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But sometimes they can be misleading little rascals.
There are no shades of meaning with numbers. A 2 means 2, and that's
it. Clear. Concrete. Not open to discussion or interpretation like
"That depends on what the definition of 2 is." Two is this many:
one, two.
So why can numbers be so misleading?
 Sometimes,
the numbers are irrelevant:
For decades companies measured every aspect of
customer satisfaction. Image for advanced technology? Check.
Friendly salespeople? Check. Like the color? Check. The only problem
was these numbers don't happen to correlate to business success. One
number – and apparently only one – does:
the net promoter score.
A net promoter score is simply the percentage of people rating a
company 1 through 6 subtracted from the percentage rating it 9 or 10
in response to the question: "On a scale of 1 to 10 how likely are
you to recommend this company to a friend or associate?" The only
other question that matters is the follow-up: "Why?"
Some creative research measures ads' and commercials' likeability,
although there would not seem to be a correlation between how much a
commercial is liked and how effective it is at generating the
intended behavior in the target audience. So why measure
likeability? More to the point: Why make decisions based upon a
factor which doesn't impact results?
A
number used to measure one factor may be inappropriately applied to
another:
Customer satisfaction scores – whether net promoter or any other
type – measure customer satisfaction. Period. They do not measure
what motivated customers to pick the company in the first place. A
lot of research has shown that the factors that determine selection
are often very different from those which determine satisfaction.
Marketers only see customers during the transaction, so they're
inclined to overemphasize the importance of satisfaction drivers.
But those marketers aren't able to observe while prospects are
making their purchase decisions. So they're susceptible to confusing
the factors that generate satisfaction with the ones that generate
sales. When they advertise satisfaction drivers rather than the
sales drivers, the results are often disappointing.
Another problem with focusing on satisfaction drivers is that that
businesses only see the people who decided to buy from them, not all
the ones who went elsewhere. So large areas of opportunity may go
unrecognized.
There's occasionally confusion about what the numbers mean:
A recent study showed that only 2% of cars are sold on line. Quite
true. But more than ten times that many are sold in dealerships when
a customer walks in with a check in the amount previously negotiated
on line. And many more sales are begun with on-line research into
make, model, price and discounts. So the dealer who naively believes
that only 2% of purchases come from the internet is competing at a
serious disadvantage to those who know what the numbers really
mean.
Often, a crucial number is missing:
A new television campaign has achieved a significant jump in
awareness. A test panel found the commercial effective at
communicating the intended benefit. (That can be determined
in focus groups and one-on-one research.) The media plan delivers
strong sustaining-weight reach and frequency. And sales are flat.
Are the data flawed? Is the campaign a bust? Or did three new
competitors come into the market with launch-weight reach and
frequency? If so, the new campaign's share of voice is a small
fraction of the company's former portion of media exposure in the
category. If that's the case, just holding sales flat is a big win.
On a micro scale, we know an automotive dealership with a third of a
competitor's media spending which has been duped into believing
media weights are the same by the competitor's "friendly" data
sharing. The dealer has never attempted a competitive media
analysis, so he wonders why his sales are a fraction of his
"friend's," and switches from agency to agency looking for a magic
solution to a simple – but unrecognized – problem.
Numbers may not lie, but people sometimes do:
Ask an average group of people if advertising influences their
purchase decisions and the answer is a resounding and unanimous
"No!" With that sort of response, you'd expect the entire industry
to close up shop immediately. Watch how those people behave,
however, and it's a very different story.
The new – and excellent – book, What Sticks, makes the point
that the only accurate way to measure advertising's impact on
purchase decisions is by observation of the behavior. Decades
earlier Rosser Reeves devised the Usage Pull methodology which
measured open-ended purchase intent responses of people who had and
had not been exposed to a brand's advertising. Both valid. But
asking "Would that ad convince you to buy?" isn't.
And, of course, there's always misdirection:
Magicians use flamboyant gestures with one hand to divert attention
from what the other hand is doing. Matadors dupe bulls into charging
a cape rather than the person wielding it. It's called misdirection,
and it's all too common in marketing communications.
Media salespeople, agencies and even internal teams sometimes say,
in effect "Look over here!" to direct attention away from what
really matters. Like the media rep who proves conclusively that her
or his station is #1 in the market, while conveniently omitting the
fact that it doesn't reach your company's target demographic. Or the
agency which trumpets a commercial's Advertising Age "most
liked" ratings while ignoring dismal awareness and preference
numbers. Or even the sales manager whose PowerPoint focuses on
increased sales while side-stepping the fact that all of those sales
were made by offering such deep discounts that the company lost
money on each and every one.
We love numbers:
Numbers are the heart and soul of marketing. At BrainPosse we love
the little rascals. Everything we do is focused on our favorite: ROI.
Like anything someone loves, numbers deserve understanding, respect
and to be treated right.
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