#datadrivenPR – How to turn Data into Stories

“Dates are cold and unemotional by their very nature.” With this sentence Isabelle Ewald started last Wednesday’s workshop on “Data-driven PR – How data becomes stories”.

So how does that fit together? Cold data and compelling PR stories? Very well indeed! Isabelle immediately sent us back to the 1990s. Who of us 90’s kids didn’t dream of getting into the magic bullet with Marajke Amado (see fig.1).

Data PR is the magic bullet of communication.

According to Isabelle, the magic bullet is a great metaphor for data PR. Apparently boring, perfectly normal children hold an interview with the presenter: “What are your hobbies? – Reading and playing soccer.” Sounds like the average kid at first glance, so not very exciting. But then they get into the magic bullet and come out – TADAA – totally transformed, dressed up (okay, from today’s point of view a bit questionable…) and somehow more exciting. According to Isabelle, that’s exactly how it works with data-driven PR.

Every company has data. And even if this data is sensitive and should not be published, you can still access huge data pools of third party providers like open data portals, market research companies or foundations. Or you can simply collect the data yourself using your own surveys. Here, one should only consider that it is often only a ” brief sentiment picture” and the survey is not representative.

Data PR thus describes the systematic use of data in communication work in order to convey (usually complex topics) in a targeted manner, to explain them better and to create a context. Data can either be the tool used to tell a story, the source on which a story is based or both. There are many ways to visualize the story.

As an example, Isabelle presented the OTTO Group’s “Cotton Made in Africa” (CmiA) initiative (see Fig.2). This is a very good illustration of what can also be done with a small amount of data. Actually, there were only two figures in the beginning:

1. Quantity of “CmiA” cotton used by the OTTO Group –> 16,000 t
2. Resulting amount of water saved compared to the production of conventional cotton –> 33 billion litres

That sounds like a huge amount to be said at first. But how much is that anyway? So we need a good comparison to illustrate to everyone what an enormous amount of water has been saved here. The per capita water consumption of a person living in Germany was used as a comparison. That corresponds to 750,000 people. And now we simply looked at the number of inhabitants with which this figure can be compared on the basis of major German cities. And suddenly the cold figures and enormous dimensions become clear, obvious and comprehensible for everyone.

This data PR example also pays off in an essential part of good public relations: proximity. Besides topicality and importance, proximity is a key news value. Everyone is interested in what is happening on their own doorstep. This is why, for example, the annual dispute atlas of advoCard, the burglary radar of the Hanover police department or the salary check of the BILD newspaper work so well.