The Power of Numbers

Colleague and PR pundit Lisa Faulkner-Dunne recently observed that editors love numbers. She observed this because she attended one of those ubiquitous media luncheons in which editors and producers tell PR people what interests them. They also tell PR people, generally in a world-weary tone, that 1) they should really read the publications they are pitching and 2) they shouldn't call harried editors asking about receipt of press releases. They're right, in a perfect world. Of course, if I only pitched the publications I read, the possibility of getting any ink for my clients would be very limited indeed, what with time spent reading the local papers and business journals, general interest pubs and watching the local news.  This is all sandwiched in between looking at blogs and Internet news sites and watching reality shows like Project Runway and Top Chef.

Back to the numbers: a cursory glance reveals that, like garden plantings, they're mostly odd numbers and multiples of five. Let's see...in today's paper we have a cover story about the Oscars with not one but three lists of five things ..5 blunders, 5 "smart moves" and the opinions of 5 critics. On the cover of another section, we peer into a celebrity's home (well, not really) to discover 15 things about him, including the condiments in his refrigerator and whether he puts his dirty dishes in the sink or the dishwasher. Whoa! I'm riveted. But wait! On the cover of another section, we find that 1,111,174 people in the Chicago area have sex on the average night. Did I want to know that?

What does this obsession with numbers mean for PR people? Will our news have to fit into a list of five things or thereabouts? Should we write news releases as lists of five things? Failing that, we should probably wait until this fixation on numbers passes, if it ever does.  Of course, the upcoming release of the Number 23 movie is bound to spur all sorts of lists of 23 things, or 23 lists of 23 things.