PR measurement with expert Johna Burke, AMEC

Learn how you should be measuring your PR campaigns and what the current PR measurement trends are with our guest Johna Burke. Burke is the Global Managing Director at the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication with more than 20 years of experience and proven results in B2B and B2C marketing and public relations. 
 
Guest: 

Our episode guest is Johna Burke, global managing director at the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication. Burke has more than 20 years of experience with proven results in B2B and B2C marketing and public relations. 

Topic: 

• Keep up with the PR industry’s key measurement trends.
• You might be missing some key measurement opportunities in your PR campaigns.

Five things you’ll learn from this episode:

1.  What are the current trends of measurement in the PR industry?
2.  What is the difference between inputs, outputs, outtakes, outcomes, and impacts?
3.  What are some overlooked impacts you should be measuring?
4.  What is the purpose of AMEC?
5.  Why should you focus on communication to build relationships?

Quotables:

• “We are seeing a trend in people measuring outcomes instead of just the outputs.” -@gojohnab
• “If you don’t have a good reputation and if you aren’t trusted in your industry, then no matter how many leads you get, the funnel is going to take a lot longer to cycle through.” -@gojohnab
• “People need to start doing some testing now to understand and prepare for pivot points in the new economy.” -@gojohnab
• “Behind every B2B transaction is a B2C relationship.” -@jasonmudd9
• “‘What is the goal you’re trying to accomplish and what are the items that you need in your toolkit to be able to properly solve that problem?’ Is always the best question as opposed to, ‘What are the tools and technology I can use?’” -@gojohnab
• “Advertising, marketing, and PR work best when they are blind, consistent, and transparent to what the market is looking for.” -@gojohnab 

If you enjoyed the episode, would you please leave us a review?

Contact info and resources:

• Twitter: @gojohnab / @AmecOrg
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gojohnab/
• Website: https://amecorg.com/

 Additional Resources:

• ReviewMaxer: http://reviewmaxer.com
• Axia Public Relations: https://www.axiapr.com/ 

About your host Jason Mudd:

On Top of PR host, Jason Mudd, is the CEO and managing partner of Axia Public Relations. He is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands. Since 1994, he's worked

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Transcript

- [Announcer] Welcome to ON TOP OF PR, with Jason Mudd. presented by, REVIEWMAXER

- Welcome, Johna Burke, to ON TOP OF PR. It is a pleasure to have you here. You have been a good friend and a mentor since the day we met and I'm just so excited to have you on the show today and talk about measurement trends in public relations and corporate communications. How are you doing?

- Thanks Jason, it's great to be here. I appreciate that being your guest of the day and spending some quality time, which we don't nearly get enough of.

- Absolutely, I completely agree. Johna, I was thinking about our conversation and you've had a great career in public relations and marketing and I was hoping you could just kinda give us a quick highlight of what you've accomplished and what your experience has been over the years.

- Sure, Jason, thanks. So I started as a young, idealistic, technical writer, what could go wrong. And then went on to public relations and investor relations 'cause obviously that's a natural path. And you know, handled things for Fortune 500 through reputation management, through IPO, through a lot of the challenges and interesting times that come along with that. I then went to work for PR services. Saw that there was, what I thought was needed, a demand to be able to do our job better, spent meager 18 years there at BurrellesLuce before coming over to AMEC, the International Association for Measurement and Evaluations of Communications. And it is, that's why we loving when your called AMEC but I figure for your audience I would make it easier so they don't end up on some engineering website which could happen.

- Sure.

- And you know, I've been with AMEC now for about a year and a half. And really, I'm so fortunate to be working in a field that is my passion and being able to help people all over the world about something that I know works when applied and I still get to learn every day. So it's a great blessing.

- Well, we are blessed to have you here and I'm really excited to jump in this conversation a little bit. So I think what I'd like to start with let's talk about, from kind of a global view, what are you seeing as far as trends in PR measurement and what really has you excited?

- So I think that we still see the full gamut. We still see certain markets that have a certain measurement, maturity and sophistication for what they're doing. They're working with, you know, frameworks model data, they have market mix fully functioning and operational. And then we still have some groups who are reporting on counts and amounts. And a lot of that is driven by market maturity of the client, of the expectation of the cost and value of services as they are perceived. But we are seeing a trend to people really measuring outcomes as opposed to just the outputs. And we see a greater trend in our industry of people ramping up and upskilling to get the education to facilitate the execution and the deliverables of measuring outcomes instead of just outputs.

- That's fantastic, that's good to hear. I wanna dive more into that, but first I wanna be considerate that some of our audience may not know the difference between an output, outtake, outcome and an impact, Could we walk through those for a quick second?

- We absolutely can. I mean, I think it's probably one of the most common things that you'll hear and see in our industry is there's a lot of talk about the terms that, you know, being able to apply those is very different. And it's one of the reasons why at AMEC, we have the resources to be able to help define that. Also to help organizations have the conversation so that when they're actually applying these principles and applying the necessary framework that they're able to talk through that. So when we go through the stages of that integrated evaluation framework and you have inputs. An input is what you need in preparation for communication, right? You have your activity, the things that you do to plan and produce your communication. You have the outputs, what you put out that is received by your target audiences. The outtakes, what audiences do with and take out of your communication, The outcomes, the effects that your communication has on your audience and the impact, the result that are caused in fuller in part by your communication.

- That's very helpful, thank you. I'm sure some of our listeners, if they're like me, we'll rewind that, listen to it again, right? Take some good notes, listen to it again, and then try to bring it back to their team, which is a fantastic approach to this podcast, which is why we're here and doing this on demand. I wanna rewind just a smidge there, when you talked about the impact of the organization. A lot of times, people assume or jump to the impact is you know, 80% of the time going to be sales, but we both know that's not the only thing that communications is either designed to do and desire to do, intended to do, whatever it might be. In your kinda global view and high level experience and doing this day in and day out, could you point to a couple of often overlooked impacts that a smart PR, smart communication strategies are looking to measure as far as impact on the organization?

- Sure., I think the main item is reputation, right? If everyone is chasing the sales and the leads, who's managing the reputation? Because that's not an area that you wanna leave untended and there are a lot of different ways to measure that. It isn't easy, it isn't some, you know, chart that someone is going to deliver up to you without any correlation and causation input. so you do have to think about it. But it is a critical piece of communications and PR. And I think when organizations are talking about, you know, only focusing on sales, on lead gen, there is a bigger question of then, what happens with your conversion? Because if you don't have a good reputation, if you aren't trusted in the environment within your industry, then no matter how many leads you get in that lead time, that funnel is going to take a lot longer to cycle through. And I think the organizations that, you know, it's not segmented, it's a divide and conquer, but all collectively working together with consistent messaging, with consistent themes that they can go back and see when they have resources dedicated to managing the reputation. Resources dedicated to measuring and evaluating the trust that their stakeholders have in them, they're going to see much greater conversion of those opportunities that they have coming through the marketing channel, coming through the advertising channel. And so, while it's tempting to go after that number because you wanna have, you know, some attachment to it, I think there are ways that that can be done. But I think having that be your sole impact that you're chasing, is a real danger zone for communicators because that is a very short tail interaction when you're really looking for that kind of long tail, that sustainable action and reaction of your stakeholders so that you're building trust, you're building reliability, you're building confidence. So when, and if you get into a crisis, you have all of those assets built up with your reputation and that's where you're going to get the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of a consideration to come out on the other side of whatever that crisis is with greater credibility and with less erosion of your market base.

- Yeah, for sure. You're reminding me, we used to work with a national mortgage company who had you know, really poor conversion rates and believe it or not, very aggressive telemarketing practices. And they called us and basically just said, "Hey, we're losing like $17,000 a day of income "because when we hang up the phone with somebody, " they Google us and they see all these complaints "about our aggressive behavior." And so we lose those opportunities, and so, you know, we went in and we had conversations with them and we said, "The only way we'd be successful "is if you changed your business model." And fortunately we had somebody in a leadership role who was thinking big picture as you're alluding to. Instead of looking at short term, you know, sales number, he realized that sales are declining, not increasing because of reputation. And so we worked with them and kind of changed their whole timing, their scripting, you know, instead of calling people during dinner when they found they could reach people, they were changing, and instead of telling people, " Oh, I saw a poll on your credit report "that you apply to your credit union for a mortgage, "we'd like to meet that," you know, then suddenly they're like, "Okay, who are you? "Why are you interrupting dinner? "And by the way, it's none of your business. "The conversation I had "that I thought was confidential at my bank today." So we changed their whole messaging to simply be, if you happen to be in the market for a mortgage, you know, would you consider a second option? I don't have to tell the person that I already know you're doing this, but at least present them with a solution versus a solicitation. And so yes, sales slowed initially, but then suddenly, you know, they faithful to the program, they started seeing a lift. And as we were able to improve their reputation, we started to see a lift. And so, you know, we started to get them to think big picture and the truth was they were very thoughtful and realize at some point we were worried our business was gonna close because of the recession and the economy, so we got aggressive. And that worked until it didn't, right? And then they had to rethink it. So suddenly they're paying my PR agency a whole lot of money to repair the damage and retrain their people and regroup. But they went from only having three facilities, I forgot what they called them, sales centers basically, in America to having 17, after we got involved because we were able to turn that reputation around, that made a really big difference. Yeah, go ahead.

- No, and I think that's critical. I mean, I think we all know that advertising works. We all know that marketing works, we all know that PR works. And what we also know, is that they work exponentially better when they are aligned, consistent and really, you know, transparent to what the market is looking for.

- I wanna talk just for a minute about the idea of a funnel. So when we're talking about communications, we're thinking of building awareness. From awareness, we dropped down and there's consideration. From consideration, we dropped down to a decision. And so many times, I'm speaking to, you know, CEOs, entrepreneurs, even marketing people who come from a very strong lead generation background and they want to just skip the awareness, the consideration go straight to decision. And so, you know, you and I have anecdotes like crazy about, you know, "Hey tell me about your wife or your girlfriend. You know, "the first day you meet her, "did you proposition her to marry you," right? I mean, was that your first line or did you spend a little time nurturing them? Getting to know them, letting them know who you are, learning who they are. Ask them out on a date, maybe buy them dinner or spend time with them and ask them to marry you. And they're like, "Oh yeah, of course, "why wouldn't I do it any other way?" And I'm like, "Well then why do you think "this process is any different?" And so I think people are looking for instant gratification and quick ROI, and you know what? Sometimes it works. We all know people who that was love at first sight, maybe they proposed on the first day and maybe that worked out, but that's unique stories, right? Not reality. And so, what's your reaction when people kinda think that way, Johna?

- You know, a tried and true, is that every interaction that you're trying to have with your customer, with your stakeholders, it's a relationship. And every good and bad relationship that I've had in my life, I can track back to the communications, right? Good communication, great relationship, bad communication, devastation. So understanding that it isn't a funnel. I mean, I think that's one of those things is, we wanna create some image, we wanna conjure something, yet we lose the personification of what's in the funnel, right? So if the lead is attached to a person, we have to stay in touch with the humanity of all of those elements that are going through that funnel with that person. And you know, living in a world where people are talking about AI and artificial intelligence, I mean, all of that is super sexy, right? People are like, "Yeah, you know, we've got this," but what does that really mean? Because for everything that's artificial, it can be a path down a road that isn't substantive. And I think that there are elements that, you know, you want natural, you want that organic, you want those things that are tried true, and real. And you can find elements of that in artificial intelligence, but you can't find all of it. And I think as we look at kind of this bigger picture, there is a whole element of empathy and feeling that goes into it. Deirdre Breakenridge, has a great Feel model, that talks about what the Feel and the emotional elements are of that cycle. And it's really powerful. Once you start looking at what that means, as opposed to just the numbers and thinking that you're understanding what that causation and correlation is, what are those external factors that are also going on that are changing the dynamic of how people are going through your funnel.

- Very interesting, I always enjoy catching up with you and so many thoughts are going through my mind right now that I'm trying to contain them and focus on asking you the next good question as opposed to blurting out 12 questions right away. So, to that end, you know, one observation I'm seeing is, you know, so much of research, right? Is now becoming more important in measurement because you have to have some basic research to be able to do the measurement and understand basic research. Whereas before I sensed, you know, so many companies were just, "Let's just skip the research" and we've had other guests on the show talking about research, we're not to do that today?" But I think what's interesting is that the ideas that almost like, the sales driven lead generation mindset of the entrepreneur or the marketing leader, just like, they wanna skip over building relationship, they wanna skip over research and jump right into, "Well, how do we measure this?" It's like, well, you can't measure this unless you establish a baseline. Can you talk to that for a minute?

- Well, there are a lot of ways that you can back the enthusiastic, right to impact, kind of prospect into those elements. And that is, you know, asking about a stakeholder profile. Who is your target audience? What do they look like? You know, where do they eat? Where do they drink? How many kids do they have? What is their profession? How much money do they make? What kind of car do they drive, right? What are all of those socioeconomic elements that feed into that? When you're talking about these people, what are their other circumstances that are making this the tipping point for a purchase, for a transaction, for a pivot of where they might be? Are the external elements and factors consistent with what you're trying to create? Because I think all of those elements, while people again, wanna look at the accounts and amounts, they wanna compress this into, well, we know if we have X number of leads, then we're gonna get two conversions and we're gonna get, you know, some. So what does that model look like? And for every business it's different, but in different environmental factors, that's still going to be different. So I think what people are going to find, in the next six to eight months, is all of the research that they had is going to change. You know, those buying factors, those pivot points, all of those elements because of these external economic factors are going to change. And I think people need to start doing some testing now to understand and to start to prepare for what those pivot points are going to need to be in the new economy.

- Yeah, absolutely. I wanna go back to a point you made earlier. I don't know who I'm borrowing this from, but I like to often, you know, my agency is dealing with other companies, so our, we're in the B2B space providing business services or PR services to businesses. And I borrowed this from somebody and again, I don't remember who, but I like to remind myself behind every B2B transaction is a B2C relationship, right? Because everybody's a consumer, everyone behaves like a consumer, whether they're buying goods for their company and services for their company or goods and services for their household. And so, you know, being in PR, you know, I just recently wrote a blog post about this. I hear people say all the time, "I need PR, "but I'm not really sure what that means, "I just know I need it," right? And as we start to educate them on, what is PR, why you might need it and all that, you know, they're often trying, if they're in the B2B space, they wanna focus exclusively on B2B media and earned media coverage in the B2B space, and tell them, I'm like, "I get it, "I understand what you're saying, "but you have to keep in mind "that every person consuming B2C news or consumer news, "also work somewhere, also is married to someone "or has a friend or a neighbor or a coworker "who they might be able to influence." And I said, "And by the way, "when people are window shopping your company, "they're not entering a Google search request." It says, Oh, and only show me B2B trade, you know, for what this company's reputation is as you alluded to earlier. I'm thinking to myself that the listeners here might be intrigued a little bit to hear more about your organization and how they might connect with it and what resources you have available for them.

- Sure, thanks, Jason. So AMEC, as I said, the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communications, is really based on education. And we have an amazing group of members who are, you know, providers, supporters, data companies, all really focused and diligent about measurement and evaluation of communications. We have the Barcelona principle is something that came out of AMEC International Global Summits. We have the integrated evaluation framework, which is something that goes into applying kind of that PESO model of how that looks, how that works within your organization. The integrated evaluation framework is an interactive tool, so anybody can go in, put in your goals, put in your steps and it'll create a PDF that can kind of be that living working document for you as you're going through your campaigns, going through your efforts. And for people who aren't too sure where they are in that process or just getting started, we have the measurement maturity mapper, lovingly called the M3, because measurement maturity mapper is a mouthful even for me. And that essentially gives professionals the ability to go in and through the process of a questionnaire, receive a diagnostic of where they are, are they at the basic, the intermediate or the advanced level for their measurement? And depending upon where they are within their responses to that diagnostic. And so PR agencies can do that for each of their individual clients and then take that back to them and say, you know, "We're really at the basic level. "If we wanna skill up, here's what we need to do." It provides that diagnostic of these are the steps that you need to take to be able to advance your program. And then really embedded within the overall organization that much more effectively.

- Love it, and what I also like about that is that it gives an objective third party score as opposed to the agency telling the client or the corporation, you know, you're at the beginner level and you need to spend this much more money to get to the advanced level or whatever it might be. You've got some kind of, you know, measuring stick that's objective that the agency can bring to the table. Or since a lot of our listeners are corporate marketers, the CMO or the VP of marketing or communications can bring to the leadership team or ideally to the boardroom and brief them on where they are now, why they might need more funding or resources or time, whatever that resource might be to be able to help the company get there. So I have two followups. The first is easy, so I'll do that first. What's the website address that someone would go to to find these resources?

- You bet it's amecorg.com, A-M-E-C-O-R-G.com.

- So it's not, .org.com there the org, is in the part of the actual domain itself. got it.

- Correct.

- Yeah, yeah, okay. And I'm sure you'll see your traffic spike as soon as this episode airs, I know I'm gonna go and check out a couple of those resources you're reminding me of or introducing me to for the first time. Second follow up question would be, let's just rewind a step, you kind of dropped a little lingo there with PESO and I know most of our listeners are not gonna know what PESO is, would you kind of explain that and be sure that we give proper credit to our friend Gini, from the book, Spin Sucks.

- Gini, wrote a book including the PESO Model. The PESO Model has been around, and her infographic, is one of the widely used assets around PESO, but PESO has been around since the early 2,000s. So in giving proper credit, we will give credit for all of her conversations and discussions about it, but I would not want to improperly give attribution to those who worked on it early in the early, early days.

- Oh, thank you, Johna. Okay.

- So in fairness and balance,

- Yeah

- But yes, I mean, Gini is a great asset and an advocate in talking about the PESO model and how that works in communications. PESO is the paid, earned, shared and owned pillars of communication. And, you know, one of the items that has been so enlightening to me, is in this global role, there are things that we talk about that don't translate well all across the world.

- Sure, yeah. PESO means something very different, in certain countries

- PESO, means something very different in certain countries also paid and earned, means something very different in those countries. What we would see as kind of a mainstream media or an open publication, there are sources there that will still only cover something. If there is a payment, bride feels like an ugly word. So we'll call it a payment that goes along with that, and you know that creates that internal conversation as well, it's an earned media outlet but we did have to pay for it. Is this part of our paid media? Is this part of our earned media? And so all of those elements that are very different and culturally the around those is very different as well. And so that's why when we look at the elements and one of the resources that I would widely encourage your listeners to take advantage of, is probably the best asset that there is on the AMEC website. And that is the taxonomy of integrated evaluation framework. And essentially, that's going through a lot of the definitions. We had great assistance from Jim McNamara, who is kinda one of the thought leaders in measurement and evaluation who has a very exciting book coming out about the impact of good measurement and valuation and what those savings and what that looks like. And so, you know, when you're talking about all of those elements, really understanding what those mean to your organization is that critical piece. And you know, sometimes that just, it translates into market mix modeling of how you're going to layer and frame that data for how it all works together. The most common thing that we often hear in earned is, "Oh," the paid people have so much data, they've got all this great stack and we're so limited into what we can do. And in the earned area, you know, "Gosh, there's all these limitations." Meanwhile, in the paid, they are in a position of really being wedded to a lot of volume metrics, right? They're doing some A/B testing, they're doing some qualitative, but a lot of theirs is on volume metrics. And there's that appetite there to say, "Oh, I wish we had more of that qualitative data "of what are the themes, how are we comparing, "what are we seeing when we use," you know, "and change that language?" And so, I think for every organization while paid earned, shared and owned, is that consistent. Those consistent pillars, I think understanding what that means for your organization, how those all coalesced together, what those themes are, how you're amplifying what that message is, is where you're going to see the greatest impact normally. And I think to make sure that there isn't an arrogance of communication, right? I think that as communicators, sometimes we turn this great phrase and like, "That is brilliant, that sounds good. "I love the way that sounds," right? And we get all excited about the way that some things sounds. And people are going to adopt it. But when you go to SEO, it's not being used, When you use that type of language in an ad, it's not getting any reaction. And so I think it's being consistent and using all of those different pillars to understand the language of your stakeholder better understand, you know, how are they really talking about things. And if you have some great new way to talk about it, And probably the those who are most guilty of this as the government, right? The government and their acronyms and no one knows what half of those mean, they just kind of accept them. But understanding what those things really mean and what the nuances to the stakeholder I think is going to make a huge difference in how you can level set all of your communications and amplify and accelerate all of your programs by using that data across each of the channels.

- So many thoughts are coming to mind. One of them is, you know, the idea that, you know, the grass is always greener, you know, when you were comparing paid to earned and the ability to measure, also I was starting to think about, you know, more money, more problems, right? 'Cause the paid media people always have more money, but it sounds like maybe they have more problems with the data that they actually get as well. And so always something to kind of keep in mind. let's talk for like 30 seconds about earned media attribution and, or earned media attribution technology and kinda tell us what's going on there in your world.

- So I think there is a lot going on with attribution in certain areas, you know, a couple of our members are deep into attribution and kind of building that data stock of what that looks like across the channels. I mean, the most common, the most notable, probably not common, the most notable is Cision and our mutual friend Mark Wiener and you know, looking at what they're doing with their data stock is I think interesting in being able to show and to find that attribution. I think it goes back to our original conversation though. If PR is chasing attribution, are they spending the resources that they need to on reputation? And so making sure that you have, again, I mean, one of the great things is the wheel analogy, right? The wheel has to be balanced in order to be able to be a valid form of transport. So if you're transporting a message, you're transporting a stakeholder, taking them through a journey, your wheel has to be balanced, otherwise it's a very bumpy road. And that usually requires kind of understanding, all of those elements that are feeding into something, you can take, I think some attribution, I think that it is a high risk model if you are devoted solely to sales to lead gen. Like, so many of our marketing counterparts are, right? That is their wheelhouse. So they are doing a lot of testing with messages. A/B testing, they're doing a lot of focus groups. They're getting directly from the consumers, how are they thinking about it? How are they talking about it? And if we aren't emulating that in the earns, then we're falling behind based on some of that data if we're chasing that same attribution that marketing is. So I think it's an understanding going back to, what is the goal that you're trying to accomplish? And what are the items that you need in your toolkit to be able to properly solve that problem? Is always the best question as opposed to, what are the tools and technology that I can use? Well, you know, I have a great car, but if you, you know, don't have gas then it does you no good, if you don't have any place to go, it does you no good. So, what are you trying to accomplish? And, then what tools? And, what is the vehicle of change that you need to process that? Are always the most important issue, so I don't think that there's a prescriptive that attribution is X to everyone or Y to most people, It's understanding how that works within your overall mix and what you're trying to accomplish. For some that will be more, for others it will be less.

- So it starts with, "Why?"

- It always starts with the, "Why?"

- Yep, that's right, good. Let's talk just a moment 'cause you have a unique global perspective, are there certain countries, regions or other factors that you see that are causing more sophistication, more adoption of communications measurement?

- That's a good question and it varies. You know, I think there are organizations who are global organizations who were driving different elements all over the world. You know, one of our presentations from the summit last year is a spirits company, Diageo. And you know, the misconception is, "Odd spirits, what could go wrong?" You know, "It's just a pour this "and ounce of this, two ounces of that." And they're very sophisticated with their data and with their modeling. And I think it is an example for everyone to look at all of the data sets that you have, how you can integrate those. I think obviously, you know, parts of Europe and parts of the U.S. are probably more sophisticated with the type of information they're providing and that's closely related to the accessibility to the data that they have. I think there are other parts in, you know, in Eastern Europe that are very unique. Austria, as an example, is very unique because where we're looking at audience data that we get from publishers, it is all directly from publishers there. And so there is no, you know, multiplier, there aren't all of those elements. All of that data is fed directly to consumer and to report in to the reports from the publication based on all of their data. So there is no multiplier, there aren't any of these kinds of gray areas that we get into by using estimates, by using averages if we can't get our hands on some of that data globally. There are pros and cons, if we could compile them altogether, it would be fantastic, right? But, so I see a lot of global organizations who have made that shift and adjustment and they're trying to kind of normalize that data around what they can get everywhere, and then they're using analysis of what that data is telling them and then correlating that to other things that they're seeing in the business to find those insights. So I think your data stock is heavily related to what you're trying to accomplish, how you normalize that data and then what you're trying to accomplish on the other end and where you can see those correlations to the impact of what you're doing.

- Johna, if our listeners want to connect with you and follow you and consume your thought leading measurement content and get to know your organization better, what action steps would you recommend they take?

- I would recommend that they follow us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is @AmecOrg, and they can also follow me directly, @gojohnab although you'll get probably a lot more ridiculous stuff at the @gojohnab handle, just a little warning for everybody--

- Some personality signs through, that's good.

- It's still just a little bit, just a little bit. And, you know, obviously they can sign up for updates, they can, you know, that would give them access to our blog posts that are posted by our members. We get some great thought leadership there that is a global perspective, people are writing what's key and what's going on with them. And also gives them access to, you know, a couple of projects that I'm pretty excited about. We in November, launched a planning primer and we're going to be augmenting the planning piece of the integrated evaluation framework of integrating that. One of the gaps that exist when you're talking about, you know, they wanna go from, what's your name? To, when do we get married? Is that planning piece and understanding kind of all of those elements that go into planning that it isn't just, "Here's a plan now, go." But really making sure that that's a living, breathing part of any communications plan is really critical. And so we'll be hopefully integrating that into the integrated evaluation framework. So people who are looking at that interactive piece have a more comprehensive way that they can integrate planning. They can do that right now, but it's a very cursory level. The other piece that we're going to be launching in July is a foundation course which is a basic three-week measurement course which is going to kind of level set everyone on vocabulary on the meanings of outputs, outcomes, and then upon completion of that basic course, they would receive a LinkedIn badge and also, A4 piece of paper that they have completed the three week course, because we are a UK based organization, we can't call that a certificate, Heaven been forbid because our interim class, which is the 10 week education course is the AMEC Global Certificate Course and that's essentially a university course, will people go through 10 weeks of learning and then a six weeks course of applying that to their own business example.

- Very nice, very nice.

- Yeah.

- That's sounds like great initiatives, I'm glad you're launching that. Obviously, you are a strong leader for that organization and you have a lot of plates that you're also spinning and balancing at the same time, which I appreciate and know that you're doing a great job with. You also have two more things that I think would be worth mentioning. They may be up in the air, we haven't talked about COVID-19 at all, somewhat intentionally, but you've got a annual conference and with that is an awards program, could you just give us a quick summary of that as we're wrapping up?

- Absolutely, Jason. Thanks, yeah. So we have our annual global summit, which was scheduled to be in Vienna. It will now be a virtual summit that will be taking place the first week of July, final dates to be confirmed, but it will be, you know, a few hours over the course of two or three days with some really great keynotes. People who purchase the summit package will also receive, on an ongoing basis, some of those other breakout sessions that we can't now fit into a more compressed agenda. There'll be also featured as webinars, but anybody who purchases the summit package will have full access to all of that programming through the end of the year. And that really is geared towards, you know, measurement and evaluation discussions, conversations of what that looks like on a global scale, some new technology, what's being adopted, best case practices and case studies of organizations who have this as a work in motion and are using this in addition to Jim McNamara, we'll be talking about his book that's coming out and the data that he has that's showing, you know, how good communications was able to save, I don't want to misspeak, but I think it's at over 20 million pounds. So I think being able to show that value is important. And our words, the judges are feverously judging awards right now. Lots of judgment going on, even though we don't normally condone it. And, you know, really the feedback that we're getting is that it's some of the best work that they've seen, which is great to be able to see that going on. Yeah, and to see that it's a pretty fierce competition of, you know, who will come out on top of those efforts and those awards, will take place in the end of July or the early parts of August, depending on what we're able to facilitate as far as making sure that we have the winners properly acknowledged and hopefully putting a little celebration around that as well.

- Excellent, I know on your website, you also have a certification program. Would that be a good place for a marketing or communications leader who wants to begin migrating their organization from maybe somebody who's measuring AVEs or what'd you call, likes and views or a vanity matrix of some sort, you used a good term for that earlier, what was that again?

- Blue vanity metrics, but yeah, it's those, you know, counts and amounts that people are heavily on. But also on the website, if you're still in the AVE honey trap, we have the 22 reasons to say no to AVEs that hopefully can help steer you and your clients and your organization from that as well. And you know, I think the certificate course is an amazing course. It's actually a fun anecdotal story. I was in Florida in February and I speaking at the PRC, West Palm Beach and one of the students from our certificate course was there, so that he came because I was there speaking and he had completed last year, this certificate course and he works at a university and was talking about how just going through the course has given him a lot of tools to be able to make them better consultants for all of their constituents there at the university. So having your certificate course be revered by a university academics is always a good thing and a good test to that. And it does require some rigor, we offer that three times a year, but I would absolutely encourage everyone to put themselves through that, and you know, have all of your... Anybody who's interfacing with a client should go through the basic course once that's launched because that's going to give them, again, some of those basics that's going to help them communicate and express what those basic elements are to be able to have those, "Why," conversations more effectively so that you aren't chasing the wrong numbers and you aren't being evaluated based on something that doesn't impact how the client makes and spends money of what is the ultimate guide of how they're going to be evaluating you.

- Johna, I hate to say this, we have to run, it's been a pleasure having you. For our listeners, in case you're not aware, AVE, stands for Advertising Value Equivalency, and you can certainly Google that and find a lot of articles. There's plenty out there. Some on our blogs, some on Johna's blog but definitely check that out. Thanks again for joining us, it's been a real pleasure to have you.

- Thanks so much, Jason. It's been a pleasure being here with you and your audience, and always appreciate the thought leadership that you take in the industry to keep the content and the topics relevant. So I really appreciate your leadership as well.

- Oh, that's so kind, it's all my pleasure and I look forward to seeing you very soon.

- [Announcer] This has been ON TOP OF PR, with Jason Mudd. Presented by, REVIEWMAXER.