What you need to know about the Barcelona Principles

August 9, 2011

Measurement

Killing off AVEs is just one of the seven Barcelona Principles of measurement that PR pros need to know. (Image credit: RaceTalkBlog.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This post was originally written for the Fleishman-Hillard Intranet. FH’s Don Bartholomew contributed to this post.

How much do you know about Barcelona? To be honest, up until the last year or so, it was just a city I had heard people rave about in Spain that my wife and I wanted to visit whenever we make that trip to Europe we’ve been talking about.

But for PR pros like us, Barcelona should have a much deeper meaning than a vacation. Because something happened there in the summer of 2010 that shook up our industry. Something that we, as strategic counselors, need to do a better job of making sure our clients understand. That something was the Barcelona Principles.

What are these principles? In short, they’re the most notable outcome of the European Summit on Measurement held in Barcelona in 2010. That summit marked the first time global PR industry leaders had come together on an international stage to debate and vote on the way we should be measuring our work. Some PR pros know the principles like the back of their hands, but they are still new to many. FH’s Don Bartholomew does an amazing job of detailing the principles and providing feedback from the leaders who helped develop them here. I’d strongly encourage you to check out his post for background. Then, when you get back, we can talk about what these principles actually mean in our everyday jobs.

Applying the Barcelona Principles

It’s one thing to say we now have some measurement principles to live by, and here they are. It’s another thing entirely to actually discuss how we should be living by them. Let’s do that now.

1. Goal setting and measurement are fundamental aspects of any PR program.

Hopefully this is one you nod your head at, because your clients are already doing it.

- Goals and measurable objectives are an integral part of showing PR’s success, especially when it comes to showing the impact of social media.
- Instead of just talking about that occasionally elusive ROI, talk about the impact our work is having on achieving communications and business objectives.
- And, I don’t think it really needs to be said, but we should always be measuring our work. The do-something-creative-and-pray-the-company-likes-it model just doesn’t suffice.

2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality — clips alone are not enough.

You’ll absolutely understand this one if you have ever gotten into an “our impressions are bigger than your impressions” debate with advertising or marketing.

- Impressions are important, and they should be reported. But we shouldn’t stop there … especially, since quality may be more important than quantity if your client is trying to reach a specific niche audience.
- Per FHKCs Nicole Trembley: “If your client is a cat food company, which is more beneficial? An earned media hit in the local newspaper or on a cat food blog?” Often times, it will be the latter.

3. Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity.

PR professionals have always searched for ways to compare ourselves and our work to our friends in marketing. But, AVEs are not the way to do that.

- Even the Wall Street Journal agrees.
- AVEs are generally about attributing a financial value to PR for budgetary reasons. It’s usually an allocation decision for someone in marketing — “everybody else is doing it” syndrome. They see it as an easy way to put a financial number on media relations. But that number is not accurate in showing the true value of PR. AVEs only measure what work we did, not how people, especially our clients’ target customers, reacted to it.
- When Don and I were discussing AVEs, he pointed out that AVEs limit the entire value of public relations to media relations. So, we get zero credit beyond publicity and maybe 50 percent or more of what PR does is not covered by AVEs.

4. Social media can and should be measured.

This principle ties back nicely with the first one.

- PR has struggled to measure social media for a while now because ROI gets hung over our head. But, often times, the benefits of social media are long term.
- Setting measurable objectives makes it easier to show short-term impact.

5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results.

Raise your hand if you report metrics like impressions, hits, tweets, posts, etc.

- It’s not that these metrics don’t have some value. But, if you think about it, all they show are outputs — how much coverage was obtained. We need to go further than that when providing results to our clients, and we should be focusing more on outcomes.
- How did customers react to what we did? Did we ask customers to take an action (e.g., click a link to our website) and did they do it? What did they tell us about the brand through qualitative conversation?

6.  Business results can and should be measured where possible.

Drawing a direct line from PR to business results (e.g., sales, store traffic, attendees at an event) has been and continues to be elusive. But, it’s up to us to be creative and look for opportunities where we can draw that connection.

Two examples:

- The first is tracking sales from OEO, if your client has a coupon code to share with bloggers.
- The second is a case study I read the other day. L. L. Bean actually removed all shipping costs on its items in 2009, because customer feedback and online behavior showed people were actually backing out of sales because shipping costs were too high.

7.  Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

Strong ethics are vital to PR being taken seriously as business counselors, and that holds true with measurement. This principle is simply a reminder that we must be transparent in how we come to the results we get and, for those of you who are math fans, be able to “show our work” to our clients.

So, are you applying the Barcelona Principles to your work? How are you educating clients on the principles? Have you given AVEs the boot, but good?

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jaykeith 15 pts

The mantra, whether you call it Barcelona Principles or anything else, is to measure what's important for you, your company or your clients, and do it well with a plan. Those metrics are going to vary on a case by case basis. I really don't see why this is so difficult to be honest. Even if someone wants to use AVE's as a measurement tool because they just want to get an idea of earned impressions versus potential ad costs, so be it. I'm not going to tell someone they're an idiot for using that as a metric. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but neither is any other metric measured alone and taken as gospel in a silo. You need to measure a lot of different things to measure not only the impact of PR but also SM. And they all need to be done in concert, with a clear plan mapped out ahead of time.

I'm really tired of people (not you personally JG, this is more of an "industry" rant) spouting off what needs to be measured and how we're all idiots for doing certain things (like saying impressions don't matter, that's so patently false I can't even get over it). There are a few so called "industry experts" whose sole purpose in life is to tell us all what we're all doing wrong, not what we should be doing right, and it's getting old. It's different for everyone, so principles or not, figure out what works best for you (or you clients, bosses, etc.) and stick to it.

At the end of the day, no one knows your business better than you do, so no one else should be telling you what's important to measure. What's perfect for one won't work at all for the next guy, and that's ok. Trying to crack this "PR measurement code" is a quest for a pot of gold that doesn't exist. The measurement tools and methods are there - just figure out which ones matter to you and use them.

Nikki Little 61 pts

jaykeith Good points, Jay. What and how you measure will differ depending on what you're trying to accomplish. I get what you're saying about using AVEs to get an idea of earned impressions, but I also don't think AVEs alone should constitute a sufficient way to show results.

Totally get what you're saying about the industry rant. And I feel like we hear different (and often times contrary) things on the "right way to measure" depending on who is doing the ranting. It definitely boils down to knowing what measurement options exist and using the ones that make the most sense for your business and its goals.

jaykeith 15 pts

Nikki Little Thanks Nikki. I don't disagree with you regarding AVE's, I just can't believe that so many people have spent so much time trying to discount one measly measurement tactic. 10 years from now people will be saying the Barcelona pricinples are outdated and shouldn't be considered. That's just how it works, measurement and tools evolve, and as PR pros we have to evolve with them. But there's never going to be one "smoking gun" that every PR agency or person can use to show results. There's too many variables. That's why even these principles are vague at best. They're more like common sense guidelines, not tried and true methods, which is fine. But like everything else, they should be taken with a grain of salt. What it comes down to is doing what's best for your company or client and keeping them educated and informed in what you're doing, proving the successes and failures.

JGoldsborough 247 pts moderator

jaykeithNikki Little Good discussion, you two. That's what this post was meant to do...spark discussion. And why PR pros like yourselves are not new to these principles, I think a lot of our peers have never heard of them.

1) Totally agree on holy grail of comms measurement. Does not exist. 2) The BPs are simple and should be common sense. But think PR-wise for a second. The fact that our industry actually had a meeting of leaders to discuss measurement for the first time is a big deal. It shows we're thinking about these things as an industry and working to get closer to measurement that means something. 3) Impressions are important. It's when we stop there that we run into trouble. And too many people still stop there.

4) AVEs represent years of PR not being taken seriously as a meaningful business discipline. They say "marketing always comes first and PR really doesn't have two legs to stand on so it has to play marketing's game." Think about when a coach makes a statement to the whole team by cutting a player who screwed up one too many times. AVEs is that player for the PR industry. And we need to cut it loose a la Kyle Davies, to make a Royals comparison :). Cheers!

My latest conversation: 5 internal communications questions you need to ask yourself

Nikki Little 61 pts

JGoldsborough Of course you had to get in a Royals reference, didn't you? ;)

Nikki Little 61 pts

Thanks for putting this post together, Justin. I'm sharing it with the PRSA Detroit community.

I think every PR pro needs to print out the Barcelona Principles and hang them somewhere in their office/area where they are constantly reminded of how to properly measure the results of our work!

JGoldsborough 247 pts moderator

Nikki Little Thanks, NS, for sharing the post. And agree 100 percent. Just as important as printing these out, I'd love to hear PR pros start talking about these principles to company and client leadership so maybe they will start to take our industry a bit more seriously.

My latest conversation: 5 internal communications questions you need to ask yourself

Trackbacks

  1. [...] What you need to know about the Barcelona Principles Justin Goldsborough at Fleishman-Hillard, with contribution from Don Bartholomew, does a great job summarizing the key principles from European Summit on Measurement held in Barcelona in 2010 that were established to help guide the measurement of PR. We’ve written before about the death of Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs), but this post gives a great summary of the other six principles and how PR professionals can apply them to their every day work. [...]