Outcomes & Impacts: The Effective Way of Determining Real Value of PR Campaigns for Organisations, Stakeholders and Society
Introduction
There’s no real value to organisations from the majority of public relations (PR) or communication campaigns championed by agencies on behalf of organisations or by organisations themselves.
The real value of PR campaigns to organisations is determined through the demonstration of the outcomes and impacts of the campaign on first, the organisation; second, the stakeholders; and third, the society – a requirement by the Barcelona Principles in all measurement and evaluation of PR or communication campaigns.
Most measurement and evaluation of PR campaigns exclude outcomes and impacts of the campaign, focusing mainly on the “outputs” of the campaign, which, really, are merely “vanity metrics” and show no real value to organisations, stakeholders, and society.
For clarity of context, “vanity metrics” refer to impressive-looking numbers that provide little real insight into a business’ actual success or progress towards its strategic goals or objectives.
Hence, the number of social media followers, number of likes, tweets and re-tweets, number of impressions, shares, page views, app downloads, number of attendees at events, seminars, and so on, following a PR campaign, are meaningless and do not in any way indicate the success of a PR or communication campaign.
There is a need for PR agencies and PR practitioners in general to move beyond using outputs (vanity metrics) as the benchmark for determining the success and value of PR campaigns to organisations. Because the real value of any PR or communication campaign is determined through the demonstration of outcomes and impacts on organisations, stakeholders and society.
Outcomes – first step to evaluating real value of PR campaigns
Demonstration of outcomes of public relations to the organisation, stakeholders and society is the first step to measuring the real value of public relations campaigns.
Outcomes simply refer to the identifiable effects of the PR or communication campaign on target audiences. More often than not, these identifiable effects of PR campaigns appear in the form of increased advocacy, positive attitudinal change, increased satisfaction, trust and preference for the organisation’s products or services among target audiences.
These identifiable effects of the PR or communication must then be linked to how it benefits the organisation and helps it to achieve its overall strategic objectives. Not only the organisation, but also how it benefits stakeholders involved, as well as society.
For instance, an identifiable effect such as increased trust in commercial banks in the country, leading to a 10% addition of new customers (persons previously outside the formal banking sector) to the existing customer base of the banking sector following the PR or communication campaign, is the real value of the PR or communication campaign to the organisation, which in this case is the entire banking sector. For stakeholders such as customers, regulators and shareholders, the real value of the PR campaign includes access to credit (loan) for business expansion; progress towards achieving financial inclusion; and increased dividends from banks’ profit, respectively.
For society, the real value of a PR campaign is an increase in financial literacy due to previously unbanked persons now engaged in the formal banking system, job creation for unemployed individuals due to expanded businesses backed by credit from banks, among others.
Impacts – second step to evaluating real value of PR campaigns
Impact has to do with identifiable long-term results for organisations, stakeholders and society, caused in full or in part by the PR or communication campaign. For the organisation, the impact of the PR campaign could be an improvement in its reputation or an improvement in relationships with key stakeholders. For stakeholders, impact could be a change in the company’s / organisation’s policies that promote their welfare and rights.
For society, the impact of a PR campaign could be a social change where, for instance, in the context of Ghana’s illegal mining, communication campaigns lead to a behavioural change where individuals involved in the menace decide to stop pursuing other alternative livelihoods.
Determination or causation of impact by PR or communication campaigns follow application of three key rules being: (a) the alleged cause (PR campaign) must precede the alleged impact (results of PR campaign); (b) there must be a clear relationship between the alleged cause and impact; and (c) other possible causes for the identified results must be ruled out as far as possible.
It must be noted that not all PR campaigns can show impact, especially when evaluation is done shortly after the campaign activity. This is because impact is often identified several years after the PR campaign activity.
Conclusion
In the measurement and evaluation of PR or communication campaigns, it is not enough to just report on outputs (vanity metrics), which provide little to no real insight into the actual success of the PR campaign. Outputs tell nothing meaningful in relation to the relevance and benefit of the PR campaign to the organisation, stakeholders and society.
Contrary to popular belief that measurement of outputs in PR campaigns is the most important, it’s not. The most important aspect of PR campaigns is the evaluation (analysis, identification, interpretation, and reportage) of outcomes and impacts of PR campaigns on the organisation, stakeholders, and society.
In other words, what really matters is how the PR campaign benefits the organisation in terms of its strategic goals, the stakeholders in terms of their rights, welfare, etc, and the society in terms of a positive social change.
The author (Dodoo, Fuaad) is a M.A. Strategic Public Relations Management student from the University of Media, Arts and Communications (UniMAC) and a business journalist with NorvanReports.
email: dodoofuaad84@gmail.com
linkedin: linkedin.com/in/snr-fuaad-dodoo
