People in the business of persuasive communication have trouble proving that what they do works. Even if public opinion changes in your favor after you undertook a public relations campaign, that change might be due to some other factor.
That’s why an arcane piece of research called “marketing mix modeling” caught my attention. In an article published by the Institute for Public Relations, several PR researchers found research done by consumer products companies that was able to isolate the effect of media activities from promotions, coupons and other marketing efforts. They found that the “media-centric” PR offered better return on investment than other methods.
It’s no mean trick; the research involves multivariate statistics and regression analysis. The article had trouble finding studies that it could publish, because they contained proprietary data belonging to the large-company sponsors.
The principle, though — proving the value of PR versus other tactics of persuasion — is interesting to those of us in the business services industry where word-of-mouth is an important marketing tool and “business development” is often simply sales work unsupported by public relations.
It is also something that the public diplomacy community should examine. The State Department has demonstrated in a study that foreigners who participate in cultural and educational exchanges, or English-learning programs, or embassy library and cultural promotions, hold more favorable attitudes toward the U.S. than those who don’t. However, the relative effectiveness of PD (meaning embassy PR) versus broadcasting, information operations, comparable USAID training, and other tools of statecraft are only beginning to be examined.
I have no idea how to do the math. Any volunteers out there?
