Analysis is for illumination, not self-aggrandizement
I just finished a book called The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington.
I chose the book for enjoyment, not for work. Ironically, however, like most books I read, I can somehow apply what I read to my professional life.
I thought this book would be different. However, I was wrong.
What do spies have to do with media analysis or building an application to support such efforts?
Well, believe it or not, media people (entrepreneurs, journalists, and corporate communicators) made the best spies. Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, was a journalist for Reuters news service before he was recruited as a British spy. However, probably the most notable communications professional turned spy was David Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy & Mather, a worldwide advertising, marketing and public relations agency.
Before Ogilvy was recruited, he was heavily involved in Gallup’s Audience Research Institute.
Ogilvy was recruited to help the British leverage both polling and media data to help sway American sentiment towards supporting the Allied cause against Nazi aggression. To some, this might represent a misuse of data. However, the early part of WWII was a dark time and required desperate actions.
One of the quotes recited in the book and attributed to Ogilvy was: “I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.”
Ogilvy believed heavily in research and in fact, used his research skills to successfully convince the American people to support the war effort. He also used those research skills to make Ogilvy & Mather a household name and very successful agency.
Ogilvy was not telling people to ignore research data, he was telling people to use it properly.
This statement does not just extend to marketing executives, it also applies to professional communicators who like most of us, are too willing to use research data to make ourselves look good instead of using it to help make unbiased and sober business decisions.
Just as British intelligence could not afford bad information from its people, business can ill afford bad information from business communicators.
As Ogilvy so succinctly stated, research is for illumination, not for support. If the research soberly supports your point, so be it. However, too often information is abused and like the British and the world as whole during WWII, misrepresenting information would have had disastrous consequences.
Brett, this is interesting. In my experience, we’ve been too wedded to our own personal biases (and feelings) than dispassionate research. Using research to inform judgment seems to be the best resolution to this question.
Eric Hoffer, in The True Believer, writes that among the committed ideologues, fact is less relevant than belief. We see this played out in pedestrian quarters, not just the halls of power, when we see PR people who won’t measure their programs — they like the lack of accountability, the sense of playing the artist. They’re convinced of their own intrinsic judgment to point of refusing to brook dissent.
It’s also true that if we use research merely to prove that what we’re doing or recommending is right, we are indeed missing the point! A brief example. For some time, I’ve held that a main purpose of employee communication is convincing your workforce to expend discretionary effort toward achieving organizational goals. I’m revisiting that belief in the wake of some discussions to the contrary. I’m willing to change my mind if there’s data that will illuminate me.
But then, I’m kind of a dweeb for this stuff.