Measurement. It’s best practice but how many of us actually do it? Apparently not that many. At least, that’s what I learnt when I attended the IABC international conference in Toronto.

Speaking with many of the delegates, it seems that a lack of time and budget hinder many communications practitioners from measuring success – it’s not just us Kiwis! 

The Gold Quills, the Oscars for our industry, were established by IABC to celebrate best practice - and in particular to reinforce the importance of using research to inform campaigns, and afterwards to measure success.

This year there was a huge variety of winners – everything from cancer society fundraisers, through to high-profile campaigns for international brands. Ideas Shop also won a Gold Quill with our client Potatoes NZ for a media campaign we ran to bust myths about potatoes and reposition them as a healthy, nutritious and environmentally sustainable food.

The one commonality was that research underpinned them all; tactics were informed by research, and they undertook research to measure the results.

At Ideas Shop, we didn’t let budget stop us undertaking research for our project – but we did do it on a ‘shoestring’. We undertook a series of “quick and dirty” interviews with journalists to understand the issues that faced them, and then another set of interviews after the research to measure our success. The approach was simple and low-cost – and it worked. It also proved that measurement doesn’t have to be big or scary.

I was surprised to learn that most projects took the same approach as we did – using simple, low-cost tools, rather than extensive and expensive research. Examples included running small focus groups, using tools like SurveyMonkey and stakeholder audits. Some also used even simpler tools, for example measuring uptake and repeat consumption. 

It was a good reminder that even a little bit of insight goes a long way to ensuring a campaign is on target.