Johna Burke - Why measurement is key to the credibility of public relations in management

In this episode, Stephen Waddington discusses the measurement and performance management of public relations with Johna Burke, CEO, AMEC.

They discuss:

• How data helps practitioners prove their value to senior leaders and gain credibility and influence in management.
  
  
• The importance of reliable, ethically sourced data, ensuring that data is properly vetted to maintain trust and integrity.
  
  
• How to use real-time data to manage the performance and effectiveness of public relations campaigns.
  
  
• How the AMEC framework helps link public relations work to business goals and helps understand outputs, outtakes, and outcomes.
  
  
• Why is comparing media coverage to advertising value equivalent (AVE) outdated and unhelpful?

Presented by Sarah Waddington and Stephen Waddington

For more information visit https://www.wadds.co.uk/
With thanks to our production partners at What Goes On Media

Transcript

Stephen Waddington:
Hey Johna, how you doing?

 Johna Burke:
Hey, Stephen, great, great! Glad to be here with you and pretty exciting, wonderful, to see you last week at our awards.

Stephen Waddington:
Whereabouts in the world do we find you today?

Johna Burke:
In Surprise, Arizona.

Stephen Waddington:
Good to see you. I'm going to start with a lowball question. It's the question that whenever Richard Bagnall and I get together and spend too much time over Negronis we always end up talking about… it's 2025. Why is measurement in public relations still such a challenging issue?

Johna Burke:
Thank you for starting with the soul crushing question of the conversation. Thank you.

 Stephen Waddington:
Why is AMEC necessary? That's the question, I guess.

Johna Burke:
That's the right question!! So AMEC is necessary, because I think there is this learning curve and there is this attitude in PR where they're very good at certain pieces and for so long they've still taken this approach of ‘I'm not good at math. The numbers are different’. Where it's not the case anymore, right, and I think there is a real division for those who are incorporating measurement into the things that they do. You see them accelerating. You see their credibility within the C-suite, within all of the functions of their business, increase and it's because data does matter, right, and we now are in a society where we have so much access to data that there's no excuses.

I mean, back in the 90s things weren't as digital, they weren't as readily accessible. There could have been some excuses, even poor at the time, because you can always map those activities to those outputs and outcomes. But now, especially, with most of the items being digital, even in-person items, you can get some of that digital, instantaneous feedback. So there's really no excuse for not incorporating data and wanting to know and applying the understandings of how effective your communications are, to make your brand better and to be a better steward of your budget and of the role that you play in the reputation piece for organisations. That's why it's so frustrating. But for a lot of people who are leading that effort, I think we are making inroads. And you know, there's still someone who I respect highly who's doing a lot of academic research, getting his PhD about PR. So maybe there's still a lot to learn there for all of us.

Stephen Waddington:
There's loads to learn! One thing I have learned through the research I've done so far spent three years on it is that management absolutely recognises the value of public relations. So I can evidence that through tangible assets on the balance sheet, through the contribution to the relationship perspective and marketing of sales, through the insights that help with planning and decision making, through the crisis that's been well managed or averted completely, but, yes, still, public relations doesn't have the scorecard or doesn't show up into the management meeting with the scorecard to demonstrate its value. Or, if it does, you know it's those are the forefront of practice and generally there's a long trail of people behind that don’t.

Johna Burke:
So what you just said is so amazing, whether you realise it or not, is that PR has the credibility and the C-suite relies on them. They identify their value in crisis, in crisis averted, and a lot of them are delivering a minimal amount of data. Now let's add to that and think ‘okay, now, once we add data so that we can show that value chain very clearly and the ebb and the flow of that’, imagine the relationship that PR has the capability to have with the C-suite when they are using credible data and helping to really guide decisions to be data-led for their organisation. So it's a miracle, right? So they know that the work is being done, they know that it's valuable, but the opportunity that still exists is why AMEC exists and that's because creating that data-led, data-infused PR and comms role for an organisation will supercharge the effectiveness of comms, further elevating the role and the relationship with the C-suite of trust and reliability.

Stephen Waddington:
Again, management absolutely understands the value of the relationship perspective. There is no one in the C-suite that understands that better than the public relations practitioner. Yet public relations practitioners, corporate communicators, have in the past defaulted to a media perspective of the organization or a communication perspective rather than a relationship perspective. How do we push them up to that higher level?

Johna Burke:
Well, I don't know that the individuals can be pushed up, right? I think the individuals need to be very good at what they're very good at, and that is at planning, at strategic communications. I think the organisations where you see them being elevated is where they're working closely with consultants. They're bringing in data analytics team, so they have people with an acumen for data who understand the why and the how. They're able to do that. I think you're a bit of a unicorn by being able to play on both sides of that fence, and that isn't necessarily what we want for all comms people either, but we do need them to have the acumen for how to interpret that and how to surround themselves and to create that accountability using data for what comms is doing. Even if that isn't an expertise that they have, that there are ways that they can learn, they can incorporate that. There is an unlimited amount of consultants out there who are actually doing this with data, and I think that those people who don't have that expertise, that's okay, but they're also pretty fast learners and the people who have historically been leaning on their skills, as you know, a writer, as someone who can write a speech, or who can communicate effectively. Once they see the data working in tandem with what they're trying to do, they're very quick to adapt and to incorporate that into what they know. And that's where we'll know that we're being more successful when we see ongoing real-time data and analytics. Unfortunately, there's still a lot of people who are using month-end reports or quarterly reports or year-end reports only as that kind of ‘here's a dashboard of what we did and how we think it matters’.

I'll share a painful example, an analogy of my own life in the last 72 hours. It's a lot like if you go on a long trip and you're gone from your house for three weeks, only to return home to find out the refrigerator is broken. That's not a great situation, right? So if you think, oh, you're just operating as if, of course, the refrigerator is working, it always works, it's plugged in, there's no problems - no, as soon as it breaks down, that's where everything stops, and I think comms is a lot like that. There are a lot of people who are just working on this assumption the refrigerator is always working and they get to the end of their trip, the end of the quarter, the end of the year, to only find out, ‘oh, that's not working. I wonder how long that's not been working’. Oh yeah, all of our food is ruined, so we have to start over again and that's tragic, and that's such a waste of budget, something that they fight so hard for, only to waste it.

Stephen Waddington:
That's really exciting actually, the perspective that we could bring performance management into public relations or into the public relations corporate communication function, and actually you had a room full of these people, and you talk about this role of bridging data analytics, but also the, the relationship um skills required. You had a room full of these people last week at the AMEC Awards uh, presenting some brilliant, brilliant work work. What were some of the key highlights from that from you from the AMEC Awards last week?

Johna Burke:
That's a little bit like asking me which of my children I love the most!

Stephen Waddington:
Which are your favourite children. Yeah, it is Sorry. So, Jolly Bedwood?

Johna Burke:
Yeah, anybody who can take a good teasing like that for two hours is obviously my people. But I think what, what you see, or what, what I can see in the awards without giving anything away from being able to see all of the entries, all of the judging right, so I enter it from a relatively unique perspective is that there's a lot of really good work out there, and even in the AMEC awards it isn't all comms, right, but it is the measurement of comms. So it's where the data and the comms teams have come together that have created that synergy to create award-winning work. And I think that's the piece where I mean, even if we look at Golan as an example, Golan won a Cannes Lion, right.

People are like ‘this should be all the time’. It should be all the time, but the way they did it was through data, right? It was a great campaign, but it's the data that backs that up, that gives that alignment and consistency with what they're expecting at Cannes against, you know, advertising and marketing data that makes that possible. And I don't think people have to be an expert at everything, but I think people do have to take that piece of consulting and identify very clearly what the problem and what the challenge is, and then be able to say, ‘ok, now let's step back and use our planning skills, our strategic skills, to say, ok, what are we trying to change here and how are we going to measure this along the way, to show that we are moving in the right direction? And, more importantly, if the data says that we're not moving in the right direction, how are we able to then take that pause and adjust so that they are’, as opposed to ‘no, this is what we committed to. We're just going to go all in on this’. No, be smart. Let the data help make you smarter about what you're working on yeah, again, the performance aspect.

Stephen Waddington:
It's really interesting you've raised that now, um, um. You should also mention johnny benwood is the I think he's Global Intergalactic President of Data and Insights, isn't he a Gallon?

 Johna Burke:
Yeah, I think the intergalactic part might be added on, but definitely global, global. So there's global and insights!

 Stephen Waddington:
You did give a merciless teasing last week.

I want to talk about. One of the cornerstones of AMEC's work is the integrated evaluation framework. We teach this to socially mobile students as a normative planning tool, and it's an excellent tool. Can you talk me through the highlights of it? And then I want to dig into three aspects I get asked a lot about it.

Johna Burke:
Absolutely so. The biggest benefit and the biggest challenge of the IEF is that first square. When you log into the IEF you are required to place a measurable objective there. You may or may not be surprised - many people move past that and start putting in their activities, you know, and then maybe backfill some of that objective piece.

Stephen Waddington:
Sorry, jo, just to interrupt you. Is that one of the biggest challenges that  people don't know what the comms objectives are.

Johna Burke:
But it isn't the comms objectives. Right, they know how to complete the comms objectives, but it's that alignment with the business objective. So how comms is feeding in to the overarching business objective, whether that's creating a bigger widget, whether that's selling more widgets, no matter what that is. They need to understand that, the role that comms can play in that, and then what that measurable objective, so that they can be held accountable to that. And you know, I say that a bit tongue in cheek, but in talking to a lot of people who were just starting out on this journey, they're like well, but you know, ‘we know that we need to get more, more eyeballs, more impressions’. I'm like ‘do you, is that what you know that you need to do’? Because I think maybe that's a step backwards. You know what are you trying to do that makes you think that you need more eyeballs and more impressions. Because that's where that quantitative and qualitative piece has a real divide. It's much more interesting to you know, the whole world is your target, as opposed to ‘these 50 people are a target. Now, how do we, in a meaningful way, get in front of these 50 people and convince them that we're a reputable company, a company that they want to do business with and that they can rely on’, right? So there is a little bit of that. Now, we're going to go big. Well, going big is going small. You know, is really understanding that narrow sliver of who you're trying to influence. And that's difficult for a lot of people who are trying to come into the IEF, because if they don't have buy-in already, right, a lot of people are trying to use the IEF tool to demonstrate how, when they all work together, they're more effective. So if they don't have buy-in, that already it's a little bit of guesswork, and not always great guesswork, because it's biased and skewed against what they're doing and what they think they do well, that's supercharging that and that may or may not be what is impacting some of those elements of their corporate comms with that key target audience. So I think the objective is always something that's important, that you need to work with your team and have a lot of clarity on why you're doing what you're doing and not just ‘okay, we need to do four press releases’, it's like ‘no, if we're doing these press releases, who's our target? Why are we doing it? Why is the press release the right way to do that’?

And all of those aspects of comms to really validate why you should or shouldn't be using comms in the role that you are and who should be the spokesperson, who should be that deliverer of that message. And I think as people look at some of those nuances, they think, ‘oh well, that's obvious’. It's obvious for some, not for others. And that's why the real gold dust of the IEF, I think, is the taxonomy. And that's because that breaks down by definition, your shared assets of your organisation. You're creating that uniformity around definition of what that means so that you know who's going to be the champion of this, right? When we're looking at pulling in this data. Who's going to be bringing that to us, how is that data validated? What is the reliability of that data, so that we can plug that in and know with confidence that we are presenting solid data but also ethically sourced data.

You know, I think there is a lot of that that is going to come up in the next 12 to 18 months. All data is not bad data. All data is not good data. But all data can be reliable if it is sourced and then sanitised, that you have a lot of good hygiene around your data in an ethical way. And that's important so that, as comms takes that role and takes that data to their C-suite, they aren't getting those questions that leave them a lot of looking-at-our-boots moments, but give us those answers, say will, where is this data from? Why would we rely on this? And they have those answers. They know that before they're presenting that, so that they can have the confidence that it's something that's going to move the needle for them.

And once they're able to then demonstrate that in the matrix of the IEF for ‘what are those activities, what are those outputs, what are those outcomes’ now they're able to demonstrate and roadmap how that works and that's going to give everybody both an investment in why this is a tool that they can work. And again, this is not exhaustively the end-all / be-all, but it is an amazing starting framework for organisations who don't have their own, and I can say with a lot of pride that this framework is the baseline that a lot of organisations have used and then they've modified it so it works for their teams, it works for their brand, it works for their C-suite for what they're trying to accomplish.
Stephen Waddington:
I really like your perspective there on the integrity of data, because I think I totally agree with you - the related point about impressions as well. You know there's so much nonsense out there on the internet that you know almost certainly stuff you’re counting is fake. I agree whole-heartedly that data integrity is going to become a an emergent issue.


I wanted to talk about O-Levels within the iIEF - Integrated Evaluations Framework, because one of the things in teaching it or consulting around it that trips people up is the three boxes with outputs, outcomes, and…. I've done it myself. There you go!

Johna Burke:
Outputs, outtakes and outcomes!

Stephen Waddington:
Outcomes! I missed that. Go on explain those to me.

Johna Burke:
So, from the industry that loves a little alliteration, what you're telling me is this this is the moment that it is paralyzing to them. All right, I'll take it. I'll take it!

Stephen Waddington:
I'm going to come out with different names.

Johna Burke:
No, no, no.

Stephen Waddington:
No, no, I'm not, I'm absolutely not.

Johna Burke:
No, I think we need to think about it of the oh, oh, oh, it's magic, right? Right! So outputs are what you put out that is received by your audience, right, so it's that extension of that activities piece, right? Now, how does that work? What are the messages that you've put out there for your audience? And I think there has to be that check where people are like ‘is it clear, is it confusing to people’? This is where you need to identify how that's working, how that's resonating with your audiences, and you can do that with the next O, which is the outtake. So what are the audiences taking with and taking out of what you've said to them? Do they care? Are they doing anything? Are they, you know? Is it resonating with them? Does it matter?

And then if you don't have good data there, if there's some skewed data and you're not sure, well, the outcomes is going to tell you, it's going to create that bigger disparity about what are the effects the communication has on the audiences, right, how does it change for them what they are doing? Does it make it real? And then you can't talk about the three O's without the I, and that's the Impact, because outcomes are going to be some of those shorter things like downloads. Is it something that people are spending time on a video that you've created? But if you look at it without the impact piece, it would be confusing and it wouldn't make sense, but when you look at it with that impact piece, that's that long tail effect. So now are people further down the funnel. Do people see your organisation as more credible, as more reliable? Are they turning to you and are you seeing traffic and new respondents to other surveys that you're doing? Is your owned asset getting more traffic? Is it bookmarked for people to come back to on certain issues and initiatives? And that's why you have to look at them all as an ecosystem and they all have to exist together and they're all very telling along the way.
 
 Stephen Waddington:
Thank you for the Sesame Street primer! Thanks, thanks.

 Johna Burke:
B is for blue!

Stephen Waddington:
We’re in comms… whatever it takes!

Johna Burke:
But sometimes it does take taking things back to a very rudimentary explanation.

 Stephen Waddington:
Yeah.

 Johna Burke:
So it resonates with people like - because comms wonderful with words, which makes them notorious at complicating things that can be simple, and that's where they lose some of that credibility. You know a CEO, you said it at the top of the pod. CEOs have confidence in comms. Sometimes they don't know why it works. Well, explain to them clearly and simply why it works, not trying to confuse them with all of the ways that you're clever, but with hey, ‘client A didn't know us. Client A found out about us. Client A trusted us to download a paper. Now client A is a qualified lead’.

That's pretty simple stuff and that's why it matters. ‘Okay, how do we get more client A's to be in our funnel now? How is that making the job of sales easier? How is that making our stock price better? How is that consistent with what we're trying to do on an ESG level’? All of those things require it to be simply broken down so that not that CEOs need to be simple. But if you aren't explaining clearly, then you are risking being misinterpreted and being not trusted yourself, from a comms standpoint of view. If you can't explain it clearly, you don't understand it well enough.
 
 Stephen Waddington:
Very well put.

I grew up in a time in the 90s when AVE was the normative measure for public relations Advertising Value Equivalent and uh, I think it was the normative measure for public relations advertising value equivalent and I think it was the Barcelona principles rejected it. There was a strong line that said it does not represent a means of measurement and AMEC  has generally debunked it. AMEC has members amongst its media monitoring community that still provide AVE as a flag, as a variable within their reporting. How do you square that?

Johna Burke:
So AVEs are not the value of public relations and communication. Right? That is Barcelona Principle number five has been since the beginning, has been through two additional iterations and I'm sure will be the again the least changed Barcelona principle, as we do the update for 2025.

The Barcelona principles are meant to be guide rails right? So we have evolved the Barcleona Principles including the 2020 iteration of not just ‘these are the 7 prinicples and rules’ but telling people what to do and what not to do when using the Barcelona principles to be most effective for their organisation.

The reality, breeding back from the 90s and before, is a lot of CCOs are still bonused and compensated based on AVEs. So when we look at an industry where comms people are not notoriously overpaid by any means, but for that one sliver of their pie that they have been able to get for some type of a bonus, it relies on AVEs because within their organisation they have failed to this point to demonstrate why it's different, and so that's an easy number for them to plug in against their marketing and advertising peers to demonstrate why they're doing that.

That's one of the main drivers, and I know there's a lot of conversation. There's a lot of discussion around ‘yeah, but if the demand for drugs went down, people would stop using drugs’. Maybe if that was the only way people were trying to support their families in an environment they're going to go to the street for some other type of drug. So it still doesn't represent the value of comm, but it is one metric normally in an index of metrics that people are using. How people are extracting that is unfortunate, in some cases we are seeing some movement against that, but unfortunately a lot of the elements are in certain markets where comms is trying to compete in a one-on-one basis and they aren't weighing it against reputation. Right? Reputation isn't an eyeball, isn't a visual, and really, as we go more digital and you see, you know more and more things looking at the algorithms of digital metrics AVEs become less and less influential in even the most common mixes, and so our AMEC members do not promote that this is the value of comms, but they do deliver that as a metric of a benchmarking that clients have been using for a long time within their overall scorecard that they're doing. And I think having those other conversations, you know, and I think having those other conversations and I know that those conversations take place where it isn't ‘Here's your AVE job done’, but here's this metric. Here's where you see it declining. It's declining for all the reasons that we've been predicting for 20 years. How are we finally going to get you to move off of this, or what else are you doing? What other data can we bring in? Can we bring in your stock price? Can we bring in some of those other things, so that you might be able to see a correlation around things that are going to help you tell your story better, because it isn't really causation, and that's the thing that most people do now.

Stephen Waddington:
So I'd return to this where we started that CEOs, absolutely in my experience, and I could evidence this through Richard, recognise the value of comms public relations in the broader sense, through the relationship perspective and its contribution to sales and marketing. The crisis averted the intangible assets and so forth, and I think as those metrics become more normative, AVE is just going to die. It’s got to die. Course it has.

Johna Burke:
I mean, but we've had it on a tombstone ever since the 90s.

Stephen Waddington:
Yeah, we have.

 Johna Burke:
I mean, late 90s is when I first saw it on tombstones. So you know, let's not give it more energy that it needs, but let's focus on the really important elements that people are looking to do and let's not use that as a way to you know… people who are doing good work of consulting and trying to move people away from that. Let's not focus on trying to put them out of business, because it's one of many metrics that they include. That is kind of that baseline for so many of their clients.

Stephen Waddington:
Johna Burke, thank you very much. It's been wonderful talking to you.

Johna Burke:
Thank you, my friend. Always a pleasure - a lot of work to be done, so hopefully we'll be talking for a lot of years to come.