A Productive Survey: Since I wrote a lengthy article in last week’s newsletter about the PR industry’s use of specious surveys to generate news coverage, I can’t let this example of genre go unremarked.

U.K. cell-phone company Vodafone confidently predicts that 10 million workers will “up their game” today ahead of England’s match versus Trinidad and Tobago, boosting productivity by 27.7 percent, and that six million employees (24 percent) will be working harder, smarter and faster throughout the World Cup, increasing the country’s GDP by ₤1.83 billion.

How did Vodafone arrive at this conclusion? It asked workers if they planned to work harder and be more productive. Astonishingly, very few respondents indicated that they would in fact be lounging around, sneaking out of work early, or spending half their time surfing the Internet looking for news of Wayne Rooney’s fitness. And Vodafone—no cynics there—has accepted the British public’s insistence that it will be diligent and productive during the World Cup.

Entirely by coincidence, Vodafone offers a World Cup update service on its phones. So this survey is doubly good news: it earns the company free publicity and it surely soothes the concerns of any boss who might have worried that those updates would distract their employees.

The release was picked up Computer Weekly, Online Recruitment, and… The Financial Times. In fact the PR people will be able to claim that it got their client on the front page of the FT, albeit as a single paragraph at the end of larger story on the Amicus union’s tips for “taking a sickie” in order to get home in time for the 6pm kick-off.