Thought leaders in public relations and communications measurement drafted a set of new priorities during the Lisbon European Summit last week, dubbed the Measurement Agenda, 2020. The agenda builds upon the Barcelona Principles set forth in the Measurement Summit last year and coincides with Cision’s launch of Cision Global Analysts, which brings together international talent and experience to help meet the newly set out challenges in PR and communications measurement.
The organizers of last week’s summit are the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communications and the Institute for Public Relations. They joined the Public Relations Society of America, the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, the Council of Public Relations Firms and a host of top global corporations and communications agencies in organizing 200 delegates representing 33 countries to vote on the industry’s top priorities. The official supporters of the summit were The European Association of Communication Directors and the Portuguese Association for Corporate Communication.
The top four votes, in rank order, were to establish the following:
- How to measure the ROI (return on investment) of public relations efforts
- A set of global standards for social media measurement
- An integration of measurement into the standard PR toolkit
- A client education program to emphasize and insist on measurement of outputs, outcomes and business results from PR programs
The combined definitions of the Barcelona Principles and the Measurment Agenda, 2020 lay a clear path for communications measurement across comprehensive PR territory, including efforts in analyzing both social and traditional media coverage, and with an emphasis on global standards to meet today’s largely borderless media landscape.
With the launch of the dedicated Global Analysts group, Cision commits their resources to these industry-established values and goals, and with these agreements it looks ever clearer that measurement will have greater and greater accuracy and a secure, integral role in PR efforts across industries, media outlets and nations. Look here now for a video chat with K.C. Brown, General Manager of Cision Global Analysts and in the future for more coverage as these priorities are realized into new metrics and practices and we begin to see how PR benefits from them.
