After much behind the scenes debate the UK PR industry has finally taken a step out of the shadows and stood tall. The UK’s leading public relations title PR Week announced this week that it would no longer ‘accept AVEs (Advertising Value Equivalents) as a method of measurement in its awards.’
For years, clients and agencies have rightly been asking in-house and agency PR’s for metrics to confirm their investment in communications initiatives.
For some very inexplicable reason the PR industry decided to measure the success of it’s work in advertising terms. Hmmm. How confident this was. We’ve placed a great story, which the journalist feels is strong and newsworthy and worth a few column inches. The story carries a number of the client’s ‘key messages’ and we going to tell the client that our work has helped them save X amount because had they bought the advertising space they would have had to spend Y. What a totally undermining and ridiculous way of measuring the success of professionals whose job is to understand human behaviour and promote causes, values and beliefs to wide ranging audiences. No wonder those in ad-land have been enjoying Champagne budgets.
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations, of which I’m a member of it’s Council, have been having it’s own debate for a number of years about the value of AVE’s. Last June in Barcelona the CIPR along with the Global Alliance For Public Relations decided to move away from AVE as a standard measurement system.
So, with PR Week now not accepting this standard in entries for it’s awards, the question is now about how long it will take industry to focus on other measurements and accept PR for the strength it provides to brand and reputation development and management?
In my opinion Public Relations should be the driver and not the subservient to disciplines that traditionally command the big budgets.
A hat-tip to PR Week, but we still have a long way to go until we are perceived for more than just people doing media relations and gaining column inches.
Facebook or Bust, The Audience Is Listening
Friday, September 9th, 2011George Lucas was right, 'The audience IS listening'
Facebook has brought together an audience of incredible numbers. The social networking giant is today a community of people that keeps on growing, creating for businesses an opportunity to reach out directly to consumers. But here lies the question, why are businesses still looking like ‘rabbits in the headlights’ and failing to truly engage with audiences that can help many survive during these hard economic times?
Today, Facebook has over 750 million users worldwide. For many businesses that figure is a fantasy, after all, are we going to engage with so many? So let’s narrow this figure down into more manageable and relevant numbers. In the US there are over 154 million ‘active’ users, Indonesia comes in second with 40 million and a 16 per cent penetration rate, while in the UK there are 30 million users reaching half of the population. Malaysia has over 11 million users accounting for nearly 1 in 2 residents, while Singapore has a very active 2.5 million with 54% of people being on Facebook.
And the figures don’t stop there. Here are some more, more than have of Facebook users access the network each day, half of which do so through their mobile phones. And those that access Facebook through a smartphone or other mobile device are ‘twice as active as Facebook compared to non-mobile users.’
For many companies and organisations, these numbers are very 2-dimensional. The audience is there, but the history and culture of 20 century business dictates that for many they still broadcast to them through a given Facebook Page.
Audience engagement is much more than a Facebook Page and the apps and tabs that these Pages have. It is about, well, engagement. It is about listening and delivering. In business it is about meeting needs. And to meet business needs you needs to re-invent itself, spending time speaking an engaging with your various audiences.
Many companies are focused on the comfort of your own structure. Safe in the knowledge of how they have always delivered their business. But what about your audience? Have they been happy in how they have received your business?
As Facebook show’s us, people today are connected online. For many they check their network, their community first thing in the morning. People seek input, advice and support from their community that they have before they have spent money. Today, people are happy to share bad experience, which shapes many companies brands and reputations.
While engagement is certainly not as cheap as business thinks it is, it creates a much more personal relationship than brands have ever had with it’s audiences. It creates the loyalty, the holy-grail of business relationships that many aspire for.
Think about it this way, how do you like being talked at?
Tags: advertising, audience, business, customer service, engagement, facebook, marketing, recession, relationships, social media, social networking
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