Thought Leaders Interview: Jim Macnamara
This week Jim Macnamara, Professor of Public Communication at the University of Technology Syndey, joins us for the interview series “Thought Leaders in PR Measurement” question and answer. The founder of CARMA International, a media research company from Sydney (Australia), joined academia after a 30-year career in professional communication practice. Within this interview, he explains why standards are so important from his point of view and lets us know which major role education plays within the PR area.
Communicationcontroling.de: When did you start to deal with questions of PR measurement and evaluation, and why are you especially interested in this topic?
Jim Macnamara: There was a distinct tipping point for me – an epiphany, if you like. In 1990 when I was heading the public relations and marketing consultancy MACRO Communication that I co-founded, the CEO of one of our largest clients, Microsoft, called me one day and said: “Jim, we are spending a million dollars or more a year with you. I want a report that shows me what we get for our money.” I went away and wrote what I thought was a very convincing report of all the things we had produced and the activities we had done and took it back a week later. The CEO spent a few minutes looking at it and then slid it back across the desk to me and said: “Jim, I don’t care how much work you have done or what you have produced. I want to know what was the result for our business.” In that moment, I had encountered the three fundamentals of measurement which are first PR has to be measured or clients won’t continue to invest in it; second measurement has to focus on outcomes, not outputs (which is what I had reported, as was the custom at the time) and third, outcomes have to be aligned with business or organization objectives. Also, I realized that I did not have a clue how to do any one of those three things. Spurred by this experience, I enrolled in and completed a Masters degree by research in 1992-1993; in 1994, I was one of the contributing authors to the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) Gold Paper on Evaluation; in 1995 I set up the Asia Pacific office of global media analysis firm, CARMA International; and from 1997 I focused full-time on research, completing my PhD and building a specialist media and communication research business over the next decade. In ended up it the boardroom of many clients and it was very evident that quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the outcomes of PR was essential and increasingly expected.
This interview is part of the series „Thought Leaders in PR measurement” – we’ve talked to 12 people who shaped the international debate on communication measurement in various periods.
cc.de: Why do you think communication measurement is essential for organizations today?
Macnamara: The answer to that question is obvious to anyone who has studied communication and media thoroughly. I strongly advocate that anyone who works in PR, corporate communication or advertising should study communication theory and read communication and media research – not just do PR courses or marketing courses. When you closely study human communication, you know that information transmission is not communication. But many practitioners, and clients, mistakenly think it is and assume that if they send out enough information, attention, awareness and persuasion will follow. Of course, we know that is not true. We know from psychology, semiotics, phenomenology and sociocultural theories such as symbolic interactionism, structuration, and many others areas of scholarship that people interpret what they see and hear, often in very different ways than the sender intended, and sometimes they ignore it altogether. Communication is more about what arrives in the minds of target audiences and what they do with it, than it is about what is sent, published or distributed. Unless you are a mind reader, you have to do research to find out what happens as a result of PR activities such as events, media publicity, publications, and so on. Practitioners and organizations have to recognize that they cannot assume effects, particularly not the effects they want. Sending out information is only half of the process of communication. Unless they do some evaluation research, practitioners and organizations have no idea what target audiences thought, paid attention to, considered, believed or did – or even if they did anything.
cc.de: What have been the most important insights and turning points in your research on the topic?
Macnamara: Two important realizations have emerged during my 20 years working as a communication and media researcher and these have convinced me that doing measurement and evaluation of PR and communication is not simply a matter of giving measurement tools to practitioners. These two realizations – I’m not sure if they are insights or opinions – are much deeper and more fundamental than PR measurement knowledge. They relate to one’s worldview and one’s concept of human communication. I have come to the view from my research that a major blockage to measuring PR and other forms of public communication is that major developed Western countries such as the US, UK and Australia are still largely modernist with an unshakable confidence that ‘scientific’ processes and experts can achieve whatever outcomes they want. Positivist science led to ‘mass’ media and ‘mass communication’ theories in which we believe that media, governments and organizations can mass deliver messages and shape public opinion and persuade people to do what they want them to do. Modernism and its associated intellectual traditions such as behaviorism have greatly over-estimated the power of mass communication and under-estimated the power of people to resist, tune out, ignore, filter, interpret and even appropriate messages disseminated to them. Despite the alleged emergence of postmodernism encompassing poststructuralist thinking, critical theory and disciplines such as cultural studies which challenge modernist, structuralist and behaviouralist notions, the world of business and government today is still predominantly modernist. They still believe in the power of mass media and mass communication which is actually mass transmission of messages. Why is this important or relevant? Because, if you think this way, you don’t see a need to rigorously measure the effectiveness of mass media advertising and PR campaigns. You intuitively believe that they work. My second insight comes from this worldview and is largely covered in my response to the previous question. In a modernist worldview with faith in mass media and mass communication as social science tools to shape public opinion and “manufacture consent”, communication is perceived predominantly as transmission of information – even though media effects research, audience research, psychological theories such as cognitive dissonance and understanding of human agency have challenged most assumptions about the power of media and mass communication. Social media are driving the last nail in the coffin of top-down, one-way transmissional notions of communication. These insights suggests that we need to devote more attention to education and changing understanding of human communication and the role of media at a fundamental level, before clients and practitioners can fully appreciate the need for measurement and evaluation.
cc.de: International research constantly shows large gaps between the importance and implementation of measurement practices. Many complain about this, but nothing seems to change. Do you think there are any ways out of this dilemma?
Macnamara: Standards are one key step forward. But also education is vitally important and is probably the main route to change. By education, I don’t mean only undergraduate and postgraduate university courses – although I do advocate more subjects on the fundamentals of human communication and up-to-date subjects on media for practitioners. But, in addition, professional development programs should update practitioners’ knowledge and look beyond technical training focused on technical skills such as writing media releases. Furthermore, I would like to see PR and communication scholars and professional PR institutes interact more with business and management academics and institutes to increase understanding of communication among business and organizational management. Until client management and practitioners recognize communication effects as highly contingent and variable, they do not see measurement as an imperative or even a priority.
cc.de: Do you think it is possible to develop international standards for linking communication to organizational goals and for evaluating communication activities? What will be advantages and disadvantages, who might profit from such initiatives?
Macnamara: Standards are a very important part of all professional practices. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses, architects, and so on all operate within standards. That the PR field has taken so long to develop standards is somewhat surprising and concerning. Having standards doesn’t mean standardization which can stifle competition, development, innovation and customization. For instance, doctors and nurses operate within strict standards, but that does not mean they cannot respond to each patient’s needs and circumstances and tailor treatments. The purpose and advantages of standards is to establish basic minimum requirements that are necessary to ensure quality and integrity in practices. In PR measurement, standards can serve to identify acceptable methodologies, as well as methodologies that are not acceptable because they lack reliability or validity, and provide consistent terminology so that clients can understand what is offered, rather than be confused by widely differing terms. Standards are long overdue in PR because it is a field with an array of terms and myriad different uses of terms. For example, consider the often interchangeable use of reach, target audience reach, impressions, circulation, audience and opportunities to see. In terms of linking communication to organizational goals, there is considerable fuzziness about concepts such as engagement, influence and impact. For instance, some PR and advertising agencies call ‘clickthroughs’ engagement, which I’m afraid is a very superficial and somewhat fanciful interpretation. The only disadvantage of standards is the outing of invalid and unreliable methods and unscrupulous practitioners and it is high time this occurred.
cc.de: From your point of view, what is the most important future challenge for PR measurement and evaluation?
Macnamara: There is one key challenge and that is education. We already have more than enough tools to measure PR, such as proven social science research methods like surveys, interviews, focus groups and so on, as well as a wide range of specialist tools and services such as media content analysis and automated internet and social media metrics. But it’s not just education of PR practitioners that’s needed. There are two types of education required. First, PR practitioners need to be educated at both a formal level as well as in ongoing professional development. Second, clients need to be education about communication. If they don’t get that in their MBAs and finance, accounting, commerce and marketing degrees, then the PR industry needs to talk to management institutes to inject communication training into their PD programs. I’m sure a short course on ‘How to identify and eliminate wastage in your PR and marketing’ would appeal to many managers and turn them on to measurement.
cc.de: Thank you for that conversation!
About Jim Macnamara
Jim Macnamara, Ph.D., is Professor of Public Communication and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. Macnamara joined academia after a 30-year career in professional communication practice spanning journalism, public relations and media research. He is internationally recognised for his work on evaluation of PR and his recent research focuses on social media as well as emergent models and paradigms of PR. He has published articles in social science, journalism and media, cultural studies and PR journals and is the author of 12 books including Public Relations Theories, Practices, Critiques published by Pearson Australia in 2012.
Readings
- Macnamara, Jim (2012): Public Relations Theories, Practices, Critiques. Sydney: Pearson.
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