|
|
Article: How can you serve me? Let me count the ways: Ofcom's policies will be heavily influenced by economists and bean-counters. But the measurement of public service is no straightforward task. (Media).
- Article from:
- Marketing Week
- Article date:
- January 23, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Centaur Communications Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
"Economists have come to feel What can't he measured is not real. The truth is always an amount -- Count numbers; only numbers count.
So said the economist Robert Chambers, quoted in The Tyranny of Numbers by David Boyle -- and I am grateful to former J Walter Thompson chairman Jeremy Bullmore for drawing my attention to it, in a lecture entitled Posh Spice and Persil, which has been published by WPP. Economists' obsession with measurement was a key theme at last week's Oxford Media Convention, sponsored by the Institute for Public Policy Research and Media Guardian, on the subject of public service communications. "Only numbers count" is a concept which is set ...