We all remember when Bill Murray was Lost in Translation. But in this practical and educational presentation, Guro Dahl Lindbjerg, County Manager, Retriever Norway and Head of analysis, Retriever Group, uses the mighty Bill’s image to represent how communicators can sometimes feel lost as well.

 

Why? Because communicators at organisations working towards societal change can often find the measurement of impact to be quite a headache. Those normal points of measurement – awareness, recall, change in perception and attitude – are simply not sufficient. And there may be no official statistics available to measure impact.

 

This, says Guro, results in communicators becoming Lost in Evaluation.

 

But, she adds, it is important to remember that “traces of change” lie all around us. We just need to know where to find it – in the media data.

 

Media data is a manifestation of our common contemporary society, which can be used not only for social research, but also for communicators working towards their impact goals. The coverage of events, accidents, happenings, topics, opinion – all of these articles represent useful data when collected in large numbers.

 

For instance, Norwegian Sea Rescue wanted to track the impact of its important communication work on reducing numbers of people drowning. But no official statistics were available. They were lost. By looking at editorial coverage, they could gain statistics on the number of news pieces of drowning accidents – an effective indicator on how numbers of drownings are changing. Hey presto – no longer lost.

 

This is just one of the thoughtful examples provided by Guro to illustrate the usefulness of that vast repository of data that sits within the media.

 

Guro provides one final key takeaway at the end of her presentation.

 

“Whenever you feel lost, looking for a way to measure societal impact, remember Bill Murray and look for the answer in the media data.”