Public relations consultant /blog

‘…what’s sad is the damage these fools do to PR industry.’
– Stuart Bruce, MD Wolfstar

With public relations activity so notoriously difficult, but not impossible, to evaluate, it’s little wonder that measures of success provoke heated debates among industry gurus.

The measure most hated by true professionals is AVEs; advertising value equivalents. Yet 37 per cent of PR agencies use AVEs and AVEs can even make their own stories (wonderful nonsense!).

AVEs are deceptively simple: it’s what your media coverage would cost to buy. On their own, they are tosh. An AVE does not take tone into account, consider whether editorial is more trusted than advertising and so on.

Many PRs work is not so clearly focussed on the bottom line and has very little to do with marketing, but for those who are working with marketers find AVEs very tempting.

Clients are excited by big numbers and AVEs offer that. More sophisticated clients, with large marketing budgets, will invest in econometric modelling which seeks to understand how all marketing activity, including advertising, really impacts on the bottom line.

However, the real secret to evaluating public relations is to build it in at the planning stage and to set clear goals.

Smaller, less sophisticated clients with modest budgets can benefit from a form of evaluation that includes AVEs. Some clients simply want their PR to raise awareness of a product, in the same way most advertising does. In that circumstance, setting an AVE target is not unreasonable.

Posted at : May 29th, 2009 - 4:08 pm
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