When it has come to the adoption of online platforms, and the adjustment to the current information age, there is presumably no worse sin than not "getting it."

Most companies are still presumed by default to be out of touch. And mainstream media outlets continue to be similarly pilloried.

Yet, no one is going to sacrifice profit for the illusion of progress, just because a critic heckled them.

A safer tactic, then, has involved trumpeting a survey that doesn't name any names. SAS Canada, the analytics company seeking new customers for its software and services, has all but perfected this game.

The latest online survey of 1,000 "senior level business decision makers," conducted by Leger Marketing back in January, asserted that less than a fifth of companies are "getting it" when it comes to social media. Statistics showed that some of those executives have sloughed the job off to communications and marketing departments. And some just don't care.

Of course, it didn't take seven months to count up the multiple-choice clicks, given how SAS released numbers from the same survey in mid-May. The press release back then was "Information overload still dragging Canadian execs down."

Without fail, these numbers were promptly spun into a feature report for the Financial Post, then syndicated to local Postmedia Network affiliates across the country.

Last summer, though, the picture was different. SAS boasted that 90 per cent of organizations in the country were using the new tools — just sluggish about applying them.

Still, the statistics actually budged in a positive direction, since 10 per cent of respondents asserted social media was a waste of time in 2010, compared to 5 per cent this year.

Whatever the spin, these numbers can clearly be wedged into any trend piece, if not trumpeted as newsworthy on their own during the laziest of Tuesdays.

No one, after all, wants to head into September feeling like they spent the summer not "getting it."