The marketing world - PR included - is heads-down and tactical with everyone working long hours and praying they’re not cut next. I see very few risk-takers and even fewer mouth-openers. Making ROI a priority requires both.

Complicating this, we are awash with poor-quality, “free” tools that track and “measure” social media. This dreck has had a significant impact against the more expensive, higher quality tools, dragging down real improvement and progress IMHO.

While some products in both camps offer nice starts, these projects aren’t at a scale where the cfo would even consider the tactics being measured an “investment” worth measuring. A huge ROI on a small base that can’t/won’t scale in a predictable manner doesn’t move the business folks.

I predict that reporting and measurement will actually lose priority this year - and I hope to see major consolidation in the measurement tool space. That’s not intended to be negative - it’s intended to re-set expectations and discourage any more “experts-without-experience” from whoring the game.

Thanks for the post. You’ve been a great advisor, and I will keep these points in mind as a PR student. I plan on attending a workshop on marketing and brand management presented by the Board Retailers Association this week. One topic we will be covering is how community involvement and special events directly tie in to gaining an immediate sales return. I’ll take good notes and let you know how it goes. Enjoy your time at Kent!

Marketers think everything is about marketing — revenue is king. PR (in theory anyway) is more holistic, though the marketers will dispute it. The branding effort from the 90’s tried to pull all the stakeholders under marketing, to no avail. They cannot pull themselves away from the concept that all communication is marketing!

I offer the reverse — all marketing IS communication, but not all communication is marketing. That’s why even in the midst of “integrated marketing” thinking, I recoil — it needs to be coordinated, not necessarily integrated. In particular, we’re a lot better equipped to lead all communication functions than marketing is by virtue of our multi-stakeholder and strategic perspective.

But all that is inside baseball — the ROI question won’t go away easily, though many of our colleagues would like it to. Nor can ROI be used only for revenue enhancement purposes, lest we invest nothing in issues management, crisis PR, and employee communication (which we know contributes mightily to the bottom line — Gallup, Watson Wyatt, Hay Group and others have shown it to be so.)

See you at Kent!

Cheers,
Sean
@commammo

As the profession has evolved, the barrier between the way PR and Marketing folks think is a huge challenge. At this point, it is much more detrimental to the future of the profession than the trad’l battle between journalists and communicators.

Looks like we have a huge mountain to climb in terms of basic education. Hopefully it’s not a Sisyphean task!