility, but if your audience is 18-year-old girls, it’s not going to have much impact. Instead, you should define quality as not just the influence of the media outlet, but also whether the story contains your key messages, desired quotes, desirable photo and reaches the right audience.

4. Be who you are, and see who is pleased.

Another lesson is something my therapist told me many times: “Stop trying to please everyone, just be who you are and see who is pleased.”  Donald Trump and Joe Biden never wavered from their very real and authentic personas. The people that voted for either one was pleased enough by the persona of their chosen candidate to vote for him to be president. The winner clearly pleased more people than the other guy.

One of the most powerful lessons PR people can learn from these COVID times is that we are all human. The top political correspondent for NPR, Mara Liasson, is frequently interrupted by her dog on national radio. Children come into top level meetings demanding macaroni and cheese. Only a psychopath would not empathize with pros working through these occasional hiccups in one’s professional life. So, the number one lesson for 2020 is that empathy and authenticity is the order of the day. It’s what you need to build trust, attract top talent, and grow your customer base.

5. If Joe Biden can win the U.S. presidency with virtual events, you can win virtually too.

Granted, there’s no substitute for knocking on individual doors, but not all things virtual failed in the 2020 election. Biden took a lot of grief for doing conference calls and outreach from his basement in Delaware, but it didn’t stop him from winning.

This week a leading health journalist, Michelle Forzley, advised a group of marketers (of which I was one) not to plan on in-person events until spring of 2022 at the earliest. As she walked us through all the details of vaccine release, distribution and actually getting people to take it, it was clear that no one is going to be comfortable going to large in-person gatherings in the next year or so. Rethink your event, figure out new ways to build relationships, get leads or get your messages across. I

t’s the time to rethink and reinvent, not just try to replicate the real world on Zoom.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the CEO of Paine Publishing LLC and publisher of The Measurement Advisor. Find her on Twitter @queenofmetrics.

The post What we’ve learned about communications from the 2020 Election appeared first on PR Daily.

In the unlikely event that you are actually measuring the outcomes of your diversity, equity and Inclusion (DE&I) efforts, chances are good you’re doing it wrong.

In 2014, 66% of corporations had no metrics at all, and virtually no one (less than 6%) was measuring the ROI, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).  There’s not a lot of evidence that the situation has improved since then.

Sure, lots and lots of companies are issuing press releases scrambling to at least sound like they are embracing principles of DE&I, but one thing has become very clear: they’re talking about and measuring the wrong things. When any organization comes out with a “statement” about the recent protests, Black Lives Matter, racism, or whatever they feel they need to talk about, it takes only a minute or two for the Twitter-verse to discover whether they have passed or failed the true diversity test.

When I read this excellent piece of advice on why most D&I programs fail, being the Queen of Metrics I couldn’t help but think that they all have one thing in common: lack of good, valid measurement.

What is the correct definition of diversity?

The first mistake every organization has made for years, and only recently started to correct, is the basic definition of diversity. When you say the word “diverse” to many managers, a lot of them will assume they’re doing fine if they see a sufficient number of black and brown faces when they look out into an all-hands meeting.

They don’t see the people who are routinely discriminated against because of their gender—whatever it might be. They don’t think about the person with a disability who might not be able to read lips now that you’ve required wearing masks while in the office.

So, when you’re setting up your systems to measure diversity, make sure you make your questions inclusive and broad enough to include every minority or previously disenfranchised group.

Defining success by the wrong numbers

The other mistake that almost all organizations make is to simply look at minority employees and vendors as a percentage of the entire employee population. But those numbers are misleading and ultimately discriminatory in and of themselves. Too many minority employees end up at the bottom of the salary ladder. For minority vendors, sadly all you need to do is put your wife, sister, or daughter in charge, and you qualify as a “minority-owned” business. That doesn’t do anything for the historically discriminated-against businesses owned by people of color.

If you’re measuring based on headcount, you need to measure by team, rank and title. And, when you’re putting together a new department or a new task force, make sure you’re measuring diversity of opinions and perspectives.

Making decisions based on unconscious bias and/or unrecognized racism

As we’ve seen in countless #MeToo stories, discrimination and harassment can too easily be baked into the culture of an organization. In one company, a minority woman was hiring new staff for her team. Her top choice was a minority woman like herself. Her white supervisor expressed a concern that the hire “would look bad” if the entire team was made up of minority women—clearly oblivious to the dozens and dozens of teams in the organization that were made up entirely of all white men. Just this week, Hearst fired the president of its magazine division despite years of complaints of a toxic culture. Such cultures go on for so long and become so intrinsic to a company that bad behavior becomes “normal.”  But in order to survive in today’s economy, nothing is normal, and change is inevitable.

You can’t root out root out bad behavior by just measuring head counts. You need to look at the words and images you use in all of your communications. For starters, run a content analysis of your emails, website and intranet to check for diversity in words, photographs and videos.

Avoid FOFO: Fear of Finding Out

Employee surveys are ubiquitous measures of corporate “happiness” and “engagement.” But they are almost always missed opportunities to learn anything about how your employees are really feeling about their environment. Many of my clients won’t even put a “prefer not to say” option when asking about race or gender, for fear of offending someone. Or, more tellingly, many pull questions because they believe they can’t do anything to address a problem if it emerges. Never mind HR’s traditional reluctance to change or add questions because it may raise consistency issues.

But let’s put this in perspective. What is more important, consistency with a survey that has measured the culture of the past, or finding out how employees perceive behavior, discrimination, and inclusion today. And don’t even raise the budget issues. What’s going to cost more: a solid piece of survey research or the legal fees for the lawsuit that could be waiting for you, never mind the PR nightmare that will accompany it?

And yes, I’m sure it sounds very scary to be asking questions about personal feelings, race or discrimination but not knowing those answers is far riskier. Never be afraid to ask an opinion. People like their opinions to be heard, and you’ll probably learn something.

To learn more about measuring the success of your D&I communications, see this article.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the CEO of Paine Publishing LLC and publisher of The Measurement Advisor. Find her on Twitter @queenofmetrics.

The post Evaluating DE&I? You’re probably doing it wrong appeared first on PR Daily.

2020 will be a challenging year for communicators.

The news holes will be taken up with all the usual headlines of a new decade: presidential campaigns, the Olympics, and a few other minor stories like impeachment and the usual corporate crisis. And those are just the things we already know about.

The question for professional communicators isn’t how to break through all that clutter. You probably can’t—and probably don’t want to, since your most likely breakthrough scenario would be a major crisis.

The real question is, how do get your point across to senior leaders in such a crazy year?

Here are few survival tips for 2020:

1. Put yourself on a media diet.

Everyone from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to your archrival in the industry is going to be pushing false narratives and creating copycat media outlets that look like the real thing. The answer is to focus your attention only on those media outlets and platforms that matter to your stakeholders. That doesn’t mean ignoring social media or podcasts; it means doing your homework and making sure you have a thorough understanding of what’s important to your customers, employees, shareholders, volunteers, donors or constituents.

The outlets and platforms matter less than the people who are influencing the opinions, beliefs, actions and behaviors of your stakeholders. So vet your sources carefully, make sure they matter to your stakeholders, and then follow the postings of those influencers with the diligence of Sherlock Homes—and ignore everything else.

2. Use a measurement dashboard to keep your focus on your organization’s strategic priorities.

Do not get distracted by the daily vagaries of the news cycle nor by whoever walks into your office with a clever idea. Build a set of metrics and/or a dashboard that starts with your organization’s strategic priorities. Then map out the path that shows how your team contributes to those priorities. A good dashboard should reflect how all the elements of your communications program are contributing to each of the priorities.

In other words, stop worrying about how many clicks that last social media campaign generated, or how many people shared that last news story. Focus your time and attention on how all your activities helped realize your organization’s goals.

3. Ask the boss for what you need to make sure you achieve your goals.

Forget about tooting your horn or creating a brag book of the great stuff you did. Who has time for that when there are a million other things to do? When you do get the 30 seconds in an elevator with your boss’s boss, tell him/her what you need in order to hit a home run. Use your measurement data to discover what isn’t working or isn’t succeeding as well as other efforts. Then recommend moving resources from those less successful efforts to what you know will make you a star.

4. Deliver a whack on the side of your corporate heads.

Years ago, when I was probably way over my head in a new job as director of corporate communications at the largest independent software company on the planet, someone gave me a book called “A Whack on the Side of the Head.”

I quickly consumed it, and some people thought I was a genius and some perceived me as a professional provocateur. But however you viewed my ideas, they certainly weren’t what anyone was expecting.

These are uncertain times, and the foundations that many communications programs were built on are disappearing as fast as the Greenland ice sheet. Pretty much every idea that someone thought of last year won’t work this year.

So read the book, and when you do have a chance to make recommendations or suggest changes, think big change. If you can’t think of a new idea, go ask your customers or someone you don’t hear from every day. Better yet, do a quick Google Poll to survey your stakeholders and get their ideas. Whatever you do, don’t sound like yesterday’s solutions.

5. Find your own media-free zone.

For me it’s giving the dog a belly rub. There’s nothing like being rewarded with the puppy equivalent of a purr to get you out of whatever headspace you’re stuck in. Whether it’s a walk on the beach, a hike in the woods, a 10-minute soak in your hot tub, or giving your puppy a belly rub—there has to be time in your day when you step away from your desk, turn the media off and get a new perspective on whatever problem you’re trying to solve.

So take that time to clear your head before you start trying to communicate up.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the CEO of Paine Publishing LLC and publisher of The Measurement Advisor. Find her on Twitter @queenofmetrics.

The post How PR pros can stand out in 2020 appeared first on PR Daily.

This article originally ran in 2019 and is part of our annual countdown of the most-viewed stories from PR Daily.

After some 32 years of measuring communications efforts, I can definitively declare that the three most frequent words I’ve heard are “show my value.”

They are frequently preceded by “help me” “need to” “can’t” and “how to.”

Whether you work for a giant conglomerate, a tiny nonprofit or a government agency, showing value is at the core of most communicators’ pain. At some point, everyone needs to somehow explain to senior management their contribution to the organization and to, hopefully, shed light on the best ways to communicate your value to senior leaderships.

Before we even get to practical tips, we need to dive into the underlying drivers behind those three words, so let’s start by unpacking the reasons behind the need.

Too many comms pros, as well as their bosses, see measurement as a binary construct: A campaign either wins or loses. In your performance review, you either show value or you don’t. And the downside of failure is much worse than the upside of success.

If we design measurement to yield yes-or-no results, then we design situations that create a fear of failure: You win and get a raise, or you fail and get passed over for the job you really want. At best, we present ourselves with three possible results: little green, yellow, and red lights. Red means, “I’m doomed,” green means, “I can go on vacation,” and yellow means, “Back to the grindstone.”

The problem is that most of those dashboards never teach us how to change those colors.

Chances are good that most every other department in your organization is using some sort of data to drive efficiency and improvement. They look at data as a learning source to determine what it will take to make their department or organization successful—however they’re defining success. So if you’re not there presenting data, you’re left out of those important conversations.

Thus a good measurement report like the one below doesn’t pass judgement on failure or success; it shows you how to turn all those red and yellow lights to green. The example below ranks various communications efforts according to the agreed-upon goal, (in this example, it’s engagement) and then factors in the resources required, so you can see which were effective (the programs that generated high engagement for relatively low cost) and those that may offer an opportunity to increase efficiency.

So the first step to greater communications success is to jettison the binary mentality and adopt a comparative perspective so you’re examining which efforts succeeded the most for the least amount of resources spent.

Then follow these four steps to “communicating up”:

• Speak the same language.

The first thing you need to do is making sure you’re speaking the same language as your boss, your boss’s boss and your boss’s boss’s boss. Schedule a meeting with anyone who needs to see your results, and get consensus on what “value” means to them. But it’s not just about definitions. You need to make sure that whatever is keeping them up at night is the same thing that’s you’re addressing in your research. Get inside their head as much as you can to understand what data they need to have in order to make better decisions.

• Understand what decisions need to made.

Communicating your results to management isn’t the end goal; it’s part of the process. At the end of the process should be a clear strategy for improvement, so make sure you get clarity around what decisions need to be made from your data. Do you need evidence that a program needs more resources? Or fewer? Do you need to convince someone that they’re wasting money? The answers will determine the nature of the data you need and how you use it.

• Cut out the blah-blah-blah…

Sugarcoating results is not appreciated in boardrooms. If there’s a problem that is costing you money, resources, reputation or trust, it needs to be fixed quickly. PR people are famous for presenting the proverbial half-full glass as one that is practically overflowing. That never works in boardrooms. Too many people can pick your arguments apart. So remember that the data is the data, and you learn more from failure than you ever do from success.

• Keep the stakeholders top of mind.

The one way to win an argument with senior leadership and get egos off the table is to pull the “stakeholder card.” Frame your results and your recommendations from the perspective of the target audiences, and be clear about how you contribute to the process that gets stakeholders to act in the desired way.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the CEO of Paine Publishing LLC and publisher of The Measurement Advisor. Find her on Twitter @queenofmetrics.

The post How to show top bosses your value appeared first on PR Daily.

PR pros can’t get clear business objectives from their clients and bosses, and if they do, leadership isn’t always clear about how they expect communications to contribute to those business goals.

That’s one of the biggest complaints I hear from agencies, as well as a surprisingly large number of in-house communications professionals.

If that’s the case in your organization, my advice would be to make up your own business goals, present them to leaders (or the client), and tell him/her that unless you hear otherwise in the next few days, this is what you’ll be measuring against.

That may seem daunting, but it’s easier that you think if you follow these rules:

1. Measure your contribution to your culture and mission. 

A company’s culture and its mission constitute an evergreen set of values that supersede and outlast strategic plans, annual KPIs, quarterly goals and all the other drivers of corporate dashboards. Its mission is the organization’s reason and purpose for existing.

If you work for a company like Southwest Airlines, where your company’s core foundation is its culture, defining metrics is easy. Your choices will always be driven by culture. At Southwest it’s all about giving people “the freedom to fly.” So when they report on their results, they quantify the extent to which their external and internal media reflects that culture—the extent to which employees delight customers, the extent to which their employees volunteer in their communities, and the extent to which employees and customers engage with their message. As a result, its stock price, its ESG score and its reputation consistently outrank the competition’s.

Marathon Oil’s culture is all about safety, so executives don’t just look at short-term financial goals; they measure effectiveness of their decisions in terms of the safety of the communities they impact.

We can all learn from companies like this, so if your organization has a strong culture and a clear mission, create metrics that show how your communication efforts enhance and support that culture.

2. Tie your metrics to the strategic plan.

Sadly, a lot of professional communicators work in an environment where culture and mission are so far removed from day-to-day reality that tying your metrics back to them seems feels like a moon shot, so they use whatever activity metrics their agency or clipping service throws up. The problem is that those metrics are even further removed from business or mission-related metrics than the moon.

So your next stop is to study the strategic plan. Most organizations put them out every few years as a guide to decision-making to make sure the organization ends up in the markets with the customers it needs in order to grow. Generally they have from three to five major initiatives that typically focus on sales, market share, new products and/or new markets.

• Gather your team, sit down with the strategic plan, and brainstorm about how what you do every day that can or will support that plan. Once you’ve defined those contributions, continue your brainstorming about potential indicators affirming that your efforts are affecting the strategic objectives. For example, if part of the strategy is to expand sales in new markets, you might want to increase your share of visibility or virality in those markets. Your metric might be: “Increase share of desirable voice in xyz market.”
• If the strategic plans include new products, a common indicator of engagement with a new product or initiative might be downloading information about it, so your metric might be an increase in downloads from the website.
• If the strategic plan includes a shift in your market positioning, you can measure your contribution to that by tracking the degree to which your brand is associated with that positioning in social media and traditional media compared against other competing brands.

Now focus on those metrics that tie to the plan, and ignore any irrelevant data that doesn’t relate to key strategic initiatives. No one has the bandwidth to deal with all the various data points that all the various vendors and dashboards can produce, so focus on the ones that are relevant.

3. When all else fails, tie your metrics to the stakeholders. 

The one thing that unites sales, marketing, finance and communications is concern for the stakeholders. So you can never go wrong by focusing your measurement program around key stakeholders.

Start by listing all the stakeholders that are most important to your business. Now, rank them from most important to least. Focus on the top two or three stakeholder groups.

Next put yourself in their shoes; if you don’t know what walking a mile in their shoes feels like, advocate for research to find out—or spend a week in sales.

When I was a young marketing manager at Hewlett Packard, we were about to reinvent how the company communicated with its dealers—the folks that carried HP calculators and printers  and who, we hoped, would soon carry our laptops and LaserJets. My very smart boss, Resa Pearson, sent all of us out to spend a week talking with dealers in different parts of the country to find out how they wanted us to support them and how they wanted to be communicated with. In part because we understood the needs of the people we were communicating with, our product launch materials were among the most successful (both in terms of dealer reception and orders) in company history.

If you really don’t have the budget to ask stakeholders what their issues are, just be human. Think about what their lives might be like, and then do a little research online to find existing data on what it’s like to work in their industry or have their job.

Now, formulate your objectives about what might make them think or act in a way that benefits your organization. Translate that into tangible terms, things that you can count—engagement on a website, attendance at an event, signing a petition, etc.

Take those metrics to senior leadership to show how you are, in fact, making it easier to sell into that target audience.

Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of Paine Publishing LLC and the publisher of  The Measurement Advisor. 

The post Unclear on execs’ business objectives? Set your own, and start measuring appeared first on PR Daily.