I’ve been judging a couple of PR industry awards competitions over the past few weeks. On the whole, the standard was okay and a few entries were truly inspiring. What struck me was the lack of clarity in the PR objectives – all the judges nodded in agreement. In most entries the objectives section was a few lines of beautifully written prose – no numbers, no timescales, nothing to indicate movement, a shift, an improvement or any progress. This is not a true PR objective, it’s a broad and woolly aim.

How can PR ever prove its value if submissions do not set clear objectives? Any objective should have a minimum of 2 measureable parts – and a timeframe. This is Business 101.

So here’s my objective for the PR industry:

When entering any PR awards competitions over the next 12 months (timeframe), ensure that every entry (zero quality tolerance) has clearly-stated objectives which must include a budget, a timescale, and at least two other forms of measurement (quantity, quality, money, time) which are numbers and which are measured. Even better if PR objectives can be related directly to the client’s overall business objectives.

And here’s tip 1 in this series completing a PR plan, and an overview of how to write a great PR plan.