The Strategic Public Relations Center at USC Annenberg released its fifth study of generally accepted practices in public relations today. The GAP V report is the most comprehensive survey of PR professionals done in the United States.
This latest study incorporates views and information provided by respondents representing 520 different organizations – a 4.8% increase over the previous survey done in 2005 and published in 2006.
The organizations represented in this year’s survey ranged from the very smallest local charities and companies to global corporations in the highest reaches of the Fortune 500. Overall, respondents participating in the survey reported PR budgets averaging $4.4 million, average budget increases of 7% in 2007 over 2006, anticipated budget increases of 5% in 2008 over 2007, staff sizes ranging from 2 to 60, and fees to outside PR agencies that averaged 30% of their PR budgets.
The full report is available at no cost at annenberg.usc.edu/sprc.
Professor Jerry Swerling (pictured), who heads the Public Relations Studies program, directs the GAP studies.
Best Practice Communications
The study identifies, for the first time, best practices in public relations and organizational communications that the USC Annenberg researchers believe apply to all organizations.
“The term ‘best practice’ tends to be thrown around a lot, often referring to practices that are frequently used or used by respected organizations,” said Swerling. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time correlations have been used to identify best practices with a reasonably high degree of certainty.”
After five surveys completed over a period of seven years, the GAP V report concludes that statistically sound correlations from various survey responses can now reliably be used to identify true best practices.
As just one example, respondents who report to the C-Suite – to the chairperson, the chief executive, or the chief operating officer – also are significantly more likely to report that PR has a relatively larger budget. The study also notes that reputational considerations, which are central to the PR/Communications function, are now commonly factored into organizational strategic planning by the C-Suite. Putting the two together, the report concludes with a reasonable degree of certainty that reporting to the C-Suite benefits the communications function.
“Those elements are more than enough to conclude that reporting to the C-Suite is a best practice. The profession has long assumed this to be true based on survey and anecdotal findings, but to the best of our knowledge this is the first time that a true pattern of interrelated benefits has been identified through correlations. While at this point we can’t literally prove scientific causality, the value of this reporting relationship is unmistakable. In future studies, we’ll drill down on causality, based on the hypothesis that there is, to some degree, a cause and effect relationship at work,” said Swerling.
More Non-Profits and Government Agencies
The continuing growth in survey participation by not-for-profit and government organizations is particularly significant in the GAP V report. These influential charitable and governmental agencies together make up nearly half of all respondents in GAP V.
One of the ways in which GAP V stands out from earlier GAP surveys is the evidence it provides that these non-commercial organizations are now structuring their communications functions and measuring their performance on par with the public and private commercial corporations against which they compete for awareness and public influence.
Measuring Effectiveness
The survey continues to show a characteristic of a public relations practice that has been in evidence across all five of the GAP reports: a significantly low funding level for evaluating PR effectiveness.
“Among the most sophisticated organizations – whether they’re Fortune 100 companies, major not-for-profits, or large government agencies – the most significant activities are carefully measured and evaluated based on broadly accepted metrics … except for public relations,” said Swerling.
From the first GAP survey completed in 2002 to this year’s GAP V, the study’s research team has noted that the profession lacks the tools, the resources, or the will to develop and adopt sophisticated forms of evaluation that would test the effectiveness of its activities.
The team continues to believe that this year’s reported 6% average expenditure for PR evaluation is still too low, and that the traditional aggregating of circulation or broadcast reach into a simple totaling of “impressions” or “advertising equivalency” is becoming less and less credible.
“We need to find, fund and apply reliable and widely-accepted measurement tools of our own,” said Swerling. “Until we do, we will not see the kind of generous funding that sister-disciplines such as advertising and marketing regularly receive. Communications practitioners know the power and impact of their profession, as do most CEOs. Nonetheless, we do a disservice to our discipline by measuring it solely in terms of media-related outputs and asking that our effectiveness be accepted on faith.”
Reporting Relationships
This year’s findings also confirmed the conclusion of previous GAP surveys on the direct correlation that reporting relationships have on PR budgets and reputation inside the organization. Communications organizations that report directly to what is called the “C-Suite” – either the chairperson of the organization, the chief executive, or the chief operating officer – consistently enjoy higher budgets relative to organizational gross revenues, greater control of the enterprise’s broader communication activities and an influential place at the table for the most important strategic and directional deliberations of senior management.
The study confirms that the profession has what it has long sought: C-suite reporting relationships, which are now the most common of all at 64% according to GAP V respondents. The second most popular reporting relationship reported this year was to marketing at only 23%. Although marketing-dependent PR organizations are sometimes lavishly funded, they do not enjoy the kind of internal influence and access to the top that C-Suite-reporting PR teams take for granted.
Much less desirable reporting relationships among all those explored by the study are those where PR teams principally report legal, finance, human resources, strategic planning or to the heads of business or operational units. When an organization’s PR teams do not report to the C-Suite, the results, almost uniformly, are diminished overall budgets and reduced cognizance of reputational considerations.
“The finding suggests that an organization that permits its PR people to report anywhere but to the chief executive or president is a leadership that does not recognize, and is not taking full advantage of, the benefits of a more strategically driven, fully integrated approach to organizational communication,” said Swerling.
Outside Agencies
PR agencies might define an ideal relationship with a corporate client as one in which they are a so-called ‘agency of record’ – a position in which a single agency has the client’s entire outsourced PR business. GAP V shows that this practice is increasingly a rarity. More than 60 percent of enterprises responding to GAP V use outside agencies, and large enterprises use them almost universally. However, the most common model now is to spread the work around multiple agencies, most probably to customize the work based on an outside agency’s unique strengths and skills.
Despite a sharp decline in the agency-of-record practice, PR agencies should take heart that well over three-fourths of those using agencies maintain continuing, multi-year relationships with those agencies. This situation is definitely not the constantly turning carousel of hiring and firing that most agency heads fear.
Global Reach
Up to this point, the GAP surveys have focused principally on organizations within the United States – but that may change next time.
Since more than a quarter of respondents in GAP V reported having international or global responsibilities for their U.S. based organizations, the USC Annenberg researchers intend over time, to significantly expand outreach to PR colleagues outside the United States. This outreach will gauge the state of the profession and assess the differences in practices on a more global basis.
“We all know that around the world the playing field for institutional messaging is changing at lightning speed, driven by the Internet, mobile telephony, and the broader digital universe that encompasses us all,” Swerling concluded. “Accordingly, our most important challenge as we prepare for a GAP VI will be reaching out to PR professionals working within the borders of other countries, as well as those working in transnational organizations, because they will play increasingly important roles in shaping the social, political and economic issues of our times.”
