Despite recent workshops on measurement by DC area communications professional societies, today’s PR Week headlines “Industry Faces Long Road to Uniform Measurement Standards”.

Ketchum CEO Rob Flaherty, who will be addressing the AMEC (International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication) Fifth European Summit on Measurement  in June, believes that industry measurement standards need to be created to answer “three fundamental questions”: 

1-      Did you reach the right people with the right message?

2-      Did their behavior or attitude change?

3-      Did, your effort produce some economic benefit?

Fleishman-Hillard president and CEO Dave Senay says that “Many agencies have their own proprietary forms of measurement. There was no standard before, so a lot of agencies had to invest in creating their own,” and adds “The industry will in time realize moving away from proprietary measurement and adopting a standard is in its best interests.”

PR Week reports that the Coalition for Public Relations Research Standards, created by industry stakeholders including the Institute for Public Relations, is seeking feedback on measurement to use in creating a toolkit of consistent, reliable, and comparable PR metrics.