Why brand awareness is the new PR measurement of success (again)

In today’s lingo, how do you measure a vibe? It’s a funny question, but in many ways, it sums up the challenge facing communicators and marketers right now. Measurement – especially in PR – has always been the topic that dominates the room. Whether I’m meeting prospects, clients, or agency partners, the conversation inevitably circles back to the same thing: how do we know it’s working?

It’s a discussion I’ve had for more than two decades, and the truth is the industry never stands still. New models emerge, new metrics are introduced, new dashboards get built, and now with AI in the mix, we are once again rethinking everything we thought we knew.

When I walked out of university and into my first PR job around 20 years ago, measurement looked wildly different. I would spend hours uploading press clippings to a portal and manually entering every tiny detail. The system would spit out a number – a “value” – that would be a grade on our result. It was a version of AVE (advertising value equivalents), and back then, many companies relied heavily on them as an ROI measure. Some still do, astonishingly.

We all knew it wasn’t perfect. A glowing front-page piece in a trade and a throwaway mention in a national could be given similar “value”, depending on the model. Yet that was the language of the time, and for many clients, it felt reassuring – something neat, tidy, and quantifiable. But even then, an article wasn’t the end point. As digital media grew and pieces lived on long after becoming the next day’s fish-and-chip wrapper, the impact of coverage evolved too.

The impact of online on PR measurement

The rise of online news and content added layers to the measurement puzzle. Suddenly we weren’t just tracking the output, but the life of that output. Domain authority became a buzzword. Clicks, impressions, backlinks, referral traffic, dwell time – it all became part of the vocabulary. The hunt for high-DA links became, in some cases, almost a sport.

And for a long time, this made sense. Search engines shaped discovery, and digital metrics felt like a more accurate proxy for influence. We chased the numbers because the numbers were the currency of visibility.

But interestingly, and somewhat unexpectedly, the pendulum is now swinging back towards something far simpler. According to Censuswide, 62% of CMOs now say brand awareness is their primary measure of success – up from 42% just last year. That is a huge shift in a very short space of time. And it’s only going to increase as the internet itself continues to transform.

AI and ChatGPT

We are no longer living in a world where discovery begins with a search bar. Increasingly, tools like ChatGPT and other generative AI interfaces have become the new front door to information. These systems don’t “show” you search results but interpret information to give an answer. 

In this new landscape, many of the digital metrics we’ve relied on for years tell us far less about how people are actually learning about – and forming impressions of – a brand. What matters now is whether you show up at all. Whether you are part of the collective understanding that these models pull from. Whether your reputation makes sense in context, not just whether your link appears on page one of Google.

Awareness, in other words, has become about discoverability and relevance, not just reach. It’s about building long-term brand equity that seeps into the ecosystem, shaping how AI systems – and therefore people – interpret who you are and what you do.

And here’s the interesting, and maybe slightly unnerving bit; humans trust generative AI models. Often never questioning the answer. If ChatGPT says it, many people simply accept it. They may never visit a company’s website to check the facts, or read the reviews for themselves. They may never see the original article you worked so hard to land. They trust the synthesis.

That puts a huge spotlight on reputation as a whole – not any single campaign, link, or headline. As the saying goes, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. A brand’s presence across the internet, across time, across formats and sources, is what fuels the answers people now receive.

Evolution … again

This is why measurement is evolving, again. We are moving on from narrow KPIs like clicks or reach, useful as they once were, to metrics that capture the entire picture. The full digital footprint. This incorporates the consistency of messaging, the clarity of narrative, the trustworthiness of sources, the breadth of positive sentiment, the strength of expert commentary and the credibility of a brand’s leadership.

These aren’t “vibes” exactly, but they’re as close as measurement has ever come to capturing how a brand is genuinely perceived. And importantly, the picture is never static. It shifts constantly as new information comes to light – both for humans and for the AI models they increasingly rely on.

So yes, the language of measurement is changing. But in many ways, it’s bringing us back to what PR has always been about - telling the right story, consistently, credibly, and in a way that builds a brand people instinctively understand and trust.

And maybe that’s the real answer to the question: how do you measure a vibe? You measure it by looking at the whole, not just the parts.

Charlotte Stoel is managing director at Firefly Communications, a pan-European communications and PR agency with offices in London, Paris and Munich. Charlotte, who drives the company's business strategy of shaping reputations of tech businesses, is passionate about the team and has also spearheaded a comprehensive people development programme so everyone thrives and grows.