KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

Mamma Mia, I love Sweet Scoops

Queen of Measurement — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:12:36 -0500

Warning, if you're only interested in learning more about social media measurement, come back on Monday because today is Saturday, and I'm taking a day off from measurement to just write. I'm staying in a friends gorgeous apartment overlooking the Oyster River (it's for rent by the way if you're looking for a to-die-for place on the Seacoast of NH) . Remnants of Hurricane Ida are making today a classic rainy fall day, and the notion that I have two whole days with nothing on my agenda is inspiring me to write. I've spent the last two weeks on the road at amazing conferences, talking to really smart people and needless to say have a lot to write about. But before I get to that... there's what I'm calling the Mamma Mia post.

This should probably be on the Sweet Scoops blog, but since they haven't started it yet, here goes. First of all SweetScoops is what I call "the No Confession Confection" -- a creamy wonderful frozen yogurt that tastes like really rich premiuim ice cream but has half the calories. So when I'm feeling like I really need to indulge my sweet tooth, I pick up some of their Ginger or Mudslide or Blueberry and feel wonderfully self-indulgent, but not nearly as guilty as I normally would.

Which got me, a wickedly lapsed Catholic, thinking about guilt and indulgence and all those decisions we make every day that seem to be all about achieving some balance between the two. Normally, when I have a bunch of writing to do and I have 5 hours on a cross country flight, I'll whip out my computer and write like crazy until I run out of battery power. That's what the "good" Katie Paine would do. The "bad" Katie Paine would watch Mamma Mia the movie. A movie with no redeeming intellectual value, but with a bunch of music I adore.

So last week I had this conversation with my friend Pam that took place while I was making my annual batch of apple Thyme jelly:

Pam: "Why can't I grow time"

Katie: "That's an incredibly profound question"

Pam: "Not really, I plant it every year and it never comes back"

Katie: "That's even more profound. What would happen if it did? "

What would happen, I wondered if somehow the time you "Spend" could actually be redeposited in your life. You wouldn't have to make nearly as many decisions.

Philosophers and parents might lead you to believe that life is made up of big decisions, but life is really made up of a continuous stream of tiny choices that somehow become the story of your life. I live in a world where, in order to achieve a bit of balance, I am constantly shushing the voices of the Puritans, the Catholics and the other guilt mongers I grew up with, and just take a break. But if you could "grow time" you wouldn't have to make those diminutive decisions. You could actually have a time for everything in the season.

A time to indulge in desert and a time to "eat healthy."
A time to watch a movie on the flight home, AND time to plow thru 300 emails.
A time to read that "bodice ripper" AND time to read a report.
A time to listen to all those podcasts of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me AND a time to return all those phone calls
A time to the green house AND clean the bathroom
A time to feed your funny bone watching all those Jon Stewart episodes you tivoed AND time to feed the cat
A time dream your next garden AND time to weed the one you have
A time to run thru the mountains, or back roads or streets of town you’ve never been to before AND time to run thru spread sheets
A time to sail away AND a time to make sales.
A time to write a friend a hand written note AND time to write up the meeting notes
A time to comfort a friend in trouble AND time to stay up on your contacts on Twitter
A time to walk with a friend AND time to talk to a client.
A time focus on the beauty of an autumn afternoon AND time to focus on the numbers
A time pay attention to wildlife (#NWF) AND time to pay attention to profits
A time to forage for new plants AND time to forage for new clients
A time to make pickles & piccalilli AND a time to make speeches
A time to stop everything and get out and listen to a friend play your favorite music and a time to stop everything and finish the damn report.

This is what my life is made up of, and I thank Sweet Scoops for taking decision #1 off my list.What's your life made up of?

A third shot fired into the cold dead body of the AVE

Queen of Measurement — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:08:53 -0500

First it was Canada and the CPRS that rejected the notion and practice of using AVEs as a measure of PR. Then it was the Institute for Public Relatoins, now its the UK. well maybe not all of it.. but at least the COI calls for changes in PR metrics.
I give it another year before US agencies will follow suit.

Every have one of those Mondays?

Queen of Measurement — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:52:26 -0500

When you get up thinking you're organized and within an hour of getting into the office you realize that this really is the story of your life:

I'm currently getting ready for a marathon trip that includes Boston for a BankerStuff event, the SNCR Symposium and Awards Gala, PRSA International, a day of consulting at PARC, another SNCR Meetup, an all day offsite board meeting, an IABC and SMC Louisville event, and finally a reception for recipients of the Seacoast Concert for a Cure funds.

Never mind trying to pack for multiple climates.. just keeping the tickets straight is proving daunting. So when my friend Ann Boyce sent me the above, I dropped everything and just started to giggle.

As goes the MSM, so goes measurement

Queen of Measurement — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:59:17 -0400

We've been having lots of conversations these days about the measurement mix between social and traditional measurement. And the question constantly comes up: Is it still worth measuring MSM? Six months ago it was inconceivable to suggest to our clients that we they could drop MSM measurement all together. With today's news, it gets alot more conceviable.

It’s not world peace, but for our profession it could be the equivalent of the Emancipation Proclamation

Queen of Measurement — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:07:45 -0400

You probably didn’t feel it, but on Friday October 16, 2009 there was a shifting of the tectonic plates in Portsmouth, NH. No, it wasn’t recorded by the USGS, but if you’re in the PR world, you would have felt it. That was the day that the IPR Measurement Commission voted definitively -- 19 to 2 -- to “reject AVEs (ad value equivalency) , the concept and the practice. “ At the time, I tweeted that I could now die happy because for so long I’ve said that my mission is to get to have “she killed the AVE” written on my tombstone.

For those agencies, clients and providers out there that are now left in limbo, making money off of a practice that has now been rejected by leading experts in both Canada and the US, I can only say: "move on."

The Canadians did. They went thru this debate five years ago, when they rejected AVEs and settled on the MRP Standard . Today, when I speak in Canada, I am constantly amazed by the intelligence and sophistication of my audience and the questions they ask. They don’t bother with questions about “what’s the AVE of a blog” but rather challenge me with questions about correlations to outcomes.

If anything, this vote comes at a perfect time. PRSA is pushing a set of guidelines that specifically address PR’s contribution to the bottom line – whether in terms of sales, revenue, cost savings or stock price. Check it out.

At the same time, with the rise of social media, AVEs have little meaning when the value of the most traditional media is dropping daily, and the power of individual blogs, many of which don’ t accept advertising, is growing exponentially.

The good news is that every week, a new and better way of demonstrating contribution to your organizations bottom line presents itself. Sodexo measures its Twitter success via $300K in recuirtment cost savings. Non-profits are correlating success in fund raising to social media programs. Southwest has seen such success from its social media efforts that it can quintuple the size of its department.

So why do clipping firms and PR agencies have such a hard time weaning themselves from this outmoded metric? Like any bad habit – heroin, porn – pick your analogy -- it sometimes takes tough love to go cold turkey. With luck that’s what the IPR vote will accomplish.

So rather than seeing this as an earthquake. I prefer to see the vote as PR's emancipation proclamation. As of Friday October 16, 2009, we are free from the shackles of a slavish devotion to silly numbers, false metrics, and thinking that outputs are all we do.

We can now focus on those things that really matter. Quantifying our real contribution to organizational success.

Consolidation continues in the media evaluation industry

Queen of Measurement — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:52:05 -0400

The fact that Durrants has acquired Metrica
should come as a surprise to no one. Increasingly the clipping services are becoming obsolete and if they're planning on surviving, they need alternate revenue streams. Additionally the act of collecting content from the various vendors (we use about 10) is becoming the biggest challenge for those of us on the evaluation side. I wish the newlyweds all the best.