Road to the Best Implementation of AMEC-based Measurement and Evaluation
A Pinch of 2022 Reflection and Outlook for 2023
Fardila Astari, IAPR
A year has passed since the organization Perhumas and the leading PR media, PR Indonesia, promoted the measurement and evaluation standardized by the Association of Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) in Indonesia. This must be continued in 2023, considering that when implementing the basics to develop strategic planning (from research to measurement and evaluation), PR practitioners are still facing a winding and uphill road in creating communication that is impactful to organizational change, social change, and contribute to the growth of their companies, institutions, or organizations. This occurs not only in Indonesia but also across the globe.
Global Alliance, which recently published the global research outcome on “Trends In Reputation And Intangible Asset Management“, stated that one of the problems is less than 50% of companies or organizations are implementing the measurement model to test their reputation’s effectiveness, from the communication side, stakeholder trust management, and reputation measurement for CEOs. Developing sustainability still needs to consider measuring a company’s progress in sustainability goals, and measuring and managing the impact of sustainable investment products on the business itself. Meanwhile, from the ethical side, practitioners are expected to determine indicators that reflect the impact of ESG management on their businesses.
This research outcome from Global Alliance proves that the business world is beginning to demand PR practitioners to account for/prove their work with regard to a more tangible impact (organizational change, social change, and contribution to the growth of the company, institution, or organization) on their businesses/organizations/institutions.
From the author’s training and workshop observation on approximately 2000 public relation professionals in various sectors in 2022 throughout Indonesia, some room for improvement were found, including:
- Understanding the management profile of the company, institution, or organization (vision, mission, and the achievement of management/division/directorate where communication can contribute to).
- Conducting simple communication research and analysis and understanding research dimensions to find problems.
- Developing communication strategy:
- Determining qualitative and quantitative communication goals with Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound, Evaluated, Reviewed (SMART (ER)).
- Developing messages that are rooted in the goals of the company/institution/organization based on target audience research: at minimum, the messages can address the root of the problem and facilitate the target audience’s motivation, needs, and hopes.
- More structured activities using Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned (PESO).
- Measurement based on: Outputs, Out-takes, Outcomes, and Impact.
- Understanding Barcelona Principles 3.0 (BP3.0) in a holistic and integrated way.
From observation and site findings, many claimed that the integrated strategic planning concept from research to measurement and evaluation promoted by AMEC is just a theory. The fact is, AMEC’s members consist of PR practitioners, academics, and PR professionals from around the world, from various sectors. These PR practitioners work together to create a concept with important steps that need to be followed by PR practitioners and professionals so that any developed and implemented communication strategy can provide a real impact on the goals of companies, institutions, or organizations on organizational change, social change, and growth.
Research is key, Analysis is Critical Thinking
It has been too long since we ignore research as the key to finding the target audience’s problems. Research is always considered to be optional (if the budget is available), difficult, theoretical, and mathematical. In the end, professionals often justify a problem from a professional intuition (feeling), judgment, and findings from other people (hearsay) in validating a problem. The result can be true or false (gambling).
Research and analysis are two best friends that cannot be separated. Good research without strong data processing and analysis will result in research data not providing useful information on the development of communication strategy for PR practitioners.
By learning specific target audience problems based on research, PR practitioners are challenged to sharpen their critical thinking skills in addressing these problems using outcomes and impact. The capability of PR practitioners in conducting research analysis will enable them to come up with correlated creative and innovative ideas by using all of their communication assets and stakeholder management. PR practitioners can even create necessary communication assets not yet owned by them.
Mistargeting the Target Audience
Another basic mistake often found is choosing a target audience that is too general/wide and not specific (gender or area, and other aspects for piloting), thus creating inaccurate goals, messages, and communication activities, leading to a biased measurement that can potentially result in communication failure.
The understanding of PR practitioners on the target audience’s problems, motivation, needs, and hopes is not well reflected because they do not know the use of this information in building message strategy and communication activities based on PESO.
Communication Strategy without a Clear Goal and Message
Paul Noble, the author of the book “Evaluating Public Relations”, mentioned that “The fulcrum of evaluation is objective setting”. This means that the pillar of evaluation is communication goals.
Based on BP3.0, Principle 1 states that communication goals must be found from research, by mentioning the desired change based on outcomes (qualitative) with change targets in numbers (quantitative).
Clear communication goals will create strategic, innovative, and creative PESO-based messages and communication activities by adjusting to the budget situation and a more rational human capital.
Misunderstanding about PESO
Determining communication activities based on PESO is recommended by AMEC to structure the most strategic media selection and most suitable for the target audience. In the observation, it was found that practitioners were still focusing on earned, owned media, and specific campaigns using paid media. Meanwhile, shared media is understood superficially as distributing materials one way to many parties.
The author understood shared as extraordinarily more valuable than just spreading materials one way to many parties, thus leaning towards looking at the target audience as an object rather than a subject. Shared is defined as creating collaboration and shared values, able to provide multi-channel impact (paid, earned, and owned) from multi-stakeholders. Yuswohady, in his book entitled “CROWD”, said that “Your core competence is CONNECTING the customers “(customer = stakeholders). So, by understanding shared, PR competency will be upgraded by creating collaboration and shared values among stakeholders with the same values and mission to achieve common goals.
Measurement all the way to the Impact
Currently, PR practitioners mostly use PR value as a communication measurement. In several findings, despite some PR practitioners no longer using PR value, communication measurement is still based on Outputs (numbers) and Outtakes (responses). There is no research, or not yet, to measure Outcomes (mindset or behavioral change), not even linking Outcomes to Impact (organizational change, social change, and contribution to the growth of the company, institution, or organization).
According to Principle 6 of BP3.0, PR practitioners must “Go beyond “coverage” or vanity metrics such as “likes” and “impressions” to have a better understanding of the target audience ecosystem by focusing measurement on engagement, conversion, perception/attitude change, consideration, and purchase intent/behavior change” by focusing more on measuring engagement, understanding/behavior change rather than coverage or vanity metrics such as the number of likes and impressions.
Barcelona Principles 3.0 are guidelines
The following are things heard when discussing about BP3.0: lazy to read Barcelona Principles 3.0 because the document is in English, difficult to understand, and thinking that BP3.0 is different from AMEC.
BP3.0 is a guideline in understanding strategic planning, from research to measuring and evaluating communication based on AMEC. Thus, it is highly recommended to read the English version of BP3.0 rather than the Bahasa Indonesia version. Many things are misleading when reading the Indonesian translated document, making points about BP3.0 principles unable to be understood in a holistic and integrated manner, starting from research and analysis, communication strategy, to determining measurement and evaluation.
The year 2023, trial phase?
Efforts from Perhumas and PR Indonesia to promote measuring on impact have garnered positive responses by leaders of companies, organizations, academics, and government institutions. Many more PR practitioners are beginning to implement strategic planning development, from conducting research to determining AMEC-based communication measurement and evaluation.
Let us start one step at a time, no need to be perfect, because BP3.0 itself, in Principle 4, mentions that “Remember that we are measuring results and progress, not necessarily success”. In other words, this communication measurement will turn PR practitioners and organizations into “learners”. Every success will be noted as the first step towards a higher success. The same goes with failure, as it serves as a note for all parties not to repeat the same mistake.
The AMEC-based communication measurement and evaluation can be used with communication strategy for corporate communication, internal communication, campaign, crisis management, and others.
The year 2023 and the following year, demand PR practitioners to contribute in creating communication that impacts the mindset and behavior change within the people of Indonesia. Issues facing Indonesia, such as climate change, stunting, TB, public health (obesity, heart disease, stroke, etc.), corruption, and so on, become the mutual responsibility of leaders and PR practitioners.
PR practitioners who are already experts in creating strategic planning (from conducting research to measuring and evaluation communication based on AMEC) are believed to be able to develop PR campaigns that impact on larger social changes. Impactful communication campaigns can strengthen Indonesia’s reputation and growth and of course contribute to “Indonesia Speaking Good Things” or Indonesia Bicara Baik at the global level.
