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Strategy Skills > Managing Communications

Evaluating communications

Communications should be evaluated after each phase. A number of formal tools and 'off the shelf' solutions are available as well as specialist companies offering media analysis and evaluation. Although independent analysis is best, these options are expensive and usually beyond the budget of projects.

There are informal techniques that can be used to test the effectiveness of communications. Most depend on having identified key messages and target media in advance. (The intended message must be explicitly articulated before it is possible to evaluate whether anyone else understood it, or whether the message got through).

A crude but effective form of media evaluation involves checking how many of the key messages were covered correctly in the stories that were published (for example, a story could score four out of five, or 80%).

However, this can be skewed because it takes no account of where the story was published (e.g. national tabloid, broadsheet or trade journal) and its prominence (front page, page 2 etc, column inches). So there needs to be a balancing factor. This could be through ranking the publication by its appropriateness to target audiences. The scale needs to be large enough to show up a difference. It is usually sufficient to grade publications on a scale of 1-10. As an example, this could be:

10 = prominent story in national broadsheet or tabloid
6 = prominent story in an important specialist publication
4 = prominent story in a major regional
2 = story in non-target publication

A further factor is tone - whether the story is positive or negative. For example a story may contain all the key messages, be in a prominent position in the target media but be fiercely opposed to the policies. The message has got through but not the argument.

Again this needs a wide enough scale to reflect nuances of tone in the coverage. It is best to use a + /- scale that is centred at 0 for neutral coverage. For example:

+ 5 = a highly positive story
0 = a balanced story
- 5 = a highly negative story

An overall score can be assigned using the formula:

Score = (Message +Prominence) x Tone

Users of this self-assessment tool usually tend to over-rate the negative and under-rate the positive. But while this system is crude it does give a useful pointer to how well the messages are getting through.

Strengths

• Ensures messages are understood clearly by users.

Weaknesses

• Can be time-consuming but should not be neglected.

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