Jeff Myers, ASA Public Relations Coordinator

A three-stage rollout of the ASA’s new public awareness campaign—This Is Statistics—has generated a buzz that is spreading word about the initiative within the statistics community and, more importantly, to the campaign’s audiences and the media.

The campaign is targeting high-school juniors and seniors and college undergraduate students with the message to take courses or major in statistics while in college. Secondary audiences are people who influence students such as parents, high-school guidance and college career counselors, and statistics instructors at the high-school and college levels. Its goal is to educate these students about the plentiful, diverse, and careers in statistics.

The first stage of the rollout—a soft launch—kicked off prior to the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Boston. The week before JSM, an email was sent to registrants announcing the launch of the initiative’s website. At JSM, attendees were further introduced to the awareness campaign through stickers featuring the logo and website address and a flyer distributed at the ASA booth in the exhibit hall, signs strategically placed in the convention center, and the screening during two plenary sessions of two campaign videos profiling members Genevera Allen of Rice University and Roger Peng of The Johns Hopkins University.

This combination of pre-event and onsite exposure successfully communicated the initiative to ASA members and generated great interest among JSM attendees. In all, more than 3,400 people visited the campaign website during the period July 29 to August 7, the last day of JSM. This attention helped propel the Allen video to 3,700 total views.

Stage two—the public launch of the campaign—was conducted August 19. For this unveiling, Stanton Communication—the ASA’s public relations firm—issued a press release announcing This Is Statistics to a list of 130 hand-picked journalists who write about education, science, technology, career, or lifestyle topics for national and metro dailies, online publications and blogs, and education trade magazines and wire services.

Several reporters, including journalists from U.S. News & World Report’s career section and USA Today’s career blog, expressed interest in the ASA and a desire to receive more story ideas about careers and trends in statistics and data science.

The launch of the campaign’s social media outreach on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube (a LinkedIn showcase page went live later) coincided with this stage. A growing network of people—including teachers, students, and members of the statistical community such as professors—is following the public awareness campaign on social media and strongly engaging with its content. In just 10 days, 490 people “liked” the campaign’s Facebook page and 231 had followed its Twitter account.

The public launch also included outreach to the top 25 statistics programs at U.S. colleges, establishing initial contact with key stakeholders and conduits of its messaging. Many responded with offers to share campaign information and engaged on social media.

All this concentrated outreach generated strong traffic to the campaign website, with about 3,000 unique visitors touring the informational clearinghouse.

The third stage started in late August, as students, parents, counselors, instructors, and others returned from vacation and began preparing for the new school year. Its primary thrust was pitching campaign-related stories to university newspapers about the importance of statistics courses and national news media about women in statistics, how statistics education is growing in the pre-K to college levels, and how Big Data research is made better with the expertise of statisticians.

This phase also included outreach to professional organizations, such as the National Association of Colleges and Employers and the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators, to explore ways for each to share the campaign’s core messages with their members.

Promotional efforts will continue through year’s end. As the campaign unfolds, Stanton anticipates more interest and activity from the media and campaign audiences as everyone returns to normal routines. 

For more information about the This Is Statistics campaign, contact ASA Public Relations Coordinator Jeff Myers at jeffrey@amstat.org.