How should we measure the impact of communication campaigns?

A number of important questions related to measuring the impact of future campaigns also came up in the discussions on the 19th of June. Many thanks to Charlotte Gugenheim from EC, DG RTS for reporting back on these points: 

1-     Does it matter to measure ?

Yes. Although we all admit it is difficult to measure the impact, it matters in terms of helping us deciding on how to use our limited resources (time/money) the best possible way and it helps designing future actions.

2-     What to measure?

It all depends on the objective. Are we measuring awareness/change of attitude/development activity?

It is important to define clearer goals for the campaign and then define indicators, from the very outset (to have a baseline against which the campaign could be assessed).

3-     How to measure?

• Media monitoring/online monitoring (clicks, views, likes, time spent on the page)
• Survey (this implies the definition of target groups). Eurobarometer and others surveys and polls.
• Impact on the ground is more difficult to measure but an increase of volunteers working for NGOs (especially young people) could be an example of indicators to monitor.