It is PR Measurement Month! This year, we speak renowned measurement leader and author Mark Weiner. Here’s a bit about Mark to set the scene: 

• His latest book PR Technology, Data and Insights was named one of the top three PR books for 2022. 
• He is a member of the exclusive Arthur Page Society
• The Institute for Public Relations  awarded him Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018
• He is a member of the PR News all of Fame

This year our theme builds on the Public Relations Institute of Australia 2023 Conference theme Ignite to Spark. For Mark his ‘spark’ in many ways came down to a sign he saw outside a coffee shop in California – Begin Simply, Simply Begin. This neatly frames Mark’s advice on measurement and evaluation of PR: there are so many obstacles and challenges but begin simply, simply begin and learn as you go.

For Mark, the key to proving the value of PR is to understand the priorities and preferences of the people who make the budgeting decisions and from there identifying what metrics matter. 

Often, communicators assume they know what the executive want without asking them directly. Mark puts it like this: “You are three quarters of the way home if you negotiate properly, understand what is meaningful to them, what is measurable and what is reasonable Once you have that you eliminate a lot of obstacles and traps.”

Mark talks through how using a marketing mix model, bringing in data from all disciplines, can be the way to talk the language of business. In Mark’s experience, advertising gets 70% of the budget and delivers approximately $1.10 in terms of sales; price promotion gets 28% and these loses 25 cents on the dollar; PR gets the remaining 2% of budget and delivers $8 on every dollar. Where is the PR for that! 

One of the symptoms of not properly measuring is that PR hasn’t earned the trust of executives in the C Suite. And if you’re ever asked about the value of PR again, here’s a quote to shoot back across the boardroom table:

“PR is the only form of marketing communication that lifts all boats. So when PR, when earned media coverage in particular, is positive and prominent, sales are easier and advertising works better. And the alternate is true, when the news is prominent and negative, it creates harm.”

In this episode I am joined by Dan Wilcock, Sustainability and Governance Manager for the UN Global Compact Network Australia.

The UN Global Compact Network may be the biggest movement you haven't heard of. 

A special initiative initially set up by then UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, it is a call to companies everywhere to align their operations and strategies with 10 universal principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment, and anti-corruption, and take action in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

With more than 18,000 companies across 160 countries, it is the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative. 

In this discussion we take a dive into all the different terms out there - greenwashing, bluewashing, whitewashing,  green hushing – and what they really mean for PR and comms professionals.

Dan wraps all these terms up into the neat package of ESG-washing and says the reason we are seeing more of this now is that there has been a real increase in appetite for ESG information and that is coming from every direction – customers, employees, boards, supply chain partners, finance providers – all these groups now have an active interest in what a business is doing on ESG. 

This has been accompanied by a rise of misinformation. An online sweep or corporate websites by ACCC put it at more than half of businesses had made concerning claims about their environmental credentials. For Dan there’s a spectrum from puffery through to outright fabrication, with the majority being sloppiness and hyperbole – which doesn’t excuse it. 

The UN Global Compact Network just completed a series of consultations with the Australian business community on ESG which found:

• We’re in a transition period, there is a lot happening very fast. Businesses need to upskill and likely mistakes will be made.
• Businesses are consumers too. A third of businesses they spoke to had also fallen victim to greenwashing
• Reporting and disclosure is very much in flux – there’s a way to go for organisations to streamline data gathering, and delivery of the right narrative
• 93 percent of our respondents said green hushing had been considered as a potential approach as a result of the attention that it's getting right now.
• The business community is looking for more detailed guidance from regulators. (Check this guidance from ACCC giving eight principles for trustworthy environmental and sustainability claims)

For Dan it is about developing a bit of confidence, closing the capacity gap and being informed - businesses should not fear regulatory action from making legitimate and truthful environmental and sustainability claims.

And why does all this matter? Because business will only get harder for companies that aren't aware of their impact and aren't transparent about their impact.

In this episode of Smoke Signal, I am joined by Scott Brinker, a.k.a Chief Martech, author of the Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic. 

Scott is in the envious position where is hobby and passion has become his career and vice versa. 

First launched in 2011 with 150 tools, the latest 2023 version, released last month, featured an unbelievable 11,038 tools and technologies. 

This exponential rise in Martech is mirrored in Commtech.

“Everything that marketing does is now connected or driven or powered some way by something digital but that was not always the case,” Scott says. “Back in the day, even senior marketing executives we're highly dubious about tech.  

“That is where the Martech Map was conceived, to show marketers the range of different software that was probably already being used in their organisation… and there’s a lot of them.”

Scott sees both supply and demand factors leading to this significant growth over the years. 

“Technology has essentially have lowered the barriers to entry. If someone has an idea for what they believe is going be a valuable software tool for marketers, they can get into the market with it. 

“But there's the other side of this too. I can't think of any other profession that has gone through so much change and so much expansion of scope over this past decade… So marketers as a result, are always open to  technology that's going to help.

“There's this symbiosis where there are lots of Marchech startups a year to tackle these new challenges, and a lot of demand among marketers to figure out how do we how do we do this.

It is not a podcast in 2023 without speaking about AI. So what impact with AI have on this Martech Map?

“It is  going to be incredibly disruptive to the existing Martech Map because I do think  a lot of things are going to change. One of the things AI is doing in the software world is yet another thing to dramatically reduce the barrier to entry. 

“Generally, I do not know. I am absolutely fascinated to see how this plays out. But I feel pretty confident it's going to be a lot of change in this industry.”