A CEO Pushed Back His PR Report and Asked for Results, Not Work
He had counted press conferences and publicity, but he could not say what they were worth, so he left agency life to learn how to measure it.
Embracing Marketing Mistakes · EP 127: Professor Jim Macnamara Says Most Of The PR Industry Is Still Measuring The Wrong ThingJim Macnamara arrived at his biggest client's office with a thick report under his arm and confidence to match. He had run a public relations agency for many years and counted very large companies as clients, and this client, the software company Microsoft, had asked for a detailed account of the value he had delivered.
He and his colleagues had spent days pulling it together. They listed every press conference they had organized, every event they had arranged, and every bit of publicity they had won. Macnamara handed it over expecting approval. He was feeling, in his own description, pretty chuffed.
The chief executive flipped through it for about two minutes, then slid it back across the desk. Macnamara still remembers what came next.
The moment captured a mistake that still trips up much of public relations, the business of earning news coverage and public attention for companies and causes. Macnamara had measured the work his agency did, not what that work achieved for the company paying for it.
"I don't care how much work you did. I just want to know the results you got," the chief executive told him, asking for the value to his company.
The rebuke stung because Macnamara could not answer it. He admitted later that he had no idea how to calculate the result in a way that mattered to a chief executive, only how to catalog activity.
So he went back to school. He enrolled in a master's degree to study research, left the agency business to start a research company, then earned a doctorate and became a professor of communications specializing in evaluation.
What began as a humiliating slide of paper across a desk became a second career. Macnamara would spend decades trying to answer the question he could not answer that day, what difference the publicity made.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between outputs and outcomes in PR?
Count the work, like number of stories, event attendees, or total impressions. Outcomes are what changed because of that work, like awareness, attitudes, inquiries, signups, or sales. Executives usually care about the second list, because it connects to revenue and business goals.
How do you show that PR actually led to a sale?
Start with a clear objective and a baseline, then ask the audience directly through surveys and interviews whether they heard about the product, where they heard it, and why they bought. That links memory and behavior to coverage better than clipping counts alone.
If outcomes matter more, why do agencies still report activity?
Activity is easier to collect, faster to report, and always looks productive. Impact is harder, slower, and sometimes shows that a celebrated campaign changed little, which is an uncomfortable result to bring to a client.