Measure For Measure.

Measurable results are all the rage as cost-cutting management regimes seek thorough justifications for expenditures.

The subject came up twice yesterday in very different contexts. First I heard James Lovelock of GAIA fame extolling the need for more measurement of climate change but declare that "All things that really matter are intuitive." It's a great point. Projected numbers, in business especially, can usefully be as much about trends and tendencies as about pinpoint accuracy and we know that the great mathematicians all speak of seeing patterns and shapes in numbers rather than calculate them like mere mortals and finance directors do.

Then, in a meeting with an agency, the subject of convincing clients of the ROI on digital initiatives when they were quite happy to pay large sums for traditional advertising. It reminded me of a post that I wrote years ago in which I remarked upon the dubious calculations of financiers and suggested that imputed justifications of marketing expenditures were no less valid. Quite prescient really.

If you measure where you can and combine that with a rigorous inspection of your internal logic, any marketer should be able to generate a solid ROI justification, particularly now that the bean-counters have been shown not to be the master mathemeticians they thought they were.