Winning the emotional battle to measure intangible results.

 We are nearing the end of our journey again friends! I have so enjoyed talking to you guys every week and sharing what I have been learning in my post graduate studies. There will be a much more detailed thank you and farewell to come, but for now, we need to jump back into the world of strategic communications.

This week we discussed evaluating strategic communication campaigns. Why is this important? Well, for one, it lets you know where you are succeeding and where you can grow, and for two, it helps you know what is being said about you or your organization. We must consider what we want to measure to evaluate a strategic communication campaign.

When evaluating a strategic communication campaign you can measure two different types of assets: tangible and intangible. Tangible assets are easier to measure as they are usually finite. Did we drive more traffic to the site after this campaign? Did we sell more products after the new advertisement launched? Those types of things. Intangible assets are far more tricky to measure, but are just as, if not more, essential to a company. These assets are based on perception and emotions. How did people feel about our new campaign? How did the new campaign reflect our brand? Did we warrant some type of emotion when we ran this campaign? These types of questions.

As someone in my class said, "Tangible results are great, but decisions are made for emotional reasons, and winning the emotional battle is more important than a bucket load of facts when trying to enact change." This classmate hit us with a truth bomb. I don't know about you guys, but the more a commercial or post hits me in the proverbial feels, the more likely I am to interact with that brand or organization. You can tell me facts all day, but if you tell me the facts in a way that also speaks to my heart, then you have won.

I work for the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT). Recently, we launched a new website for ALDOT called ALDOTNews. In launching the site, we established analytics to track how the site is doing and what stories have the most interaction. This helps us to measure our tangible assets. We can see what stories prompted more views on the site, we can see how many people are sharing our links, and we can physically track the metrics. What these analytics do not show is our intangible assets however. These are the ones we have to be more proactive in measuring ourselves.

For example, every year in April, we celebrate National Work Zone Awareness Week (NWZAW). This is an event that takes place across the United States, with partnerships between state departments of transportation (DOT), national road safety organizations, government agencies, private companies and individuals. This campaign can often get overlooked. People drive through work zones daily. Most of us are even annoyed by them because they slow down our commute. So naturally, the response to a work zone awareness campaign is often pretty low. ALDOT has taken a new approach to this to inspire change by targeting emotional reactions. 

This year we decided to tell the story of Charlie Posey. Posey, a surveyor, at the time, was sent to do his job, a job he had done for 11 years without major incident. He had some close calls, but nothing like he experienced on October 31, 2017, when he and two of his coworkers were struck by an impaired driver. Charlie is a son, husband, father, and a survivor. Putting a picture of him holding his daughter on a billboard and telling his story elicits an emotional response. It, for lack of better terms, slaps you with a reality check. Would you speed through work zones if it were your son, husband, father? Would you text and drive if you knew you could potentially kill a loved one? No. Adding that emotional aspect to the campaign got us so much more awareness and recognition. 

Every year, we hold a press conference to kick off NWZAW. This year, we had Charlie speak about his experience and the number of people who came up to him afterward and said "I have never thought twice about speeding through a work zone until now. I am so sorry this happened to you." was astonishing. These are the intangible assets that cannot be measured by numbers, but instead change people's perspectives, and hopefully their habits.

Another group that has leaned into the "emotions drive decisions of change" campaigns is the Mobile Chapter of the Alabama Association of General Contractors (AGC). Their spokesdog, Millie, has become a symbol of work zone safety across the state of Alabama. She and her owner, Morris King, travel to elementary schools around the state and give presentations to 3rd and 4th graders. In these presentations, King urges students to call out their parents or guardians for bad decisions behind the wheel. 

Throughout the year, the AGC shares many graphics of Millie in work zone situations on Facebook. King said that Millie gets people talking and commands attention. Pictures like this remind people that workers have families too, and urge everyone to drive safely so we can all get home to our families at the end of the day.

While we get organic traffic to our site, Facebook has quickly proven to be the best asset we can have. The views driven by social media clicks blow the other numbers out of the water. While this is a tangible asset we can measure, the intangible assets we gain from social media are what we are most concerned with.

Social Media Today says that the intangible results that social media can achieve are the cause of an effect rather than the effect itself. These results include:

1. A positive or negative emotional reaction.

2. The feeling of not just being a number to an organization, but instead a valuable person.

3. The ability to influence others who share similar sentiments about anything, everything, and anyone.

4. The connectivity people feel from human, rather than institutional, communications.

By sharing real stories of real people, and changing the perspectives of drivers across Alabama, these campaigns had invaluable intangible results. While these types of campaigns won't work for every organization or group, being transparent, targeting the emotions of consumers, and fostering an open line of communication can create positive brand awareness as well as word of mouth buzz.