Irfan Kamal on Digital Innovation

Social Media Buzz Monitoring and Analysis Tools - Great Progress, Lots of Opportunity

Irfan Kamal — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:42:31 +0000

The volume of social media content being generated (and consumed) is enormous: there are over 600 Tweets per second, 900,000 blog posts per day and 30 billion Youtube views per month. With this volume of consumer generated content, it’s no wonder that we’re seeing more use of social media monitoring tools and more evolution in their sophistication.

Our team at Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence recently conducted an in-depth analysis of 20+ social media listening tools* - we actively seek out innovations in this space because of its importance. Here are 3 examples of how we use these tools in our work:

1) Analyze conversation. Obsessive attention to what influential customers and prospects are saying has always been the hallmark of great companies: a good listening tool extends the capability to analyze and track important trends, for a wide variety of purposes.

2) Measure campaign performance. We must deliver ROI to our clients and measuring changes in Preference measures like sentiment and share of positive voice are two ways (among others) we use to quantify and optimize campaign results.

3) Enable rapid response. Crises can quickly engulf a brand’s hard won reputation. Identifying emerging issues and responding proactively is critical.

The tools to help us achieve these goals have improved substantially over the past year. Here are our notes on 6 features/uses we evaluate tools against:

1) Sentiment analysis is still a work in progress, with accuracy ranging from around 60% to 90+% — the higher levels of accuracy now allow tracking of significant directional shifts in sentiment

2) Insight and discovery continues to be difficult with many of these tools (we’re encouraged by a couple that are doing innovative work to help customers spot trends)

3) Tool openness (configurability, APIs and extensibility) has improved substantially over the past year; in the future it would be great to see more ability to integrate data from these tools

4) Campaign-level tracking and measurement capabilities are very basic, if present at all - much measurement work (e.g. around changes in share of voice and tracking “exposed” vs. control groups) require significant custom work

5) Visualization capabilities have improved significantly, with some tools offering useful insight-related visualizations

6) Comprehensiveness is usually a sweet spot for most of these tools - many of the top tools have very comprehensive data feeds, often including custom message board data acquisition

*Companies & tools we’ve looked at include Alterian’s SM2, Nielsen’s Buzzmetrics, Crimson Hexagon, Visible Technologies, Cymfony, Sysomos, Scoutlabs and Radian6.

Sources:

blog: http://blog.twitter.com/2010/02/measuring-tweets.html

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-introduction/

http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/youtube-video-streams-top-1-billionday/

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Social Games Spanning Wider Demographics and Capturing More Time

Irfan Kamal — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:17:39 +0000

According to the most recent numbers from Inside Network’s Appdata, there are currently over 82 million people - or about twice the entire population of California - playing Zynga’s social game Farmville.

Aside from the growing magnitude of the player base for social games like Farmville, a recently released Information Solutions Group / Popcap study also suggests that these games are reaching a broader and more diverse segment of the population than one might expect.

Here are some of the US-specific findings about social game players from the study*:

- average age is 48

- 90% reported the same or increased game play over the past 3 months

- 27% and 25% reported less time spent reading (mag, book, newspaper) and home TV/movie viewing respectively

- 43% of the time, game players log into social networks specifically to play games

- friends’ recommendations are the #1 factor influencing social game selection

- 35% have purchased a virtual gift while playing a social game

- among the specific games studied, Bejeweled Blitz and Farmville were more popular with women; Mafia Wars and Texas Holdem Poker were more popular with men

Here’s a recent Appdata list of the 15 most popular social games. Who would’ve

*the study also surveyed UK players

Co-Creation Growing Rapidly Into a Viable Business Model

Irfan Kamal — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:45:00 +0000

There’s been a lot of interesting discussion recently on how to best leverage channels like Twitter to communicate. This post talks about a bit about the co-creation of new social experiences that drive conversation and engagement in innovative ways, with the potential to then communicate the co-creation activity across multiple channels - including Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Flickr.

More than ever before, people have tools to help them co-create products and services in social environments. It’s an exciting trend that’s still very much in its infancy. Many of us are familiar with Cafepress, Zazzle and Nike’s custom shoes NIKEiD program. These were early - and still successful - examples of firms that help people remix and create everything from shoes to skateboards.

We’re now seeing signs of continued evolution of this general trend, in areas as diverse as fashion, fabrication and finance. The ideas these companies are introducing will change the way a range of industries introduce, sell and market products. For marketers, these companies all demonstrate useful and innovative approaches to genuine engagement of audiences around co-creation.

Instructables (DIY)
Part of the rapidly growing online “fab” and DIY trend, this site provides one of the best communities centered around creating almost anything - including an Electric Umbrella, Pulled Chicken, a Cardboard Frisbee and even Homer Simpson’s 3D Doughnut Trophy. The site reaches over 4 million monthly unique visitors globally.

Polyvore (fashion)
Polyvore has taken traditional fashion magazine models and adapted them to create a vibrant community around remixing fashion items. You can assemble a collage of products that look good together, rate others’ attempts at the same, and click through to purchase items in collages. Polyvore reports strong growth, and over 900,000 registered users.

Prosper (loans)
In an environment where financing is hard to come by, Prosper fills a real need in an innovative and thoughtful way. Read real people’s reasons for seeking loans, check ratings and default histories, request a loan yourself, and create/invest in a custom loan “portfolio”. Prosper has facilitated over $180 million in loans. Also check out similar site Lending Club.

Got any other examples?

Introducing Conversation Impact - Social Media Measurement for Marketers

Irfan Kamal — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:07:24 +0000

John Bell and I formally introduced the Conversation Impact(TM) measurement model at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Audience Measurement 4.0 on June 23rd. Here’s a brief overview of the model, its goals and planned evolution.

The model was developed by our team to provide brands with a comprehensive, recognizable framework for tracking social media campaigns. We relied heavily on our experience with a range of social media campaigns for both B2B and B2C clients, and considered the types of questions and reporting requests we receive with every new project or request for information.

We focus on simplicity and comparability across media - the latter, to help guide marketers with media allocation. We categorize our metrics into 3 areas, corresponding roughly to objectives and “marketing funnel” stages; each is shown below, with representative metrics (the metrics are selected based on unique client needs). Included are both familiar and new metrics.

Image courtesy of Crimson Hexagon

Reach and Positioning

Unique monthly visits
Time on site
Overall volume
Share of voice within category or brand family
Search visibility

Preference

Sentiment index (% positive - % negative) in social media
Share of positive voice in social media, within category
Relative Net Promoter Score, absolute or within category

Action

Registrations
Sales
Advocacy

Some of these metrics we measure using software such as Crimson Hexagon, Radian6 or TruCast; other metrics we measure with more traditional panel or intercept survey-based instruments.

We invite discussion - this is the first phase of what will be an iterative process to arrive at a simple, effective way to help marketing and communications executives make better decisions on social media spend allocation and scaling.

Can Photo-Driven Crowdsourcing Provide Brand Insights?

Irfan Kamal — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:38:20 +0000

A new experimental site, Photocracy.org, is a crowdsourcing initiative to explore whether images are useful in providing brand identity information. The people behind the site, Princeton University student Josh Weinstein and Sociology Professor Matthew Salganik, are currently collecting information on perceptions of 3 countries - the United States, China and Japan - using votes on images of those countries. Visitors from each country are asked to choose which of 2 pictures is more representative of the country. Since the site’s launch a few weeks ago, over 100,000 votes have been cast for comparisons like this one:

Photocracy.org US comparison images - cowboy on horse vs. Obama

Why is this useful? To find out, I asked the people behind the project some questions.

What specifically are you hoping to accomplish from this project?

Matthew: This is a study of cross-national perceptions, and we are hoping to find the photos that best represent Japan, China, and the United States according to voters from Japan, China, and the United States. [We], as well as visitors to our site, will be able to see how Americans view their country, as well as how it is viewed by people from Japan and China. Likewise, we can see how people from Japan and China view their country as compared to how it is viewed by others. If the project works well with these three countries, we hope to expand it to cover additional countries in order to get a richer understanding of global public opinion.

What are the broader potential implications and uses for this type of work?

Josh: The potential implications for crowd-sourced pairwise comparisons is limitless. Both in textual … and pictorial form (as in Photocracy.org), pair-wise comparisons are an excellent and easy way to sort lists of ideas. Further, the availability of user-generated options adds a further bonus so that, potentially, ideas users submit can reach the top.

The visual basis of the methodology adds another level of potential. For starters, by using pictures instead of text, translation issues are effectively eliminated. Most importantly, this methodology is entertaining and simple for the user.

Another approach would’ve been to ask people to describe the different countries in words, or using a set of written questions. Is there something about using photos that is more effective for brand identity research - in comparison to using written questionnaires?

Matthew and Josh: The choice of pictures over text was made for two reasons. First, offering visual aids instead of written words bridges the language gap. For example, if an American uploaded that she thought that Chinese were “aggressive”, how exactly would we translate that into Chinese? There are probably several words with similar definitions, but different connotations (for example, in English there are “warlike”, “violent”, “assertive”, etc). This translation problem plagues cross-national research, but we avoid it by using photos. On our site, people interact directly with items uploaded from other countries with the researchers standing in between them. A second reason for using photos is that interacting with pictures is more interesting than interacting with text. This site relies on volunteers to come and vote and we thought that using photos would be more fun. As we enter an increasingly visual world (the internet and television instead of newspapers) - iconography and understanding the perceptions thereof becomes evermore important.

See results on how people perceive the United States, China and Japan - and cast your own votes - at Photocracy.org .

Polymeme: Track the Blogosphere by (Unusual) Industry Clusters

Irfan Kamal — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:18:58 +0000

Many of us are familiar with Techmeme, a useful news aggregator with a focus on aggregation of tech stories across the web and the blogosphere. Techmeme has an entertaining sister site (Wesmirch) that aggregates celebrity gossip. Other popular blog news aggregators include Technorati and search services such as Twingly.

Polymeme is an interesting new entrant attempting to focus a bit differently by clustering stories from a database of over 25,000 blogs across the following relatively unusual categories:

Policy (with sub-categories Economics, Education, International, Law)

Change (with sub-categories Green & Energy, Non-Profit, Social Enterprise, Social Justice)

Culture (with sub-categories Architecture & Design, Arts, Books & Poetry, Theatre & Music)

Media (with sub-categories Advertising, New, Traditional, TV & Cinema)

Science (with sub-categories Evolution, General, Health, Social)

Polymeme claims its technology and processes help its readers identify stories outside of what they describe as an “echo chamber” that results in certain popular ideas or news being reinforced at the expense of other worthy - but less visible - ideas.

What do you think? Is there an echo chamber effect? If there is, is it necessarily a bad thing?

It’ll be interesting to follow Polymeme and other companies that try to bring out the less traveled parts of the blogosphere. (When I checked it out, Polymeme was interesting and did seem to pull up some unique stories, but was very slow — growing pains, I’m guessing.)

Predictive Value of Buzz for the Dark Knight Opening Box Office

Irfan Kamal — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:26:40 +0000

In an earlier post, I summarized the results of a study suggesting that several characteristics of movie word of mouth or buzz correlated well with expected total revenue over the movie’s release cycle.

There’s been a tremendous amount of word of mouth buzz surrounding this past weekend’s release of The Dark Knight, so I wanted to see what types of opening box office might be associated with pre-release buzz.

As a comparison, I also looked at volume of word of mouth around Hellboy II (the top release last weekend).

For comparison purposes, here are the data for last weekend’s top movie, Hellboy II. I want to look at predictive value of word of mouth volume, so I look at data 3 days before the release date.

Word of mouth volume index (from www.blogpulse.com) 3 days prior to official release date (7/11/08):

Hellboy, on 7/8/08: .0600

Opening Weekend Box Office (from www.boxofficemojo.com):

Hellboy II, per screen $10,779 (total $35 million)

For the Dark Knight, here’s the comparable data:

Word of mouth volume index (from www.blogpulse.com) 3 days prior to official release date (7/18/08):

Dark Knight, on 7/15/08: 0.26

Opening Weekend Box Office (from www.boxofficemojo.com):

Dark Night, per screen $35,579 (total $155 million)

So, Dark Knight’s word of mouth volume index was about 4.5x higher than Hellboy’s. Per screen box office came in at about 3.5x higher than Hellboy II and total weekend take came in at about 4.5x higher.

Note that of course this is more anecdotal than a deep study (a deep study would include other competitors, various other metrics referenced in research, e.g. tone of word of mouth, and would also look at total revenues - and would look at all variables over an extended period, not just point estimates).

Also, in case you’re a fan of the movie Journey to the Center of the Earth (also a top release the 7/11/08 release weekend), I didn’t include the movie because it had the atypical aspect of a 3D release.

Also, in case you’re wondering when/why I picked “3 days” before the release date, you’ll have to trust me when I say that I picked that date *before* seeing the blogpulse data. It seemed like a good point to have sufficient trend data.

Of course I beat Hellboy.”

Is Optimization of Social Media Desirable - and Possible?

Irfan Kamal — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:16:59 +0000

Direct marketing has long relied on good experimental design and techniques such as A/B testing to optimize ROI. One of the appeals of Internet marketing has been the ability to optimize and track ROI on campaigns, and that’s also one of the ways that early Internet advertising was able to secure a foothold in the savvy marketer’s budget.

The use of (and buzz around) social media has been growing rapidly. Is it possible - and, just as importantly, appropriate and desirable - to bring a comparable level of experimental and planning rigor to social media?

My short answer: yes, it is possible, appropriate and indeed very desirable for at a subset of social media and a subset of objectives (specifically, for branding/advocacy and for purchase/intent to purchase).

To the extent messaging and media can be optimized, it’s certainly very desirable from the perspective of a marketer or agency seeking to more effectively deploy and justify marketing spend.

There are many different types of social media (as covered in other posts here and on numerous other sites), including Facebook and Myspace applications, games, videos, blog outreach, microblogging outreach, podcast creation, microsite creation, word-of-mouth network campaigns and so on.

Messaging can, in general, be optimized - with greatly varying levels of difficulty (video and apps are very hard, word of mouth and microblogging communications are easier).

Media (that is, delivery channel or platform) can, in general, also be optimized, but some types of social media - e.g. apps on closed platforms and microsites - may be too linked to the medium itself to allow for cross-media optimization.

Large scale deployment and use of social media has the potential to become critical to achieving high ROI on marketing.

However, for that to happen, good messaging and campaign optimization must start to be undertaken where appropriate.

Olympics 2008 Ideas: Spanish Team Original Art

Irfan Kamal — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:34:59 +0000

The art commissioned by the Spanish Olympics organization (ADO) struck me as an example of a creative and authentic campaign with high passalong potential: the artwork is striking, original and appealingly non-commercial.

The art is by Jaume de Laiguana. Here are some representative examples portraying Spain’s boxing, gymnastics and synchronized swimming teams; visit ADO’s online brochure to see the full set.

Right now, it’s in Adobe Flash; I’m assuming they’ll add:

email links
downloadable brochure
desktop wallpapers/screensavers
matching/supporting video
prints (they are introducing a calendar with these images)

Coming in later posts: more ideas you can think about from other social media-focused Olympics 2008 campaigns (Adidas posters, Lenovo’s athlete blogs and more).

How Social Media Could Help: the Eureka Purr-fect Pet Vacuum

Irfan Kamal — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:00:28 +0000

In deciding how effectively a new product (or service) can leverage social media, among other factors, I look for whether the product offers a genuinely different/unique and communicable benefit that’s relevant to a socially addressable demographic, i.e. a market that can be efficiently reached or influenced through social media.

As a pet (dog) owner, I’m interested in solutions that can help clean up after my happily shedding dog.

Let’s take a quick look at Eureka’s recently launched Boss 4D pet-friendly vacuum cleaner.

1. It does appear to offer a different/unique benefit.

According to Eureka:

Combining the cleaning know-how of Eureka with the odor elimination strength of ARM & HAMMER(R)’s Pet Fresh technology, which offers two times the odor fighting power of traditional ARM & HAMMER vacuum accessories, the new Eureka Boss 4D Pet Fresh features unique tools to tackle pet owners’ top cleaning challenges — removing pet hair and eliminating pet odors — to create a purr-fectly pet-focused cleaner that outcleans the leading upright by 45 percent** at half the cost.

I’d include both the affordability and the superior cleaning capability as different/unique benefits.

2. The benefit is simple enough to communicate easily.

Pet hair and odor cleanup is tough! What’s not to like about an affordably priced vacuum cleaner that is good at tackling this tough problem?

3. The target market can be reached or influenced through social media and is large enough to make social media marketing efficient.

According to the American Pet Products Manufacturer Association (APPMA), the average pet owner is a 46 year old female. There are over 70 million pet-owning households in the US alone, which implies a sizable market segment 45 years old and under.

Eureka presumably has detailed information on the actual shape of the demographic distribution of pet owners; this would influence the specific types of social media that might be useful.

All considered, given the extremely high percentage (over 60%) of pet-owning households, it’s very likely that there’s a substantial percentage of pet owners who participate in some form in social media (and even if they don’t participate, they will probably be influenced by a household member’s participation). It’s likely that this segment can be reached as, if not more, efficiently through social media than competing media (including television and print).

Some social media ideas

Here are some possible approaches for Eureka’s Boss 4D social media outreach:

Youtube comparison video: Eureka claims its Boss 4D vacuum is better (and cheaper) than Dyson’s Animal vacuum - why not show the Boss 4D’s superiority, i.e. show what it means to clean “45% better”. A couple of Dyson Animal vs. other vacuum videos have gotten a total of over 40,000 views.

Social networks: There are a number of social networks and forums for pet owners, including dogster.com, catster.com, petster.com, petside.com, among others — participation and listening in these venues can both provide insight and generate word of mouth; also worth monitoring are forums and answer sites (e.g. Yahoo Answers) focused on cleaning

Meetups: Dog meetups nationwide are listed on meetup.com and provide a great combination of online & offline word-of-mouth creation opportunities

Blogs: There are thousands of pet and home/house care blogs that would reach this audience; an outreach program targeted at prominent influencers would be helpful; setting up and promoting a Eureka blog with cleaning tips and pet care information is also worth considering

Product reviews: Monitor and, if possible, respond quickly (clearly identifying affiliation) to issues mentioned in product reviews (e.g. Amazon.com provides a forum for each product, and also has a 2,000-member strong Vacuum community).