socialADDICT

Bringing back another blog post I wrote for dt back in November 07. How & when to take statistics with a grain of salt…

We are constantly bombarded with statistics all day long. 65% of Americans are overweight, 91% of Americans believe sending text messages while driving is as dangerous as driving drunk (even though 57% of them say they still text while driving), 41% of men snore regularly, and the list goes on. The thing we have to be suspicious about is that statistics are not only generalized they are often skewed (and it all depends on the surveyor).

Just an example, I read a MarketingVox article earlier this week about how consumers would be willing to change the brands they buy or their consumption habits to make tomorrow a better place. Ya, I agree with the premise of consumer change and advocacy and I thought the article sounded pretty impressive until I started reading the stats. So I just want to point out that even with a topic like social consciousness, sometimes the numbers can be misleading.

Let’s take the first sentence (and “stat”): “85% of consumers worldwide are willing to change the brands they buy or their consumption habits to make tomorrow a better place.”

The first figure is astounding to me – 85% of consumers in the world? The world population is roughly 6.6 billion. I know that not every single person can be considered a consumer given their age and other variables so I subtracted out the age groups too young to have their own established purchasing power. My consumer population is 4.8 billion. Ok, so 85% of that is roughly 4 billion. So, 4 billion consumers would be willing to change brands or consumption habits to better the world? I wonder if 50% of the world population even knows what social responsibility means.

So I did a little more digging…

This survey was conducted in only nine countries and in sample sizes of no larger than 1,000 – that speaks validity error right there. And the survey was carried out by goodpurpose – a company who brings consumers and brands together to take action and effect positive social change (a company of the Edelman global PR firm). Edelman invites brands to make a difference by discovering Edelman’s consultancy…sounds like a sales pitch (with very impressive statistics) to me.

My point is, is that you have to take stats with a grain of salt. Sometimes such figures are pointed in a certain light to meet a particular agenda – like that of Edelman global PR firm. I think what they’re doing with social cause is great don’t get me wrong. I hope that more brands and consumers unite to make the world a better place – but just be aware of the numbers firms push out to you. What is their objective? Where did those numbers come from? Who sponsored the research?

And remember: 65% of all statistics are erroneous anyway…or so I’ve read.