WHY DOES YEAR-ON-YEAR DATA MATTER FOR BRAND STORYTELLING?
Year-on-year data is great, but only when it matters.
That statement seems obvious, but it’s something that we find comes up pretty often as a question from the clientele.
Data, no matter what it is or where it’s coming from, is meant to be measured. And over time, as more data is collected, we can begin to develop data trends. Data trends are great, mostly because they allow us to see how different perceptions on nearly anything change over a period of time. But they serve a dual purpose for our polling and storytelling needs.
For clients, annually collected data tells a story about what people want or what social trends are developing. It’s a powerful research tool that helps clients gain interesting insights or different perspectives on most topics. It has just as much potency as a marketing tool as it does a consumer insights tool.
For us, annually collected data leads us to new ideas, unique insights and a fresh perspective on newsworthiness. We’re always looking for ways to stretch out data — find new ways to look at a topic and a new hook to report on. Year-on-year surveys have the potential to help us do that.
Overall, there are some things to consider for year-on-year or annual surveys that are important to keep in mind before designing or launching the survey.
Will it stick?
From a news lens, annual surveys are only reportable if it makes sense that they should be annually recorded in the first place. Health and wellness is an excellent example where annual reporting makes sense. Our health as a society and our weight can change very quickly and are almost always at the front of people’s minds. On the flip side, let’s consider something like sleeping — sure, everyone sleeps. But sleeping patterns don’t change as frequently as our health does; measuring differences in how people sleep from one year to another likely won’t give us much of a change.
So when clients come to us asking about the prospects of running a year on year survey, this is top of mind for us. Is this topic both sticky in the news right now, and will it still be sticky enough of a topic to have differences next year?
What will it look like five years from now?
If we successfully determine it makes sense for us to run an annual survey, we then start to think about the long-term goals and impact. Annual surveys, as time goes on, have a lot of potential to give readers a detailed look at how things evolve.
Returning to our health example, if we start to consider what story we can tell about this topic in five year’s time, we can test a number of different narratives. Perhaps we can show how Americans have continually postponed their healthy choices year after year, as our five-years-and-running survey with Herbalife has shown. The findings of their most recent "Writing off the end of the year" research were reported by Yahoo in November 2022, and previously in November 2021.
Maybe we can plan out a retrospective, looking back at how our health was maintained years ago in comparison to today. We can even attempt to predict what the next year might look like, based on the past five years of data.
Annual surveys present us with a real win-win opportunity: they give the client unique, data-driven content that they can use internally to keep their conversations and content relevant and maintain a presence in the media; and all the while it gives us a more enticing and interesting long-term news narrative.
How can it be reused?
This is a consideration that might seem simple at first but can have a surprising answer behind it. Sure, annual research is, in essence, reusing the same questions to gain the same quantitative data and tell the same story with an emphasis on trends. But what happens when data doesn’t change between the years? Or if the change is so minute, it doesn’t present a new narrative?
Annual surveys give us the ability to stretch out our findings — we can take the regular, timely research and help coach brands on what topics can keep their conversations and content relevant, all the while maintaining a presence in the media and generating exposure.
However, it’s still very important for us to design year-on-year surveys with some sort of “plan B” built into it. If we aren’t able to find the same narrative as before, we can still stretch our findings by weaving in some new questions that can give us a new news direction.
A good example of this is when we worked with Crumbl Cookies. In August 2022, Crumbl released a story designed to find America’s favorite flavor of cookie. A year later, a story was released designed to find new perspectives, but included a unique pivot to include state by state data on what state has the biggest sweet tooth. The top cookie flavors didn’t change, but we were still able to create a narrative that took annual data and turned it towards a new direction.
In full, year-on-year surveys are an excellent avenue to create a refreshed perspective on any given topic. It’s something that should always be considered when we start ideating and designing surveys and stories. Annual reports are one of the best options available to deliver results and stories that are equally valuable to brands as they are to news outlets.
Joe Staples
Editorial Account Director,
72Point Inc.