Given that we have been on a continuous roller-coaster of breaking news for over a year now, I’d love to predict that life will calm down. But I fear it won’t. The one thing no one has any trouble predicting is that between the #MeToo movement, politics, and climate change, chances are good that some sort of chaos or crisis is inevitable for all of us. Here are ten predictions for communications measurement and evaluation for the coming year.

1. Listening will prove more valuable than yelling.

Whether you call it content marketing or advertising, a good percent of the billions spent on the effort to convince prospective customers to buy whatever it is you’re selling is proving less and less valuable. New research has demonstrated that, rather than engagement boosting sales, in fact sales boost engagement.

What corporations are learning is that there’s a bigger payoff in listening and being responsive to the customers you already have than in shelling out more dollars to yell a bit louder and in different places to people who may or may not care. Customer support has long been underfunded, but that will change in 2018 as data showing its importance comes in.

2. It will be easier to bury the bad stuff…

For corporate PR, the constant “breaking news” of political and social upheavals will make it harder to dominate headlines. The good part is that it won’t be hard to bury bad earnings or whatever else you’d rather not see on the front page.

3. …but there will be more bad stuff.

Activists, consumers, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, and just about anyone with a Twitter account and an agenda will be watching corporations like hawks for any slip up. To get ready for the inevitable, review our Crisis Preparedness Checklist.

4. You will “engage” with more bots than people.

The Russians aren’t the only ones stirring up trouble with troll farms and bots attacking their enemies. Your competitors have access to all the same tools. So before you brag about your “increased engagement” numbers, make sure it’s the kind of engagement you want.

5. Consolidation in PR will continue.

Just when you thought Cision was running out of companies to purchase, they found two more: PRIME Research and Cedrom-SNI. Cedrom-SNI is a major player in international monitoring, and PRIME has long dominated the high end of evaluation and measurement. There are still a few independent companies out there, and very few have deep enough pockets to compete against Cision’s world domination game plan. So, look for additional consolidation throughout 2018. (See our article this month “What Cision’s Purchase of PRIME Means For Measurement Pros, Both Large and Small.”)

Also look for more acquisitions of PR agencies and service companies by management consulting firms.  A few years ago it was the big agencies buying everyone, but they don’t have the money that the big consultancies and private equity companies do. One reason may be that earned media is seen as worth investing in, and that monitoring the media is also a good investment.

Consolidation won’t just be confined to the media services arena. The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) just announced a merger with WOMMA (the Word of Mouth Marketing Association), and my hunch is that this is a harbinger of more consolidation among professional associations. Attendance at many professional meetings is down as professionals increasingly get information online, and networks like LinkedIn make some of the benefits unnecessary. Additionally, the myriad special interest groups for specific industries also compete for those corporate “education” dollars.

6. The number one priority will be business value.

Numerous economists are predicting a correction in the markets for 2018. Regardless of what happens to our economy, the pressure is on to show the  business value of communications. And that doesn’t mean a fictitious AVE number or even CPM.
What it means is that communications has to rethink its contribution to the bottom line, not in terms of reach and impressions, but in terms of business goals. (Here’s a guide to get you started: “How to Show Your Contribution to the Bottom Line — Anywhere on the Planet.”)
Metrics like “cost per conversion” or “cost per engagement” will dominate our dashboards in 2018. On the nonprofit side look for “cost per new donor” or “cost per engagement” to replace anachronistic goals like “increased awareness.”

7. Celebrities will lose their appeal and influence.

In the post #MeToo era, the risks associated with celebrity influencers are top of mind in most board rooms. As more corporations get burned by those once-darling celebrities, look for a shift to local and lower-profile influencers. They may not have as many followers as Louis C.K., but chances are they don’t have as much baggage, either. (If you want to review our special coverage of influence, start here: “Your Guide to Our Issue on Influence: What Makes People Act and How Do You Measure It?”)

8. You’ll hear a lot about shiny new technologies, but they won’t change your world.

2018 is the year that communications professionals will talk about three specific shiny new technologies as Forces That Will Change Your World: identity tracking, AI for predictive analytics, and blockchain. Shiny they are, but changing your world they won’t. Well, maybe, but only if you’re a big organization with a lot to invest in them. I discuss each of these technologies this month in separate articles:

• When Will Identity Tracking Provide the Holy Grail of Actual Reach for Communications Measurement and Evaluation?
• How Soon Will Blockchain’s Privacy and Permanence Bring New Techniques to Communications Measurement?
• When Will Artificial Intelligence Provide Predictive Analytics for Communications Measurement and Evaluation?

9. Weather or not, here it comes.

As I write this, I’m still recovering from the bombogenesis that hit Shankhassick Farm — and most of New England, as well — last week. Nothing out of the ordinary, really, for January in New Hampshire, but it reminded me of the impact that climate events can have on a business.

Fortunately, I work from home. So I could keep up with client issues while trying to sort out pipes that froze, oil companies that wouldn’t deliver, septic systems that malfunctioned, and winds that were strong enough to blow out the storm windows on my porch. But if I were one of the thousands of communications professionals on the front lines of corporate crises, trouble at home and at work would have been impossible to manage.
Climate crises — hurricanes, fires, floods, or bombo-whatever — are going to grow increasingly common. Which means you are going to have to incorporate weather into your crisis plans. It also means that a lot of PR pros will have trouble getting to work. Which in turn means that all those PR service providers who monitor our media or help prepare those press statements need to have contingency plans. (You’ll probably want to read our articles “Build a Measurement Dashboard Now and Survive a Crisis Later” and “The Crisis Preparedness Checklist.”)

10. Wages will rise.

It takes years of experience to become a good corporate communicator. And, even if universities were perfectly preparing their students for the PR world, there just isn’t enough talent coming up through the ranks to fill all the jobs. The challenge is even greater if you are looking for someone with analytics or business experience. More importantly, you can’t replace a seasoned professional communicator with a robot or a sweatshop in Indonesia. So, expect to pay more (or at least offer better benefits) for that talent in 2018. ∞