By Katie Paine—Mary McNamara is the Measurement Queen of New Zealand. Even though we are on opposite sides of the global, we’ve been slogging away in similar measurement trenches since even before we first met back in the 1990s. Early on, she engaged in the fight against AVEs and other bad metrics. She has been educating her clients on how to do measurement right for as long as I have.
When I asked her what was new and different in her measurement world this year, her perspective was truly refreshing. She notes that “…marketing and management are more interested in my work… I’ve stayed relevant by introducing more technology and collaborating with data scientists and marketing specialists.”
On the horizon she sees executives wanting business reporting rather than communications reporting: “They will want integrated results: SEO, share price, sentiment, NPS (Net Promoter Score) and/or engagement. I’m being asked to explain the links between these scores, and companies are happy to spend more money on advice now that data is cheaper. I also expect to see more integrated marketing and PR measurement tools emerge, and hopefully become more standardised.”
She offers examples like an energy company examining sustainability across peer companies and other organizations in other fields to look for the latest developments and inspire new direction in their own teams.
She cites clients using media analysis for message testing; comparing how different audiences are engaging with different media and whether that is changing behavior. Most notable: “…management and board don’t worry so much [about attribution] as long as things are moving in the right direction and research can inform good decisions.” Lots of lessons to be learned there.
The biggest trend she sees is for companies and government to want evidence of how their audience has experienced their product or public service through a media lens, compared to market research or some other feedback loop. They then want to track this and compare it to business outcomes. This might be more sales or some type of changed social behavior, like paying tax on time, quitting smoking, or driving safely.
Therefore Mary, for your persistence and pioneering thinking, you have earned this months’ Measurement Maven Award. Congratulations! ∞
[ajax_load_more post_type=”post” category=”international,measurement-masters” offset=”1″]
