Three Learnings From the "Barcelona Principles"

  By Ward White, Chief Strategy Officer

Just about the hottest topic in the PR trade press lately has been the Barcelona Principles.

• What’s this all about?
• Why should I care?

What’s this all about?

Last summer, 230 leading measurement experts from 33 countries gathered to address a worldwide problem -- the lack of standards in measuring what we do as PR people. They debated and voted to take a stand on seven issues. These seven points have becomes known --and widely praised -- as the “Barcelona Principles.”

These are:

• The importance of goal setting and measurement.
• Measuring the effect on outcomes is preferred to measuring outputs.
• The effect on business results can and should be measured where possible.
• Media measurement requires quantity and quality.
• AVEs are not the value of public relations.
• Social media can and should be measured.
• Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

The full Barcelona document is on the website of the Institute for Public Relations, which is the industry’s bridge between PR academics and PR practitioners. IPR co-led the effort to assemble this worldwide summit and played an active role in the drafting. PRSA also participated. The link is http://www.instituteforpr.org/research_single/the_barcelona_declaration_of_measurement_principles

Why should I care?

As I see things, there are three main take-aways for the everyday PR or marketing professional.

1. The most important thing about the Barcelona Principles is that they exist. The PR world came together and agreed – MEASUREMENT MATTERS
   
   A common mantra in Business School is “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” To manage a PR program, you need measurement. Your boss, or your client, needs measurement.
   
   TAKE-AWAY: Measurement is essential to every PR program and project. Without measurement, the program is incomplete and inadequate. Period.
2. The second most important thing is – RESULTS MATTER.
   
   Hence, “Measuring the effect on outcomes is preferred to measuring outputs.” Your clients don’t care how much effort or information you put out. They care about what your program achieved. What difference did it make? What was the outcome?
   
   TAKE-AWAY : The significant measure is not your activity, your output. Producing a brochure or a press release is output. Rather, measure outcomes, -- what happened as a result, what difference did it make to your client, her boss or to the business itself?
3. Third, BUSINESS RESULTS MATTER.
   
   PR is not primarily a communications discipline. It is a business discipline that uses communications to achieve business results. (If you’re not in a business, substitute “organization” for “business” wherever it appears and everything here will apply).
   
   Where possible and accounting for other variables, measure business results – sales, market share, change in purchase preference or attitude. This principle applies especially to marketing-related programs.
   
   Media coverage is not a business result. At most, publicity is one tool in the toolkit we use to help a client build its business. The best programs start with business objectives. They then engage every relevant stakeholder group, they use every tool (social media, purposeful philanthropy, personal relationships, coalitions, marketing partners, events and, yes, media coverage,) to achieve the business objective.
   
   TAKE-AWAY: Your PR program cannot achieve quantitative business results without quantitative business objectives upfront. The focus of PR professionals today is on defining objectives that build the client’s business (or brand) in measurable ways.
   
   We are urged to think more like a business executives and less like communicators. Our challenge is to think like a CEO, to think – not like our client – but like our client’s boss. When PR people can be both businesspeople and communicators at the same time, we bring something unique to the table, something of great value to clients.

CONCLUSION.

The heart of the Barcelona declaration is in the first three principles – measurement matters, results matter and, most of all, business results matter. The rest is detail. (A few of those details have stirred controversy, especially the validity of using advertising equivalency), but the first three principles highlighted here are the ones of lasting significance.

I predict that the Barcelona Principles will be with us for a good while. Accordingly, we would do well to get used to them. At one level, they simply re-state the basics. No surprises there. But they also represent an ideal. We will have to keep stretching to reach the goals they lay out. Stretching, striving to be better – that’s good for all of us -- and good for the PR profession. Viva Barcelona!

Disclaimer: this blog post represents the author’s personal views and is not an official statement from Edelman as a firm.