Communications: What’s your impact?

Abstract

The numbers are good: strong engagement rate, steady increase in performance throughout the campaign, and sufficient pick up by target media. Yet, something isn’t right. The campaign hasn’t yielded the results these numbers were supposed to produce, and the media engagement figures don’t justify it. Having a closer look at different campaign assets to understand what went wrong isn’t much help either – these assets weren’t assigned their own objectives. 

And this is why we all need the right characteristics and metrics to measure success. In marketing and communications, this is the reason we have measurement at all.   

Measuring the impact of communications is not an arbitrary exercise in the pursuit of flattering statistics. It is meant to guide us into better and smarter ways to tell our stories, to ensure they have power, purpose, and direction. 

Over the last 11 years, our team with a combined experience of over 400 years has poured hours into the analysis and assessment of what makes powerful marketing and communications. Perhaps before even a decisive and directional strategy, the objectives and purpose with which you set out to do marketing and communications activities are most important.  

Relevance to scouting

For WOSM, this reminds us that good numbers don’t always mean real impact. A post can get likes and shares, but if it doesn’t help more young people join, take action, or feel proud to be Scouts, it’s missing the point. Measuring our communications helps us see what really works, so our stories and campaigns make a real difference where it matters, with young people.