More from the doom-monger in chief...

After another PR Week appearance, I'm getting a bit worried that there is only negative news coming from the public sector public relations fraternity... That's probably because despite some briefs still coming out, the news isn't that great.

In fact, my initial response to the report which showed that 47% of PR agencies with public sector clients have lost some business was, "who are the 53% who are lying."  Truth is that every agency has suffered, but I suppose some may have just escaped with budget cuts as some activity has been allowed through - and I don't know how Daryl Wilcox defined "public sector". And I agree that there is still life in the sector, it will just look very different from life under the last government.

So, my more considered response to PR Week though, was:
"The pressure is on all public sector departments to reduce spending across the board and it's clear that despite the many successes in the past, marketing and communications is one of the first areas to feel the pressure.


"No organisation which receives government money is protected from these communications cuts.

"But within these cuts, public bodies should look at how they can use this opportunity to improve their communications.  Bringing in agency support to devise new strategies, or working in more flexible ways with their agency partners should be investigated. Communications activity that is planned and delivered effectively can demonstrate real return on investment and actually realise the government mantra of spending only to save in the future."

And this return on investment could help address serious issues, as I wrote about earlier in helping NICE improve uptake of antenatal care.

Nice shows we still need government PR... if not the fat cats

Was interested to see the anger on Panorama and in the media on the salaries of the government comms fat cats.  PR Week covered the story and I obviously had my say there.  But Paul Cardin's response made me think...

He said:

"No sympathy whatsoever from this quarter. Don't fight it and risk exposing yourselves. Just line up and take the medicine. Being surplus to requirements during the hard times, you'll be progressively more redundant as this recession takes hold and exposes the overpaid parasites and hangers on."

Fair enough on the medicine point. There are plenty in the industry who agree with Paul on that - and I think that's pretty much the industry body stand point.

But I don't think all comms people can be tagged as parasites. And, I think this misses the point slightly. 

Sure there were excesses during the Labour years (as someone who has read more Central Office of Information briefs than I care to remember, there are some my company refused to go for because we just felt they were a waste of money and wouldn't deliver any tangible result).

But much of the comms activity undertaken by government / charities has been socially useful (anti-smoking and recruitment of teachers to name just two), but the headlines today from Nice show an urgent need for comms.

The big news in their story states:

"[We need to] improve access to and uptake of antenatal care for women in difficult social circumstances, thereby helping to prevent complications and potentially save the lives of these mothers and their babies.

Difficult social circumstances, or complex social factors, can include poverty, homelessness, unemployment, substance misuse, difficulty reading or speaking English, teenage pregnancy and domestic abuse. 

Pregnant women in these situations often do not attend antenatal appointments as traditional services are often not adequate for their needs. 

However, a lack of good antenatal care can increase the risk of women dying from complications during pregnancy or after birth, with women living in areas of high deprivation in England five times more likely to die during pregnancy or after childbirth than women in more affluent areas. Babies born into these circumstances are also around twice as likely to be stillborn or die shortly after birth as those who are not."  

The access point is one area which needs government funding. But the uptake is an issue for communicators with a clearly defined audience to act on.  It is very measurable objective and if successful will help save lives.

So even if you don't like the salaries of the PR fat cats, don't assume all government comms people are parasites - look what good they have done and could do.

The PRCA agree with me!

I was amused to see that now the election has happened, the industry body, the PRCA, agree with my summary of the state of the marketing industry.  In PR Week,  director-general Francis Ingham said, "for general PR agencies, this result poses real dangers. Let's not be in denial - all three main parties have taken a swipe at PR. They've threatened to slash public sector PR and marketing spend."


Well much that I love being agreed with, it's a shame that they didn't feel like saying something before the election!  My Tweet to PR Week asking this question has so far gone unanswered...

PR needs to embrace the chance to show it works

The UK's Central Office of Information has suggested that advertising value equivalent's (AVE) are no longer included as part of mandatory evaluation criteria when measuring how well PR campaigns perform.

And not before time!

You can read my comments either in PR Week or on the website of the company I work for. But, if like me you get excited by evaluation (or just want to understand more about the context of this debate) I thought I'd use this space to go into a bit more detail and set out what AVEs are, why they are so evil and what COI is planning to change.

Basically, some people reckon the way to evaluate if a media PR campaign works is to look at how much it would have cost to take out adverts of the same size as the coverage a campaign generated in the media. Some then go on to create a 'editorial value' which multiplies this amount to reflect the fact that people trust editorial more.

Sounds a bit crazy? Yes it is... and very inaccurate. There are three main problems:
1) There is no way of accurately recording the ‘value’ of pieces of coverage on BBC and other non-paid for channels, including social media.
2) There is confusion between AVEs which are based on, often rarely used and quickly outdated, rate cards and a ‘PR Value’, ‘weighted AVE’ or ‘editorial value’. This second group of measures are even more inaccurate and simply multiply the AVE by an editorial trust weighting estimated at 2.5 or 3 times AVE.
3) Despite the popularity of AVEs among some clients and widespread industry usage, just a third of communicators actually believe them to be somewhat or very effective as a measurement tool, according to an important international study.

So, the COI, as one of the largest providers (and purchasers) of PR services in the UK has suggested replacing AVEs with a cost per impact model. This is defined as the amount spent on PR divided by impact. Impact is the number of times the article is seen (reach multiplied by opportunities to see).

But this in itself may have its own drawbacks:
1) The suggested model may be open to abuse. Historically, ‘opportunities to see’ generated by a media outlet can be claim to be obtained by using a circulation figure (easily obtained from media databases) and a common multiplier – again three has become an industry standard because more than one person will traditionally read a paper or watch a TV (again, not exactly science when you consider my earlier post on YouGovStone research). And despite people having the 'opportunity' to see/read/hear, not everyone reads every bit of a paper or listens to every minute of a radio station.
2) It's difficult to see how this model could be expanded to include non-media campaigns as well – including social media, online, viral, stakeholder and event campaigns, etc.

In fact there is limit on any model which essentially only examines the efficiency of PR activity in generating coverage (important as this is). In Band & Brown's submission to COI in response to the consultation, we strongly argue that all evaluation measurement should also measure effectiveness and as such requires the inclusion of attitudinal and behavioural measurement (it's probably only fair to point out that at the moment, we use both types of evaluation, depending on client needs/budgets).

These measures ensure that all PR activity can be evaluated – not just media coverage - and also proves that the industry is not walking away from accountability and is living up to the standards adopted elsewhere in the marketing industry. This will help PR stand up for itself alongside other marketing disciplines as part of what the head of COI news and PR calls 'holistic evaluation'.

The paper I helped write for Band & Brown in response to COI set out five recommendations for addressing the problems above and improving the way the industry proves the real impact of public relations... let's see if COI and the rest of the industry accepts them when the final framework is published!

Online safety should be as important as road safety

I quite enjoy it when I'm asked to comment on campaigns I'm not working on - especially when they're at brief stage, you can say what you think another agency should be doing.

But PR Week asked me to comment on one I wouldn't mind being part of - apparently there is a brief for PR to support.

Not having seen the brief, comment was always going to be a bit speculative, but the bit PR Week missed from my quote was (I thought) the best:

"Of vital importance will be the role of schools in instilling a sense of safety online from an early age. If internet safety is approached in a similar way to road safety, long-term benefits as well as short-term communications gains will be realised."