education

IABC Communication and Measurement Conference

Building credibility with in and with out

Program

Browse the program below.

Schedule at a glance

Thursday, 18 November

Friday, 19 November

Full program

Thursday, 18 November

7:45–8:30 a.m.
Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:30–8:45 a.m.
Welcome and Opening Remarks

8:45–9:45 a.m.
Speaking the language of the C-Suite: Measuring the organization’s bottom line
Measuring our communication messages and vehicles isn’t enough anymore. Today, senior management expects a more direct correlation between money spent on communication with the business outcomes resulting from it—including how it increases revenue or reduces expenses. This session will show examples of how other organizations have calculated return on investment (ROI) for both internal and external communication (including government entities). In this session, you will learn how to:

• Plan communication in a way that ties it to behavior change.
• Isolate the amount of credit communication can take in the resulting behavior change.
• Calculate a return on investment based on the credit you can take versus the cost of the communication.

Presenter / Angela Sinickas, ABC, IABC Fellow / is president of Sinickas Communications Inc., an international consulting firm that helps organizations—including 23 percent of Forbes Global 100 companies—to plan and measure successful communication. Her publications and speaking engagements in 26 countries have made her name synonymous with practical measurement of organizational communication. She is the author of the manual How to Measure Your Communication Programs, and a regular columnist for Melcrum’s Strategic Communication Management magazine. She also serves on the editorial boards of two professional journals.

9:45–10 a.m.
Coffee break

10:00–11 a.m.
Workshop

Measuring the impact of social media on employee engagement
Your employees are participating in social media channels with or without the support of your company. How much your organization supports and encourages that participation—and invests in enterprise-level social media—depends on what the organization gets out of it. All of the various work-related dimensions of employee  social media use have an impact on employee engagement (that is, the degree to which employees are willing to give discretionary effort on the company’s behalf). Management will never realize the value of social media if you can’t produce metrics that make the case for employee access to social media tools inside and outside the organization. In this session, you’ll learn:

• The correlation between employees’ social-networking activities and their levels of engagement.
• How to tease reportable measures from the data employee social networking produces.
• The information that really matters to leadership and how to ensure your reports turn into management action.

Presenter / Shel Holtz, ABC, IABC Fellow / is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, and brings 30-plus years of experience to his engagements helping organizations communicate online. Shel has authored or co-authored seven communication-focused books and countless articles, and is a regular speaker at communication conferences. He blogs at http://blog.holtz.com.

11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
Workshop

Show me the money: Aligning your communication to business—your path to a positive ROI
“Show me the money!” is the mantra of the day, whether you are marketing the latest product or training staff to be more effective communicators. Senior executives, shareholders, taxpayers and other stakeholders want to know the value they are getting for their investments. The ultimate measure of value is ROI, but reporting ROI in isolation from other performance measures is insufficient. Multiple types of data tell the bigger story and can help you improve your communication process. In this session, you will learn how to:

• Calculate ROI, given the monetary benefits and costs of your communication initiative.
• Report ROI in the context of other performance measures.
• Align your communication initiatives with the business.

Presenter / Patti P. Phillips, Ph.D. / is president of the ROI Institute Inc., the leading source of ROI competency building, implementation support, networking and research. She is also chair and CEO of The Chelsea Group Inc., an international consulting organization supporting organizations and their efforts to build accountability into their training, human resources and performance improvement programs, with a primary focus on building accountability in public sector organizations. She helps organizations implement the ROI methodology in countries around the world—including South Africa, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Turkey, France, Germany, Canada and the U.S.

12:30–1:45 p.m.
Luncheon Keynote

How can public relation practitioners and communicators prove their communication drive the bottom line?
Learn how Microsoft is evolving its PR and communications measurement to move beyond clips and impressions, and even beyond tweets, retweets and comment streams, to a view of how communications helps drive business results, build brands and improve sales.

Presenter / Frank Shaw / joined Microsoft in 2009 as vice president of corporate communications. In this role, Frank is responsible for defining and managing Microsoft's communication strategies worldwide, including planning and execution, public affairs, media and industry analyst relations, executive communication, employee communication, and global agency management. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was president of Microsoft Account Worldwide at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, where he held key responsibilities for all global PR, communication and influence efforts.

2–3 p.m.
Breakout session

From Razzmatazz to Results: Using Research and Measurement to Improve Your Communications
Connecting outputs to outcomes has long been acknowledged as the best way to measure one’s work as a business communicator; yet the organizations that do this consistently are few and far between. In this session, you’ll review case studies that do just this, including in the social media sphere, and learn:

• How to set up a simple yet effective measurement program.
• How to correlate your work to your organization’s key performance indicators.
• How to implement effective measurement even if you’re on a tight budget.

Presenter / Shonali Burke, ABC / is Principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, "an agency of one" based in the Washington, D.C., area. She is in her 14th year in the communications field, and her experience includes working at small and large agencies, as well as a stint as the ASPCA's Vice President, Media & Communications, where she recreated the communication function for the country’s oldest animal welfare organization and instituted its award-winning measurement program. An accredited business communicator, Shonali was named a measurement maven by KDPaine & Partners in 2006, named to PRWeek's first top "40 Under 40" list of US-based public relations professionals in 2007, and one of the Institute for Public Relations’ three Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award winners of 2008. She is Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University's M.A. in Communications program, where she teaches a course on non-profit communication in the digital age, and also edits Network Solutions’ Women Grow Business community blog. Shonali is President of IABC/DC Metro and serves on IABC's International Accreditation Council as Director of Marketing. She blogs at Waxing UnLyrical and tweets as @shonali.

3–3:30 p.m.
Coffee Break

3:30–4:30 p.m.

Select and attend one of two sessions.

Breakout session (option 1)

Is there a problem? Structure your measurement plan to get to solutions
Measuring the success of your communication efforts is often a mysterious and intimidating task. But without measurement, it’s difficult to justify budget, personnel and other resources. This interactive session will explore the three-step process that will help you structure your measurement plans to get to solutions. Step one:  Identify the right problem. Step two: Plan to measure. Step three: Follow through on your measurement plans. The catch? It’s not as simple as it may seem. We’ll look at real-world examples and discuss award-winning strategies that will help you avoid common measurement errors and successfully:

• Identify the right problem/opportunity that will align your communication efforts with your organization’s business goals and objectives.
• Define SMART objectives that will improve your ability to demonstrate strategic and critical thinking capabilities.
• Deliver valued business solutions through communication strategies that produce outcome-based performance measures.

Presenter / Todd T. Hattori, ABC / created and manages the Process Improvement and Quality Assurance Office for the state of Washington Department of Information Services. He provides strategic leadership to standardize, monitor, assess and improve internal processes that affect customer experiences. This position has allowed Todd to fully integrate employee and customer communication within the organization’s business strategy and operations, and create a new measurement paradigm: Measured success against defined and communicated targets is a continuous process, not an end result. Todd has 19 years of experience providing strategic communication leadership and counsel to various nonprofit, private, education and government organizations.

Breakout session (option 2)

Develop a measurement mind-set: Know how to ask the tough questions
Recent surveys show that little more than half of all communication professionals evaluate their communication programs. There is no budget; there is even less time. Yet showing the value of employee communication in building trust in and respect for organizations and their management is critical. This session will explore strategies to gain management buy-in for evaluating the impact of communication efforts and designing an evaluation plan to measure trust. Drawing from case studies, we will look at how to move from “comfortable” implementation measures to the “tougher” phase of impact evaluation. What desired attitude and behavior changes can be measured and tied to your communication efforts? How do you design an evaluation strategy that helps senior managers see that building trusted relationships with their employees and stakeholders is a long-term initiative that still provides positive short-term feedback? What existing organizational measures might be included in your plan? How do you communicate negative feedback that might be uncovered as a result of your evaluation efforts?  This session will illustrate how to:

• Gain senior management agreement on what attitudes and behaviors matter to the business (and how much communication efforts can affect those attitudes and behaviors).
• Craft survey and/or focus group questions that get to the heart of building trust and credibility with employees, measuring early attitudinal wins and setting an evaluation path for the journey to behavior change.
• Frame the results of your evaluation when reporting to senior management and ultimately to your employees so that they don’t “shoot the messenger.”

Presenter/ Susan Quinn-Mullins, Ph.D., / is principal of Quinn Mullins & Associates. Susan helps clients build and maintain positive reputations, assisting organizations in developing focused and meaningful communications around new and existing programs. She is also a senior adviser with the Reputation Institute and a member of their Canadian team. Susan has more than 20 years of communication and marketing experience in a variety of senior roles within the pharmaceutical, specialty chemical, consumer packaged goods and health care industries. She has won numerous communication awards and serves on the board of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). In addition to consulting, Susan teaches public relations at McMaster University’s Centre for Continuing Education

Friday, 19 November

7:30–8 a.m.
Continental breakfast

8:15–9:30 a.m.

Select and attend one of two sessions.

Breakout session (option 1)

Don't waste time or money on guesswork: Find out your brand's buzz in a social media snapshot
Social media has become a primary channel for targeted PR and marketing campaigns. But the magnitude and reach of social media communities can be overwhelming and are not without risk for the uninformed. A social media snapshot is the critical first step to find ways to engage those communities in a smart way. In this session you will learn:

• Why a snapshot is an important starting point for anyone who wants to know what is being said about a company, its competitors, its issues, products, campaigns or its messages in social media.
• How messages and engagement approaches can be fine-tuned for outreach to social media communities.
• How a social media snapshot can save you time and money.

Presenter / Margot Sinclair Savell / is the vice president of Weber Shandwick's Media Intelligence & Digital Strategy group. Her work measuresthe competitive digital landscape for clients,in addition to providing strategic counsel and thought leadership. She is also the author of Weber Shandwick's 2009 white paper, Do Fortune 100Companies Need a Twittervention? Savell'sresearch and measurementreports have generated positive responses from clients such as Microsoft, Hitachi GST, Verizon Wireless, the Federal Reserve, Harvard Business School, Boston Scientific, Samsungand MasterCard.

Breakout session (option 2)

Eating our Own Cooking: What I learned from being a development partner and a client on SAS' new social media analytics offering
This session will address multiple learning points from the experience of implementing our new SAS Social Media Analytics software, using examples pulled from the launch of the product itself. Key points include:

• The data is in the details - how important is accurate?
• How do you really feel about sentiment - what it means, what it doesn't, can it be automated, and if so, what does it take?
• How much is too much - the cost of wanting to know everything

Presenter / Diane Lennox / is PR Services Manager for SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services. A 30-year veteran in marketing communications and writing for all media, she has spent the past six years supporting SAS' internal PR agency by managing the Global PR Resource Center (internal), acting as international liaison with dozens of country PR managers, guiding PR measurement and monitoring, overseeing communications and media training, supporting the blogging and social media program and providing SEO guidance. She does not do windows.

9:45–11 a.m.

Select and attend one of two sessions.

Breakout session (Option 1)

Measuring news media impact on brand, reputation and direct mail
You’d probably take it on faith that over time, negative news coverage is bad for brand equity. But financial regulators don’t take things on faith; at least they didn’t in 2008, as the global financial meltdown progressed. One company had to quantify the impact to satisfy its regulators and its leadership. In this case study, you’ll learn:

• How to tie unpaid media metrics into your brand research.
• How to examine media metrics suppliers, their strengths and their weaknesses.
• How one company used this material to gauge media impact on direct mail, brand awareness, disposition and attitude, and reputation risk.

Presenter / Sean Williams / is the owner of Communication AMMO Inc. He helps leaders improve their communication skills, build strategic communication plans, strengthen internal communication capabilities and effectively measure the results. His clients include the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, U.S. Endoscopy and KeyBank. He also is an adjunct professor of public relations at Kent State University. Until launching his business in 2009, Williams was vice president of corporate communications for National City Corporation, leading the internal communication and internal and external public relations measurement and evaluation functions during the height of the financial crisis.

Breakout session (option 2)

Uncovering the business case for public relations through measurable objectives
In every business case – whether the organization is large or small; for-profit or nonprofit; local or global – there is an objective. And yet, at a time when the demands for accountability and value in PR have never been greater, many practitioners put their precious resources at risk by investing in programs based on weak, indeterminate objectives. If public relations is to earn greater respect and higher levels of investment, we must do better.

In this hands-on session, PR research maven Mark Weiner shares his easy, proven process for building winning public relations programs. Supported by case studies and simple templates designed to help every public relations professional make their business case through proper objectives-setting, attendees will learn how to:

• Reduce the potential for disputes before, during, and after the campaign
• Focus resources to drive performance and efficiency by identifying areas for reinforcement, prescriptive change and continual improvement.
• Prove the value of PR by making it easier to determine if the PR program met or exceeded expectations

Presenter / Mark Weiner / is the CEO of PRIME Research North America. PRIME is one of the world’s largest public relations and corporate communications research and consulting providers, employing more than 500 analysts and consultants in Western Europe, North and South America, Eastern Europe and Asia. Since 1993, Mark has devoted his career to helping many of the world’s most respected organizations and brands to demonstrate and generate a positive return on their investment in corporate and brand communications. He is the author of “Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian’s Guide to Marketing and Communication” which was published by John Wiley & Sons and has contributed chapters to three other texts.

11:15 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Closing keynote

Does it pay to budget for measurement when budgets are tight?
TBD