Get with the data or get left behind, warns government comms executive

Speaking at the ‘Does PR need more geeks?’ event last night – organised by PRmoment in partnership with Mynewsdesk – Aiken went against the grain in urging that his PR colleagues focus on data, not creativity. Aiken is responsible for the effectiveness and efficiency of government communications.

“The PR industry is its own worst enemy,” he said. “Professional courses are teaching creativity, not metrics, which is resulting in too little understanding of business analysis.” He went on to explain how the government’s lack of evaluation had led to a poor understanding of the effectiveness of its own communications: “The government has cut its spending on communications from £1bn to £500m since 2010, but we don’t know whether we’re being twice as effective or half as efficient as we didn’t evalute. It’s impossible to know.”

Aiken believes that the “new curriculum” for government communicators (and for the PR profession in general) should focus on four key areas: data analysis (in particular segmenting audiences); content design (infographics, films and other ‘novel’ ways of sharing data); influence builders (“we’re moving from deference to preference – consumers are making their own decisions now, not following leaders”); and evaluation.

“Bring your data and leave your creativity at the door,” he said.

Other speakers at the event included Borkowski.do founder Mark Borkowski, who spoke about the importance of harnessing technology and understanding the power of the crowd, and head of marketing at Mynewsdesk, Adam Cranfield, who agreed that the PR industry needed to improve its understanding of big data in an era of “algorithms and information gathering”.