The Power of Polls

In 1935, America's most esteemed public-opinion poll was The Literary Digest, which had called accurately the last 5 elections. Their polls were showing that Franklin D. Roosevelt would lose the presidential election 56 percent to 44 percent to Al Landon.

Yet an upstart polling company, founded just a year earlier by George Gallup, claimed Roosevelt would win the election.

When Gallup was proven right, Gallup was thrust into the national spotlight. George Gallup was quickly approached by the fast growing movie industry. Several Hollywood producers approached him about working for them, and finally in 1940 he signed an exclusive contract with RKO Radio Pictures. Over the next few years he carried out surveys about many of the studio's planned film projects and many of the stars it had or wanted to have under contract, including Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Orson Welles, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. When that contract ended, Gallup continued to work with RKO and also added David Selznick and Walt Disney as clients. After World War II, he worked with a number of independent production companies as well.

George Gallup had created one of the most commonly used polling services for decades to come. It also created a slew of competitors, including Harris Interactive and Yankelovich Partners.

Polls had moved from the political landscape to the popular culture. Journalists loved these polls. Polls created debate. Sparked conversation. Polls sold newspapers.

Cell Phone Etiquette

I conducted my first poll as a PR strategy in January 2000. I was working for a new dot com, LetsTalk.com. We were competing against 10 other more established companies in the same space. We ran an inexpensive omnibus survey using Yankelovich and within weeks, we were featured in the New York Times.

In March 2000 the tech wreck hit and our expansive ad campaigns, marketing plans and ad agency went out the window. PR became a driving force behind the company's survival. We turned to surveys to drive that coverage.

At LetsTalk, we finally settled on the topic of cell phone etiquette. This topic, over the span of the next 5 years, got us predictable visibility in USA Today, New York Times, CNN, Consumer Reports and a myriad of other media sites.

Of the 10 companies we competed against in 2000, only LetsTalk is still in business, doing more than $100 million a year in annual sales.

Polling in Technology

As my career continued, I never forgot the power of polling. Omnibus polls. Polls of webinars. Polls of open source community. Every poll had some roll to play sparking discussions, and ultimately raising awareness.

I was reminded of this recently when a client launched a poll of more than 1,000 Java developers. Our poll told a story; and an unexpected one. This led to significant increase in media coverage (eWeek, JavaLobby, TheServerSide, CTOEdge and many other sites covered it); but it also increased web site traffic and the number of free trial product downloads skyrocketed.