Barcelona Principles

The PR industry has needed an effective measurement tool for some time now, and with the Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles (Barcelona Principles), we are a step closer. Although the Barcelona Principles were agreed by leading PR professionals from over 30 countries in 2010, PR agencies have been slow to adapt to this new system; many are still using the old form of measuring PR coverage by advertising value equivalent.

From next year, we will use the Barcelona Principles as a standard measurement tool in the agency unless clients request otherwise. The biggest question among the team and clients will be ‘what does this look like’?

• At the beginning of a campaign, we will agree the inputs / strategy, as we always do i.e. number of press releases issued and the focus, social media activity, events, brand ambassador, sponsorship, media drops, etc.

• We will measure the outcome of those inputs as we go along rather than just media results i.e. monitoring a shift in awareness, attitude, behaviour, footfall, sales, etc. as a result of the campaign and not just the number of clippings

• We will measure coverage that appears on prominence, target audience reach, key message alignment, call to action, sentiment, social media interaction (fan growth, retweets, likes, etc.)

• The success of the campaign will be measured on event attendees, visitors to the site / click-thru, sales, market share, awareness, etc.

We are already using the Barcelona Principles for one of our travel clients and presenting the campaign results for the year to date recently was really interesting – the outcomes were all based on percentages; percentage of coverage achieved in target A and B list media, percentage of coverage with a call to action and agreed key messages, percentage of coverage with website / social media mentions, event attendees and building new media relationships.

We look forward to putting this new system in place and we are excited about the challenges it will bring.