Evidence Soup

Power Balance (of hologram fame) has purchased the naming rights for an NBA arena. (Yes, really.)

Silly me. I figured when the folks selling the Power Balance bracelet admitted there's no evidence to support their claims, that would be the end. But lo and behold, evidently they have sold so many hologram thingies that they've purchased the naming rights to the Sacramento Kings' arena for the next five years. I kid you not.

A depressing turn of events for all things evidence-based. My critique of Power Balance is well documented, including the post How do those Power Balance bracelets work? I think it's because of the 20-Hz difference between a genius and an ascending colon. Gawker, too, was taken by surprise, writing that Company Admits It's a Scam, Promptly Buys NBA Stadium Naming Rights. (I highly recommend reading the comments on that story -- so many gems, though I think my fave is "I understand that the decision was very difficult between this and 'Nigerian 419 Arena'.") As Gawker explains:

Ad Age estimates that the deal is probably worth about a million bucks a year for the Kings, and also points out that the Kings suck and they probably couldn't get anything better. Yes: this professional basketball team could do no better than a company whose marketing copy actually reads, "Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body's natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body."

After the Australia kerfuffle, the company announced "In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility. We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct." Subsequently, the company issued this statement:

"Power Balance stands by our products," said Keith Kato, President of Power Balance, LLC. "Millions of people around the globe are wearing Power Balance products and are thrilled with the results. Dozens of high profile professional athletes swear by the results they've experienced from wearing our products." CNBC recently named Power Balance as the "Sports Product of the Year for 2010."

...That said, there has been some negative press about our products coming out of Australia recently, followed by a class action law suit filed here in the US based on those misstatements, and we wanted to set the record straight.

Contrary to recent assertions in the Australian press, Power Balance has made no claims that our product does not perform. This is simply untrue. Apparently, some previous claims in our marketing ads in Australia were not up to ACCC standards. Changes were voluntarily made immediately, approved and the issues were believed to have been resolved. We were obviously surprised to see the recent press coming out of Australia followed by a class action law suit here in the United States.

"The mission of Power Balance has always been to develop and deliver quality products that enhance people's lives," said Kato. "...Frankly, we know there will always be critics of new technologies, but our products are used by those with open minds who experience real results. Our company is absolutely committed to further evaluating the technology behind its products' performance so that we can continue to offer products that enhance people's lifestyle."

Supporting evidence. I checked other media outlets, just in case Gawker had posted the naming rights story as a joke. Nope. It's on Bloomberg and Business Insider, among other sites.

 

Interview Wednesday: Ashley Welde, Director of Evidence-Based Communications at Burson-Marsteller.

Today I'm delighted to introduce Ashley Welde, Director of Evidence-Based Communications at Burson-Marsteller (New York, New York).

I asked Ashley where we can learn more about her, and she provided these links: "I blog and tweet under the Burson-Marsteller name. If you don’t mind receiving other company news, you can hear about the research I do @BMGlobalNews. Some studies I published this year which may be of interest include The PR Effect, which provides evidence for the effectiveness of PR programs; The Message Gap Analysis, which explores the 'gap' between a company’s messages and what ultimately appears in the media; and Fortune 100 Global Social Media Study, which uncovers evidence about how Fortune 100 companies are using social media."

The Five Questions.
#1. What got you interested in evidence?
I’m a natural-born psychologist who is always trying to understand why people think what they think, and why they do what they do. Thus, I’m compelled to uncover the root cause of people’s beliefs and actions, which instinctively leads to gathering evidence. I’m also interested in business, so I have an MBA and I’ve spend the last 15 years in marketing/PR, gathering evidence to understand what drives consumers’ brand perceptions, what influences their purchases, what drives corporate reputation, etc.
My father was also a psychology professor who did extensive experimenting on the chemistry of the human brain, so research about people and their motivations must run in my blood.

What types of evidence do you work with most often (medical, business research, statistics, social science, etc.)?
My job title, “Director of Evidence-Based Communications,” is kind of fancy name for market researcher, which is what I actually do. The evidence I collect as a researcher is a combination of social science and business, and the evidence drives two specific goals: 1) to develop PR programs that will influence stakeholders perceptions and behaviors and 2) to measure the impact of the PR programs.

For example, maybe I have a client who wants to encourage citizens to recycle. For the first goal, I would collect evidence to understand why citizens are not recycling (i.e., maybe they don’t know which items are recyclable, maybe they don’t know where to bring their recyclables, maybe they’re just lazy). Then we use that evidence to develop a PR program targeted at the issues preventing citizens from recycling. For the second goal, I identify measurement techniques to collect evidence about whether or not citizens’ recycling behavior has been influenced by the program.

What is your involvement with evidence: applying it, advocating its use, researching/developing it, synthesizing/explaining/translating it, communicating it?
I do all of the above. In addition to applying evidence to client work as I described above, I also design thought leadership studies to promote Burson-Marsteller’s communications services. Within the company, I am responsible for educating my colleagues about what evidence is available and to apply it to their client work. I also communicate and promote the Evidence-Based thought leadership we do throughout the PR community.

Where do you go looking for evidence, and what types of sources do you prefer? (formally published stuff such as journals, or something less formalized?)
The evidence for my industry is published in PR/marketing industry trades/websites such as PR Week, Advertising Age, the Center for Media Research and eMarketer. I always try to understand the methodologies used – and often email the researcher if I can to get a better sense of how the research was conducted – because the quality of research varies greatly. I also read some academic research about consumer behavior, which is often more methodologically sound but unfortunately cannot always be applied to real-life PR in a practical way.

#2. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10= ‘It’s crystal clear.’ and 1=’We have no idea why things are happening.’, how would you describe the overall “state of the evidence” in your primary field?
Sorry to give a cop-out answer, but I would say “5.” (As a researcher, I always prefer 1s and 10s!) Traditionally, “evidence for success” in PR meant getting coverage for a client in a major newspaper, instead of whether or not you were really changing people’s perceptions and behaviors. Public relations is genuinely hard to measure, which I could explain in more depth except it would consume this entire interview. However, clients are starting to demand more evidence to prove that PR programs have an impact on the business’s bottom line, so people like me are developing tools to do just that. And, because so much of PR is becoming digital (including social media), it is getting easier and easier to gather evidence to demonstrate impact.

Which of these situations is most common in your field?
a) Much of the evidence we need doesn’t yet exist.
b) People don't know about the evidence that is available.
c) People don't understand the evidence well enough to apply it.
d) People don’t follow the evidence because it's not the expectation.

“C” I just described above that PR has a problem with “A” because there is a lack of evidence prove the impact of PR, but I believe that a lack of understanding about how to apply evidence is a bigger problem. PR professionals are extremely creative and excellent at coming up with big ideas, but they are not trained to apply and generate evidence. This is quickly changing though, and it is the driving force behind the Evidence-Based Communications program at Burson-Marsteller – to help encourage professionals in the PR industry to use evidence to be more effective.

#3. Imagine a world where people can get the evidence they need, and exchange it easily and transparently. What barriers do you believe are preventing that world from becoming a reality?
I think the barriers to an evidence-based world are that people do not always want to believe the evidence. For example, 18% of Americans still believe President Obama is a Muslim despite mountains of evidence and media to prove that he is not. People tend to support evidence that is already aligned with what they want to believe, regardless of whether it is scientific evidence, social science evidence, etc. Evidence will always be open to interpretation, and new evidence will make us realize that the “old evidence” was completely wrong. I believe these are the most limiting factors.

Where do you see technology making things better?
Technology makes things better because we can collect evidence more thoroughly and accurately, and I believe this is true for both social science and medical/natural science. However, technology and free survey tools such as surveymonkey and zoomerang – which are fabulous in many ways, and I find them extremely useful for my work – also enable people who are not properly trained to write biased survey questions and to collect, analyze and publish data with erroneous conclusions. And, technology allows for these erroneous conclusions to spread even more rapidly through digital/social media, which I find concerning. Even as a trained professional, sometimes I find it hard to determine which data I read are valid and which are not.

#4. How do you prefer to share evidence with people, and explain it to them? Do you have a systematic way of doing it, or is there a format that you follow?
I like to develop a dialogue with people so we can have a conversation about the evidence I’ve collected. When I talk with clients, colleagues, or media about evidence, they all begin the conversation with different assumptions about what the data means, and unless I get them talking about how they interpret the data, I won’t be able to correct their misinterpretations. So I always begin by presenting the data, but then I take an organic approach to learn the best way to get my message across to each unique audience.

What mistakes do you see people making when they explain evidence?
Researchers often present evidence, but they don’t offer ways to apply the evidence in an actionable way. They don’t tie all the data points together to create a story. The evidence has to be woven into a meaningful story with implications in order for someone else to make use of it.

#5. What do you want your legacy to be?
I’d like to be remembered for helping colleagues and clients recognize that evidence drives creativity. Many of my colleagues worry that data and evidence kill the creative PR process, but I want them to see that evidence inspires it.

Amen to that. Thanks for sharing your insights, Ashley.

____________________________

Chime in. Would you like to be interviewed, or do you have someone to recommend? Drop me a note at tracy AT evidencesoup DOT com.

More evidence about Old Spice: I stand corrected.

[Update: Marketing VOX offered an explanation of conflicting Old Spice sales figures. See the end of this post.]

Yesterday I wrote about growth in Old Spice body wash sales. My information came from Eliot Van Buskirk, writing on Wired's Epicenter. However, in my haste to post a quick writeup about it, I oversimplified the evidence.

It's the coupons, too. I'd intended to also mention the Old Spice coupon program, but neglected to do so. I received a note from Ashley Welde, who is the Director of Evidence-Based Communications at Burson-Marsteller in New York City, a firm I wrote about last year (thanks, Ashley, for keeping me on the right path -- and for doing it so gently). She wrote: "Regarding sales of Old Spice, there is controversy over whether the sales are coming from the great ads/You Tube videos or from couponing." Both Ashley and Eliot Van Buskirk referred to an Ad Age article and SymphonyIRI sales data.

Elusive evidence. Ad Age quoted P&G spokesman Mike Norton: "How much of Old Spice's recent gains... come from Mr. Mustafa's ads and how much from the coupons? It's impossible to know." Should Old Spice be measuring awareness, coupon redemption, market share, sales growth, or something else? I would certainly hope it's some of each. One would think people are more likely to clip and use a coupon if they've got more product awareness (in this case, thanks to really funny, memorable commercials and videos). But measuring all this in the real world is problematic.

Did you want evidence of top-line performance, or bottom line? Ashley Welde from Burson-Marsteller added: "I think it would be very interesting if it turns out that coupons are driving the sales, because couponing overall is becoming more and more effective, even though it’s such an old school marketing tactic. We’ll see what the evidence shows in the long run!" Though she pointed out that coupons can dampen financial results, quoting Ad Age: "Nor is it clear how much Old Spice's 106% gain will disappear from P&G's top line when coupon redemptions, which don't figure into scanner data but do come off the company's top line when financial results are reported next month, figure in."

Hard evidence? Today's graphic isn't as fun as yesterday's, but it tells an interesting story, too. Obviously, how you measure makes a big difference. In this case, they said: "During the four weeks ending June 13, market research firm SymphonyIRI... found that sales of the product were 106 percent higher than during the same period last year." Ad Age, citing evidence from SymphonyIRI, said: "other men's brands also have been making substantial share gains of late, including P&G sibling Gillette and Beierdorf's Nivea. And the thing Old Spice, Gillette and Nivea have in common isn't Mr. Mustafa, but rather multiple national drops of high-value coupons.... reflecting unprecedented levels of promotional intensity in the category."

And still more evidence. Eduardo also commented on yesterday's Old Spice post, saying "Hmmm. Yahoo says the sales have *not* increased, and have in fact decreased: 'The problem: Sales are down a surprising seven percent. This situation is far from unique - mass attention does not always equal money in the bank....'"

Sigh. It's okay, Old Spice guy, we'll always have YouTube.

Update: From Marketing VOX (today): "New figures quantify the viral success of the Old Spice viral video campaign using the one metric that ultimately matters to marketers: sales.... Earlier numbers suggested the opposite: sales of "Red Zone After Hours Body Wash" - the specific Old Spice product the top spot promoted - fell by 7% in 2010, according to WARC figures. The first ad debuted at the Super Bowl in February. But those numbers were calculated before the campaign's latest push - its two day, 186-plus viral video extravaganza, in which the actor portraying the Old Spice Man, Isaiah Mustafa, took questions and responded to posts on Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Reddit. They were produced at roughly a rate of 7 minutes per video."

Look at your man's evidence-based marketing. Now look at mine. Old Spice campaign boosts sales substantially.

[Update 28-July-2010: There's more evidence about Old Spice. I wrote a second post here.]

I often wonder if popular marketing campaigns actually pay off (such as the chihuahua who had us all saying ¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!)

Does your man's evidence look like mine? According to Eliot Van Buskirk, writing on Wired's Epicenter, this year's Old Spice campaign on YouTube (and network TV) grew sales substantially. He says "Sales of Old Spice body wash more than doubled earlier this summer, coinciding with the rise in popularity of its social-media-friendly online ad campaign in which be-toweled former NFL wide receiver Isaiah Mustafa answered specific viewers’ questions...."

Buskirk believes irreverence really paid off. The tag line for the first video was 'We’re not saying this body wash will make your man smell into a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it.' Good stuff.

MarketResearch.com is a resource for evidence-based management & marketing.

Looking for evidence to support your product development, strategic planning, and marketing efforts? Traditional market research and analyst reports are a quick way to build the foundation of your evidence base. MarketResearch.com offers a substantial collection of reports for a wide variety of industries - from familiar names (such as IDC) and smaller firms you perhaps haven't seen before.

The site has a straightforward organization and some handy features. For instance, here's a search I did on the electronic medical records (EMR) market.You can share these results on delicious, etc., get an RSS feed from the site, or email notifications.

Search inside. You can search inside reports before purchasing them (similar to the search feature on amazon). Here I searched on the keyword "meaningful," hoping to find research on the new U.S. meaningful use requirements for EMR incentive payments. The search results tell precisely how many times that phrase appears in the document, and on which pages. (They cleverly replace important numbers, dollar figures, and other findings with '##' so as not to inadvertently give away this extensive research for free. Good idea - it protects the publisher while providing more details to the potential customer.)

The results highlight the search phrase so you can see the context where it's discussed in each report. A nice emulation of what amazon does (example here).

Evidence-based social media strategy: 15 words you shouldn't use on Facebook.

Dan Zarrella, a market researcher and social media strategist, investigates patterns on Facebook, Twitter, etc. He has a new post about the 15 least shareable words on Facebook: "What I found was that techie and social-media dork favorite topics like Twitter, Google, and the iPhone aren’t very popular with the mainstream Facebook audience. [W]hen you’re targeting the much larger Facebook audience, lay off the trendy web geek stuff."

Zarrella offers The Science of ReTweets, a 22-page report "full of scientifically proven ways to get more ReTweets". (To get it, you need to subscribe to his blog via email.)

He also has advice about the most-shareable words on Facebook. Although #1 on the list isn't very interesting (it's "Facebook"), the list also includes why, how, and health. Here's how Zarrella describes his data set and methodology: "I’ve been capturing links posted to social media sites from 20 extremely popular news outlets since February 2010.... First, I find the average (for averages I’m using the inter-quartile mean) number of times articles from each individual site are shared on Facebook and then I compare the individual stories to their domain’s average. This allows me to then combine the percentage difference (either more or less shares) to produce an “effect” number that represents the difference in amount of shares."

'Activation' helps evidence go mainstream more quickly. So people won't starve despite a glut of evidence.

What a great concept: 'activating evidence'. This idea is presented in Activation of evidence: A new approach to knowledge translation and closing the clinical care gap. It appeared in the Journal of Medical Marketing [complete pdf here]. [Cynics might summarily dismiss the article because it touches on marketing strategy (for the pharmaceutical industry in this case). But they shouldn't. Anyone interested in evidence-based management can learn from their example, whether it's applied to marketing or something else.]

Moving things along. A key purpose of activation is getting new evidence reflected in guidelines more quickly - and getting those guidelines to be more fine-grained, rather than making broad recommendations. (Here, the authors are talking about medical evidence and clinical guidelines -- but many of their concepts are transferable.) As long as we're talking about valid evidence, why not? Inactive evidence does no one any good. Here's the authors' take:

"The pharmaceutical industry spends huge sums of money on large clinical trials but, even when highly successful, the evidence from these trials is often not effectively translated into timely changes in practice. Research that should change practice often has little real impact for years, and even when best practices are well known they are often poorly implemented.... These results are often not fully recognised in clinical practice or guidelines for many years, and when guidelines are updated they often make class recommendations without differentiating between molecules. As the morbidity and mortality data from such trials will have identified the right patient, the right drug and the right dose, this appears to be a wasted opportunity."

They talk about experiencing famine despite a glut of evidence -- maybe we need a variation on George Bernard Shaw's famous quote. "Life is a banquet of medical evidence, and most patients are starving to death."

What is activation of evidence? It's being defined as a response "to the challenges of knowledge translation; as the industry’s contribution to closing the clinical care gap. In effect, activation of evidence is a vehicle designed to deliver and implement knowledge derived from credible sources, including published guidelines and key clinical data with strong end points such as morbidity and mortality. Activation of evidence is an active, focused, effective mechanism for behaviour change that brings a key piece of evidence to life. There is a possibility that activation of evidence might be seen as an attempt to pre-empt or replace formal guidelines from established bodies. However this is not the case."

Moving from research to reality. The article talks about current models for turning evidence into practice, citing health promotion, continuing medical education (CME), and others. The authors recognize the importance of knowledge translation in developing effective tactics: They claim the evidence shows that these programs:

"can be effective in changing physician behaviour and improving outcomes. Recent studies have concluded that: continuing education combined with process improvement methods is effective in increasing rates of delivery of preventative care; combining educational outreach with integrated case management provides a promising model for improving quality of care and control of priority respiratory diseases; and a multifaceted approach in an integrated healthcare system with standardised methods of communication is an effective way to implement patient-centred, effective and timely care...."

What does this have to do with marketing? The authors explain that "Increasingly complex networks of customers and decision makers, and diminishing access to doctors, also require pharmaceutical companies to interact with the healthcare system in new ways. By analysing strategies successful in translating evidence into behaviour change in clinical settings, pharmaceutical companies can... leverage successful clinical trials to: increase sales; contribute to the development of new and updated guidelines; and help the healthcare community close clinical care gaps in key areas, providing benefits to patients, payers and practitioners."

"More complex networks of customers, influencers and decision makers also play a key part in the changing landscape that marketers face.... At the same time, doctors have less autonomy as payers, care trusts, pharmacists and patients have greater influence over what is, or can be, prescribed. New mechanisms of interaction with the healthcare system are therefore needed to effect changes in prescribing behaviour."

Making it happen. Elements of an activation of evidence strategy should include educational outreach, developing a comfort level with the evidence base, assessing new evidence against current practice, and assessing real-world implementation of evidence.

Out with the bad, in with the good. I see another benefit to all this. We know that the results of some clinical trials aren't replicated by subsequent research (for a variety of reasons I won't go into here). The sooner a particular trial is scrutinized for possible inclusion in clinical guidelines, the sooner it can be considered in systematic reviews and additional research -- and if so happens that a particular piece of evidence doesn't hold up, the sooner it can be eliminated from the evidence base, the better.

Does the evidence show that Dunbar's number really matters? Or are weak ties just as good as strong ones?

Contributors to the Smart Data Collective forum frequently offer useful insights about analytics and other topics. I liked a recent piece by Jacob Morgan about Dunbar's number: According to Wikipedia, this is a "theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships." Dunbar's is typically believed to be about 150. Makes sense to me - especially when I think about the circle of people I stay in regular contact with, invite to parties, interact with on Facebook, etc.

I'm intrigued by social network research: The structural holes stuff, etc. Lots of folks are exploring how people make connections, and what difference these connections (or lack thereof) can make. Of course, I'm most interested in understanding the role of social networks in spreading useful evidence as quickly as possible.

Strong vs. weak. Dunbar's number describes what many folks call "strong ties". Is a strong connection required to get people to consider new evidence, especially when that evidence challenges their current beliefs? Or are weak ties enough?

Morten T. Hansen, in his book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, talks about the importance of weak ties. "[R]esearch shows that weak ties can prove much more helpful in networking, because they form bridges to worlds we do not walk within. Strong ties, on the other hand, tend to be worlds we already know; a good friends often knows many of the same people and things we know." And he offers a pragmatic explanation of why your weak-tie number can go much higher than 150: "It’s less time consuming to talk to someone once a month (weak tie) than twice a week (a strong tie). People can keep up quite a few weak ties without them being a burden."

Authority matters, too. When we consider new evidence, the authority of the source is important - this is a key component of making something persuasive. Technology has made it much easier to learn about new evidence and locate new authorities, even when we have weak - or possibly nonexistent - ties to those sources. (Consider Twitter. Evidence often comes from people you're following, or people who are re-Tweeted, even if you don't know them.)

Beating the number. For those who do want to be strongly connected to as many people as possible, Chris Brogan writes about "beating Dunbar's number" - for instance, by establishing yourself in multiple groups based on specific geography, a specific industry vertical, etc. Some of his points are a different way of saying "it's not who you know, it's who knows you" - and I agree with him on that. Brogan writes: "[M]ake it work in reverse. By that, I mean this: if people think of you as part of their 150, then they come to you, and they seek you out. This comes from having some value to offer. If, for instance, you’re helpful in finding others business, those people will seek you out the next time they have an opportunity, or the next time they need your help. In either case, you’re in the network."

The bottom line? I think Dunbar's number is useful for evaluating a certain type of connection: The ones characterized by strong ties. But for spreading evidence to a wider audience, it's not important. You can successfully communicate evidence to folks with whom you have only weak ties.

By the way, Dunbar has a book called Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. I've not read it, but the reviews are quite positive, and I've heard it's a worthwhile read.

How to get evidence that search-engine optimization (SEO) is working.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way to improve traffic to a web site through organic (unpaid) search results. You can spend a lot or a little on SEO: Buying links to your site, tweaking content, etc., -- some methods are legitimate, and some might actually be harmful. So when you hire an SEO consultant, how do you know you're getting your money's worth?

The nature of online marketing makes it easy to collect volumes of data, count clicks, etc. The challenge is to look at the *right* evidence. Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting explains in Measuring SEO Results (on Search Engine Watch) that people look at several different metrics to assess SEO success: These include:

• Ranking reports: "[t]his data is deceptive. These... exercises always focus on high volume terms, the ones that make up 10 percent or less of total search volume."
• Number of links added: "[W]e remind clients that one link can be worth 100,000 times more than another. It's certainly interesting to track the links added, but only if you include a measurement of link quality...."
• Non-branded search traffic: A great metric. "Focus on daily unique visitors and chart that over time. [F]actor out branded search traffic because few Web sites need SEO help to rank for their brand name."
• Visitor engagement: "bounce rate, time on site, and page views per visitor are all useful...."
• Conversion: "This is the most important thing to measure." Useful evidence includes increases in product sales, 'contact us' requests, completed forms, and whitepaper or widget downloads.

Wisely, Enge reminds us to identify what our goals are before we attempt to measure whether we achieved them.

PR consultancy announces “evidence-based communications” methodology: A scientific approach to delivering client messages.

Burson-Marsteller, a global consultancy, has adopted a research-focused approach they call 'Evidenced-Based Communications' (complete announcement here). This year, the firm has rolled out a methodology for developing and measuring programs. “The media and communications landscape is changing and so have the needs of our clients,” said Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn. “In a world of citizen journalism, social media, and instant information about events happening around the globe, we are investing in a more diligent and scientific approach to developing and delivering key messages.”

It's great to see marketing and media moving in this direction. Here's how the firm describes the benefits (there is, um, a bit of spin applied). "Evidence-based communications ends the guess work. All strategies are based on evidence, not speculation." (Okay. But trying something creative and new involves unknowns. Don't let evidence crowd out big ideas and experimentation.) "It is cost-effective... ensuring that each client’s communications dollars are spent on tactics and messages that will deliver results. It is measurable. By... benchmarking at the beginning of a program and measuring effectiveness at the end, clients will be able to demonstrate a positive communications return-on-investment."

They continue, saying theirs is a holistic approach: "While it is common to use some basic research to drive a communications message or to assess the reach of a program at the end, the Evidence-Based approach is a complete methodology. The approach ensures a thorough use of data and tools designed specifically to insert science into the process where appropriate. It provides proof of PR value to the organization’s C-Suite. By using an Evidence-Based approach, communications professionals can demonstrate the value that PR brings to their organization at large."

I wish them well with their evidence-based methodology.