- Francis Bacon, 'Novum Organum', 1620
Francis Bacon published 'Novum Organum' in 1620, it took 150 years for the Western scientific community to appreciate and implement its key lesson, the relative roles of inductive and deductive processes; it is taking the marketing and sponsorship industries longer still.
Without digressing too far into the abstract, and with apologies to any learned scientific historians; the scientific method proposed in Novum Organum is a challenge to the Aristotelian method of deductive reasoning, building logical arguments based on base assumptions; and a manifesto for a new method based on observation and inductive reasoning, using acquired evidence to test a proposed hypothesis.
To extend the reference to sponsorship;
The belief that media exposure, opportunities to see, or awareness of a particular campaign delivers value to a sponsoring party is based on deductive reasoning.
We assume that the creation of an association delivers a value to a sponsoring brand.
We assume that exposure to a message translates into acceptance.
This is not the time to challenge those assumptions, though they're certainly worth returning to in a later article, but to demonstrate the reliance of such methodologies on arbitrary assumptions.
This approach leads inevitably to the mundane ('please tell me how appropriate this sponsorship is'), the fantastic ('a UK media reach of 1 billion people'), and the outright leading ('do you believe sponsors would benefit from linking their advertising and promotions with Olympic ideals').
An inductive approach seeks to test the hypothesis that sponsorship has impacted on business return, not simply to prove it.
i.e. by identifying the measures that would be impacted if the hypothesis were true:
Francis Bacon published 'Novum Organum' in 1620, it took 150 years for the Western scientific community to appreciate and implement its key lesson, the relative roles of inductive and deductive processes; it is taking the marketing and sponsorship industries longer still.
Without digressing too far into the abstract, and with apologies to any learned scientific historians; the scientific method proposed in Novum Organum is a challenge to the Aristotelian method of deductive reasoning, building logical arguments based on base assumptions; and a manifesto for a new method based on observation and inductive reasoning, using acquired evidence to test a proposed hypothesis.
To extend the reference to sponsorship;
The belief that media exposure, opportunities to see, or awareness of a particular campaign delivers value to a sponsoring party is based on deductive reasoning.
We assume that the creation of an association delivers a value to a sponsoring brand.
We assume that exposure to a message translates into acceptance.
This is not the time to challenge those assumptions, though they're certainly worth returning to in a later article, but to demonstrate the reliance of such methodologies on arbitrary assumptions.
This approach leads inevitably to the mundane ('please tell me how appropriate this sponsorship is'), the fantastic ('a UK media reach of 1 billion people'), and the outright leading ('do you believe sponsors would benefit from linking their advertising and promotions with Olympic ideals').
An inductive approach seeks to test the hypothesis that sponsorship has impacted on business return, not simply to prove it.
i.e. by identifying the measures that would be impacted if the hypothesis were true:
- higher levels of consideration amongst those exposed to a particular activation, when correlating factors have been accounted for
- changes in key brand metrics that mirror activation activity
- cut-through of specific sponsorship messages, and so on
In essence it is a new mentality. The confidence to treat evaluation not as a tool to justify investment but rather one to prove our worth.
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