Just as in the wonderful Dr. Seuss book “Horton Hears a Who!”, the world of social media may have started off perceived as a tiny speck of dust, whose participants only elephants with tremendous listening capabilities could hear. Turns out that the speck is actually a world of its own and is a growing source of constant opinions about products and brands. “Listening” has gone well beyond the elephantine companies on the cutting edge of market research to be a mainstream source of next generation real-time market intelligence.

So what’s next?

Traditional marketers and research professionals now want to extend their knowledge beyond a basic understanding of what is being said by taking a holistic approach that includes analysis of who is speaking and what are the deeper implications for product or brand based on online conversations?

“Social Media as a Cocktail Party” has made the Amazon best-seller list, in part by claiming that “Social media is, unbeknownst to many of its users, the largest, best, most accurate market segmentation tool ever invented. This is true for groups that have self-organized online (we at CI call these categories “psychographics” due to the tendency within social media participants to organize around hobbies (“chess clubs”) and attitudes and values (“the environment”) as opposed to demographics).

However, for groups that do not self-organize online, how do companies begin to understand the basic demographic characteristics – such as age and gender – of individuals interested enough in their products to speak about them online? The amount of public information available about bloggers continues to increase and that, in turn, supports online segmentation efforts. Social media research is not simply limited to what people are saying but what individuals who are discussing your product or brand “look like” demographically. Technological advances in terms of harvesting relevant online content have given rise to what we call “intersection analytics”, which support a deeper look at where brands intersect with social media. “Intersection analytics” simply means that we can locate the prominent attributes (e.g., taste, value, quality) associated with any brand or product based on online conversations. Think of “intersection analytics” as the instantaneous, ongoing relationship between attributes such as “tastes great” or “expensive” or “too sweet” and where and to what degree they can be applied to (“intersect with”) your brand. The brand, of course, can then be compared to competitive brands in the space along the same dimensions to determine brand positioning, all without spending a dime on a focus group.

A recent post on the social media activity associated with the Oscars highlights the ability to augment “traditional” social media research with demographics. For companies with this technology, the future is rapidly becoming the current. We now know that it was a little boy, and one who shirked his duties previously, named Jo-Jo who helped save Who-Ville with an incredible “YOPP!” at just the right time.

We analyzed individuals online who discussed the Oscars’ and found that, despite the Academy’s targeted marketing efforts,

• men conduct more online conversations about the Oscars than women and
• Millennials drove most of the discussion

What about the women who are discussing the Oscars online?  From the online conversations, we derived information about their interests, their habits, and their lifestyles.  This rich understanding of audience demographics helps provide an avenue for the Academy to appeal to and grow their audience by appropriately fine-tuning their media mix.

We examined conversations from January 22 up through February 22, the date of the Oscars.  Over 1,000 authors for whom we could identify characteristics discussed the Oscars online – these authors were segmented by age, gender, and the location of their conversations.  We then performed a deeper dive into the characteristics associated with women discussing the Oscars online.

The Generational Composition

We grouped Oscar authors by their age into Millennials, GenXers, and Boomers categories.  Not surprisingly, online conversations were tied to age with Millennials driving the most, followed by GenXers, and then Boomers. 

Geo-location Composition

Not surprisingly, the U.S. dominates the discussion. It is interesting to note however how much conversation came out of India with the success of Slumdog Millionaire. 

The Gender Composition

Perhaps somewhat surprising, Oscars discussion is dominated by men.  Importantly, the analysis focused on one month of the broader conversations leading up to, and during the Oscars (movie buffs) and not on the red carpet gala (fashion),  which may provide some additional explanation for this disparity.

Cross-Affinity Analysis of Women Discussing the Oscars

Cross-affinity analyses provide a deeper understanding of the audience itself.  By passively observing social media participants, we bypass some possible biases associated with traditional survey based approaches, making online authors an apt audience to study.  Social media analytics can deepen the understanding of online audiences, which helps targeting (marketing or advertising) and messaging strategy.

Using our semantic theme technology we surfaced other components of online conversation for females already discussing the Oscars.  This technology allows us to determine in an open-ended way what else this select group of females is interested in and discussing online, for example:

Some emerging concepts – such as “Films” and “Oscars” – are expected.  Many of the other affinities – including celebrity gossip, parenting and children, and feelings helps paint a more holistic picture of this audience, which highlights the power of using semantic techniques to distill meaning from online conversations.

The woman who cares about the Oscars:

She stays up-to-date on her celebrity gossip, she may have children, she enjoys reading a good book, pop music, and games and puzzles; she dreams of traveling, and she discusses her feeling about all this and more on her personal blog.

Going beyond conversation analytics to audience analytics suggest specific, testable strategies that brand managers and marketers can take with regards to their target audiences.  By better understanding their existing audience, particularly their online audience, brands now have help with their digital (or traditional) marketing strategy. CI provides brands with the guidance that they need to succeed in effective word of mouth campaigns and to effectively drive their marketing strategy.

UPDATE: Due to a typo in the original graph (corrected) highlighting the top countries posting about the Oscars, “Austria” should have been “Australia”. In retrospect, this makes sense given the nationality of both Hugh Jackman and Heath Ledger. 

I participated in this panel back in November hosted by the PR firm Johnston-Wells of Denver. These guys are at the forefront of helping companies figure out the new world of social media and “the why and how” of effectively participating in this powerful distributed world of consumer influence.

The event was well attended by local companies in the Denver front range community and highlighted the range of emotional embrace organizations have for social media, from outright fear to competitive advantage. I spoke about effectively monitoring social media as an addtion to PR but also how to leverage the medium for market research and identifying the key influencers to proactively engage with customers and brand advocates.

Listen in right here:

The Digital Media Marketing Summit webcast is sponsored by BrightTalk

MINNEAPOLIS and BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 17 /PRNewswire/ — Iconoculture, the leading cultural trend research company, and Collective Intellect,the leading provider of real-time market intelligence through advanced digital-media analytics technologies, today announced a partnership that focuses on bringing the marketplace one big step closer to the most comprehensive, cost-effective consumer insights available.

This partnership combines the breadth and depth of Iconoculture’s expertise on current and emerging consumer trends with Collective Intellect’s powerful analytics capabilities for mining social media. Together, the companies are working closely on a solution that will provide the industry’s first fully integrated view of the consumer, helping brands and businesses develop actionable ideas for growth.

In the coming weeks, Iconoculture and Collective Intellect will unveil a service featuring a series of reports — on such topics as the economic crisis and its impact on consumer spending habits, green moms, current healthcare and recession concerns, food and beverage trends, and more — that will combine Iconoculture’s observational content and IconoCommunities(SM) findings with Collective Intellect’s analysis of a wide variety of social media. This partnership gives marketers instant access to powerful, cost-effective insights that depict a more comprehensive view of the consumer, versus dated insights processes that require marketers to gather data from multiple costly sources.

“In this current economic environment, it’s more important than ever for marketers to have access to robust yet cost-effective consumer insights,” said Dan Frawley, CEO of Iconoculture. “This partnership provides our clients with an integrated solution for understanding what’s happening with consumers worldwide, why it’s happening and where it’s heading. Companies need that inside knowledge in order to develop products, services and messages that are relevant to consumers — who in today’s market are smarter and are changing faster than ever.”

“The rise of social media has presented marketers with new challenges, but also new opportunities for connecting with consumers,” said Don Springer, CEO of Collective Intellect. “With the exponential growth in user-generated content, it’s more important than ever for marketers to listen to what consumers are saying and doing. By combining our social media services with Iconoculture’s values-based observational content and expert analysis, we’ve created a solution that puts fresh, real-time insights into the hands of marketers on a continual basis.”

About Iconoculture

Iconoculture, a cultural trend research company, is the voice of cultural trends, illuminating not only what’s important to consumers worldwide, but also why it’s happening and where it’s heading. In order for companies to seize opportunities for developing products, services and messages, they need the inside story that’s driving consumer behaviors and cultural trends. Iconoculture’s perspective provides more actionable ideas to Fortune 1000 corporations and agencies, enabling companies to become warriors for their brands. In 2007, Inc. magazine ranked Iconoculture as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation. For more information, contact Iconoculture at 1-866-377-0087 or visit us at www.iconoculture.com.

About Collective Intellect

Collective Intellect is the next generation in market intelligence, offering the most advanced real-time analytics technologies available. Collective Intellect helps clients extract valuable insights from the vast volume of consumer-related digital communications. Collective Intellect works with a wide array of Fortune 500 companies to deliver market intelligence faster, more cost effectively, and with better data purity than any other method. Collective Intellect’s proprietary artificial intelligence solution analyzes unstructured data to uncover what consumers really feel about brands, products, campaigns, categories, companies, brands, messaging, issues or any topic of importance. Founded in 2005, Collective Intellect is headquartered in Boulder, CO. For more information, please visit www.collectiveintellect.com.

SOURCE Iconoculture

Copyright 2009 PR Newswire

Traditional market research has a new information channel – social media. According to Forrester, by the end of 2009, more than 85% of US online consumers will be reading or viewing social content. Market research that does not take into account brand- or product-specific online user-generated content – blog posts and re-posts, product reviews, rich video and comments – will be, at best, incomplete.

Previously, we’ve written about social media market research and the benefit consumers may derive from it as well as using social media research in tough economic times. Next we’ll address the commonalities between traditional market research approaches and their analogs in the social media space, specifically by analyzing digital communications for relevant brand and consumer content. However, we’ll address that in a subsequent blog post. Why? Because we’ll be presenting this analysis at a Digital Media Marketing Summit sponsored by BrightTalk on Thursday, February 19^th at 5pm (ET).

Collective Intellect will feature a webcast focusing on the transition from traditional “Market Research 1.0″ to the social media-based “Market Research 2.0” approach.

Check back here to pick up the web cast if you miss it.

See you there.

]]> http://www.collectiveintellect.com/social-media-metrics/social-media-monitoring-market-research-20/feed/ http://www.collectiveintellect.com/social-media-metrics/social-media-monitoring-market-research-20/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CollectiveIntellect/~3/tC49HMMn8lE/ http://www.collectiveintellect.com/uncategorized/super-bowl-09-dollars-spent-per-social-media-conversation/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:32:47 +0000 Kevin Yordy http://blog.collectiveintellect.com/?p=1393

This chart assumes an average of $3 million per 30-second spot.

GoDaddy achieved the best “dollars per social media conversation” rate, followed closely by Doritos. However, considering that Doritos’ commercials were consumer-generated, their ad budget would have clearly been significantly lower.

Pepsico and Coca-Cola’s soft drink brands were grouped together, as were Anheuser-Busch’s varieties.

To get the full PDF report, as well as Part One, fill out the form below and we’ll email it directly to you!

• Pepsi dominated the online conversation during the game. Pepsi alone took 19% of the Top 10 share-of-voice; but when Pepsico products Sobe and Doritos are included, Pepsico accounted for almost 40% of the Top 10. (Gatorade came in at #11)

• Coke managed to grab 12% of the Top 10 share-of-voice, despite its ads being pushed to the second half of the game by Pepsi’s purchase of the first half.

• Of the five brands with the highest online activity, Audi had the highest “brand affinity/loyalty” association.

• Of those same five brands, Sobe had the highest “economical association”, followed by Budweiser and Pepsi.

• Transformers 2 was the most popular movie trailer

2009 Super Bowl Advertisers Selected Market Share

Twitter generated a huge response as well, Pepsi again dominating. Check out the top 10 tweets, as of 8 p.m. EST 2/1/09:

Twitter Top Ten

To get the full PDF report, including intersection metrics and sentiment fill out the form below and we’ll email it directly to you!

But this year it isn’t just about television — the spotlight’s online.

Some of America’s biggest brands are experimenting with viral ads, user generated ads, online remixes and web-only versions that are too-hot-for-TV.

“The broad ‘digital swing’ this year is striking,” said Tim Lefkowicz, president of Collective Intellect, an online marketing company based in Boulder, Colorado.

Some familiar faces like General Motors and FedEX have decided to punt this year, but NBC has nearly sold out its Super Bowl XLIII ad inventory at up to $3 million for a 30-second spot. It’s worth it: Viewership always reaches stratospheric levels for the game, approaching 100 million people in the U.S. alone and about a billion worldwide.

It’s a challenge and an opportunity, and every year the bar is raised. This may be the year that geeky cred plays a big part in pushing the envelope.

“In years past only smaller, more tech-savvy companies relied heavily on digital methods, in large part due to the high cost of a Super Bowl second, but also because they understood the values and habits of its core consumer better,” said Lefkowicz.

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