Yes, Jeremiah Owyang, you're absolutely right, it's time to dump your dashboard and get a GPS that can talk to you.
But we are SO over that now. Dashboards only work if you keep your data consistent, only change your messages every other year and your key pub list stays the same. And we all know how NOT true that is these days.
So the perfect measurement system for today is the GPS. Let me explain. In the early days of communications measurement, the standard measures were the equivalent of a ruler. It told you how much coverage you got, but didn’t tell you much about it at all.
As time went on, more sophisticated techniques came along, ,and measurement systems began to resemble compass.. they could tell you where you were and what direction you were heading to. They didn’t really tell you how to get there, but you at least knew whether you were facing in the right direction.
Then along came the dashboard, a far more sophisticated tool that put the measurement equivalent of a gas gauge, speedometer, tachometer and oil and power meters on your desk top. Now you could figure out what direction you were heading as well as whether you had the resources sufficient to get you there. You could simultaneously look at all your various programs and see which ones were performing up to speed, and which needed a tune up. And that was find until we all went mobile.
But now we live by our Blackberrys (or in my case my G1 Android phone) and communications professionals spend more time away from the office than in it. More importantly, we have more data and can do more with it, so its only normal to think that you would want to have that data at your finger tips. And you just having data isn’t enough.
Like a GPS you need some forecasting capabilities – something that tells you approximately when you will arrive at your destination, and what will happen if you change course.
Essentially, what I’m suggesting is a complete rethinking of the measurement process from one that gives increasingly accurate data about what happened in the past to one that helps forecast what impact your actions will have in the future.
To do this, we need a different tool set. One that relies on statistical analysis, web analytics and a far more sophisticated approach to content analysis than most measurement systems offer today. It’s not enough to just track volume and dates, or even volume and tonality. In order to predictively model the future, you need variable that include messaging and positioning. You need to look at who or what drives results.
This new GPS-model will also need much closer cooperation between the people doing the measurement and the people doing the work. It won’t be sufficient to just ship off or call up a chart and say “I did well this month.” We’ll need to sit down on a regular basis, learn what the clients did, and what they want to do, and figure out how to get them there.
So the wonderful myriad computer systems that help sift thru the data are not the answer. They're just tools. You'll need partners in measurement that can give you advice, interpret the data and talk you through the process. I've yet to meet a computer that can do that.
Comments