Please stop saying that you are not good at maths. It’s not ok.

“I am just not that good with numbers. That’s why I am in communications.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people in my profession say those words. I am always puzzled how they’ve come to believe it is acceptable to say that and make such proclamation without the slightest hesitation or sign of embarrassment. Such statement is often followed by a brief laughter — the type of laughter that is supposed to make me think they said something funny and that I should empathise with them.

To me, saying something like that is a sign of ignorance. It is ignoring that communications is a core business discipline and rising in importance. It is to ignore that to be a good communications strategist, you need to understand your audience and customers and to do that you need to be able to read and analyse data. It disregards the fact that communications impacts business results. And most importantly, it downgrades the role of that person and their (and my) whole profession to being the fluffy unscientific field that shouldn’t be at the top table.

Communications is changing and basic numeracy is going to be more important then ever before. I don’t believe you can get away without it and here are just a few examples of why:

• Everything is measured: companies are analysing more data than ever before. Whether it’s web traffic, social engagement, customer journeys, competitor campaigns, media coverage or anything else — you need to be able to analyse the data and interpret what it means for communications.
• Data is informing comms strategies: if you can measure pretty much everything, you should use data to inform your strategies. Yes, you’ll still start with your instinct and experience, but now you have data to check that your hypothesis are correct and put them to a test. One of my favourite quotes summarises it well: “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” (Jim Barksdale, former CEO of Netscape).
• Content marketing is key: if content is what everyone is talking about, how do you know if it’s working, what’s working and how to do it better, if you can’t analyse it properly and measure its impact?
• The silos are disappearing: It used to be that if you’re in PR you wouldn’t really touch sponsorships, advertising or other forms of paid marketing. That’s gone, because companies know that you can’t have all these forms in communications in complete silos. What it also means is that someone in PR will, for example, need to understand Facebook Advertising and read Facebook Insights.
• It’s all about storytelling: Some of the best stories are those that surprise you or enlighten you, and those stories are often told with the help of data. It’s not a coincidence that many journalists are learning a whole new discipline: data journalism.

None of these things require complicated math, but to be able to analyse data, you will need to know at least the basics and having some knowledge of statistics won’t hurt either.

It’s a more complicated, but also more exciting world and the importance of communications is rising. If you’re up for the challenge, please don’t say that you can’t do maths. Thank you!