PR Sells Council and Council Sells PR
Objective/Brief:
The Communications Team at Essex County Council had not undertaken independent evaluation prior to its work with Media Measurement (MML), which began in April 2008.
Each of eight service areas carried out their own PR activity without planning or evaluating, and requests would come to the Communications Team without any overall strategy. The various service areas were competing for media attention, rather than working together to achieve the best results. Through the evaluation, ECC aimed to demonstrate best practice, through evaluation, to the rest of the Council and to other local authorities. Its objectives were to:-
1. Improve planning of PR activities, leading to better outcomes. The Council wanted to see:
a) A quarter by quarter improvement in the percentage of beneficial coverage;
b) A quarter by quarter improvement in the number of items mentioning a Pledge;
c) An increase in the ratio of media items to media releases.
2. To assess the effectiveness of campaign activity in raising the profile of ECC. The Council wanted to achieve national press coverage for each of its campaigns.
Conclusions:
1. From the success of evaluating its communications activities, ECC was in a position to make informed decisions about the organisation of communications at the Council, effecting a major change in strategy. ECC centralised the communications function to overcome the previous problems of disjointed strategy and competitiveness.
In terms of improving planning of PR activities, leading to better outcomes, ECC used MML’s research to adjust its strategy on a monthly basis and be proactive with its communications, targeting tiered media. The Communications Team also understood which PR activities resulted in more beneficial coverage and focused their efforts on these areas. Beneficial coverage increased from a low of 5% in July 2008, to above 20%.. These improvements have not only led to better outcomes, but clearly have demonstrated a financial return on investment for the Commercial Team.
2. In terms of assessing the effectiveness of campaign activity, it was found that campaign work promoted the work of the Council to a national audience and allowed ECC to lead the way for other Council’s in areas such as its award winning Post Office closures campaign. ECC achieved the objective of securing national press coverage for each of the campaigns, with coverage across the UK and in some prominent national newspapers and broadcast programmes.
Because the effectiveness of the PR Team could be demonstrated to the Council, funds were made available to enable the Team to become a commercial enterprise.
Eleri Roberts, Media Manager at Essex County Council, said; ‘It is accurate to say that MML’s evaluation was at the core of these major strategic changes and MML provided the Council with a strong objective basis upon which to make important decisions about the future of the Communications function.'
What our clients say
-
"Media Measurement are at the cutting edge of social media evaluation."
Tracey Hope-Ross, VP of Research at Mom Central Consulting
-
"The intelligent, detailed and clear analysis provides us with invaluable intelligence"
Louise Wiley, Media Relations Dir. at Arts Council
-
"They demonstrate to you that you can measure the effectiveness of PR"
Jon Sellors, UK Head of External Comms at RSA Group
