Orchan Consulting | Asia Sdn Bhd

Not long ago, we walked into a pitch with a regional brand team. They proudly showed us their “cutting-edge” PR dashboard: a glossy interface packed with charts, graphs, and numbers that spun and updated in real time. It looked impressive. But five minutes in, we asked a simple question: “So, what decisions are you making based on this data?” Silence. The truth is most dashboards are beautiful distractions. They count clicks, mentions, impressions, and sentiment scores; but rarely tie those metrics back to business outcomes. Worse, they give leaders a false sense of control: as if more colourful charts somehow equal smarter strategy. In practice, we’ve seen teams paralysed by dashboards. They obsess over vanity spikes (“Look! Engagement’s up 35% this week!”) but can’t explain whether customer trust actually improved, whether stakeholders feel reassured, or whether sales conversations got easier. That gap -- between what’s tracked and what actually matters -- is where communicators los...

Headlines don’t prove ROI. Discover why media coverage is a vanity metric, and how to measure communication by real impact: trust, behaviour, and outcomes. Agencies love to brag about “media coverage.” The number of headlines. The stack of clippings. The glossy PDF full of logos. But here’s the truth: media coverage without impact is just wallpaper. It looks nice, but it doesn’t fill the room. If your audience doesn’t think differently, feel differently, or act differently, all you’ve got is noise. Coverage vs. Impact: The Real Difference Coverage = visibility. Did the story run? Was the brand mentioned? Impact = outcomes. Did people shift their thinking, trust more, or act differently because of that story? One gets you attention. The other moves your business forward. Why Counting Headlines is a Vanity Metric No one remembers logos on a PDF. What people remember is how a story made them think differently. Volume doesn’t equal influence. Ten tiny pickups in ...