Posted by Milos Sugovic
Nothing really, unless you’re in PR.
Take a look for yourself: slide six of a VMS presentation titled “Measuring the Power of News on Advertising and Business Outcomes.” Is that really correlation? Last time I checked, correlation is a statistical relationship between two (or more) variables. So why would VMS, the leader in providing news and ad monitoring solutions, dumb down a statistical concept so much that they themselves look dumb?
Well, there are three explanations I can think of: First, and least likely, they don’t know better. Judging from the rest of the presentation and the credentials of the researchers, they know what they’re talking about. So let’s scrap that one. Second, and more likely, they talk to it when presenting. Fair enough, but why a graphic with one variable? Unless they’re talking about autocorrelation (self-correlation over time), which I highly doubt, it’s not a good illustration, period.
Which brings me to the third and most likely explanation: the obsession with “dumbing it down.” Statistics has traditionally struggled with making inroads into the public relations profession, and understandably so. On one end you have practitioners that rely on right-brain functions (nothing wrong with that), while on the other there’s a whole myriad of challenges one faces when dealing with qualitative data. But that doesn’t mean we should reduce powerful statistical techniques to the cravings in the hypothalamus!
Instead, there’s a need to educate. How many times do you hear in PR “know your audience?” The same applies to those leading measurement and research arms of the PR offering. Instead of bombarding our clients with whipped cream and measurements that generate meaningless, mysterious, and obscure indices, how about opting for transparency instead? Indices are great if you know what they mean, but how many CMO’s or CEO’s will bother to decipher a proprietary algorithm, let alone how/if it correlates against some other measure of business outcomes?
We’re in the business of affecting the consumer and that means market research. But good research is not only a function of data and analysis; it’s useless without clear communications. Teaching your clients how to read your results will make your findings that much more powerful. Not only will they get it, they’ll trust it. And as a result, the PR/marketing strategy will be founded on analysis and research instead of gut feeling, making it a win-win for all.
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