Message from the President

 

Over the last two months I’ve had the pleasure of representing our Society and the national board at a number of Canadian and American public relations conferences. At these events I continually speak out on the issues that I believe are important and relevant to our profession and to our members: demonstrating our value to the organizations we serve; strengthening and promoting our educational programs and professional development initiative; and increasing our visibility and awareness among our key audiences and publics.

As many of you will have seen over the last year, I have shared the findings (Halifax, Fredericton, Montreal, Regina, Calgary, Victoria and our national conference in Vancouver) of a nine-month study that I conducted in partnership with Leger Marketing on the significant impact of Maple Leaf Food’s crisis response on the company’s reputation and trust. This study of more than 7,700 Canadians demonstrated, for the first time, the immediate value of communications during a crisis on an organization’s overall reputation and Canadian consumers’ desire to purchase Maple Leaf products in the future. Not only has the company’s response safeguarded its position in the food service industry but it has now set the gold standard for crisis response in Canada (and in my humble opinion throughout the world). 
 
The activities of the communications staff, in coordination with MLF’s senior leadership team, demonstrated the value added to the company’s overall net worth and viability of a strategic and measurable plan of action. It is these types of results that we need to showcase and communicate to our leaders in an effort to continually demonstrate the contribution that our efforts make to our organizations. But to do that, we as a Society need to provide the case studies and evidence of this contribution. We need to highlight how public relations strengthened relationships and enhanced reputations. We need to illustrate how our initiatives were aligned with the organizations’ strategic objectives and therefore are able to pinpoint our effective and efficient contributions to success.
 

My new presentation, which was launched this month in Regina and Edmonton, speaks purposely to our value challenge: we not only need to demonstrate that public relations is valuable but we need to prove it can be valued.

The word value creates a great deal of discussion and consternation among our members and public relations professionals. Many individuals believe that our actions cannot be measured and therefore it is almost impossible to demonstrate value – or a “return on investment.” Others believe that it can and should be valued and have developed tools specifically for measuring media relations (MRP system) and social media programs.  

In order to demonstrate value we must first understand what value is and how it is created.  Simply defined, value is demonstrating some measure of worth. It can be economic, social or relational. It can be measured in currency, reputation or loyalty. It can be converted into goodwill, repeated purchases, and increased visibility and emotional appeal.  For organizational leaders, value is realized when the organization achieves its stated goals and objectives.

So how can we demonstrate the value of our public relations initiatives? Here’s an easy way to remember how we generate value for our organizations:

•          V – Voice and Visibility

•          Our primary raison d’être.

•          A – Alignment and Accountability

•          Ensuring that our programs and initiatives are aligned to the organization’s overall goals and objectives and that we are accountable for the results.

•          L – Leverage and Linkage

•          We leverage the relationships that we develop with our key publics and create a linkage between the organization and the publics we serve.

•          U – Ubiquity and Utility

•          We are visible to our senior leaders and utilize the resources entrusted to our departments in an efficient and effective manner.

•          E – Evaluation and Edification

•          We measure, assess and course correct when necessary.

I know that this simple formula is not the holy grail of public relations but I truly believe that the answer to demonstrating our value lies within our own desire to rise to this value-based challenge.

 
Terry