We’re sorry to spoil the party, but we recently killed a data point on our platform.
Our dashboard analytics used to compare: Reach Generated by Advocacy vs. Equivalent Media Spend.
On paper (and screen), it looked powerful. Large numbers have a tendency to sound impressive. Some people even get awarded for them. But here’s why we’ve mothballed the metric.
Advocacy builds brand trust through people. Ads build brand awareness through campaigns.
When you measure advocacy against ad spend, you push teams towards optimising only for reach, not credibility, relevance, or genuine connection.
Comparing, reduced advocacy to a media calculation.
Advocacy isn’t a cheaper version of paid social. It works in a completely different way:
- Paid media buys attention. Advocacy earns it.
- Paid campaigns interrupt conversations. Advocacy invites them.
- Paid reach fades. Advocacy compounds.
Reducing the differences to a cost comparison downplays the value.
It distracted from the metrics that actually matter.
When we highlighted “earned media value”, it became a headline number. It was shiny. Simple to report. Easy to reward. But it wasn’t the metric that told you whether advocacy was working.
As Albert Einstein (supposedly) put it: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
Depending on your company’s goals, there are many other indicators for tracking the performance of advocacy. They might well be more subtle, but they’re far more revealing.
- Participation: Are people interacting and engaging without being chased?
- Consistency: Do your advocacy activities sustain or spike and slowdown?
- Conversation quality: Are you generating engagement or just impressions?
- Behavioural change: Is posting and sharing becoming part of your organisation’s culture?
Those signals don’t translate neatly into a comparison with media. But they tell you whether advocacy is delivering sustained value.
We didn’t remove the metric because our customers were wrong to like it. We removed it because it was encouraging the wrong conversation.
We’re serious about building advocacy that lasts. Our metrics have to reflect that.
