Case History: From Barcelona Principles to Standardized Measurement

We’ll call the company GBH (Great Big Health), Inc. It’s a manufacturer of health-related devices and as such faces a number of legal and regulatory challenges which in the past have restricted what and how it can measure results.

As our story opens: GBH recently undertook a reorganization and rebranding exercise. It now has a new CMO on board and wants to take a fresh look at all of its research and measurement programs. The new head of communications research, Kent Allen, inherited more than two dozen different ongoing projects. He knew that there must be some efficiencies to be gained somewhere, he just didn’t know where yet. Kent was also familiar with The Barcelona Principles and the recently developed measurement standards. He knew that compliance with these standards would allow him to compare data across all his programs and vendors, and thus lower the cost and complexity of his measurement. So he want to ensure that the measurement that went into his new Dashboard complied with the Principles, standards, and best practices.

Getting organized: Determining strategy, goals, and metrics

Kent started by reading up on the company’s hot-off-the-presses strategic plan. Armed with goals and objectives, he met with his boss, the VP of Marketing and Strategy. They discussed how communications would be expected to contribute to the strategy. They used strategy to determine goals, and then specified goals to define success and determine metrics.

Together, they narrowed communications-specific goals to 3:

1. Protect the brand from risk.
2. Shorten the sales cycle.
3. Expand the marketable universe.

They agreed that communications could help achieve each of the goals as follows:

1. Communications helps protect the brand from risk by:
   1. Improving relationships with key influencers and stakeholders, including investors, employees, regulators, the community and the media.
   2. Being vigilant and knowledgeable about potential threats.
   3. Improving employee understanding of the company’s mission, vision and values, as well as their grasp of potential risks and threats.
2. Communications helps shorten the sales cycle by:
   1. Increasing awareness of the brand. With limited time in front of prospects, sales people need to spend less time explaining the company and more time educating the prospect on its benefits.
   2. Increasing understanding of the brand positioning. The more the key audiences understand about the brand, the more time salespeople get to talk about the products.
3. Communications helps expand the marketable universe by:
   1. Helping generate and qualify leads. Using social media and inbound marketing techniques to identify potential customers who are already interested in the product, communications can short circuit what in the past might have been a much longer sales cycle.
   2. Cost-effectively reaching out to new audiences and new stakeholders. Communications can support GBH’s initiatives in new and developing markets.
   3. Effectively communicating to the installed base of customers. Communications can encourage word of mouth marketing and leverage existing patient networks.
   4. Effectively training and educating employees to be better brand ambassadors outside of the office.

Based on this consensus, Kent and his boss decided that the definitions of success that would be part of the corporate dashboard would be:

• % decrease in those who are unaware of the brand among key stakeholders
• % increase in awareness of brand positioning among key stakeholders
• % increase in in-bound requests for information
• % increase in non-employee engagement with on-line brand properties and networks
• % reduction in share of undesirable voice
• % increase in share of desirable voice

What research was already available?

Once the connections between the goals and communications efforts were made, Kent gathered the latest reports generated by all two dozen different vendors and research projects. Then he brought in his team to determine which, if any, of the existing research programs could be used to measure efforts against those goals. Each report was read thoroughly and evaluated to see if it could provide or contribute to one or more of the requisite metrics, either as it was, or with minor modifications. Of the 30 projects the team reviewed, five were determined to be possible contributors to the dashboard metrics. They were:

1. The ongoing brand awareness research, an annual extensive worldwide study of key stakeholders. While a once-a year study did not meet the criteria for the monthly corporate dashboard, the questions asked could be adapted to a more frequently conducted pulse survey of stakeholders.
2. The ongoing media content analysis. If the quarterly media content analysis results could be delivered monthly, and expanded to include key social media, it could produce the requisite metrics concerning share of voice.
3. Google Analytics reports. If the Google Analytics reports could be expanded to include social engagement, then they could be used to measure the increase in non-employee engagement with on-line brand properties and networks.
4. CRM system data. While not regularly shared with the communications team, GBH did have a robust Salesforce application in place. It was agreed that in-bound requests for information could be tracked using Salesforce.
5. Employee feedback surveys. At least a dozen of the existing research reports delivered data on employee feelings, morale, beliefs, etc. While many were redundant and could easily be eliminated, three of them could be used to measure employee engagement as well as employee understanding of corporate mission and messages.

Choosing projects and vendors: The research program Olympics

No matter what the project, the devil really is in the details. The first surprise Kent encountered when trying to decide how to deliver the requisite metrics was that a whole new research effort was being undertaken in the social media group to listen and engage with customers. Part of that program was a search for a “listening” tool, which of course overlapped with the existing ongoing media monitoring program underway in PR.

So Kent decided to combine the two efforts, and conduct a thorough evaluation of a select group of vendors. To begin the vendor search, he used the Conclave’s Standard Transparency Table (also called “The Transparency Reporting Template”) as a base, and adapted its list of vendor questions to meet GBH’s specific needs.

Kent then made a list of  “must have” vs. “nice to have” vendor criteria. The “absolute must have,” criteria included:

• Access to key media,
• Ability to deliver data monthly, and
• Ability to integrate social and traditional media analysis into a single platform.

An initial elimination round of vendors was held based on these criteria. As it happened, the incumbent traditional media monitoring vendor could not deliver the metrics required by the dashboard, so the search was expanded to include more sophisticated, customizable platforms. For the five remaining vendors, Kent developed a criteria scoring system based on the Template questions. Responses to each question were weighted in terms of how important the subject was to the team that would ultimately produce the dashboard. The weighting was assigned as follows:

• Accuracy: 5 points
• Timeliness: 4 points
• Ease of use: 3 points
• Cost: 2 points
• Capability, credibility, stability, culture of the supplier: 1 point

Cost was weighted relatively low in this instance because GBH was saving money by eliminating duplication. Using this weighting, a vendor was chosen that best met the specific needs of the dashboard team.

At last, an up and running Dashboard

Once the metrics and vendors were in place, the data started flowing in. The actual dashboard was produced manually using Excel and PowerPoint. People started using it. And, best of all, better decisions were made with it.

Reviewing the process: What was learned?

Kent’s major learning from the process was that it included many unanticipated complexities:

• Who knew how complex some of these platforms would be to implement?
• Who knew what kind of push-back he would get from divisions and affiliates used to the old reports (which were full of activity metrics and empty of insight)?
• Who knew how hard it would be to create an “apples to apples” comparison between vendors when each vendor thinks of itself as “unique in the marketplace?”
• Who knew how hard it would be to get any of these systems to work together?

The good news here is that each of these complexities could be addressed and dealt with. And now you will know to anticipate them when you go up against a big dashboard project like this. ∞

Thanks to Butler Street LLC for the image.