Career communicators, Paul Cheal (right in main photo), former managing director of corporate and financial PR agency, Honner, and Deb Camden (left), founder of The Communication Dividend analytics solution, have joined forces to make communication intelligence available to all PR practitioners.
Cheal has joined The Communication Dividend as managing partner and chief executive officer, joining Camden as founder and chief intelligence officer.
Between them, the duo have more than 60 years’ experience as communication professionals. Both started out in journalism; both have headed up PR agencies; and as judges in Australian and international awards for communication measurement and evaluation, both have seen first-hand the standards that need to be reached as well as the enormous potential for improvement.
Not ones to back away from a challenge, they are launching their new business with bold ambitions: to bring communication intelligence into the hands of every communication professional in the world.
The Communication Dividend was started in 2018 by Camden as a digital “one stop shop” where all the communication and PR metrics that matter across an organisation can be seen in one easily accessible platform – providing a single secure, real-time view of performance, giving tangible strategic insight into programs.
The Australian innovation has been implemented by corporate affairs and marketing teams in a number of public and private sector organisations across Australia including global financial investment corporation, QIC and global engineering consultancy, ABB. In 2019, The Communication Dividend received international acclaim with two Bronze Awards in the International Awards for Communication Effectiveness.
The new partnership builds on this global recognition, bringing to market a specialist measurement solution for PR and communication agencies and their clients where measurement and evaluation has long been challenging from a budget, time and data access perspective.
Cheal, who has deep experience working in the Australian PR agency market over the past 20 years, said he has seen first-hand the challenges agencies face in investing time and budgets in measurement and evaluation.
“Effective measurement and evaluation remains elusive for much of the communication profession, despite extensive academic research and literature on the topic,” Cheal said. “This is especially true for agencies, who more often than not lack time, budget and access to data to do meaningful measurement beyond traditional media.
“Without measurement and evaluation, agencies struggle to truly demonstrate the impact of their work, yet this is the critical question clients ask. With the rapid pace of change and increasing breadth of the communication activity being undertaken by agencies, there’s never been a more important time and opportunity to prove our value.
“The Communication Dividend offers agencies a secure, real-time insight into the effectiveness and success of a communication program customised according to the client’s KPIs.”
Early trials with the agency market are delivering dividends and the pair are buoyed by the feedback they are receiving.
“The feedback from agencies and their clients has been extremely encouraging,” Mr Cheal said. “Agency leaders are looking for ways to add value to their clients. Clients are looking for accountability and transparency for their communication and PR investment. We can see measurement and evaluation rapidly moving from a nice-to-have to an absolutely must-have.”
Camden said there has long been a missing link between PR and communication and the organisations they serve.
“At the beginning, middle and end of the day, we’re all about linking communication value to business or organisational value,” Camden said.
“The Communication Dividend is designed to fill the missing link between organisational strategy and communication, making it the first measurement approach that puts organisations and their strategies at the centre of the communication measurement and evaluation equation.”
The platform automates current manual processes and securely integrates data from across marketing and communication channels, with a suite of more than 200 metrics that can be tailored to address client-specific KPIs from inputs to outputs, outcomes and impacts.
“Most of all, we want to support agencies and their clients to understand their communication dividend – the ultimate value of communication and PR efforts,” Camden said.
