I’ve long advocated the need for the PR industry to embrace commoditized media measurement in order to direct more dollars to measuring what matters. Seems the Advertising industry is heading in this direction.
A joint-task force composed of members of the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Advertising Research Foundation yesterday unveiled an initiative that would shake up the classic equation of advertising math that determines consumer exposure to an ad. It would replace the concept of frequency — the number of exposures to an ad — with “engagement,” a metric that could better reflect the growing number of media choices facing consumers, from cell phones and the Internet to video games and podcasts. [AdAge]
This will only become more important as communicators discover the need to measure the degree to which customers are participating in their communities and brands. The best campiagns will measure what changed: did we move markets, change minds and increase sales? This isn’t just about driving communications accountability, its also about driving marketing accountability.
There is a lot of work going on to identify relationships. My work on the
Relationship Value Model is another area of research but this time, I put Public Relations at the centre. If we have a role in Relationship Management, then we have to work hard to claim the space.
customers participates in their communities only when they feel it’s their community.
–> there seems to be a few exceptions to this rule – depending on how you look at community. For instance, I know the Audi auto community is really Audi’s community but I still participate because they give me the ability to do so and I want to. Audi hosts it but I have never felt it is mine – and I don’t really care that much – they are only cars. The Java community is another. Sun acts as the host and allows participation. I do see your point though and this is a critical area of experimentation.