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Fast tracking: Making a friend of metrics

Summary

In companies that doggedly measure nearly every business activity, the calls to quantify PR’s value can seem never ending. This is most prevalent in companies with a relentless eye for continuous improvement and return on investment. They range from technology and engineering giants like General Electric Co. and Motorola, with their Six Sigma black belts, to McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, which put stopwatches on everything to achieve assembly-line efficiency.

When it comes to public relations, the typical response from PR pros is to fight any attempt to reduce our work to a simple spreadsheet. But given such an environment, in the long run it vastly benefits communicators to call a truce and make metrics work for — not against — you.