Devlin Brown is the founder and director of Empirical PR, formerly known as Fast Forward Public Relations. He officially changed the name at the start of 2026 to more closely reflect what his business does for its clients. “Ours is a PR programme based on empirical evidence,” he says. He spoke to SMETechGuru about the future of measurement and reporting in PR in South Africa, and you can read more of his fascinating insights and strong opinions in the Q&A interview below.
The Measurement Gap
Why do you think many South African PR agencies still rely on vanity metrics like article clip counts and impressions, despite C-suites demanding ROI‑linked outcomes?
I don’t think agencies necessarily see it as vanity metrics. They see it as ‘this is how it is’. The status quo dictates how things are done. Many agencies are still reporting based on the value of the retainer or project versus AVE as a ratio ROI metric. It’s how it has been done for ages, and – frankly – if you know your media landscape and trust your writers, it’s a fairly easy “ROI” promise to make. Impressions, AVE, clippings – it’s all important. I wouldn’t do a report without it, but we are well past the era of relying on it as the foundation of PR ROI for a business.
Is this a skills gap issue, a cultural issue in the industry, or simply resistance to change?
Of course, there is some resistance to change, but that resistance is more from the levels in an agency that find themselves in transactional daily checklists: “I already have to do all these media lists, brief x number of writers, facilitate status meetings and do the current reports, I cannot physically manage any more!” I don’t believe any agency owner that wants to be relevant today and next year is resistant to change. They should be seeking out change.
Yes, there is a massive skills gap, which is a symptom of “agency culture”. We simply do not have enough people in the PR industry who understand the commercial or business value of what they are selling, doing or promising. They see the “win” as the interview secured or AVE achieved. They don’t appreciate that the win lies in that rich space between output and the business strategy and objectives. Trying to relay this, you often see eyes glaze over. Annoyance, even, that this has made its way into KPI discussions. You cannot teach in a few one-hour sessions what should have been built into the very fabric of what people do, every day, from day one.
Clearly, this results in a system that forces ADs into a transactional box. Without the right commercial training, they are left out of their depth when a CMO asks the hard questions. That’s an agency owner’s nightmare, but it’s a systemic failure, not an individual one. Trust is built over time and easily lost when the client realises she or he is alone.
C‑Suite expectations
What are the “real” metrics executives in South Africa are asking for today — pipeline influence, reputation lift, employee trust, customer sentiment?
How can PR practitioners translate these into measurable outcomes that resonate with business leaders?
No two businesses are the same, but certainly all executives want all of that. But more than that, they want something that moves their business, not just another set of metrics.
The key lies in having the kinds of conversations where executives can understand how and where an effective PR programme fits into their objectives. If the customer experience is awful, a PR programme proclaiming the opposite would come across as inauthentic, and that breaks trust.
This is where the communications consultant needs to understand the business, where it is, where it wants to go, and then build a programme to drive credibility and bolster reputation that’s in-sync with the business. Not despite the business. There’s no shortage of LinkedIn posts about “PR in the age of AI” – but do business executives understand how PR can help them become architects of their own reputation or how their organisations show up in AI mode? Even if a task is top-of-the-funnel awareness, a good PR programme can offer much more, that’s measurable, and that’s how outcomes should be determined and reported.
AI’s role in measurement
Is AI genuinely helping PR agencies move beyond vanity metrics, or is it just another buzzword being sold to clients?
Can AI tools realistically track sentiment, reputation, and pipeline influence in the South African market, given local language diversity and cultural nuance?
Yes and no. For the most part, most agencies are weaving the phrase “AI reporting” into their proposals and comms because that’s what they know people want to hear. With everyone doing the same thing it is fair to suggest there is a risk the industry is simply shifting into a new set of vanity metrics. There was a time AVE was considered amazing: “Wow, is that what it would have cost me to pay for the same space in that publication? That’s great value!” Until, correctly, cynicism kicked in.
Platforms, both local and international, are all offering various AI-driven reporting functionalities. To your question, I have not found a single tool I trust to interpret the meaning behind the language and cultural nuances of a place as rich as South Africa. But, does that mean there is no value in these new AI-derived metrics? Of course not – that’s just dogmatic fearmongering. But, when I read the “AI insights” from many of these platforms (and even enterprise generative and agentic platforms) I always ask the same question: Why would you let an algorithm do what you are supposed to be doing as the trusted PR consultant? You know that “gut feeling” that comes from varied and diverse life experiences, from eye contact, from reading the silence and feeling the bitter pain and joy of professional life?
The problem doesn’t lie with the metrics uncovered by AI, it lies with what comes next.
Ultimately, businesses don’t need PR agencies that have just switched from one set of fairly relevant numbers to another, without trying to join the dots between the data and the business in question. Technology does in microseconds what takes humans hours or even days. And so, if I were an executive in the market for PR I would ask: “If I can do everything that a PR agency is doing with AI, why do I need an agency?” This is exactly why I have spent the best part of the last year developing an in-house, proprietary measurement and reporting methodology that is highly adaptable to different clients, relies on AI to do what it does best and incredibly quickly, and allows me and my team to do what we do best: Show, empirically, what is and isn’t working, and how and where the PR programme should evolve to achieve the desired outcomes.
Trust & transparency
How important is transparency in measurement for building trust with clients and consumers?
Do you see AI as a way to enhance credibility, or does it risk creating “black box” metrics that executives don’t trust?
Whenever AI is used or relied upon, it should be disclosed. If the rest of the planet is using AI to enhance productivity and free humans to do the strategic work that adds the most value, PR would be crazy not to. There is no shame in this disclosure unless a) you are relying on AI for PR output (adding to the bland, vanilla content that’s being downranked for algorithmic demotions) and b) outsourcing insights and recommendations to an algorithm. Reports should be tailored and personalised, supervised and owned by humans, precisely so that executives can see why, if at all, those metrics are relevant to them or not, and what to do next.
