go human

Working at a Fortune 500 company in the 1980s, Merry Elrick, now president of DataDriven MarCom (DDMC), saw a need to deliver communication metrics.

"I was responsible for the corporation's advertising and sales promotion," says Elrick, "and I reported to the CFO. I noticed every other department, even HR, could come to the C-suite with stats to prove their worth. But we in communications could not, and we were treated accordingly. I think we were considered a necessary evil, and maybe not so necessary."

Later Elrick founded an integrated marketing communications firm and discovered her clients had the same experience—a need to measure ROI. "It's really the only metric that makes management sit up and take notice," says Elrick. "It shouldn't be that way. Management should also care about building brand equity because it generates long-term shareholder value. And this is something companies ought to measure. But determining ROI of communications in the immediate short-term seems a more pressing need."