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Is PR jugglery letting (and getting) you down? Souvent, spesso, oft, dikwijls, ofta, ofte, often!.

Jugglery n .1. the act of throwing and catching (several objects) continuously so that most are in the air at the same time. 
2. keeping (several activities) in progress, especially with difficulty.

In the current economic client, business for most PR and marketing communications executives is a constant jugglery of priorities, budgets and time. It's also an intensified contest between internal departments competing for finite corporate resources - achieving more for less is an objective of every corporate game plan today.

The old pillars of new PR

PR has to prove its value and defend its right to existence constantly and, probably as never before, needs to be driven by and responsive to the same disciplines as other business activities and capital outlays. It has to stand up to rigorous measurement against targets: spurring sales, increasing market share and impacting return on investment. And, if PR can't validate its contribution to the business, it won't be able to retain its share of company assets; the days of the PR feel good factors being sufficient are long gone.

So what can the pressured in-house PR executive do to overcome the juggling woes?
The answer is simple: establish two fundamental pillars of real value and smarter management. But constructing them needn't be yet another task that adds to the PR's already sizeable number of juggling balls. Developing these pillars and then building on them is a job for the juggler's professional partner - the PR agency.

A partnership with an external agency can substantially improve in-house executives' abilities to work more effectively and successfully, enabling them to focus on other critical activities. Measuring PR results, proving value for money - as well as value to the business strategy - and monitoring programme planning, delivery and expenditure are balls that belong firmly in the agency's juggling act, not the client's.

Measurement keeps PR balls in the air 

The last DA UPDATE  focused on the need to ensure PR measurement is measuring up. PR Week, 28 February 2003, then published findings from a survey of 1,273 companies on PR budget cuts, and opined that these could be directly equated with the lack of measurement. Just over half - 53 per cent - of the in-house PRs surveyed allowed for measurement in their programmes, but, of those that did, only 59 per cent had done so at the request of their senior management. For the rest, perhaps it was simply that the measurement ball was dropped by an over-stretched in-house PR. Whatever the reason, this means that in nearly 70 per cent of the surveyed companies, senior managers did not regard PR as a quantifiable business function; so on what did they base their budget-cutting decisions?

In areas like production or sales the impending impact of cuts in budget or staff can be rapidly calculated and proved, but in PR, without evaluation systems, it's not so easy to make substantiated justifications to secure resources. Is it any wonder then, the poor PR ball is often down-sized or even dropped while other departments in the company go unscathed?

There is a huge un-tapped opportunity for in-house executives to seize the potential of metrics and pro-actively go forward with them to make a stronger case for PR in the boardroom. Demanding better measurement data from PR agencies is the first step.

Managing the art of juggling 

Good measurement data, however, can only result from good programme management. But management hardly conjures up the glamorous image PR tends to sport, and in an industry where jargon reigns supreme and campaigns often need to ooze compelling creativity, it is often overlooked, excluded or absent from some or all stages of PR activity: briefings, proposals, planning, implementation and evaluation.

But regardless of its creative characteristic or content, PR is a business like any other, and will not retain good customer loyalty without good management.

At DA we believe in managing for value. And that is not just about optimising efficient internal account handling and number crunching; rather it is about continuously coupling strategic creativity with the right systems and processes to deliver PR programmes that are on track, on time, on the bottom line.

Neither is it only of use to DA to ensure we keep all activities in a given PR programme progressing; the clients benefit too. Managing for value is not a set of rigid controls identically imposed on every client programme; it is completely interactive with clients, mirroring their individual management styles and preferences, and relieving them of tedious - though necessary - monitoring and reporting.

DA also offers a range of incisive metrics: press coverage evaluation, audience bench-marking, activity and time plans, status reports and in-depth budget analyses borne out of rigorous financial controls; all of which enable DA to demonstrate clearly to clients that their PR programmes are successful.

With these strong, established management systems, DA keeps all clients' key PR balls in the air and empowers them to anticipate and respond rapidly to market forces; change direction, refocus resources and maintain a sustainable and verified competitive advantage - both externally and internally.