Pancakes; sitcoms; breasts; sandcastles; barbecue weather; cheese sandwiches. They don’t look like items that would fall naturally into one category. But for each of these things, there’s a formula for the perfect version.
It’s something that irks scientists and mathematicians everywhere, who feel that such formulae – appearing with some frequency in the press – undermine their profession. It’s probably a fair-ish gripe, although I think no one is going to confuse an equation for the perfect chip with a serious report on new the applications of stem cell therapy somehow.
Judging by the sheer number that make it into the papers, it seems to be true that journalists enjoy a ‘perfect formula’ story. And the British public – by and large fairly sophisticated consumers of media – will be aware that the formula for the perfect gravy, when released by a well-known gravy brand, is more likely to have started life in the offices of the PR agency than the bowels of the R&D department. Journalists have a job: to write stories that sell papers. Thus, it can probably be deduced that people like to read about the perfect formula for dunking biscuits, however much some scientists may complain.
However, with more and more articles and sites springing up venting their spleen about spurious science, it appears that PRs may have to think a little more carefully in future before relying on the formula fallback – especially if they don’t want to be nominated for the next year’s inaugural, yet-to-be-named award for the “dodgiest equation”.
But that’s no bad thing. Anything that raises the creative bar is surely a good thing for everyone – for clients who get fresh ideas for their brand; for journalists who get fresh stories for their readers; and for PRs who’re forced just slightly out of their comfort zone (who knows, we might even have fun in the process).
There are different, subtler (and, might we say, award-winning) ways of introducing a little pop. science into a story.
My favourite example from this week was from Forbes, the business magazine, releasing its annual list of overpaid stars. In essence, it’s a formula story: the list is put together by offsetting the financial performance of a film against the salary paid to its main actor (I’m afraid the mathematical expression of that is just a little beyond me…). Its has all the hallmarks of a PR story that some love to hate: an equation, a whole host of celebrities… but it’s not dressed up explicitly as a ‘formula for the least perfect Hollywood star’, instead talking about the ‘film star economy’. And yet, it’s been well-received in a whole variety of media, with few of the grumblings you’d hear about a comedy channel commissioning an equation for the perfect sitcom.
Of course, that might just be that it confirms widely-held suspicions that Will Ferrell is vastly overpaid for what he does – and again journalists will print what we want to read: that we’re right.
