I’m a big fan of evidence-based communications and marketing – making decisions based on real facts, rather than the traditional reliance on hunches and guesswork that’s dominated our profession for too long.
But even with the best intentions it can sometimes be hard to find robust enough evidence to inform strategic planning or tactical decision-making.
There are plenty of evaluation models and approaches out there for PR generally, most of which are reasonably relevant to public sector PR.
However Westminster City Council has just published its “Evaluating your communication tools – what works, what doesn’t? The Westminster Model” report – which shows very clearly the approaches that Westminster takes to evaluating the impact of its communications and managing the communications function generally.
You can download the report here. It’s well worth a read as there’s a lot to learn from Westminster’s approach.