It isn't impossible to manage the unmeasurable but, boy, is it tough. And PR has traditionally been viewed as unmeasurable. We have seen this in the long, sterile and now happily abandoned search for a standard unit of measurement for PR.

Why did that idea fail? It seemed a good one. But it was, in fact, doomed from the start because the complex business of human communication could never be reduced to a single factor.

There are two motivations for measuring and evaluating the effects of PR work. We usually try to pretend there is only one, but there are actually two. Auditing our communications helps us manage the PR function. It shows us what works well for us and what doesn’t. But there is another motivation. We want to be able to prove our worth.

We shouldn’t feel ashamed of that second one. The first is clearly worthy. No problem defending that. But the second seems somehow self-serving. It shouldn’t. If we don’t have the support of line managers in our organisation or client organisations we are going to fail. And that helps nobody.

So we have introduced two courses: one for each motivation. How to Audit Communications addresses the management issues. It looks at the various methodologies available and makes sure that the information on which you are basing management decisions is reliable. Obviously, that includes a survey of the tools and units you use, but that is not the main focus. The Future of PR Evaluation addresses the tools and units in much greater detail. It includes a survey of the various methodologies available. It looks at the problem of which units to use to express your measurements. And it looks at the practical matter of how much to budget for your evaluation efforts. It isn’t easy to answer when line managers question these topics.

But there is, of course, another problem. This is the internet age. The rise of e-PR has thrown a huge new element into PR evaluation. We now have to value coverage on the web. Ad values don’t cope well with that. But the new concept of Net Performer Scores does. This is very new. Get a handle on that and you could address both motivations at once.