In recent years, clients have become ever more insistent in their demand that researchers deliver results in a way that engages the audience. Researchers can respond to this demand in a number of ways, including the use of storytelling, workshops, and data representations that are visually compelling. Anything that  helps engage people with research findings - what they mean, and what marketers should do as a result - is a good thing, but a recent experience of my own made me wonder if the need to tell stories is at odds with the need to present statistics. By writing this post I hope to explore the issue further.

On Tuesday I was once again presenting The Global Brand and used Google as an example of a very strong global brand. However, I also pointed out that Google is not strong everywhere. In China it plays second fiddle to Baidu. The next morning I woke up to find my email full of headlines like this one from The New York Times: “Google, Citing Attack, Threatens to Exit China.”

This holiday I got a double helping of the movie White Christmas. The first screening was at a sing-along event at the Westport Playhouse, and the second was at home with friends in Vermont. The second time around, I realized that if the movie were made today, the technological developments in the ways we access information and entertainment would require significant changes to details of the plot.

During this holiday season of goodwill, many people want to lend a helping hand to those in need, and this year there is more need than ever. One New York City hair stylist, Christiano Coro, has chosen to contribute in his own way, by offering free haircuts at his upscale salon to people who are out of work. While Christiano’s objective is to give something back to his own community, his effort has also garnered publicity on major TV stations and national press. You’d pay a lot to get your brand that type of exposure, wouldn’t you? So let’s consider how major brands could follow Christiano’s example.

Last week saw me speaking at the 7th Annual Marketing Directors Conference in Athens. The topic for the day was marketing accountability. Creating my presentation caused me more frustration than it usually does, probably because accountability is so difficult to define.

Even so, it seems that everyone has an opinion on the topic. At the beginning of the day, our host Vasilis Theoharakis, Associate Professor of Marketing & Entrepreneurship at ALBA (a graduate business school in Greece), suggested that the word accountability was difficult to translate into Greek and offered his own interpretation. Unfortunately I never found out what his suggestion was, because the translator was too busy telling me that she disagreed with his proposal.