I’m pleased to welcome PRmoment’s Young Communicator of the Year, and data and research guru at Ketchum, Erin Salisbury.

I wanted to interview Erin because I think we all pretty much get the need to increase the extent to which PR firms use data but Erin is at the frontline of this and I wanted to get her real world insight - from the client perspective, a colleague perspective and from a data and insight tools perspective.

Here are some of the things Erin and I discuss;

• As a research and analytics manager in a PR firm how are you using data?
• How Ketchum are using data all the way through the system; from influencer identification, understanding key audiences, how they think and behave, how they consume media, from brand strategy through to micro campaigns
• What sources of data do PR firms need to use
• The extent to which PR firms should use personalised and non personalised data
• How PR firms need to plug together the most useful blend of data touchpoints
• Why the data used will depend on the client objectives, what they have access to and what clients can afford
• The use of data can be broad from business critical challenges to more tactical activations
• Can PR firms do their jobs effectively if clients don't give them access to their customer data trends?
• How has the increased amount of data available to PR and marketing professionals impacted on planning and evaluation?
• The impact of GDPR on the use of data for PR firms
• Where is the spectrum of personalised and non personalised data, from a practical and ethical perspective?
• How the digital marketing sector is trying to link the customers digital journey, and why ethical and legal developments like GDPR may well slow that journey
• How digital has decreased PRs measurement problem
• Whether PR as a sector is no worse at measurement that advertising peers, they are just more paranoid about it
• Why the breadth of PR tactics available means that PR is a more complicated measurement proposition than any other marketing channel
• On the basis that virtually all campaigns are integrated, what are the implications of this from a measurement perspective?
• How do you integrate data across paid, earned, shared and owned channels?
• Is a channel specific attribution approach falsely simplified?
• What approach to tool integration does Ketchum take? Do you choose specialist ones or do you try and use one tool that does lots of things?
• What's the future of data on PR? Are we moving towards econometrics? Does PR have anything to fear when it comes to identifying its contribution?