“Clip books to people with engineering or finance backgrounds mean nothing,” says Ryan Batty, senior public relations specialist for McData Corp., provider of open storage networking solutions. “There’s no better way to prove that PR is as essential as an accounting department than with numbers.”

Measurement can help earn credibility from executives and lead to tangible results like a bigger budget and staff.

Here’s a look at how measurement helped executives understand and value public relations:

Bigger budget, staff

PR had little to no input when Joe Munoz was hired five years ago as the public information office manager for the flood control district of Arizona’s Maricopa County.

“If the county had to build a bridge, they didn’t see the need to involve us to address community concerns,” he says. “They just told us to write a press release.”

That changed when Munoz hired vendor PR Trak to help him evaluate the quality and impact of the PR program.

“Without that, it was hard to get people to understand the role we play in community relations to help get projects built on time without problems,” he says.

Measurement reports prompted executives to increase the PR budget, hire four new employees and involve the PR staff in project planning meetings.

“Now we are as valuable as engineers in designing that bridge,” Munoz says. “They can read for themselves in a report how PR helps the project succeed without us having to even tell them.”

Bragging rights

McData’s PR staff earned executive attention and a bigger budget when they threw away clips books and hired measurement vendor Biz 360.

“Our executives didn’t understand what differentiates us from someone doing the Web site or organizing a trade show,” Batty says. “Biz 360 was one of the best ways to teach them about PR because we presented it in a way they can easily understand - with charts and graphs.”

Media content reports from Biz 360 track articles about McData and its competitors. The reports show executives how successful McData’s PR strategy is, and proves how PR drives sales.

“The goal is to push sales and we can show where we are doing that,” Batty says.

Each quarter, McData’s three-person PR staff picks four messages to associate with the company. It then tracks the stories that include those messages and presents them to the sales staff.

“The more that people write about a certain topic, the more potential customers can see that this is the buzz in the market right now,” Batty says. “The public values an objective third-party endorsement, and we can prove that when an article helps makes a sale.”

In addition to proving success, measurement reports help Batty answer executives’ questions.

Recently, an executive asked Batty to prove how PR improved the image of McData’s newly acquired software division. Batty quickly created a Biz 360 report that showed that the number and tone of stories increased in the year since McData bought the company.

“In the past when we were asked those types of questions, we would have to dig through all of our clip books and somehow show that the coverage was better than a year ago without any numbers to back us up,” Batty says. “We would have been at a loss without the software. More than anything, measurement supports our claims of hard work and success.”

Executive Buy-In

Measurement helped executives at Bell Labs get more involved in PR.

“Without intricate measurement, you’re operating with your hands tied behind your back,” says Rich Teplitsky, director of communications of Bell Labs, a division of Lucent Technologies. “It has given the senior leadership a better understanding of our effectiveness and helped them work with us more.”

Teplitsky gives scientists reports from PR Trak about the tone, quality and amount of news coverage.

“They can look at the numbers and see that we need to host reporter visits in publications where our messages aren’t getting in,” Teplitsky says. “We don’t have to convince them to help us.”

Measurement reports also convince executives to increase spokes-person training.

“They can see what key messages for external audiences didn’t stick and why we need to prepare our spokespeople to do a better job,” Teplitsky says.

Ryan Batty, 720.566.3934, ryan.batty@mcdata.com
Rich Teplitsky, 908.582.5700, Rteplitsky@lucent.com
Joe Munoz, 602.506.2983, Jfm@mail.maricopa.gov