Measurement and Reporting

Measurement is the desk where communications work either becomes accountable or becomes decorative. Its purpose is to let an organisation decide what to do next, which means a report is written for the decision it is meant to inform rather than for the impression it makes.

Frame the objective so it can fail

An objective that cannot fail cannot be measured. Raising awareness is not an objective; a stated change in a specific audience's understanding, behaviour or response over a stated period is. Framing the objective before the activity begins also settles what will be collected, which is the difference between measurement and searching afterwards for a flattering number.

Outputs, outtakes and outcomes

Practitioners generally separate three things: outputs, meaning what was produced and placed; outtakes, meaning what an audience noticed, understood or recalled; and outcomes, meaning what changed as a result. Counting outputs is easy and tells the least. Outtakes require asking the audience something. Outcomes require agreeing in advance what change would count and accepting that communications is one contributor among several.

Numbers that mislead

Some widely used figures carry more weight than they can bear. Potential audience reach describes an upper bound that nobody has ever met, and equivalent advertising value converts editorial coverage into a price it was never sold at. Neither is a measure of effect. Where such figures are quoted at all, they are labelled as volume rather than as impact, and no report should present a single unexplained composite score as an answer.

Reporting a mixed result

Most results are mixed, and a report that never says so stops being read by the people it is meant to inform. The useful shape is short: what was intended, what was done, what changed, what did not, and what should change next time. Comparisons are made against the same period in the previous cycle rather than against whichever baseline happens to flatter, and the method is described so that a reader can judge the figure rather than take it on trust.