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РPУUБBРLИICКRАELATIONS

Tatjana Loparski

Director for Public and
Media Relations, Element PR

Are public relations
measurable?

About ten years ago, when I was the strategy we sold to our client, works.
starting to work in public re- The principles are clear: you should know
lations, the world of commu- your goals, and you should set the goals
nication was simpler. There you would like to achieve with the cam-
were no developed social me- paign; measurements of the end effects
dia, there were no internet portals, the (whether the campaign led to change of
transfer of information was easy. And even attitudes or to support of action); whether
more, it was simple to “sell” the story that there are effects on the business results;
the work of PR professionals is not mea- qualitative and quantitative analysis of
surable. Positive and negative publications media; the value of the media lease does
emerged and this was the end of the en- not apply in public relations, social media
tire enigma how the company should as- are measurable and the transparency of
sess whether the campaign has a result or the process in an important element.
not. The explanation was that results take
time, that success doesn’t happen over- The steps are simple and there is no ma-
night, and of course that everything is long- jor philosophy in their follow up, however
term. And indeed this is true, however one one should have in mind that the time of
thing is not a founded fact today, which is comparison to money invested in advertis-
that the work of the ones who take care of ing, is long gone. Here it is not a matter of a
your reputation and the reputation of your commercial, that is, leased space in order
company is not measurable. It is measur- to promote a service and a product, rather
able and this can easily be seen from your a campaign which should instigate action,
business results and from the research of which should make us think and change
the public opinion. One can easily prove something about our behavior. For exam-
whether a campaign is successful. How- ple, you want to make a campaign about a
ever, do we apply this in practice? promotion of a product , the first thing is
to conduct a research about the position
There are seven clear principles accord- of your brand, the position of the other
ing to which one can determine whether brands of the competition, what people
a campaign in public relations in measur- think of you, of your customers and of the
able or not. These are called Barcelona ones who are not your customers. On the
principles. However, only a few of us, basis of this research, a strategy should be
professionals, know and apply these prin- prepared which will clearly indicate your
ciples because sometimes it is more sim- goals for promotion and the goals for sale
ple and easier to say that something is not and awareness of the product. These are
measurable, than to overburden ourselves the numbers which should be followed
with analyses. Without an analysis we when the activity is conducted. The strat-
ourselves would not know whether we are egy must include the target audience
headed in the right direction, and whether which is your interest, and it should follow

92 November 2016