FENTON_IndustryGuide_ProvingYourWorth.pdf

7/27/2019 FENTON_IndustryGuide_ProvingYourWorth.pdf

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PROVINGYOUR WORTH

10 Ways to Measure the Impact of Your Communications

260 Fith Avenue, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10001 1000 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005 182 Second Street, Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 9410

NEW YORK WASHINGTON, D.C. SAN FRANCISCO


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In this practical guide, we outline 10 key questionsto help evaluate whether your communications are

eective. Did you:

2009 FENTON Communications. All Rights Reserved2

Those o us who work in communications areoten asked how we measure success and whether

we can show a return on the investment or the

dollars put into media campaigns. Well be the frst

to acknowledge that appraising the results rom

communications work is not as straightorward as

counting the number o people served by a ood bank

or the number o women who walk through the doors

o a prenatal clinic every year. But communications

can be measured in more ways than one.

Success is much more than a book o news clips at

the end o the day. And earned media is just one acet

o a communications program, which can include

everything rom an online presence to advertising and

the strategy work needed or a solid oundation.

Advance your advocacy goals?

Change behavior?

Raise money?

Grow your membership?

Build the skills o your sta?

Build new relationships with inuentials?

Rerame your issue?

Introduce a new word into the lexicon?

Strengthen your organizations position,

brand and power?

And, are you quantiying and qualiying

your results eectively?

This list is by no means exhaustive, but i you can

answer these questions, youll be light years ahead

in articulating the value o communications. Thatsgood news. Because the better case you make or

communications, the more likely your organization

will invest in it and the more good youll be able

to do in the world.

Lisa Witter

Chie Operating Ofcer, FENTON Communications

INTRODUCTION

Proving Your Worth: 10 Ways to Measure the Impact o Your Communications


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2009 FENTON Communications. All Rights Reserved


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1. Advance your advocacy goals.

Moving legislation means pressuring decision-makersto do the right thing. Communications is essential

whether it involves building grass tops alliances or

mobilizing your grassroots base to add ame to the fre.

Case in Point: Protecting the Alaska

Wilderness from Oil Drilling

The heart o the Arctic National Wildlie Reuge in Alaska is its

coastal plain, a 25-mile band o tundra wetlands considered

by many to be a national treasure. The plain is critical

spawning ground or wildlie including caribou and polar

bears. It is also viewed as prime real estate or drilling by the

oil industry.

The Alaska Wilderness League (AWL), the group at the center

o a large environmental coalition, had ought or years

to protect the coastal plain rom pro-drilling members in

Congress. As gas prices spiked ater Hurricane Katrina, so did

pressure to open up the Reuge. For nine months leading

up to a critical vote by Congress, AWL and the coalition

waged an aggressive national media campaign to pressure

policymakers to do the right thing.

With FENTONs help, AWL raised the media prole o the

issue by reaching beyond environmental beat reporters

to D.C.s top political reporters. As the King Kong movie

remake hit the theaters, AWL unleashed a hard-hitting ad,

starring drilling proponent Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) as King

Stevens in a story o oil and money.

Media exposure in The Washington Post, Forbes,

BusinessWeek, Fox News and elsewhere, combined with

lobbying and a grassroots rally on the Capitol, contributed

to a major victory when both houses o Congress voted toprotect the coastal plain rom drilling.

Bonus Tip

Make sure youre involved rom the very beginning with

your policy team so there is a communications strategy

to match the advocacy strategy. When it comes to

maximizing the ull power o communications, getting in

on the ground foor is a must or success.


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With fu season approaching, the American Lung Association

worked with FENTON to kick o a public education

campaign encouraging people to get vaccinated.

As part o the Lung Associations Stick With the Flu Shot

campaign, we helped them conceive o and release a new

study on the number o children hospitalized each year in

emergency rooms because o the fu. B-roll and satellitemedia tours gave our medical spokespeople national

bandwidth, and a new user-riendly eature on the Lung

Associations Web site enabled visitors to type in their zip

code to nd a fu shot dispenser near them.

The campaign reached more than 100 million people

through media outlets including USA Today Weekend,

Parade, Good Housekeeping, and local newspapers and

TV aliates across the country. At its peak, the American

Lung Associations Web site received millions o hits a day.

Bonus Tip

Every behavioral change campaign should be evaluated by

the numbers. Create a benchmark map so you can chart

your beore and ater progress. Share these quantitative

results with your leadership sta and board. These numbers

will help you get budget support or next years campaigns.

Case in Point: Stick With the Flu Shot

2. Change behavior.

True behavioral change, which oten alls under

the purview known as social marketing, is difcult

to come by and even harder to measure or most

organizations. But with a targeted strategy, it can

be done.

Whether its convincing American teenagers not

to binge drink or women in sub-Saharan Arica to

use condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS, success hingeson the right combination o message, messenger

and harnessing the vehicles most likely to reach

your audience.


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Case in Point: Fund the Research, Find a Cure

3. Raise money.

Shaking the money tree involves a lot more than grant

proposals and direct donor appeals. A targeted media

campaign can help you reach a broader pool o new

donors who are inspired to give when they learn about

your work.

In 2004, or the rst time, Caliornians and New Yorkers had the

option o making a donation to prostate cancer research by lling

out a line on their state income tax returns. The Prostate Cancer

Foundation worked with FENTON to help raise unds through the

donation line.

The public outreach and media campaign, Fund the Research, Find

a Cureput ormer Super Bowl champion Roosevelt Rosey Grier

and Tony Award-winning actor and cancer survivor Mandy Patinkin

o Evita and Yentl ame on the talk show circuit.

Coverage included the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek.com,

National Public Radio and an Associated Press story which was

picked up by nearly 70 local newspapers in our target markets.

More than 20,000 New Yorkers donated $224,000, which ballooned

to $672,000 thanks to matches by public and private sources. In

Caliornia, donations totaled $188,000, or a combined coast-to-

coast total o $860,000 or prostate cancer research.

Bonus Tip

Because raising money is so essential or every nonprots

survival, you should be connected at the hip with your

development team. Make sure you have regular meetings soyou can support their important work and identiy opportunities

between undraising and other programs that can be maximized

with communications.

Case in Point: Fund the Research, Find a Cure


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4. Grow your membership/email list.

Membership is the backbone o many nonproftorganizations or both activism and unding.

When the Polly Klaas Foundation undertook its winning

advocacy campaign to create a national Amber Alert

system, a welcome beneft was that the public exposure

helped bee up their income rom new donors and

activists in the orm o 50,000 new members.

Case in Point:

Standing Up to Religious Right Extremism

The Campaign to Deend the Constitution

(www.deconamerica.org) is an online grassroots movement

combating the growing power o the religious right. In just

one year, DeCon grew its membership to 100,000, thanks

to an aggressive communications campaign that combined

traditional media relations and online marketing to drive

member sign-ups.

The group made its mark publicly by taking a strong stance

on issues like stem cell research and the showdown between

evolution and so-called intelligent design in the classroom.

These high-visibility eorts drove people to a dynamic

Web site where they were encouraged to sign up or action

alerts, ollow a blog, join community orums and check out

a requently updated headline news section. These parallel

on- and o-line tactics are keeping old members active and

continuing to attract new ones.

Bonus Tip

Robust e-mail membership lists are an organizations

backbone in todays digital age. Work with your IT stato receive regular reports o your Web activity so you

can connect the dots between increased trac and your

communications activity. These measurements will allow

you to rene and improve your program. Theyre also great

numbers to put in ront o your executive director and board

o directors.


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Only a ew years old, the Social Work Leadership Institute

(SWLI) at the New York Academy o Medicines goal is to

grow the workorce o social workers needed to care or the

population boom o adults over 60.

In a short amount o time, SWLI had launched an ambitious

policy agenda and was unding 41 graduate programs

in social work across the country to oer aging-inusedcurricula. What they didnt have was institutional language

to describe their programs to their target audiences, a

diverse group that included university deans, service

agencies and policymakers.

SWLI worked with FENTON on an in-house style guide

that ormalized and streamlined specic language to

describe each o their programs, the most compelling stats

to put orward, as well as branding guidelines or when and

where to use their suite o graphic logos. The guide is now a

quick, shorthand reerence or all their communications.

Bonus Tip

I youre hiring an outside rm to help with your

communications campaign, leverage your investment by

getting some on-the-ground training rom your consultant

so you build your in-house communications capacity.

Case in Point: On Message, On Point

5. Build skills o your sta.

One o the core principles o eective communications

is uniormity o message, especially in our inormation

overloaded culture. Getting your sta on the same page

with the same message is important hygiene or every

organizations success.


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6. Build new relationships with infuentials.

One o the most eective ways to position your

organization as an authority in your feld is to raise your

profle and inuence among opinion leaders and experts.

Case in Point: On Message, On Point

Few nonprots can claim to have been on The Oprah Winfrey

Show seven times. Women or Women Internationals ounder

Zainab Salbi can. But she also knew she wanted to steer the

organization in a new direction which meant reaching new

audiences.

Salbis goal was to improve Women or Women Internationals

positioning as an authority on global aairs and policy. FENTON

worked with her on a campaign, Stronger Women, Stronger

Nations, that included Capitol Hill briengs on women in post-

Saddam Iraq, an unprecedented survey o 1,000 Iraqi women on

their uture, and a conerence ocused on ensuring the rights o

women in the then-new Iraqi constitution.

Within a year, Women or Women International appeared in a

number o national opinion-leading media outlets, including a

12-minute segment on ABC News Now, NBC Nightly News,

Washington Post, Newsweek, US News & World Report,

and numerous times on CNN and CNN International.The exposure

helped position the organization as an authoritative source or

political reporters and state department ocials and created

a space or women at the grassroots to have a voice in issue

debates that aect their lives.

Case in Point: Getting the Ear of the Right People


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We couldnt have written the above CBS MarketWatch

headline better ourselves.

San Francisco think tank and program incubator Civic

Ventures launched the Purpose Prize, a $100,000 award or

social innovators over 60, as part o its larger mission to tap

the experience o older Americans and inspire millions to

use their experience or the greater good. With Americans

living longer, healthier lives than ever beore, this third age

is an opportunity or social entrepreneurship.

The strategy: get news bounce o trend stories about the

rst wave o baby boomers to hit retirement age. Media

interest was so great, we realized we could get two bites o

the apple: First announce the prize nalists to build buzz,

ollowed up by the announcement o the winners, which

included a armer, a ormer car salesman and the rst black

mayor o Philadelphia.

Stories by NBC Nightly News,CNN, NPR, Time,

Newsweek, the New York Times, Washington Post, WallStreet Journal, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere helped

create a counter-narrative to the perception that retirement

is strictly a lie o leisure by portraying Americans in mid-lie

as social innovators.

Theres a new phase o lie, between mid-lie and true

old age, Civic Venturesounder Marc Freedman told the

New York Times. The potential or the common good is

staggering.

Case in Point: Older EntrepreneursRewrite Retirement Rules

7. Rerame your issue.

The news media is a key battleground or inuencing

peoples perceptions and belies about an issue, or how

they choose to live their lives. Rewiring how people think

doesnt happen overnight but the right communications

strategy can help push your message through.

Bonus Tip

The rst step to rerame a debate is to research thecurrent rame. Examine how your issue is portrayed in

the news media, pop culture, and the blogosphere. It

may also be critical to audit target audience on how

they perceive the issue. I budget permits, consider ocus

groups and/or polling to help put your nger on current

rames as well as test new ones. Good execution oten

requires good research dont orget to plan or it.


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You dont have to be a an o William Safres weekly

column in the New York Times Magazineto know the

power o coining a new catch phrase or word. Its possibly

the shortest path to getting your message across.

8. Introduce a new word into the lexicon.

Pink teddy bears, makeup, water bottles, watches, blenders,

candles: It must be Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

For the past ew years, Breast Cancer Action (BCA) has made it

its mission to raise a dierent type o awareness in the month o

October: how corporate cause marketing, or pink washing, may

be doing more to push their products than helping women with

breast cancer.

Pink washing is the sister o green washing PR propaganda that

coats polluting companies with a deceptive eco-riendly nish

(think European oil giant BPs $200 million Beyond Petroleum ad

campaign). Except in this case, its corporations wrapping their

products in pink ribbons that is raising questions about where

the money goes, and whether women with breast cancer actually

benet. Most egregious o all are companies whose products (like

cars and certain cosmetics) are linked to incidence o the disease.

Take Yoplait, which says it will donate 10 cents to the Komen

Foundation or every yogurt lid you mail in. To donate $10, youd

have to eat 100 yogurts.

What drives these companies is the bottom line. Theres no

better way to improve prots than to tie your product to a social

cause, and theres no better cause than breast cancer, said BCA

Executive Director Barbara Brenner. Its time or people to take

a closer look, and to think beore they pink. Ater all, i shopping

could cure breast cancer, it would be cured already.

Case in Point: Pink Washing during Breast

Cancer Awareness Month


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9. Strengthen your organizations position,brand and power.

No news is neutral. A good media strategy can help

control how a story is reported and how an organization

is perceived. Shaping perception is especially critical

i an organization is the new kid on the block. Smart

communications can help build your credibility and

brand quickly.

When the Blue Fund, a progressive mutual und, hired FENTON

to help with the public launch o their organization, we knew

that answering the skeptics up ront would be the rst order o

business. I we could prove that a mutual und that screens or

Democratic-leaning companies could outperorm Republican-

leaning ones, the Blue Funds positioning in the marketplace

would be golden.

One week prior to the ocial launch, we helped the Blue Fund

release a white paper to the business press with hard numbers

to show that investing in companies whose top executives

commit the majority o their companys and their own political

action committee (PAC) contributions to the Democratic Party (and

that meet progressive labor and environmental standards) actually

pays o not just politically, but nancially: Over the past ve

years, the Blue Large Cap Index would have beaten the S&P 500

by slightly over 13 percent annually, and beaten companies that

give the bulk o their political contributions to Republicans by over

15 percent.

A story on www.slate.com, Blue is Green, switly became the

online news sites number one orwarded story o the week,

helping drive more than 3,000 unique hits to the Blue Funds Web

site in just one 24-hour period.

Case in Point: Investing in Meaningful Change


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10. Quantiying and qualiying yourresults eectively?

So you got a story in USA Today. How many eyeballs did

you reach? Media results in terms o audience share and

readership can be measured the bean counters at the

TV networks and newspapers do it all the time to entice

advertisers to buy space. The online world has its own

easy-to-track benchmarks.

Measure print impact: The Audit Bureau o

Circulations provides independent, third-partycirculation audits o print circulation, readership

and Web site activity. Some o the inormation

is accessible or ree on their Web site:

www.accessabc.com

Measure broadcast impact: Check the Web site

or the outlet and click on the section targeting

advertisers. There you will oten fnd something

called a media kit which oten includes inormation

about the stations viewers and listeners.

Measure online impact: An array o services can

help you measure success, depending on your goals.

For tracking online news coverage, traditional search

engines like Google and GoogleNews do a great job

o covering online media journals, as well as the Web

sites o mainstream news sources. You can pick up

stories that appear on their online editions but didnt run

in print or broadcast.

Sites such as www.technorati.com and www.blogpulse.com

allow you to track which blogs are covering your issues,

how popular these blogs are, and the traction your issue

is getting within the blogosphere.

For meaningul results tracking activity on your Web site,we recommend that you track how many unique visitors

are accessing your site, where theyre coming rom, and

what percentage are converting (i.e., taking you up on

your call to action).


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To get results, you have to intentionally plan rom the beginning. Below is a grid to help. Not all categories will apply,but this should get you started.

Tool: comprehensive evaluation grid

Planned for pre-campaign Evaluated post-campaign Results

Advocacy Impact

Change Behavior

Raise Money

Grow Membership/

Email List

Reframe

Build Skills

Build Relationships

Lexicon

Brand Power

Quality + Quantity

COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION GRID


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About FENTON Communications

For more than 25 years, FENTON Communicationshas partnered with nonprofit clients to make

social change. We work to protect the environment,

improve public health and advance human rights

and social justice. This guide is one in a series

that weve produced to help build the strategic

communications capacity of the nonprofit sector.

To download a free copy of this and other FENTON

guides, visit www.fenton.com.

Contact Us

Questions? Comments? We welcome your

thoughts and ideas.

New York

Lisa Witter, Chie Operating Ofcer

(212) 584-5000

[email protected]

Washington, D.C.

Ira Arlook, Managing Director

(202) 822-5200

[email protected]

San Francisco

Parker Blackman, Managing Director

(415) 901-0111

[email protected]

Documents

FENTON_IndustryGuide_ProvingYourWorth.pdf