Hope you all had a lovely Mother’s Day weekend. Here’s what we cover this week:

It's 5:02 pm on Monday, and I'm leading the last workshop before Meltwater Summit. 50 people in the room, looking to find out how to tie their work to the metrics their boss actually cares about.

But my laptop wouldn't load the presentation I had set up.

So I went analogue.

Everyone in the room wanted to know how to build a report that impresses a CEO, or what the best comms metrics are. But before we could get to that, I had to ask a different question.

“What is the purpose of communication?”

It took many awkward seconds for anyone to answer. Maybe they thought it was rhetorical. Maybe they were intimidated by my energy. Maybe they didn't want to be wrong in front of a bunch of strangers.

Eventually, one hand went up.

“To be understood,” they said. Wrong answer.
“To get our message our there,” another person tried. Nope. Wrong again.
“To be known,” a different person shouted. Still wrong.

It took about 10 attempts as a group before we got there.

“To make s**t happen.”

That's my answer. A more politically correct communicator would say "to influence attitudes and behavior." Same thing.

We don't communicate for awareness or understanding. Awareness and understanding are stops along the way. You know you've created them by looking at what changed afterward.

So if you want to demonstrate the impact of your communications, you don't measure the communication. You measure the change in attitude or behavior.

The amazing thing about that — you don't have to explain to executives what a change in behavior means. They already know what it means for their business.

But you do have to explain reach, impressions, key message pull-through, and AVE. They have no idea what those metrics mean for their business. Because reach isn't a change in behavior. It's just a measure of your communication.

Think about it this way. Which of these is easier to understand for someone who doesn't drink coffee:

"140mg of caffeine at 6:30 pm."

Or, "I had a double espresso after dinner and now I can't sleep."

The first one invites questions. The second is embedded with meaning — and now they know you're going to be in a crappy mood tomorrow.

But caffeine is not communication. So how does this tie back to the impact of communications?

We have to remind the industry that the purpose of communication is to make s**t happen.

And that's reason no. 1 why I'm so passionate about evangelizing the Data-Driven Communications framework.

I asked that same question to dozens of people at Meltwater Summit during 1:1 consultations. Each time, they felt silly — like I was tricking them. They knew the answer. But the instinct in this profession is to overcomplicate things, to assume the answer is a fancy metric or a tool you can buy.

You can't buy alignment. Your boss doesn't care about your tools or your metrics.

They care about their own success. Nothing wrong with that.

So what happens when you show up with metrics showcasing your success, but ignore your bosses measure of success? That's when you don't just get tough questions — you lose trust.

You might have the no. 1 share of voice in your competitive set, but if your business is losing to the competitor in sales, your CEO is going to look at you and wonder, "do you even get it?"

I don't blame people for thinking the way they do. After 17 years at Meltwater, I've worked with thousands of comms teams. The ones who get it — about 10% — have the same tools as everyone else. They just use them very differently.

At Meltwater Summit, I ran the Strategy Support Station. I sat down with 19 different individuals across 2 days. People who told me they want to get a seat at the table. People who said they were looking for a way to measure and demonstrate their impact to their leadership.

But when I talked about measuring perception and behavior change, their honest responses indicated the real problem.

"We don't want to be on the hook for driving business outcomes."
"Perception data is with marketing. That's not my job."
"Why are you talking to me about something Meltwater doesn't do?"

This isn't a practitioner problem. It's a leadership problem.

Somewhere along the way, the industry took an accidental turn and started measuring a myriad of things based on the metrics available. Driven by the expansion of digital communications and the data that comes along with it, it began to be all about the data that measure the communication.

But it’s not too late to correct it. Now that we have all this data, imagine if we started measuring the thing that matters, instead of the thing that happened.

Measuring the impact of comms means to focus on the purpose: changing perception (and, in turn, behavior).

When you do that, you start to build something that the top 10% of data-driven communicators already have.

Mastery. Autonomy. Purpose.

Mastery is being good at what you do, and you feeling confident in your own abilities.

Autonomy is you being given the space to set your own strategy, and the trust to make decisions.

Purpose is knowing that what you're doing is making the people around you successful — that you're contributing to something bigger than yourself.

There's one person who's the poster child of all three for me. And it's been an honor to work with her.

Gen Brammall was a superstar long before I met her. She’d won awards and received industry accolades. Highly regarded by her colleagues. Respected by her peers.

But when she took the DDC Maturity Assessment, she scored 46 out of 100. Like about 250 other communicators who've taken it, she landed in Planner, which is level two out of four. Apparently, her use of data was proactive, not strategic.

Then I met her on Monday, May 19, 2025. And she talked about communications differently than anyone I'd worked with. She talked about consumer outcomes. Behavior change. Sales.

Yet she scored 46.

Turns out she was already brilliant. She just didn't fully understand what it was she was doing, or how different it was.

So we worked closely. We collaborated on projects. And in the process, she started to better understand the frameworks she'd been using without knowing it.

Her confidence grew. She started documenting her strategy differently. She started to inspire others.

We launched a podcast together with Stephanie Lerdall. Instead of asking great questions, Gen and Steph were also the ones whose brains were being picked. Their confidence grew. They put new ideas into action. They built stronger strategies. They got more autonomy. And they started inspiring other people. Purpose.

On Wednesday at Meltwater Summit, I watched Gen deliver a 30-minute keynote on how she uses data. There was one moment where my eyes welled up. I was sitting in the front to support her — to be right there. But then I turned around and saw the crowd. Hanging on every word. Phones out, taking pictures of her frameworks.

Gen is a charismatic speaker. A caring leader. A confident, smart, strong woman. She inspires a lot of people.

To me, her story is the one I want to recreate a thousand times over. She had all the right ingredients. She just needed a nudge to put it together — and the confidence to share it with the world.

Mastery. Autonomy. Purpose.

The industry isn't broken forever. Gen's story is one of many that prove it.

If you want what she has, three things help:

You need to know where you're starting from. That's why we built the DDC Maturity Assessment.

You need guidance on how to get there. That's why we built the DDC Playbook.

And you need to know where you're going. That's why we teach the North Star.