On a daily basis, we might be caught assessing a piece of clothing on whether it is worth buying, considering the calorie intake we take in our food or even measuring the effects of exercising. Truth is; evaluation is part and parcel of everybody’s life. And this powerful aspect is an important element, especially in the realm of Public Relations (PR). From the development to final stage of a PR campaign, constant evaluation is vital in order to measure its success or failure. Have the campaign successfully reached its target audience? Is the media responding to this campaign? What can we do to make it better?
Evaluation is essentially the systematic application of research procedures to understand the conceptualisation, design, implementation, and utility of media relations campaign. Simply put, it is the usage of research tools such as surveys and focus groups to determine the level of progress.
In the case of our client, Pregnancy Crisis Service (PCS), I believe the lack of evaluation is one of reason for its weak standing in the industry of pregnancy aid.
According to a newspaper article, PCS is ranked 5th among various pregnancy help lines. PCS has been around for 25 years, yet there is little knowledge about this organisation. It is apparent that PCS did not evaluate their PR campaigns effectively as they have failed to clinch sufficient media coverage. Media relations are very powerful tools that can enable organisations to achieve the much-needed awareness. Furthermore, PCS has definitely not reach its targeted publics of teenage girls because only 3% of the calls they receive are from callers under the age of 18. Should effective evaluative measures be undertaken, PCS could source out the root of their problems and probably eradicate them once and for all. To make matters worse, the name of PCS (also known as PCC – Pregnancy Crisis Centre) itself is a major problem. In hokkien, a Chinese dialect commonly used in Singapore, PCC stands for masturbation. As mentioned earlier, should PCS undergo careful evaluation, such a mistake would not have been made.
In comparison, BABES, a 5-year-old organisation, has taken constant evaluative measures to review its foothold in the industry of pregnancy aid. Both of them have the similar target audience of teenage girls, but BABES definitely has a stronger grip in the industry as compared to PCS. With thorough research and evaluation, BABES utilised the advancements of technology and rode on the trend of SMS among teenagers. They were the first organisation to implement the SMS service as an alternative to normal help lines. Within 4 months, they have had received 157 SMS-es from teenage girls and was featured extensively in the media. BABES is a living example of how evaluation could aid an organisation, and PCS ought to take a leaf or two from their book.
Having mentioned all these points, we, Silhouette PR Agency, are certainly taking evaluation very seriously for our client. There would be 2 evaluative checkpoints throughout the entire campaign, and evaluation would be done via number of people calling in, attendance of the events, Internet hits, focus groups and telephone surveys. People often forget the significance of evaluation; it’s time we tighten our reels and emphasise on its importance.
Media relations is indeed important to increase awareness of pcs and its key messages. however, we have to bear in mind that PCS's downfall, of not being the leading organisation dealing with teenage pregnancy, is also due to the means chosen to offer help to pregnant teens(the hotline). PCS should have adapted to the changes over time and offer other ways of communicating with the teens such as through sms service and MSN chat.this is because teens today are more used to conversations through those media and hence might be more at ease and open to talk to the counsellors at PCS.
ReplyDeleteindeed evaluation is vital in any campaign but PCS might have neglected it due to the lack of resources and funding.
Babes is definitely the go-to organisation for teens because of its accessiblity and its prominence despite its young age when compared to PCS. This is why we should also keep watch on Babes and perhaps use them as an evaluation tool. Not to say copy them, but more like use their stats as comparison to ours in terms of phone calls received, etc.
ReplyDeleteI agree with dianah about the adopting the sms and msn chat service. I think people prefer being behind a mask, in this case technology, because they won't feel judged.
Yes, I'm sure that if PCS have had evaluated on a more thorough level, they could have adopted the change in technological advancements like SMS and Internet.
ReplyDeleteHopefully they would allocate more funding for future evaluations then!
Exactly, if they had evaluated their position against their competing clients, they would have recognized the methods their competitors were using to get ahead.
ReplyDeleteAlso, they would have realized they were lagging behind organizations like Babes and aLife.
Touching on evaluation this week. I would say that evaluation that it is crucial to evaluate each recommendation and presenting this to PCS.
ReplyDeleteThings to think about would be whether they are doable, most importantly, and whether we are using the right type of evaluations for the recommendations.
One general evaluation for an overrall of our recommendations would be "The campaign will create a 30% increase in awareness of PCS".