Turning News Into Knowledge

Operation Mincemeat

Malcolm Gladwell is truly a gifted, talented, and insightful person. He’s a best-selling author who challenges the way we perceive things and does his best to uncover the truth where we least expect it.

Gladwell wrote the best selling books The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures.

In all honesty, he is inspiration to my own endeavors in regards to what I want to achieve with my company through the development of our product MediaMiser Enterprise and our accompanying services. However, on May 10, 2010, Gladwell’s essay for the New Yorker caught the attention of Wesley Wark, a visiting research professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

The essay, Pandora’s Briefcase, was on a very intriguing book by Ben Macintrye called Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory. Macintrye’s book tells the true story of how the British fooled the Nazis during the Second World War by planting false information on a corpse wearing the uniform of a royal marine officer.  A briefcase was conveniently handcuffed to the dead body and personal letters and effects were placed in the pockets.

The ruse more than likely saved thousands of lives during operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, and at the same time helped shorten the war.

Essentially, British Intelligence convinced the Nazis that instead of the Allies invading Sicily, they were to invade the less obvious target of Greece. Gladwell uses this story to dismiss the value of both spies, secrets, and intelligence network.

Instead of espousing the virtues of a well-run intelligence agency and the folly of not having one, he chose to use the example of Operation Mincemeat as why intelligence networks are actually a counter productive liability.

The essay motivated Wark to write his own piece, which appeared in the opinion section of the Ottawa Citizen on May 25, 2010.

Wark, like myself, sees value in Gladwell’s unconventional wisdom, even going so far as to complement Gladwell by writing

the world of intelligence and warfare could use a touch of the Gladwellian.

However, Wark disagrees with Gladwell’s assessment of Operation Mincemeat and even rebukes the unconventional wisdom that in the past has served Gladwell, also writing

his unconventional wisdom can be less than wise.

My first instinct was to agree whole-heartedly with Wark – especially since MediaMiser specializes in analysis. But, in the spirit of being open minded, I decided to purchase a copy of “Operation Mincemeat” as well as read Gladwell’s essay.

After consuming both, not only did it confirm my instinct that Wark was right, it also uncovered a point that was clearly missed by both Gladwell’s essay and Wark’s rebuttal.

Operation Mincemeat was not just about the importance that intelligence can play, it also highlighted the importance of having a well orchestrated marketing or communication plan that can be properly analyzed from start to finish.

Essentially, British Intelligence was selling a concept to Nazi Intelligence that they (the Nazis) were in the market for and more than happy to buy.

Gladwell dismisses the whole operation as a bunch of ‘what ifs’ and dwells on how lucky the allies were that Operation Mincemeat didn’t backfire. Also, to further strengthen his own argument, Gladwell even questions whether the operation actually had an effect on the outcome of the invasion, suggesting Nazi high command may have had their own preconceived notions about the invasion being in Greece.

By doing so, Gladwell overlooks the genius of what British Intelligence actually accomplished and not only does he dismiss the obvious value of intelligence agencies, but inadvertently, the value of current day marketing and communication groups as well.

Operation Mincemeat was not just a hairbrain idea that was set in motion by its creators like a toy boat dropped into the currents of a stream and haphazardly reached the intended destination.

The odds of success were stacked in British Intelligences favour, because they were in control every step of the way by having clear objectives, properly researching the opportunity, and constantly analyzing the results and making adjustments along the way.

This is no different from conducting a successful marketing or communications plan:

1) For you to sell a product or to communicate a concept or idea, you must first find a market for your product or an audience willing to listen to you.

This is what the British did: They found a Nazi agent who was looking for something he desperately wanted to believe was true. It wasn’t by luck the false information found it’s way to Major Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, the Nazi agent.

If fact, both Gladwell and Macintyre, refer to Kühlenthal as “a one-man espionage disaster area.”

The British knew this because they did their homework. The planted information wasn’t found by Kühlenthal by accident.

There is even a passage in Operation Mincemeat attributed to Michael Handel, intelligence historian:

It is very unusual and very difficult for deception to create new concepts for an enemy. It is much easier and more effective to reinforce those which already exist.

2) It isn’t enough to find a market. You must be able to package the goods for sale and effectively communicate them to your target audience.

Again, the British did their homework and left nothing to chance. They ensured consistency by going to tremendous lengths to invent a plausible history for the body, placing personal letters in its uniform, forging id cards, and actually having a double agent confirm the legitimacy of the body back to the Nazis.

3) Once you’ve sold your product, you must constantly monitor and analyze to ensure your message was properly communicated.

The British went to great lengths to monitor and analyze how their disinformation was being perceived by the Nazis. They were even able to forensically tell not only whether documents where read, but how they were read.

4) Monitor and analyze in real time and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Again, the success of Operation Mincemeat was not accidental. Some Germans and Italians were wise to the possibility of a ruse. To British Intelligence’s credit, they were able to adjust their strategy with new or modified tactics.

The British used tactics such as creating fake maps, bogus invasion forces, and employing Greek personnel.

Bletchley Park, the British Intelligence’s information centre that was responsible for decrypting and interpreting enemy messages, insured the deception was taking hold by intercepting and analyzing Nazi communications.

To prevent the body from being exhumed from its burial site, they placed a headstone and had mourners constantly visit the site not only as a way to deter Nazi agents from trying to corroborate the facts, but also to monitor the site and make sure nothing was disturbed.

If the gravesite were disturbed, it would be an indication that Nazis Intelligence was skeptical.

5) Evaluate your efforts.

After the invasion, a post mortem (no pun intended), was conducted on the success of the operation. Just like any good marketing or communication plan, it’s imperative that the final results should be measured.

Finally, I find it ironic that Gladwell points out that many of the British Intelligence agents went on to become celebrated authors, such as Ian Fleming.

Gladwell uses this to say that intelligence agents are their best own publicists and have tendency to ‘self-affirm’ their exploits. This is why we believe there is value in intelligence agencies and spies.

However, maybe if Gladwell also read The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington, he would see that not all spies ended up being world famous authors.

One military intelligence agent, David Ogilvy (founder of Ogilvy & Mather), later became an advertising, PR, and marketing pioneer. Ogilvy was actually recruited by spymaster William Stephenson for his work with George Gallup, where he helped to pioneer polling data. Ogilvy would later use polling data, while working with British Intelligence, to help change US attitudes towards supporting Britain during the war. After the War, Ogilvy would go on to create one of the best known advertising, marketing, and PR firms.

Gladwell finishes off his essay by writing, “the next time a briefcase washes up onshore, don’t open it.”

What Gladwell should have wrote is, “next time a briefcase washes up onshore, analyze the hell out of it and exploit it for its true value.”

That’s what David Ogilvy would have done and this is one of the reasons why market research, marketing, and good analysis saved the Free World.

It’s no secret that technology rapidly changes. While this may be frustrating to some people on the consumer level, it poses many benefits in the business world. These benefits are especially true for media monitoring and analysis.

To illustrate this point, Tammy Mazerolle, Public Affairs Counsel with Atlantic Lottery, explains how the advancement of technology has benefited them with regard to their media monitoring process.

1) Better on the environment – monitoring has gone virtually paperless

“…before, all media clips were faxed to us in a clipping package that contained the actual, clipped and scanned news article. We then had to photocopy the package page by page and then manually distribute the photocopied package to senior management,” says Mazerolle.

In recent years most print sources have been made available online through news aggregator services, eliminating the need to purchase individual newspapers, and in turn producing less paper waste.

2) Quicker dissemination – everyone can receive the daily monitoring clips at the click of a button

“Today, with the new tools available to us, we simply distribute the daily media clipping package in electronic format to our core team,” says Mazerolle.

Rather than having to deliver paper copies of reports to everyone on a team or within an organization, the process has been made much simpler. With the tools and technologies available today the necessary information can be sent instantly to a much larger number of people than before; geography and number of people is no longer an issue.

3) Personalization – easy to ensure people only get the information they need

“[Through MediaMiser] we also have the ability to customize our clippings package so that the core team get a clipping package with full articles every morning, and then a summaries-only version is sent to others…,” says Mazerolle.

With the advent of tools made available for media monitoring, it is now possible to do things the photocopier never could.

These days the wheel is rarely wooden, light sources are rarely candles, and media monitoring is rarely photocopied.

How can these changes benefit you and your media monitoring?

Perspectives is a blogging series written, researched and compiled by teams of MediaMiser staff from Client Services, Sales, and R&D. This post was contributed by Samantha Ingram, Mark Durand and Lindsay Polak.

If you’re new to analysis, terms like qualitative and quantitative analysis may be just a little confusing. To look at the differences between, and benefits of, the two systems of measurement, a working definition is needed first.

According to WikiAnswers, qualitative analysis focuses on non-numerical data, such as words, pictures, or artefacts. Conversely, quantitative analysis focuses on numerical data.

Boiling it down, quantitative analysis will tell you what topics people are following, as in trending topics on Twitter.

The strength of each form of analysis can be seen in a recent report by MediaMiser’s own Samantha Ingram about media coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

This chart, taken from the Olympic report, used quantitative analysis (counting the number of times each paper ran a story) to show the papers that contained the most coverage on the popular Olympic mittens.

Using quantitative analysis lets us see which areas are producing a lot of coverage, and which aren’t. Without this measurement, we wouldn’t have known that some of the top coverage was coming from outside Canada, although the mittens were only available here.

While quantitative analysis looks at what people are talking about and how much they have to say, qualitative analysis is more interested in why people are talking, and the contents of their conversations.

The above graph, also from the Olympic Snapshots report, looks at the overall tone of one of the Olympic coverage issues. Using a simple three-point positive/neutral/negative system (and rated by people, not computers), a large amount of articles can be sifted for some basic information.

Though it looks like quantitative analysis on the surface, the tone graph isn’t simply counting who said what. Instead, tone is focused on how people feel about a topic, and the broader content outside of basic keyword analysis.

Qualitative analysis is also used in open-ended surveys, looking at the reasons behind people’s concern rather than just the concerns themselves.

While each will give effective information on their own, without qualitative measurement, pure quantitative analysis can lead to number overload. Knowing how much people are talking is good, but knowing how they feel about a topic makes the information much more valuable.

Likewise, knowing people’s, perhaps customers’, concerns is important, but the information is far more useful if you can also look at which problems are getting the most attention.

Perspectives is a blogging series written, researched and compiled by teams of MediaMiser staff from Client Services, Sales, and R&D. This post was contributed by Jen Hogan, Sophie Jodouin and Daniel Enright.

Media monitoring and analysis is an emerging communication sub-field that can feed intelligence and insights into a communications plan. It also can provide a measurement structure for a media relations department. Media analysis can be used to drive marketing campaigns or to form a social media strategy around. It’s diverse and necessary to any organization, especially one that’s issues are often addressed in media or that participates in media itself.

However, there’s not much information out there about media monitoring and analysis and what it entails. Furthermore definitions of terms can mean different things to different people. And for that reason, we’ve decided to publish a Media Monitoring & Analysis Glossary on our web site.

The glossary contains some often used keywords around media analysis, and also a few others that we’ve coined ourselves.

Do you believe it’s important to define an industry? What other glossaries would be helpful?

Please let us know what you think about the glossary by leaving a comment here Alternately, if you want to privately provide feedback, you can email me at kelly@mediamiser.com.

As we get down to the short strokes and anticipation builds, the question is, who will light the Olympic Cauldron?

Chances are, this decision was made long ago and it’s one of the best kept secrets of these Olympic games.

Speculation has run rampant in both traditional and social media. A poll conducted Feb 1-2 by Angus Reid and commissioned by TSN and the Globe and Mail, found the most popular choice to light the cauldron was hockey great Wayne Gretzky at 25 per cent. Paraplegic athlete Rick Hansen was next at 17per cent, followed by Cindy Klassen and then Nancy Greene.

Betty Fox, mother of National hero Terry Fox, was 6th at 10 per cent.  Recently, however, there has been a big push through social media for Betty Fox to light the cauldron. A group created on Facebook urging organizers to pick Betty Fox has nearly 120,000 members and support on Twitter is growing.

So why was Betty Fox 10 per cent in the survey if there is such an outpouring of support on Facebook and Twitter?

Well, first it’s important to note that Betty Fox was 24 per cent in her home province of BC. Also, the survey was done at the beginning of the month and support for her has recently started to take root.

Therefore, the issue seems to be that Betty Fox and her son Terry, have just recently started to creep back into our National consciousness.

During the month of January, leading up to the poll, Betty Fox received less than 2 per cent of the new coverage Gretzky received. However, during this time the lighting of the cauldron was also the furthest thing from the media’s focus. Of all stories that dealt with Betty Fox and Gretzky, less than 2 per cent of the combined stories focused on the lighting of cauldron.

Justifiably, the media’s focus was pointed at issues such as disaster relief in Haiti and, coincidentally, Gretzky was involved with a telethon to help provide support to Haiti. In the month of January over 25 per cent of coverage that Gretzky received was in regards to the telethon.

Also, being in the throes of hockey season and the World Juniors you don’t require analysis to see where the lion share of his other coverage went.

However, with 5 days to go until the lighting of the cauldron, all of a sudden, people and the media started to take notice and the issue has become a hot subject. During the last 5 days, Betty Fox has received 12 times the amount of coverage.

Betty Fox's print coverage for the Month of February.

In my opinion, if a poll was taken today, Betty Fox would be the overwhelming choice, because of the influence that traditional media has and the polarizing effect social media has to change opinion.

Also, the reason why most people chose Gretzky back in February was the influence of the media, simply because at the time, because of other coverage, he was more in our National consciousness. However, as we get closer to the lighting of the cauldron, people will think more of who will light it.

The decision that I believe was already made long ago, will be what most people would have ultimately chosen once they had time to discuss and think about the issue, and I believe it will be Betty Fox.

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.

For our December newsletter, we asked our employees for their top tips for 2010. It was such a hit with our subscribers, I thought I’d share it with our blog readers as well. Enjoy!

A new year is a great excuse to change your ways and work on improvement. This year we asked the MediaMiser team for tips to improve measurement efforts, here are our top ten:

“Define your company/communication values of your company, understand them and then plan your media goals based on your values. For example, if you’re planning on being proactive to consumer feedback, aim to capture and analyze the media from the feedback.”
Stephanie Luedee, Senior Analyst

“When defining your goals, make sure they can easily be measured. Ask yourself if the end product can be evaluated like the number of mentions in a press clipping.”
Sophie Jodoiun, Analyst

“Prioritize all your tasks in a numbered system to know what you should be working on at all times.“
David Kalec, Junior Developer

“Colour-code your tags and folders in your email client. In an application like gmail this makes it easy to find topic-related emails in your inbox.”
Jen Hogan, Analyst

“Leave all emails in your inbox until you’ve addressed them – once finished with them, delete or file into a folder ALWAYS.”
Sarah Smiley, Analyst

“Understand that everyone has a different definition of success, so treat each account or client individually.”
Samantha Ingram, Analyst

“Set and evaluate outcome objectives with your audiences. Also measure your outputs.  They can help you determine why you did — or did not — achieve your desired outcomes.”
Claudine Wilson, Senior Associate

“Start benchmarking your efforts against competitors, it’s not as scary as you think.”
Kelly Rusk, Manager of Marketing & Communities

“Put your PR efforts on a measurement diet. Write down results, compare over time and take notice of when you gained or lost.”
Chris Morrison, VP Client Services

“When in doubt, ask us for help.”
Bill McGuiness, Sales Director

Think of one we missed? Leave a comment below!

Don’t miss future articles like this and others on PR and social media measurement by subscribing to our monthly newsletter, MediaPulse.

As PR and social media measurement gains strength and focus from experts and various audiences, bashing eyeball count, or reach numbers, and advertising value equivalencies (AVE) has become a favourite sport.

While I am in full agreement with the new measurement theories and understand the importance of starting with your objectives and measuring outcomes that meet the set objectives, I would insist that eyeball count still plays a part in the overall picture and here are some reasons why:

Connecting is the first step

If you are putting out a press release, tweet, blog post, podcast or any message, your goal obviously is to communicate with your desired public, engage them and generate the desired outcome from that engagement. The fact that they have seen (eyeball count) is the first step towards this process. The higher the eyeball count, the higher the probability of engagement. There is an old saying “the beautiful peacock danced in the jungle, but who cares no one really saw it.” It’s the same here, you might have the best concept, but if nobody read it or saw it then you’re not going to go much further with your campaign.

Hence measuring the reach is your first and important step in the process of measuring the campaign success. If we stop at this step, (which traditionally we have been doing) then it does not mean much. But it’s an important foundational step to further build upon the full picture of impact and measurement.

Create departmental synergies before you knock off the eyeballs

Conceptually, any campaign, when created, involves top management, marketing, sales, PR and other departments. Ideally they should all be talking to each other through implementation to measurement. In reality, due to time and resource constraints or simply poor management, the implementation and measurement happens in independent silos. This prohibits percolation of original concept and messaging to all decision makers, especially when external PR and marketing consultants are involved.

Now the task of truly measuring the impact of a campaign in a cohesive way is an even bigger challenge. In the end, each unit ends up highlighting results for their individual efforts instead of focussing on the objectives of the campaign and company goals. So while sales have its numbers to show, marketing has its branding and advertising results, PR (and specifically the media relations unit) often is left with showcasing the reach and AVEs as a quantitative measure of its efforts. So until we get to the utopian world of perfect communication synergy, eyeballs are here to stay.

I absolutely love all the discussions and focus on new measurement concepts, and it’s just the right kind of thinking that will help elevate the importance of communicators, but in doing so, I would be careful to not step on to the media relations people and discount their efforts. Eyeballs and AVEs aren’t the be-all, end-all of measurement but they have their place in the big picture.

Have you ever jotted down an idea for a blog—then let it swirl around in your brain for awhile to get your thoughts in order? I do this all the time and quite often never get around to writing the blog in the end.  I’m trying to find a cure for this laziness, I think it’s called Twitter.

This was just the case a few weeks back when I read the first half of a feature story in the August (print) edition ofVanity Fairabout Politico–a politically obsessed news organization that reports every whisper heard in Washington on-demand.

On the first go around I had only read page one of the feature and I was already thinking about the great blog post this story was going to make about how Politico could salvage the future of newspapers.  You see, the sub-headline read as follows

Four old-media veterans may have solved the future of news with the Politico Web site, whose audience of six million obsessives and insiders consumes–and feeds–a real-time download of power data. The twist? Politico’s print version is what’s helped make it profitable.

few paragraph’s into the story I was extremely intrigued.  Four mainstream print guys had bucked the institution, created their own gig, figured out what their audience craved, and were profitable…and get this: it was the print edition that was helping them roll in profits.

They had 100 staffers, 6.7 million unique monthly visitors for politico.com, and seemed to scoop all the mainstream media on a daily basis.  What was the secret to their success that they could share with the rest of the media world? I was curious to find out and blog about it—but got pulled away from the story with something more pressing.

A week later I finished reading the article, and to my dismay, there was no secret.  There were no profits. Just projections of perhaps breaking even according to the CEO.

‘it appears….according to C.E.O. Fred Ryan, that Politico, paying its staffers at nearly the level that The Washington Post pays (starting salaries for reporters at the Post are about $45,000 per year), has hit breakeven.’

As the story unfolds we find out the online advertising wasn’t strong enough to keep it afloat, so a print version with almost verbatim copy is being produced as a freebie. The additional ad revenue from print is bringing in just enough to help keep it going.   Unfortunately, despite how much politico’s love Politico, they had not as I hoped figured out a secret business model for media to thrive.   All of their ideas have already been tried by mainstream media in attempts to survive:

• • Pay journalists peanuts. Check.
  • Build up our online audience. Check.
  • Help journalists become trusted brands. Check.
  • Scoop the competition. Check.
  • Try a freebie print version supported by ads. Check.

I’m definitely being a little unfair to Politico; building an online audience of 6.7 million people with a century mark of employees is a great success story.  But the sub-headline of the story had promised me so much more—it had sparked a good idea for the blog and I thought I knew what the message would be.  And there’s the saving grace and an actual link back to media analysis. You can never judge an article by just the headline or even the first few paragraphs.  To properly assess an article the full story needs be taken into account, and inherently that is problem with automated sentiment analysis the way it is being done today. It can take words and phrases out of context (or in this case in context) and not properly relay the right information to decision makers in an analysis report.

Over the years we’ve relied on our analysts to provide clients with a human touch–including toning and sentiment analysis. I’m a big believer in automation – and I think there are strides being made to increase accuracy and insights – but any proper media analysis program needs to have human intervention at various checkpoints to ensure the information being shared can be trusted and acted upon.  Otherwise you might just think that the solution to the newspaper industry’s woes have been solved…I’m still waiting, but hopeful.

On July 10, I wrote a blog posting called Beware of the viral nature of media.

It dealt with the United Breaks Guitars video, which went viral across the web and mainstream North American media.

Joe Boughner responded to the posting quite rightly questioning how much damage was actually being done to United Airlines’ brand. Joe also hoped that someone would do a six-month post-analysis on the story.

Well, we decided to do a one-month analysis of the United Breaks Guitars story and have some interesting results.

Whether long-term damage was done is still up for debate, especially since our analysis covers only the month of July.

That said, you can find the complete analysis on the Resource Center on the MediaMiser website. You can access it without providing personal information.

For those who don’t want to read it, here are some of the findings, which are backed up by the analysis in the report:

• Even though blogs and Twitter may have alerted traditional media of the story, traditional media outlets supercharged the story and made it a real issue for United Airlines.
• The majority of micro-bloggers (Twitter), tend be heavily influenced by the mainstream media.
• Do not underestimate the influence of blogs.  Even though the popularity of other social media is on the increase, and the number of people writing blogs may be waning, many are still relying on blogs for information.
• Not surprisingly, United Breaks Guitars dominated the news for United Airlines during the month of July.

Chart showing the different media interaction over time.