Starting on September 15, you’re about to hear alot more about PR measurement. September 15 is the official start of Measurement Week — a week-long celebration of PR and Media Measurement. The idea originated with the Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Media (AMEC) and has been embraced by The Institute for PR, various agencies and vendors as well as Paine Publishing. Our call to action is to get as many organizations as possible to pledge to support the Barcelona Principles and the Standards for Measuring PR and Social Media that have been created in response to their publication.
It goes without saying that I think it’s a terrific idea to shine a spotlight on my favorite topic — watch this space for some very exciting product introcuctions from us that week. I am particularly excited by the number of other organizations that have taken this opportunity to publicly state their support for the standards and our efforts.
CIPR is running roundtabls and events. ICCO is on board as well and of course AMEC members are hosting events around the world.
What I do have a major problem with is the fundamental hypocricy of organizations that have not pledged to support the standards but are using the publicity around measurement week to promote their products, while still promoting Ad Value Equivalency (AVE) which was the one thing that the Barcelona Principles rejected.
What’s wrong with this picture? First, lets review the Barcelona Principles — specifically Principle # 5:
Check out the promo piece I received from one of the participants. Now look closely at one of their reports, 
and you’ll see why they haven’t pledged to support the Principles or the Standards. What’s fascinating to me is that I get calls every day from organizations that want to dump AVEs and need better metrics. But vendors like these keep pushing them using the excuse that “customers want them.” Actually what customers tell me they want are standard ways of measuring the real value of what they do, not false and misleading numbers that senior leadership views increasingly skeptism.
