On the evidence I have seen, few people care much about the Barcelona Principles. I’ll offer a solution here, but my evidence for making this claim is my experience judging a large PR awards scheme in the last two years.
On each occasion I have spent a day or so carefully reading about 30 or more award entries. The first year it was large consumer campaign category and this year it was large B2B category.
The companies entering were amongst the most high profile consultancies in the UK and the clients were mostly substantial, professionally run businesses.
I can’t recall a single entry where the Barcelona Principles had clearly been applied and there were plenty where the results were presented in terms of “media impacts” or some other close cousin of AVE.
After some years in existence you might imagine this wouldn’t be the case (especially when an awards entry is, by definition, when you present yourself at your most capable and professional).
I sense that the Barcelona Principles exist in a bit of a bubble of larger consultancies and companies which sell PR measurement tools.
Granted, as an independent consultant who does mostly communications strategy work rather than execution, I don’t see as many PR briefs as I used to when running consultancies, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen the Principles mentioned in a brief.
This hunch was backed up by comments made to me after I posted a tweet during the launch event suggesting that if after five years these principles still had to bang the drum about the inadequacy of AVE, that it was legitimate to ask about the effectiveness of the campaign to promote the principles.
I asked David Gallagher from Ketchum (one of the prime movers behind the Principles) via LinkedIn if the Principles were actually applied to the campaign to promote them. If I interpret his answer correctly (that this was discussed), they aren’t.
So if I’m right that five years after launch the Principles don’t really resonate with buyers of PR services and are something that only vendors really talk about, how will they ever catch fire?
Something has to change.
The problem is that whilst it’s very important that measurement is improved, the work underpinning the Principles seems to be looking at the wrong end of the pipeline. You can have the best set of standards in the world, the best measurement tools etc. but if what you are measuring is incoherent or ill-defined, then what’s the value?
More precise, reliable and valuable measurable outcomes come from more precise and reliable instructions at the start of the process and that is where I’d suggest AMEC and its industry partners focus their efforts in order to achieve more widespread adoption and get out of the bubble.
Measurement is hard because the inputs to the process are hard to define. If the brief is vague and susceptible to change, so are the outcomes and how do you measure that?
A better magnifying glass won’t help you, but better terms of reference in briefs will and that is an education task for all stakeholders of the industry (not just the seemingly small number that devotes time and attention to the Principles) – vendors of all sizes, professional bodies representing both supplier and purchaser and procurement specialists.
All of these stakeholders are united by a vested interest in a better articulation of what business problem needs to be solved and what PR’s role is in accomplishing that goal. That strikes me as a huge opportunity being missed that would be based on collaboration.
The advertising industry is struggling with this issue as the recent study “From Mad Men to Sad Men” makes clear.
There the impact of unclear briefs and weathervane behaviour is costing the industry serious money as client relationships are getting ever shorter. It’s also costing clients serious sums in wasted time and effort chopping and changing agency in pursuit of perfection on the cheap.
It seems reasonable to assume that this behaviour is affecting PR as much as it is advertising and also that it isn’t going to improve any time soon unless the relationship between client and agency/consultancy is framed in terms of the benefits and value created by a closer working relationship, rather than trying to achieve better results by one party in the relationship feeling the account is forever at risk.
Linking this back to the Barcelona Principles, I’d suggest that five years on, the argument for measurement needs to be urgently reframed in terms of asking not “how do we improve measurement standards to make them relevant” but “how do we help the industry to define outcomes that can be measured”.
That is hard to do, but the alternative as the ad industry knows to its cost, is much worse.