Chris Norton 0:00

Why do you think so many marketers fail to demonstrate an ROI then? Because ROI is like the question we get asked all the time. We want a social media campaign, but we need it to demonstrate ROI. Why do so many people fail to demonstrate an ROI clearly? And it's a good job this is on camera because I want to do a really big yawn.

unknown 0:18

Right.

Speaker 3 0:18

ROI then. ROI. Return on investment. It's like such a myth.

Speaker 0:23

You just you bring it up all the time.

Chris Norton 0:25

Okay.

Speaker 0:26

None of us are perfect, Chris. You just need to remember that.

Chris Norton 0:28

I realise that. Um I hope I don't get cancelled for that.

Speaker 0:40

Welcome to Socially Unacceptable, from fuck-ups to fame, the marketing podcast that celebrates the professional mishaps, mistakes, and misjudgments while delivering valuable marketing and life lessons in the time it takes you to eat your lunch.

Chris Norton 0:58

I'm your host, Chris Norton, and today I'm joined not by Will, but by my good friend and colleague, Vicki Murphy. Vicki is our head of Creative, and we've worked together for almost 20 years now. How are you feeling about your first podcast, Vix?

Speaker 1:10

I'm excited. Looking forward to it. I would have liked a bit of a heads up that we're filming today on four cameras, but we'll roll with it.

Chris Norton 1:16

Practically in 3D. So welcome aboard episode two. Thanks for joining us. We really appreciate you listening. In today's podcast, we are both lucky enough to be joined by my former colleague and boss, Q Star Wars Music, Stuart Bruce. Hello, Chris. And hello, Vicky. 20 years. I think you deserve a medal.

Speaker 1:35

I think you've added a few on there.

Chris Norton 1:37

Yeah. Well, you were you were I'm only 35. He's not 35. That's a lie. That's a total lie. Right, right. So

Intro into Stuart Bruce

Chris Norton 1:44

I'll tell you a bit about Stuart. Stuart is a prolific blogger and vlogger who in who's internationally recognized as a PR futurist, who is a pioneer in modernised public relations and corporate affairs. Stuart's primary areas of expertise are PR strategy, corporate comms, communications measurement, which is what he's here today to talk about, digital and social media. He is also the founder of Purposeful Relations, a digital transformation consultancy, and in his time he's advised clients including Google, Royal Troy, PA Consulting, the UK Cabinet Office, and even the Ukrainian Prime Minister's Office. He's here today as a Fellow of the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communications, aka AMEC, which is much easier to say if you just say AMEC, and is a member of the Public Relations Communications Association, the PRCA, sitting on its National Council. So Stuart and I first met 16 years ago when we worked together and we've stayed in touch ever since. So, Stuart, properly and officially welcome to the show. Thank you. That was quite an intro.

Speaker 3 2:48

Can I clarify one thing now? I think that's an old version of my bio. I was on the council last year and I've come off it this year.

Chris Norton 2:54

Right. Well, in that case, uh I'm going to pass that to our digital researchers because they've got it off of digital. You need to amend your website. No, there must be somewhere where I've not updated it. PR futurism, right there. Okay, so um, well, we we want to discuss a few things about measurement today. That's what you hear today. Because measurement is a thing that I think people in public relations uh marketing or wherever you it is a difficult thing to do because there's a million things you can measure, but a lot of people measure the wrong things, right? So

Where do marketers go wrong with measurement

Chris Norton 3:22

where do marketers, would you say, go wrong with measurement?

Speaker 3 3:27

Easily the thing they go wrong with most is not having some objectives in the first place. I think we've all we've all been in the situation where we've met a client uh and they've kind of told us they want us to do something, but they've given us a tactic rather than actually telling us what they want to achieve. That's where they go wrong. They say, oh, can we have an ad? Can we have a news release? Can we have an event? Can we have a poster? Can we have a TVC without actually saying whether it's for recruitment, for sales, get planning permission, whatever the heck it is they're trying to achieve.

Chris Norton 3:57

Why do you think so many marketers fail to demonstrate an ROI then? Because ROI is like the question we get asked all the time. Um we want a social media campaign, but we need it to demonstrate ROI. Uh why do so many people fail to demonstrate an ROI clearly? And it's a good job this is on camera because I want to do a really big yawn.

unknown 4:15

Right.

Speaker 3 4:16

ROI ROI. Return on investment. It's like such a myth. Yeah. Why on earth do you always have to demonstrate a return on investment? Uh there's a there's a great sound clip from Bagai called uh David Miam and Scott um from a few years ago where he talks about this and he says, Well, what's the ROI of putting on your crows your trousers every morning, Chris?

Chris Norton 4:39

Yeah.

Speaker 3 4:39

What's the ROI of having a coffee machine in the office, Chris?

unknown 4:42

Yeah.

Speaker 4:43

Well, we just think thank God for both of those.

Chris Norton 4:45

Well, Will's bloody bought about four broken coffee machines. The ROI is not very much. Well, it's extensive, actually, in our office. I don't even bloody drink it.

Speaker 3 4:55

No, the reality is lots of things businesses do, they do because they're essential. Yeah. Yeah. It's the cost of doing business. You don't necessarily need to demonstrate an ROI. Now, I'll caveat that. Now, if it's a single one-off campaign, sales campaign, then yeah, you'd want to be able to demonstrate an ROI. But actually, lots of the things that you're doing in marketing and communications isn't about ROI. It's about preparing the ground to do to run a campaign and to do some sales. And you're not going to get a demonstratable ROI from those things. It doesn't mean to say there's not tons and shitloads of stuff you can measure. And I've been the first one to swear on this podcast. I knew that would happen.

Chris Norton 5:34

Vicki was worried because she's got a potty mouth that she'd just swear all the way through it. So if you've got your kids listed in the car, turn them, turn it down. Um, okay, yeah, that's interesting. So but I'll give you because obviously we've got like 35, 40 clients, something like that. But and and most of them, that's fine. But you do get ones that have got e-commerce stores, they've got e-commerce businesses, and they're like, look, basically, we know what you do, we've seen what you've done. You've done a great campaign here, you've done a great campaign there. If I give you X amount of money to do a campaign, what if for that investment, what am I going to get back? And that's that's the reality. When you say you want to invest in business, people want to invest, but they also want to know what they're gonna get out the other side, I think, is where we Yeah, and I think there's a difference as well, isn't there, when it when we're looking at um the clients that you're working with.

Speaker 6:19

I think from a is that an aeroplane? Yeah. Does it sound like it's landing on my head?

Chris Norton 6:24

Check the sound out, the loudest plane ever.

Speaker 6:26

I know. Um I'll wait one second.

Chris Norton 6:29

My career just flying out the window. Well, that was quick. Thanks.

Speaker 6:39

I was just gonna say, in terms of that point around you don't always need an ROI for every um element of a campaign or for every project that you're working on. I think it also differs, doesn't it, depending on the client or the brand that you're working

The struggles around showing ROI/How to show ROI

Speaker 6:51

with. And I think what we've seen for a lot of people, especially over the past couple of years, people who are um setting up businesses, you know, and putting their everything into it, it's harder to, you know, we need to be able to deliver some kind of impact and ROI from uh or be able to show how we will measure that from the off.

Speaker 3 7:09

Yeah. And I think there's there's two well, there's several things in that question you just asked there. So let's start off with the one about startups and owner-manage businesses. And it's the same if you're working with, say, a law firm where partners own it. Any business that's owned by its founders always have an eye on the bottom line because they're thinking, well, this is the difference between my my holiday in Florida.

Speaker 7:30

Exactly, yeah.

Speaker 3 7:30

Uh so that's so that's what they're looking at. So so you've got to give them something tangible. Yeah. Now that doesn't necessarily mean it's always gonna be an ROI. Yeah. If you're if you're because, you know, if you were to if you were to run a campaign that's delivering leads to their website, that's not an ROI because they're not actually selling anything. But that wouldn't be an unreasonable request from them as to, you know, can you generate leads? Yeah. Yeah, can you give an increase in leads? And of course you can do that. And it's the same as media coverage, you know, it's not unreasonable to be able to say, yeah, we can definitely give you coverage in this type of title. Yeah. So you can give them something tangible that you can measure. It's just it's it's the word and the phrase ROI that I always challenge because it makes you focus on just too small, and you know, that's too small an aspect of what you're doing.

Chris Norton 8:21

Yeah, I suppose what I suppose the big thing is business impact. And is that where Amex come from with with your work in that area?

Speaker 3 8:27

Is that yeah, there's got to be something tangible you get out of it. It has got to be tangible on the business or the organization. So whether that's gonna be sales, whether that's gonna be improving recruitment. And by improving recruitment, you know, there was a conversation I was having um the other day with a client, and they were updating the careers page on their website. And we were discussing, you know, how do we set some metrics around this? So one of the ones I suggested is well, yeah, we could just set that we want to get more applications from it, but that would be a bit of a dumb one. Why don't we say we want to get more applications that are worth giving an interview to? Right. Yeah, so they're quality applications, so we've added a dimension to it. And yeah, that's the type of thing that when they went back to the HR team and said, look, this is what we're gonna do for you, they get all excited about because that was tangible. They could see something that was genuinely having an improvement, but it it wasn't an ROI thing. Okay.

Introduction into AMEC and how it's useful for marketers

Speaker 9:21

So if we just take a step back quickly, because you mentioned Amec in the in Stuart's introduction, um, and we had a great session a couple of months ago now, didn't we, with Stuart? Um, all about the Amec framework. But can you just introduce in a nutshell what it is, how you got involved in it, and and the framework and who it's useful for as well?

Speaker 3 9:41

Yeah, so so Chris kind of stole pan of my line before. So AMEC, the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication. We're not gonna say that again, we're just gonna call it AMEC or AMEC, you could take your pick. Um Which do you go with? I use them interchangeably. Okay. Just in case.

Chris Norton 9:59

Just in case.

Speaker 10:00

We could have been saying it wrong the whole time, but we'll go with AMEC.

Chris Norton 10:02

AMEC for illegal reasons and AMEC for fun.

Speaker 3 10:06

Yeah, exactly. But it it it came out, it was kind of set up in the kind of late 90s, and it was set up by the kind of the monitoring, the media monitoring companies. So its background is definitely in kind of measuring and evaluating earned media, you know, media coverage. But actually that on its own is a bit pointless because it's only ever going to be, you know, even back then, it was only ever going to be one element of a campaign. And the kind of the the clue to kind of where they are now is actually the framework that we looked at, you know, the integrated evaluation framework. You know, so unless you're able to kind of look at the earned media, the social media, the advertising, absolutely the events, absolutely everything that's going around in a campaign, you're not going to be able to measure it and evaluate it properly. So that's where kind of Amex it's now. It's trying to look at all these aspects. But it's history and its kind of bedrocker members is still those monitoring companies. You know, but nowadays they encompass a much wider spectrum. So, for example, one of the latest initiatives is they've just uh published a paper on measurement for agencies. So I don't think there'd be much in it that you would find because we come in it, we come in all two months ago before uh before they launched it. Um and they've just set out uh set up a group for in-house communicators. Okay. That's going to be chaired by the head of insights and evaluation for Shell. You know, so it's really big companies that are involved. And it's trying to take the focus away from just the people that are selling you services, which is where they started.

Chris Norton 11:33

The Anakas is a conference every year, right? I see a lot of the people that I follow on Twitter and that they went out, and you guys went out. Uh I went down to Brighton to the PR week conference, and you went out to at the same time, you're in bloody Miami. We were in Miami. Live in your dreams. Yeah, that's I'm gonna I am definitely coming out to Miami next year. I was thinking I got the raw end of the stick this year. It's in Sofia next year. Oh a lot more affordable. Yeah, I'll be headed down there then. Um the people that were speaking. Um what's interesting to me is how because you obviously you've you've you teach quite a bit of this, the how to use the measurement evaluation element of it. How what sort of percentage do you think uh of PR agencies, would you say, are using AMEC at the moment, in your honest opinion?

Speaker 3 13:27

Well, there's probably a number that there's probably two numbers there. There's there's those that would claim to, right, and those that actually do. Okay. Uh and I think if we're in the actual do, five, ten percent, okay, um, a very low number. Now, that said, there will be some that are going to be using, you know, are going to be better at measurement and evaluation than others, you know, so I might up that number to maybe a quarter, kind of 25%. But you still see a lot where it's kind of, you know, a client asks them to do something relatively simple and they just trot off and do it. They have that very much that kind of agency model rather than saying to the client, well, you know, what is it you're trying to achieve? You know, is it sales? Is it customer retention? Yeah, and that's adding real value.

Speaker 14:11

That's the thing that I found from the session with you. It really makes you think about asking the important questions, I guess, and uh and delving deeper than just taking a brief and thinking at a tactical level, um, you know, the kind of things to get the results that they've asked for initially. But actually, if you question the, you know, those results that they want, you know, what is the end goal? And I found that really interesting in our session.

Chris Norton 14:36

And the thing that I took away from it was that objectives at the beginning need to be very, very smart, specific, and measurable, like because some people just say, Oh, can you do as a campaign or a social media or a PR or a content marketing campaign to increase brand awareness? And you're you're like, okay, over what period, from what percent to what percent, how are you measuring that? What data are you using to measure that? What tools have you got to measure that? And it was with what audience to come to query that. And some clients would find that a little bit intrusive, but actually, if you we've done it with quite we've done it with a number of our clients now, and we're finding that their their feedback is actually quite overly positive. A lot of a lot of the time it's positive. Some people have gone, you know, we can't really claim that um doing a PR or a content marketing campaign is is having an effect on on like um oh what's the word for but like brand awareness sometimes because they say they they're doing so much TV stuff. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 3 15:31

Well, that thing about awareness as well is you know, there's this thing, you know, is awareness a legitimate campaign objective? Yeah, if you're you know, Unilever and promoting Marmite, well no, because everybody knows what Marmite is. If you're a startup, then absolutely awareness is a thing because nobody's heard of you. So if you're getting so so that's why, you know, legitimate objectives can vary from different types of client. But that thing about not being afraid to challenge them, you know, if it was Unilever or if it was a startup, you know, my belief is you should challenge them because ultimately you want more business off them if you're an agency. The only way you're gonna get that is if you succeed. The only way you're gonna do do that is if you're actually doing something that benefits them in the long run. So it's it benefits them as much as you.

Chris Norton 16:15

So there's there's an online, there's a free online tool. So there's people out there thinking, okay, you've talked a bit about it. Yeah, we haven't gone into exactly how to do it because specifically is it's it's it's all about asking the right sort of questions and being specific, right?

Speaker 16:27

And and another thing, I guess, when we're talking about what the framework actually is and looks like, it's it it sounds very complex and lengthy, but actually it's quite a simple process once you can understand how to use it in the right way, would you say?

Speaker 3 16:44

Or is that just um yeah, the the the actual concept behind it is you know it it's it's a program logic model if you want to get kind of really boringly academic. Um I like how I not for the uh the trailer.

Speaker 17:00

It is one of those, yes, it is.

Speaker 3 17:01

Can't even so so actually the concept behind it, anybody that's kind of studied the theory of this will recognise it. And all they've done is they've just thought, well, actually, this can apply to communications. It doesn't just have to be for economic research, scientific research or whatever, it can apply to this, you know, and uh but you can also boil it. The analogy I always use with people is it's a bit like going on a diet. You know, if you're going if you're gonna go on a diet, yeah, you you usually kind of you need to know what you weigh to begin with. Yeah, you you need to kind of know what your target weight's gonna be. So those are the two first two things you decide. So then you think, okay, so when when you know how long is it gonna take me to get there? So I'll set, you know, I'll say it's gonna be in six months, then you put a plan in place to get you there, whether that's kind of changing what you eat, whether it's doing exercise or whatever. It's exactly but without that knowing what you weigh to begin with and what you want to weigh at the end, you can't do that bin in the middle. That's what your commons campaign is.

Chris Norton 18:03

I've got a question here. So, what what resources or tools does Amec provide to support practitioners implementing their framework effectively?

Speaker 3 18:10

Absolutely

What tools/resources does AMEC use to support practioners

Speaker 3 18:10

tons. I think that's one of the really good things about Amec is that most of their resources are free. It's not just restricted to members. So if you kind of go so the one that um you guys have taken a look at is the integrated evaluation framework, which is an online tool where you can go on, you create your account, it's in multiple languages. I think it's about what uh 20 odd languages now because members of of Pro Bono voluntarily translated it. Um you create your account and it just leads you through the steps. You know, you put your organizational objective in first, then you've got to think about your commons objective, um, then you're thinking about what inputs you've got. So that might be things like the team, uh, what resources you have. So then you go on to your activities and okay, and what each activity is going to do, and then it just takes you on to each of those um next steps, and it just helps you to kind of think in a clear logical way. But that's not the only tool they've got on there. They've also got that kind of guide. So I mentioned they've just launched one for agencies a couple of weeks or so ago. Um there's also something called the measurement maturity mapper.

Speaker 2 19:17

Wow.

Speaker 3 19:18

Um yeah, that's a good one. So so that can be something you can do. You basically go through and answer a questionnaire and it tells you kind of how mature your measurement is and identifies areas where you can improve.

Chris Norton 19:32

Right. We'll put some links in that in the in the description, I think, as well, to the the uh the the various bits and pieces so people can just find them and click on them. So I hope they're gonna be trackable links, Chris. Of course they're gonna be trackable links.

Speaker 19:44

So how did you know it to sell? How did you get involved? Like what made you start to spend a lot of your time focused on? Because obviously we read from your bio that's been a heck of a career journey, but you know, how did you move into this field of evaluation and measurement and and why is that something that you're so passionate about?

Speaker 3 20:03

Why? That's a good way.

How did Stuart get into measurement and evaluation

Speaker 3 20:05

That's actually why. Okay. Is I was kind of I was kind of looking at what I was doing, thinking, so so why are clients doing this? You know, why do they communicate? What are they trying to achieve there? Um, and that kind of naturally leads you down that kind of road um road of, well, we've got to figure out what they're trying to achieve. So how will we know they've succeeded? And so when I kind of exited my previous business, I it was something I knew I was interested in, and I felt I wasn't very good at and I needed to learn loads. So I went to a couple of conferences and listened to people and sat there really depressed. Well, because basically I I didn't think I was very good at it, and I was thinking, uh, I know as much as these people speaking. Yeah. Um and I still didn't think I was very good at it. But I thought, okay, but if the experts kind of this is where they're coming from, then maybe I I do know this stuff. So I just began to explore and discover what other people were doing, uh looking at case studies, looking at tools, and it just became fascinated by it.

Chris Norton 21:04

And you judge awards as well, don't you? And I imagine you've said People use it in awards submit in submissions. Is that regular? That's why I asked before about the percentage of people that are doing it, because I know you judge a lot of awards. So Yeah, no, I've judged just about all of the awards you had to mention that at one point I've judged.

Speaker 3 21:20

So whether it's the AMEC awards themselves, uh Provoke Media Sabre Awards. You see it it varies how well people are doing measurement when you judge them. And one of the things I do as a judge is I've got to let you into a dirty secret. I don't read the awards. It's too much of hard work. No, you're doing it for free. If there's 30, 40 entries. Don't tell me you chat GPT. No, no, no, no. There's a trick. Two or three minutes per entry, 30 odd awards. It's going to take you ages, especially if you're doing like half a dozen categories. So I just read the objectives at the start, the results at the end. If they gel, if I think, wow, they've achieved some decent, you know, they've met their objectives, I'll then read the bit in the middle.

Speaker 22:10

I feel like this is a whole new podcast here that we need to explore.

Speaker 3 22:13

Hacking of a mission. The life of a judge. So that creativity bit, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that will win you it, but only if it's worked in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. Because you wouldn't have gotten to my short list if it hadn't.

Speaker 22:26

Right. So but you the awards that you've you've done that for years, haven't you? So and and is that an area when you were looking at award entries that you found the the evaluation and the measurement part was missing? And did that contribute to your then kind of curiosity around what's missing in the measurement arena?

Speaker 3 22:46

You were look so you begin to look at stuff, and you know, especially some some sometimes some judges, I remember one, I won't name the judge, but it was kind of the founder MD of a very, very creative PR agency who I'm really impressed by.

Chris Norton 23:00

It wasn't me, by the way, just to be clear.

Speaker 3 23:02

They do some brilliant work. Yeah. And we were looking at one campaign and it was brilliant. You know, it was a really emotive YouTube video design um about design um reducing the number of road accidents.

Speaker 23:15

Okay. Careful what you say here, Stuart.

Speaker 3 23:18

Allegedly thing missing. Didn't tell you how many road accidents had been reduced.

Speaker 23:24

So did it focus more on views of video? Yeah.

Speaker 3 23:27

It was all stuff like that. And there was like, you know, three million views within a month and blah blah blah. It was all all that stuff was good, but hang on. You know, did young people's lives get saved? Otherwise, what's what was the point of the whole thing? Plus, in fact, it was a local authority. So three million views, hang on, logic tells me most of those three million views were not going to be in that local council area. So therefore it wasn't even the target audience they were after. I like that.

Speaker 23:55

But that is fascinating, isn't it? Because I think that when when you say that, you know, all the years of judging and you look in, and that is a key element that people focus more on metrics that just don't actually showcase the success of whether the initial objective is or is the initial objective let's get X amount of views. And and at that point you haven't asked why. Like what why do you want that many views and what should the objective actually be to reduce the amount of road activity?

Chris Norton 24:24

A lot of our clients, yeah. I I think a lot of people measure the wrong things. So that uh you know, we we're running a paid social campaign, might be we're running a paid social campaign for a client, and then they go into intricate detail on all the different bits, and you're like, what is your core objective? Because that's how Meta and all the other social platforms do that. What is your core objective at the beginning? And that sounds very similar to this. What is your core objective, and what is the result you get at the end? All the other stuff is window dressing, isn't it?

Speaker 3 24:53

It it is, although I would actually caveat that. So it's because some of those other metrics, so things like views, retweets, likes, all this malarkey, um ultimately that's it, it's not what's going to kind of lead to your sales or your recruitment to that business objective. But for you as a team, the people actually working on it, it can actually help you to improve what you're doing. So for so there's a difference between the types of numbers you're looking at. Some of them are ones that the team would want to focus on, because you can look for those improvements and think, ooh, what happens if we do send out our email at this time of day on this day of the week? Does that get a different open rate to if we do it at a different time or a different day? Those things matter to the team because it's a way of improving. You don't report stuff like that, because why why on earth would the CEO be interested in the fact you've doubled your open rate? It's just irrelevant.

Chris Norton 25:44

So looking back at objectives then, uh I've got one for you. So Vicki did her dissertation at university. What was it on Vex?

Speaker 25:52

Well, I thought about this this morning. I was walking the dog this morning thinking about Stuart coming in and what semi-intelligent questions I could ask. But I did, it did make me think because I remembered that my dissertation, I did my dissertation 17 years ago, and it was on like the I need to dig it out. I'm sure it was on like the death of AVE or something, like 17 years ago. 17 years ago, and yet still we have some clients that would ask, what is the AVE of the coverage we've achieved?

Chris Norton 26:18

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Advertising value equivalent, which is basically, for those of you if you if you don't use this, is basically measuring a piece of media coverage, looking at how much the advertising is worth, and then using some sort of multiple to decide how much that article would be worth if it was an ad, and it's a bit it's a bit more worth than that because it's written by an independent. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 26:38

Isn't it PR is worth in in people's minds is worth three times the amount of an ad?

Speaker 3 26:44

Yeah, you can say it's three times, seven times, five hundred times. It's a made-up number, so what the heck? Choose a really big number, it's gonna sound even more impressive.

Speaker 26:51

But do you still see that in in award entries now?

Chris Norton 26:54

It's banned, though, isn't it? It's banned.

Speaker 3 26:55

If you use it, you your uh your awards get it depends which awards you're talking about. Um and also there's been this there's another contract happening in that people because AV is become a bit of a dirty word, um you you'll have things like EMV.

Speaker 27:10

Uh oh ways to get around.

Speaker 3 27:12

EMV.

Speaker 27:13

What's EMV?

Speaker 3 27:14

What the hell's EMV? I've never even heard of it. And media value.

Speaker 27:17

Right. All right, yeah. Is it is it calculated the same way?

Speaker 3 27:19

Exactly the same. Uh or or because it, you know, because sometimes like online advertising is sold in different ways, you can't it doesn't have a rate card. So but yeah, they're basically doing the same thing. And I I think my view on AVEs is so 2010, the first Barcelona principles came out, um, which are the kind of published by AMEC. Um, and I think it's number five that says um AVs are not the value of public relations, or AVs are not the value of communications. In 2010, I started in PR and Commons in 1989. We knew that then. Yeah, it's not rocky.

Speaker 27:54

But that's the same thing, is it? Mine's only 17 years or whatever. But it's still it's a point.

Chris Norton 27:59

But people still But clients go, yeah, because we'll say to it, we'll say to a client, we'd measure every we can measure everything and we can measure, we do obviously we follow, we've now you we've integrated what we're discussing today into what we do on our client. But some clients will say, Yes, I know that, but for my board, what I would like is AVE to be included because they've always had it. But even some businesses have been set up after 2010, so it's mad.

Speaker 3 28:21

Well, and the reason is because it's simple. An idiot can understand it. So, I mean, that and that actually is a line that I've used with people before is you know, if you think your board's idiots and you want to give them a really simple number, then this is a good one to give them. We won't be doing that. But also, one of the there's a Richard Bagnell, the kind of former um chair of of Amec, he wrote a piece for the Amec website, and I think it's like 22 reasons why why AVs don't work. So there's some good stuff on there to cite. You could actually come up with more than 22. Um but one of the things I would suggest is if you do have people demanding them, uh actually telling them you can't they can't have them is not the best way. So sometimes I will I would give them, but what I'd do is I'd do things like I'd give them a report that's got two different metrics in. It's got the AVEs they've asked for, it's also got something that um meets the Barcelona principles that's been developed using the Amec framework and metrics that mean more, but I'd also put a cost at the bottom of both. You know, it cost us X amount in consultancy time to create this AVE report. It cost us X amount of time to create this other report. Within a few months, they'll start to say, Why are we paying for this AVE one? Yeah. That's not a bad child, that's a good idea. Um they also take they they also take the credit then for saving the money. People like to take credit rather than you pushing them into it.

Chris Norton 29:42

The craziness about this is like, because if if you if you work in public relations, I I was I've been down to the PR Week conference a few times, and they still talk about AVA, and all the people on the panels are, you know, I've met various of them, and on the panels they're talking about it that they we all know, everybody in the industry knows AVEs are basically bollocks. Clip that bit, Andy. Uh no, AVEs are are bollocks, but some people still still want them. And you're right, Stuart. You need we need to sort of just keep pushing. But it's weird, isn't it? It's weird that after all 17 years since Vicky wrote a dissertation, people are still asking for them.

Speaker 3 30:17

But it is that silver bullet thing. People, you know, if you say you can't use them, people are looking for that silver bullet of what can we replace them with. And the fact is, there is never going to be a silver bullet that of one single metric to rule them all.

Chris Norton 30:30

Okay, this this leads me to something else. Because Vicky's dying to our dying to talk about this. She said, can we discuss AI with Stuart? And I've I've just watched your um I watched your webinar. Uh you did a webinar last

AI in the comms industry

Chris Norton 30:41

week, and it was for it was with a guy, the guy from Profit, right? Yeah. Aaron. Yeah, Aaron Quicken from Profit. And it it was it was quite interesting that the way that they're using AI to pitch to journalists, isn't it? So basically they're saying that you can use AI now, generative AI, such as Chat GPT or BARD or whatever, but they've integrated it into their platform. So if you're sending out a story on a new a database, your pitch is tailored by the AI.

Speaker 31:10

What do you think I've I've already seen this backfiring when it comes to CVs? Like I've seen about three different agencies recently being like, can you stop using ChatGPT? Yeah, to to write your cover letter or because it's so obvious and it's it's so generic, but then you know, structured in the certain way. So I don't know whether it it's already seems to be kind of let's let's just take a step back.

Speaker 3 31:35

So if we use right, if we use profit as an example, right. So everybody has got really excited about AI since November last year when ChatGPT came out. But actually AI has been around in the PR industry way before that. You know, I've been kind of working with AI tools since about 2015. And I wasn't even one of the first. There was stuff before that. You know, and for example, one of the, you know, one of the tools we used then was called Wordsmith by a company called Automated Insight. And it would basically could take a data set, so it would take a spreadsheet of things like sports results, election results, anything like that. And it could then turn it into copy. So it would actually write a report about the sports match based on what time the the score to go, et cetera, et cetera. That was 2015. And Profit, they kind of started, you know, two or three years ago now, so before ChatGPT. And what it actually does, so it was quite quite a good description, but it basically you put in your draft news release, yeah, and it will then look and identify the journalists and the media outlets that they think are most relevant to that um that news story. Now, if you think about what a human did, yeah, uh actually if we did PR properly, that's what you should have done. Yeah. So often people just put some keywords in a database, it spits out a list of names and they fire it off. That's why journalists get spam. Actually, what we should do, and and how we all started out, um I can say that because we're all really experienced. Um yeah, how are we how we all started out is that the database would be a starting point, but from that you'd actually go and read the titles, you'd actually read some of the stuff the journalists had written and figured out whether they really were relevant. That's what profits doing. Except instead of just reading half a dozen, a dozen, a hundred articles, it's reading thousands that they've done.

Chris Norton 33:26

Does journalisted still exist? Do you remember journalisted that used to publish all the articles of all the journalists? So, because that's what we used to do when we used to work together. We used to have to then go off, read them, and figure out which journalist is right. And you're saying that that's exactly what profits. Yeah, that's that that's basically how profit works. So the reason why I want to ask you about AI, today's about measurement, right? Because we're gonna have to do a whole podcast on AI. I think that's what we're gonna do because it is fascinating. AI, right, the area that really interests me is the stuff that scission are doing. Because right, so we we've been working in social media since social media came out when it was the Facebook and um MySpace. You and I worked together then. And I remember when we first got the first social media listening tools, and we had to assess them. We did like blog reviews and all sorts of them. And sentiment was always absolute bollocks, all of it. Like, and it's a get back down to AVE. Sentiment was totally a total load of rubbish. It got it sort of uh uh sentiment sort of assessed whether something was positive, negative, or neutral that's mentioned on social media, and often it couldn't get sarcasm. In fact, pretty much 90% of the time it couldn't get sarcasm. So if you said this this product is shit hot, it would put it down as negative, right? However, AI apparently is gonna change, you would think it is gonna change all that. It will.

Speaker 3 34:44

I mean, I can for years and years I have been kind of pouring scorn on the claims of kind of companies that do sentiment because it has just been marketing hype. You know, in re you know, just like you say, it hasn't really worked. And I think the tools we have now, once they've incorporated and trained them and practiced using them properly, that we are going to be able to do sentiment. Um you know, you mentioned scission, so Ant Cousins, who heads up AI for scissions.

Chris Norton 35:14

Yeah, I was on a webinar that he did the other day, which is why I mentioned them.

Speaker 3 35:17

Yeah, so Ant is really good, and he's just been appointed as the chair of a new AMEC working group on technology. So which is we should be paying for this podcast, right? I know. It's a well and scission. So Ant's getting your plug here. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so I I think yeah, we're gonna see some amazing kind of leaps in that space. But the other side of that being is some of these monitoring tools and measurement companies, it's very expensive. And we talked about startups. Well, actually, some of the you know, you know, that's always one of the challenges when you're doing measurement is do you actually have the budget to do it well? Well, some of the things you can actually begin to do using AI tools is I've been exploring creating our own spreadsheets and using AI to do um, you know, creating prompts that can actually look at sentiment and can extract uh messages from coverage, you know, yourself. You know, something you can do in-house without needing to use a monitoring company to do it. Now, it won't have the nuances and the layers that they're going to add for the added value, but actually the this ability to do it at different levels could be really powerful. So you're gonna have some really big clients where you can spend the mega bucks on doing stuff, you're gonna have smaller ones where you know you can't, but actually, this is a way of offering them added value.

Chris Norton 36:38

So the reas the reason why I said um Vicky will love a chat about AI is because she's watched a couple of webinars herself or a couple of podcasts.

Speaker 36:46

So you I'm very new to AI.

Chris Norton 36:48

AI just but what you said you were terrified by AI. I mean, AI, there's so much hype and hyperbole about it, like everybody's just going on and on and on about it.

Speaker 36:57

Yeah, probably because I didn't under I didn't understand where it had come from. I didn't understand the development, and I just listened to a podcast the other day that just made me it just made me question everything. But I think a lot of it was you know scaremongering scaremongering, yeah.

Chris Norton 37:11

And and then at the end it went, and if you want to hear more about this, uh be sure to buy my book at there is so much hype around this.

Speaker 3 37:19

Um, but the fact is that AI and machine learning has been around for a long time. Um you know, so so what Chris mentioned that one of the clients I'd worked with was Rolls-Royce. So one of the things they've done is they've published something called the Alethea framework. And it's like a guide, it's like an ethical framework for how you can how you can use AI responsibly.

Speaker 37:41

And that's exactly what he what the what I was listening to as well, about the amount of people that had left. He he said like four top-level people who were working at Google X had left because it was it was the unethical approach to how it's being developed that is gonna cause problems rather than so he was calling for everyone to who everyone who was ambitious to learn about AI to think to themselves, only do it if you're thinking in an ethical manner.

Chris Norton 38:07

Isn't Google's what's Google's strap line? Um, the do no evil or yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 38:12

And then this is that anyway. But yeah, yeah, but it it's it's how you interpret stuff like that. I mean I mean things like you know, the approach that Rolls Royce talking is because they've been using AI for so long, they used to use it to do things like assessing the safety of aircraft engines. Obviously, they had to make sure that was shit hot, that that worked, that that was ethical. Yeah. So that's what the framework does. You can then apply it to anything.

Speaker 2 38:35

Yeah.

Speaker 3 38:35

And I think a lot of the kind of you know, it's the same. I mean, we should do an entire podcast on this, but it's the same as things like we, you know, will AI kill jobs or will it create jobs? You know, the jury's out on that one. My my personal view is they probably cancel each other out, so it doesn't make much difference.

Chris Norton 38:50

We'll just move we'll just move, but although it is slightly scary when you mentioned the profit that now picks the journalists, writes the press releases, and sends out the bloody email. Well, we're now clicking buttons and things.

Speaker 39:02

In the creative industry, I do think that is I mean, it is a whole new podcast and discussion.

Chris Norton 39:07

But knowing how tools, aren't they? At the moment, they're tools, they're not.

Speaker 39:10

They're tools being used by people, and I think that was the different that was the difference. Like while people are using AI, there's not much of you still need the people, but there could be a time when Vicky's actually just nailed what I was about to say.

Speaker 3 39:22

Because I don't think that PR and comms people are going to lose their jobs because of AI. I think PR and comms people who don't use AI are going to lose their jobs.

Speaker 39:32

Yeah, that's yeah.

Chris Norton 39:33

Okay. So you so make sure you get on chat GPT.

Speaker 39:36

And that's the that's the thing I think that's quite interesting at the minute. Like like me, I would class myself as one of these people, the people who uh hear the buzzword, listen to a few things about it, and don't dig any deeper, then have that like top-level knowledge of it, but they don't actually understand how to utilize it in the workplace or how to how to progress, you know, and work with it. And I think that's the bit where we can talk about it, but you actually need to be doing the doing to start understanding it.

Chris Norton 40:02

That we've been doing with AI, based on what Vicky's talking about, is I'm asking staff to share when they've done something useful with it, because it um you it you can do all sorts of things by asking it to round things up rather than just writing blog posts or writing emails, like writing applications to universities or jobs. You can also ask it to review things and and and round things up, can't you? Write podcast descriptions or you know, there's all sorts of different uses you can use.

Speaker 3 40:26

Summaries. Well, we've just one of the things we about three weeks ago now, we published our global report on how PR people use communication technology. And one of the one of the pages in it, so there's like a summary that we wrote as people, but one page is actually also the Chat GPT version of giving it the research and asking it to pull out kind of the key findings. And was it how accurate was it? Um It was good. There was no it didn't get anything wrong in that it pulled out the kind of um the right things, it missed some, it didn't kind of put enough interpretation on them. But as a summary, it was spot on.

Speaker 41:04

We're gonna have to. Few last minute things that we need to run.

Chris Norton 41:08

I think we can do a whole other show on.

Speaker 41:10

We could have continued to chat, couldn't we? I mean you did take a bit of an AI curveball there that's a good thing.

Chris Norton 41:15

No, but it's measurement and it's measurement sentiment and all that is quite interesting as part of a campaign. What top tip can you give to people looking to measure their campaigns properly? What's the big tip? Any marketer or comms person out

Stuart's top tip to measure campaigns

Chris Norton 41:31

there, what's the big tip that they could do to measure more effectively? Know what you want to achieve. Okay. Know what you want to achieve? Right, this is this is better. This is the one, right? Uh so this this podcast is called um well, it's about fuck-ups, uh, fuck-ups to fame. Socially unacceptable. Girl, there are so many fuck-ups.

Speaker 3 41:53

Where do I even start? It's the only possible way you can learn is to constantly fuck up.

Speaker 41:58

Okay, so we had one of the listeners from last week's show got in touch to tell us about a fuck-up that made me smile. Um so

F*ck-up from a member of the audience

Speaker 42:05

they were working on a fairly low budget project for a client. They were launching a new product, and they were looking for a rapper to write a rap for the launch video. They researched a variety of artists, found a guy online who was Grammy nominated, worked with loads of celebs, they booked, paid for him to write the rap, filmed the video, and then it came to the point where they were writing um the press release for the launch of the campaign, and they went back to the guy to ask him about m more about his Grammy nomination and the celebrities that he's worked with, and it had come back, he just came back to say, Oh, that's not real. Everything on my website was just a joke, and I thought you knew it was a joke before you booked and paid me for the work. So they were selling a Grammy Award nominated well, Grammy nominated artist.

Chris Norton 42:49

It's just completely and utterly made up. Yeah.

Speaker 42:51

Joe Blanc. Oh, yeah. Wannaby rapper. So that was a good one.

Speaker 3 42:54

So this this comes bit this comes back to one of the things they teach in US Journalism School is if your mother says she loves you, check it out.

Speaker 43:04

Yes. They didn't do the research, did they? They took it on face value. I mean, anyone I could say I'm a Grammy nominated singer. That's quite believable, I'd say.

Chris Norton 43:14

Um Right, well uh before Stuart came in, he he did hear that Will tried a um a tongue twister uh in the last podcast, and he provided us with one that he thought was hilarious. So I'm gonna give it I'm gonna be the honest, brave hero that I am and give it to Vicky. And that's Vicky to read it out down. Hang on, I'm gonna intervene here as the guest. That's not fair. It's not, is it?

Speaker 43:36

And you practiced it and did really well.

Chris Norton 43:38

Oh, go on then, give it a go.

Speaker 43:39

Go on, give it a go.

Chris Norton 43:41

Right. I was hoping I got out of this. Right. Ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 43:46

No, don't don't overplay it. Just do the tour twister. Alright, alright.

Chris Norton 43:50

I'm a mother pheasant plucker, I pluck mother pheasants. I'm the most pleasant mother pheasant plucker to ever pluck a mother pheasant. I'm not a pleasant I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm the pheasant plucker's wife. I've been plucking mother pheasants my whole pheasant plucking life. I'm not the pheasant plucker, I'm the pheasant plucker's mate. I'm only plucking pheasants because the pheasant plucker's late. Woo! Check it. Vicki, what do you think?

Speaker 3 44:16

A bit faster.

Speaker 44:17

Yeah, I mean, you're doing the possible. No, no, no, no. This is a bit faster.

Chris Norton 44:21

I'm gonna swear though. I'm a mother pheasant plucker. I put I can't do it. I'm giving up there. So thanks very much for joining us, Stuart. Uh, for today. What has been a fascinating conversation about measurement. Um, this I hope this means you're gonna be a friend of the show and you're gonna come back in at some point because there's loads of stuff we can talk about.

Speaker 44:42

Are you gonna let Stuart say goodbye?

Chris Norton 44:44

No. Goodbye, farewell, adieu. Avita's Aynes, goodbye. Uh yeah, so thanks very much, Stuart, and um, thanks for coming on and we'll see you soon, yeah? Thank you. Definitely. Look forward to coming back. Well, uh, we've just had Stuart in Vicky um going through his various advice in measurement and everything else to do with AI. What did you make of what he had to say?

Speaker 45:09

Yeah, I thought he was really good. I think he's so interesting. Obviously, a lot of experience in a variety of different areas of marketing, isn't it, as well? Like he has a lot of experience to share, and I think it's a a really important topic for agencies really to be considering.

Chris Norton 45:25

Yeah, and in-house, I think. In-house, if you want to you want to measure your campaigns properly. So what we didn't cover though, and what we would like to cover with you, Vicky, is over the years you've done various campaigns. What's your biggest professional fuck up, would you say?

Vicki's f-ck-up

Speaker 45:39

Yeah, I was thinking about this. I've had quite a few. I don't know how many I can admit to. For legal reasons. Yeah.

Chris Norton 45:48

Allegedly.

Speaker 45:48

I've got one that gives me trauma, so I thought I'd share that with the class today. Okay. So we were running a campaign a couple of Christmases ago for a high street brand, and it had been a few, a fair few months of torture, really. There was a lot of planning, a lot of travelling um the UK filming different content. There was loads of different elements of the campaign. One of which was to develop this app that was going to go live just before Christmas. It was focused on product. Um, and so we'd worked with another company to develop that app. And it'd all been counting down to launch day, got to the Friday, 4 p.m. launch. Everything went live on the website. Um, the app was launched, all of the video content looked great. So, as a celebration with the team, we worked above an Indian restaurant at that time. So we were like, right, we'll book, we'll go for a curry. Friday night, campaign's launched, launched at four, everything went well, went downstairs, and everyone knows that I have one drink and that's it. I can confirm that's true. One drink, wonder. So I started drinking. And at about 7 pm, when people were balls deep, can I say balls deep? No, you can't say balls deep. Balls deep in the chicken boona. Um, we I just started getting message after message that the app wasn't working, it wasn't doing what it should supposed to be doing. And at this point I was really drunk, so and it all fell on me. I don't know where you were actually. I was actually there. No, I often question where you are in my time of need, and you were not there.

Speaker 5 47:19

Okay.

Speaker 47:20

Um, and I just remember I I it was awful. I didn't know what to do, and I had no one to help me, and I ended up crying in the toilet. Um I think about it often.

Chris Norton 47:31

I do think like you didn't feel that I was there to help you at seven o'clock drinking alcohol Was this on company expenses, by the way?

Speaker 47:38

Probably, yeah. That's what I'm saying.

Chris Norton 47:40

So you're crying on company expenses. So what did you learn from that then?

Speaker 47:44

Probably don't celebrate too soon, you know. It had been, like I say, tough few months, everything had it was all pent up. We thought we'd launched and it was a success.

Chris Norton 47:53

How did you resolve it then at seven o'clock? Paralytics Oh no, it took all weekend.

Speaker 47:57

It was a it was a back and forth, you know. I'd it it it was a yeah, it wasn't a one one like one solution wonder it took a while.

Chris Norton 48:06

So Monday morning, how did the app look?

Speaker 48:08

Great. It sorted by then. Right. Yeah, it was great by then, and we were all the countdown to Christmas.

Chris Norton 48:12

So an awarded winning campaign in the end anyway.

Speaker 48:15

Yeah, but that is m probably one of the times that I think about often.

Chris Norton 48:19

I actually thought that your biggest fuck up was gonna be when you said to me, um, you're gonna help me move, and I said, Can you just carry this screen? I knew you'd bring this up. I said, Can you carry this screen? And she said, Yes, I'm not a fucking idiot, Chris, and then dropped it on the floor and it smashed into a million pieces. And then again, you started crying, didn't you? But I did support you there, so I and I would support you every time.

Speaker 48:39

I don't support me, you've just you bring it up all the time.

Chris Norton 48:42

Okay.

Speaker 48:42

None of us are perfect, Chris. You just need to remember that.

Chris Norton 48:45

I I realised that. Um I hope I don't get cancelled for that.

Speaker 48:54

It's coming.

Chris Norton 48:55

You keep crying because I'm giving you tasks to do. That's not the way it is. Well, thanks for sharing your uh your biggest fuck up. That's great. Um thanks for being on the show. You you're much better than than Will. Let's face it, we don't need Will anymore. You can stay in London, Will, at your conferences, your posh conferences, and your first class travel.

Speaker 49:13

Thank you for listening to Socially Unacceptable. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a five-star review. Don't forget to follow us on social media on Twitter and Instagram at ProBision PR. We would love to hear some of your career fuck-up so we can share them on the show. For more information on the show, search Prohibition PR in your search engine and click on podcasts. Until next time, please keep pushing the boundaries and embracing the socially unacceptable.