The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication: A Guide to Internal Communication, Public Relations, Marketing, and Leadership

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

MEASURING PUBLIC RELATIONS PROGRAMS

Mark Weiner

Every day, the imperatives of business affect public relations (PR) investment decisions, as bottom-line thinking is the current reality. While some organizations and public relations executives thrive in this new environment of accountability, the absence of profession-wide standards, the vagaries of where to begin, and the dearth of guidance from internal and external clients leads to a shared state of anxiety and uncertainty: senior management does not know enough about PR to provide direction, and PR executives do not know enough about measuring the value of PR or its return on investment to take the initiative. The result is stasis: timid, conventional approaches yield ...