Emotion detector: What blogs tell us about mood

In the Journal of Happiness Studies: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Wellbeing (yes, for real, here) a paper by two University of Vermont statisticians claims that the nation's mood can be determined, in part, by the tone of it's blog postings.

Here's a chart from the paper (available here) showing an increasingly happy nation over the last four years (hearts are Valentine's Day and green trees are Christmas):

Of note is the overall upward trend (didn't political acrimony seem high back in 06?), the periodic declines in July/August (summer doldrums/stock angst anyone?), and the incredible sadness apparently felt among the blogogentsia over Michael Jackson's passing.

You can validate the statistical and research methods and conclusions for yourself (here). Essentially, they boil down to an automated index of blogs using a standard list of rank ordered words shown to convey particular emotions. Then, a magic algorithm is applied that enables age and geographic filters, among other things, to be applied to results and, voila`, the Emotion of The Crowds.

So What?

In some regards, the idea of a collective happiness index is similar to what pollsters have been attempting for decades...except that the sample size in the blog survey is much larger and is near realtime (it's automated afterall). It's also less representative of the diversity of the population.

And as fascinating as the idea of a global barometer of happiness might be, the idea highlights the challenge inherent in defining something as uniquely personal as happiness for such a large group. The paper's authors certainly concede that opportunities for improving the approach exist. They even go so far as to suggest that the approach could be more useful as a means of evaluating 'social contagion' and 'predictive theories' of social interaction...which sounds a bit like what stock markets seem to have become.

For marketers, however, it is a useful reminder that high-level trends can be valuable in scenario planning, ideation and in direction setting. It's also useful in reminding us that what may appear to be true and meaningful at the level of the group can break down completely when applied to the individual...that's as true of messaging, positioning, and creative as it is of our own happiness.

For those of you made happy as RUSH completists, here's the Emotion Detector demo tape:

Social Media Metrics: Culture, Commerce + Conversation

One of the questions that frequently arises in client conversations around social media concerns metrics: How should we measure social media's impact?

One answer is: The same way you measure marketing impact.

And while that may seem self-evident, if not obvious, it does reflect the oft-obscured truth about social media: it is but a different means to accomplish the same ends. Those ends, of course, are the marketing objectives.

When social media metrics are clearly tied to marketing objectives, therefore, you will have answered the question at the start of this post with more than a steaming generality.

Yes, but how?

One tendency among the measuring class is to find a number and fixate on it: click-thrus as a singular view on success or failure, for instance.

Meaningful metrics, however, tend to be directional...they identify trends or, um, direction over time. These metrics may embody the principles of a Balanced Scorecard, where a larger set of financial and nonfinancial measures, in aggregate, indicate the directional health of the activity or the enterprise. Here are some prior posting's on metrics (here, here, and here)

So getting back to Social Media metrics, what type of marketing objectives might make a social media deployment sensible?

Of course it would be silly to make proclamations that may not reflect the practical realities of a specific organization's situation...BUT...there are three general types of objectives that I've found applicable to social media.

For any enterprise that operates as part of a highly networked, always-on, marketplace of ideas, marketing objectives must reflect the real-world way in which enduring human relationships are built: at the intersection of Culture, Conversation, and Commerce.

If your organization is prepared to operate in these three areas in a balanced way, then it may be ready for a social media deployment as part of it's marketing efforts. Here are some sample marketing objective categories for use with social media:

1. Culture: Demonstrate the shared attitudes + behaviors that reflect a commitment to the organization's or communities mission and values.
2. Conversation: Ask for and respond to dialogue among and between an organization or community's members, employees, customers, and prospects.
3. Commerce: Support promotion + sales

What follows, then, are a few sample measurements for each of these objective categories...these are not comprehensive lists. They do provide examples of the type of measurements one might use to assess the direction of culture, conversation, or commerce objectives supported by social media:

Culture

• Percent of interviewees who mention the organization or community's social media channels during the interview process
• Percent of organization's associates who Friend/Follow/Participate in the organization's social media ecosystem
• Number of customers who reference social media presence
• Sentiment Index: Ratio of positive comments to negative comments on social channels

Conversation

• Engagement Ratio: Total Unique Visitors/Total Visitors; Tweets/Retweets; Post/repost; Visit duration
• Dialogue Ratio: Number of comments per posting
• Conversation Bandwidth: Number of inbound links; Page rank
• Return on Investment: Cost per visitor, Cost per minute of engagement, Cost per feed subscriber

Commerce

• Raw referrals from social site to eCommerce site
• Transaction dollar value/completion ratio
• Transaction dollar value/referral ratio

Many others exist of course. Hopefully, these examples provide a place to start.

Value-based billing: Agencies at the table?

Bloomberg posted a story on P+G's decision to move Grey Advertising's work on Pringle's to a value-based compensation setup last month (here). All I can say is, it's about time!

I've worked at two companies whose billings were tied, in part, to performance-based incentives derived from the client's overall success. And while the P+G move (along with several other consumer companies) comes later in the game, it's also a bit more comprehensive.

Some in the advertising business are worried that it is merely a ruse to reduce fees. Others seem to embrace the concept. Here's four reasons I think it's a good thing:

1. Results: In my experiences with value-based billing, the discipline of evaluation creates discipline in the thinking. I'm not talking about stifling creativity. On the contary, agencies get passionate about the work...the risk is that they get wedded to an idea even when it can't deliver results. Value-based approaches that rely on meaningful measurement ensure that outcomes are considered throughout the ideation and execution.

2. Trust: When an agency's financial success is tied--directly--to the business success of the client, it makes the partnership more meaningful and easier to understand for both parties. Both parties can trust that they are working together for the same thing. And of course, trust is a key element of any long term relationship.

3. Strategy: Much talk is made of being strategic in the agency business. However, much work ends up being quite tactical in the context of larger business go-to-market strategies. When agencies are seen as partners, sharing the risk based on business strategies, they may find themselves earning a seat at a much larger table.

4. Inevitability: It isn't going to go back to the way it was. For decades, marketers half jokingly used the quote that "half their advertising worked, they just didn't know which half." But now the precise measurability that comes standard with all things digital is seeping into the expectation of all marketing and advertising.

Of course there are risks to the agency...that's the shared part of shared risk...some clients may use it as a means of giving agency billings a beat down. Others may pursue ill-conceived or simplistic measurement schemes. And the biggest risk is that the agency's work is held directly accountable for things it can't impact directly.

But while these risks are real to agencies, it may be wise to remember that clients has always taken a very real risk with their agencies when payng upfront or for hours worked. It may just be that, like their customers, companies have decided they'd like a little less risk in their worlds. Agencies that embrace value-based approaches may benefit by getting a more enduring seat at the table...instead of a place on it.

Making promises: The Chevy Volt

You made me promises promises
You knew you'd never keepPromises promises
Why do I believe

-Naked Eyes

CNN's money section has a headline screaming about the Chevy Volt (here):

"Chevy Volt to get 230 mpg rating

Ultra-high mileage for GM's electric-drive Volt could give it a marketing boost."

First the claim: 230 mpg. The article discusses the complications with the mpg estimate...it's not as simple as figuring 'x miles/y gallons = miles per gallon'.

As an owner of two, more traditional hybrids (one the Toyota Hybrid Synergy drive and one the Honda integrated motor assist), I can tell you that mpg ratings are guidance...your actual mileage has far more to do with how you actually drive. And the EPA estimates are usually reflective of the best practical mileage.

This can be a major disappointment for those expecting to save megabucks on petro, but at least the comparisons between hybrids and conventional gas autos make sense (i.e., miles driven/gallons consumed). The Volt isn't so easy.

Now let's look at the subhead: ultrahigh mileage could give marketing a boost.

The complications associated with the EPA rating and the role of the driver mean many are surely to be disappointed by their actual mileage. And when they are, you can be sure the online dialogue-0-sphere will be humming.

So four marketing and PR-related questions come to mind:

1. In what way does overpromising and underdelivering give marketing a boost?
2. In what way is a 'marketing boost' an important news story?
3. Can PR manage such an overpromise in the 24-hour, networked news cycle?
4. Does GM have savvy marketers who might try different selling propositions?

To Chevy's credit, communications to date haven't focussed on much more than the 'first 40 miles without gas/no emissions' claim (though I do think the footnote ought to be proportionate to the impact of the disclaimer). More on the Volt here.

All will be told when, or if, the Volt actually hits the lots at "a month and year to be announced". In the meantime, I'll be asking why we should believe the headlines we read.

Teens, Texting + Twitter: age old marketing questions?

The teenage mind is notoriously fickle...in fact, science! [conjure Thomas Dolby song] has suggested that the teen brain pares nearly 60% of its neurons during this formative phase. This biological focussing leads to forgetful moments + ever changing obsessions that could make even a veteran ping pong observer dizzy.

So how come teens don't use Twitter? It would seem to provide a realtime center stage from which to lifestream one's short attention span theatrics. Aren't these two hallmarks of the all-powerful teenage marketing segment's mindset?

According to Neilsen they don't use it as much as their parents. And while parents would be the easy answer, they DO use Facebook, YouTube and other social features-disguised-as-applications that their parents also use.

So what?

Aside from the fact that the graph has some odd segmentation notions (2-24 year olds? do 4 year olds use Twitter? Are 24-year olds really like 12 year olds?) three questions marketers might want to ask themselves come to mind from this story:

1. Why would they use it? Teenagers were early adopters of SMS/Text Messaging. Twitter is more difficult to use as a mobile application and more limited in capabilities. So, what does Twitter enable that they can't already accomplish? (see useful, usable, and desirable here). "What's in it for the user" is an important consideration for marketing to anyone, but especially when the fundamental function has an equivalent already in place.

2. Who knows what they think? Given the notoriously fickle allegiances established during adolescence, isn't the real story that Twitter is being adopted by so many people in pre-Y generations (i.e., the largest population segments)? Even if teenagers tell you what they are thinking, do you ever really get it, er, I mean understand?

3. When does they become you...or me? As in any other story based on age (or gender or race or....) we burden ourselves trying to assign people to pigeonholes. When we use singular dimensions to describe the complexity that is a person, we are left to wonder why such explanations seem unsatisfying when applied to our own behaviors. If the point of social media tools isn't to enable individual expression through social connections, then to what end do we employ them differently than traditional media? Interests, rather than age, are a more reliable predictor of a person's behavior.

I asked my own 16-year-old about Twitter (doesn't use it) and here's what she said:

"It's all status updates, no real interaction. Facebook allows you to do more. It's [Facebook] more convenient and that's what we're already doing. Texting comes with the phone. Some people have it [Twitter], but mostly its to follow celebrities like the Jonas Brothers. It doesn't seem like Twitter is really for us, more for adults."

Recycled brands: green positioning, worm poop, and marketing accountability

I was walking thru the aisles at the local Super discount-department-store-with-concentric-red-rings-that-look-like a, um, target, when an oddly deformed form factor for a consumer brand grabbed my head, twisting it in place, while the rest of me kept walking a few steps. Hanging at eye level were what appeared to be food package wrappers. Not packages, but wrappers. Empty. Like you see run over in a parking lot...or next to a trash can. On closer inspection, they turned out to be folders and pencil bags for use by school children.

$1.00 Wrapper Trapper and Pencil Cases

Terracycle has an idea for what it calls eco-capitalism. It started with fertilizer made, not from petro-consuming, nitrogen-producing chemical processes, but from worm poop (here). Now, it's targetting the children of America and their back-to-school-shopping parents.

So what?

Much green washing backlash has been whipped up against brands attempting to claim in-name-only environmental cred (see The Truth about Green Advertising here). And while sloppy and disingenuous claims are easily spotted by all but the most uninterested, one can certainly appreciate marketers calling attention to brand attributes that, though always present, have only recently held more massively appealing appeal.

But what happens when a brand built on consumption crosses paths with a concept built on reducing, reusing and recycling...Is there such a thing as win-win in a zero sum game? I think so.

Terracycle has enlisted food + packaging manufacturers to support collection and recycling of their empty product containers. Terracycle remanufactures the recycled packages into useful things...like folders and pencil pouches. Terracycle pays people to collect the packaging, underwritten by the brands whose packaging is being collected.

Here are three impacts on marketing enabled by this approach:

1. Brand stewards in affiliated companies can move upstream...beyond simplistic notions of logo placement and copy conformity to higher-order notions of demonstrable commitment and real action...the logo doesn't have to add a snipe noone believes [e.g., 'now with ecogreenalism']...the new product embodies it. Besides, who can control where your logo will show up when it's a trapper-keeeper.

2. Measurability is built in to the recycled product...success need not be measured solely on awareness and perception of a brand's greenality. Instead, financial metrics (cost reduced/sales repeated), participation metrics (groups collecting, wrappers returned...a boxtops for education program that doesn;t stop at the top of the box) and environmental metrics (pounds of waste stream diverted) are all additions to a balanced scorecard of key performance indicators available for marketing's use (more on that here).

3. Marketing to consumers can coexist with marketing to less consumption. The brands involved in the Terracycle program lend more than words to ideas of sustainable living. If you want to do your part, you can do it by generating demand (for the recycled product) or by providing supply (collecting recyclable material). You need not live in a damp, dark cave to do your part to save the world. And you won't have to give up your cookies either.

In the end, we're all worm food. But brand marketers who can find ways to sell us ourselves as the answer may just be the future of eco-marketing.

Ashton Kutcher and me: Ad performance anxiety

Ashton Kutcher and I have alot in common. I grew up in the late 70s...he played someone growing up in the 70s. Ashton's married to a woman born in 1962...so am I. I post blogs and Tweets with what's on my mind...so does Ashton. Ashton starred in "Dude, Where's My Car"...I, well, I guess there are a few differences between us.

But one other similarity arose at the Fortune Brainstorm: TECH conference last week. While the head honchos and lagging leaders of News Corp, IAC, AOL and other 'we-should-know-we're-digital-companies' regurgitated last year's online advertising trends, it was Ashton Kutcher who seemed to understand best what ails online advertisers moving into the future:

"People who have grown up on the Internet have trained themselves not to see it [online advertising]," he added. (here)

So What?

You may question the sample size on which Ashton's assertion is based, but it would be hard to deny the anecdotal evidence that display advertising advocates are increasingly feeling a bit of performance anxiety. The 2009 Marketing Themes post has more (here)

Click-thru rates on PPC search ads are the gold standard of online ad effectiveness...with Microsoft Bing's first month lap grabbing headlines at a whopping 1.5% click thru (here).

To put search ad performance in an odd sporting context, think of it this way: even Major League Baseball NL pitchers are an order of magnitude more effective in making a connection when they step up to take a swing than is the most effective online advertising format. (NL Pitcher stats here)

And if you don't like data, then maybe you like Barry Diller. As head of IAC Interactive, he says that "display advertising has to evolve".

Here's three ways online advertisers might reduce their performance anxiety when planning online media buys:

1. Buy PPC: The cost per thousand impressions will have to continue to descend in line with the effectiveness of CPM-based buys...which may eventually be closer to zero than to what it is today...offline pricing models are out of whack...they should not be the basis for buying online ads...there's a reason so many display ads are sold on CPM models...the reason is found in whose interest is served by CPM vs CPC.

2. Go beyond demographics. While it may be true that elements of age, geography, gender and income reflect certain common qualities of people, they are directional descriptions at best...one common quality among many people is that they want to determine which pigeonholes they belong in. Exploring deeper definitions of people online will require incremental touches, narrower focus (i.e., anti-reach) and soliciting permission (the audience's) in ways that are individualized and in context with the user's activity.

3. Use traditional media. Just be sure to use it for what it does best: big awareness to (relatively) big audiences in a short amount of time. And if you can't--or don't need to--go big? Try 1 + 2. If you do use traditional media, be sure it ties into something granular, personal, and meaningful online...not something ad-like.

When online advertising is no longer executed like offline advertising, I think we'll all be able to put our punk'd performance anxiety in the past.

Meanwhile, I'm with Ashton on at least this one thing.

Prior posts on ad deflation, earning attention and intrusive annoyance here, here and here.

Who's counting whom?: Four steps to reducing marketing metric uncertainty

Yes, it's Twitter again...on measurement. "Please make it stop!" you may say. Of course, just like reality TV or bad music, the urge to click the no-place-like-home button on your browser may be overcome by the can't-look-away power of Twitter's cyberlebrity status.

And if you are still reading, thanks. But let's get to the point. Twitter announced it is 'correcting follower and following counts' (here).

So What?

What does that have to do with marketing measurement? Presumably, spam accounts account for much of the 'data inconsistency' and 'artifacts' in the system Twitter mentions. But could it be that the data isn't what it seems?

Kudos to Twitter for recognizing an issue and attempting to deal with it. But what this reminds us is that measurement and metrics carry uncertainty.

Whether your metrics include page visits, permalinks or Twitter followers, many marketing metrics rely on data collected by 3rd parties...Twitter, Neilsen, Google, Quantcast, Comscore...and that means a degree of uncertainty.

And where there is uncertainty, it can be worth deploying some guidance. Here's 4 guides to marketing metrics that can help reduce-though not remove-the uncertainty:

• Establish ownership: whoever owns the business goals should own the metrics and the measurement activity...even if that means sourcing part of the activity to 3rd parties. If everyone is accountable, then noone is.
• Align measures with objectives: measurement should be relevant to the objective...awareness, while a prerequisite to sales, is not a congruent measure for a sales objective. Neither are Twitter followers, tweets, or hashtags mentioning your company's product.
• Define customer success: Not all marketing measures will be directly attributable to sales. In marketing's role as customer advocate, defining customer success measures matters (e.g., customer satisfaction, advocacy, engagement and collaboration).
• Create key performance indicators: No single metric or measurement tool defines success...A balanced scorecard of performance indicators can provide ongoing direction in evaluating the organization's [marketing campaign] performance...if all of the data comes from 3rd parties, then the KPI's are incomplete.

The Value of Media Coverage: Twitter equivalencies gone wild

TechCrunch, Advertising Age and others are running the headlines about Twitter getting $48 million--or even more--of media coverage in June (according to a report by VMS). Haven't we been here before with the notion of 'media equivalencies'?

Here's how it seems to work: Someone estimates the total impressions generated by the free--er, I mean earned--media coverage of a company in the news. Then, they apply some estimate of the cost per thousand (cpm) impressions that would be charged in paid media. The they add the words 'at least' and, voila', the paid media equivalency.

So What?

There are smart media and PR people who've addressed this general topic in depth (here, here, here). But the Twitter story also raises a couple of very specific questions for anyone interested in measurement, media, and the value of 'buzz':

1. If Twitter got this coverage for free, isn't that the real market value?

2. Is $6.77 cpm the new 'media equivalency unit' ($48million of value divided by 2.7million cpm units)...beyond that, what's the net present value of an impression online or off (see Marketing Themes for 2009 here)

3. Is a Twitter user worth $0.43 per month in media as part of a retention campaign? (number of unique visitors in June divided by $48million 'value').

4. Would acquiring a new Twitter user be worth $16 for each new user in media spend? ($48million in media value divided by the number of new users acquired in June).

5. Do the media companies owe Twitter $48million in 'value' for providing them with something to report (presumably the impressions Twitter stories earned were also paid for by some advertiser)?

Not to dis' the attempt to place a value on media coverage, but I think we can do better than overstating the value of media coverage or creating arbitrary monetary values for earned coverage.

Yahoos Facebooking: What's 1.5% of your life worth?

Forget segmentation + stereotypes for a moment. Forget our differences. Where we are all absolutely the same is in the number of hours in our day. 24 of them at last count. Each of us granted about 44,000 minutes a month to do with what we can or must.

And while that is certainly where we are all equal, where are different is how we choose to invest our time.

Which brings us to the question? What’s everyone doing with that time?

If you believe some of the headlines on Nielsen’s June report (here), then apparently, we are all Yahooing and Facebooking our lives away…and Googling and Microsofting too. Or not.

Using Neilsen’s numbers, I ran a quick calculation and found that the online user universe spent a mere 1.5% of their total hours of life visiting, viewing or otherwise engaged with the Top 10 online properties in June (*see math below). That’s good, right?

So What?

Even at only 1.5%, the top 10 online brands, as defined by Neilsen, capture an extraordinary amount of the total time available in a life…some claim time online is a waste of time, but that’s usually a statement about someone else’s time. Even allowing for the generalizations that come with averages and big numbers, a few questions stand out for marketers:

• How important is an online brand in one’s life? The top online brands are insufficient descriptions of what people are actually doing with their time: information seeking, instant messaging, commerce, socializing and games are just a few of the long tail activities that marketers must manage when opting for online engagement…and as big as Google is, it still only captures 0.002 of it’s typical user’s life each month.

• Is timeshare market share? Increasingly, the top online brand look to me like information utilities: aggregating ever greater numbers of services and properties, but maxing out the upper limit to the eyeballs they can captivate. Google gets 75% of the universe as an example. Monetizing time spent--rather than impressions or clicks--might encourage incumbents to carve up the online universe as part of a regulator-approved truce, not unlike energy and telecommunications. Still, if the biggest brands online together account for only 1.5% of our time, it’s no wonder some of them are struggling to monetize what they offer.

Figure: Timeshare by online brand (with apologies to E Tufte)

• Is there an online-only marketing strategy? As in any endeavour, the 98.5% of time not currently captured by the top 10 online brands will be the source of highly fragmented interests…including those that have no apparent online component (for instance, eating dinner with your family). Marketing that misses the mark will include marketing that forgets there is a lot of life beyond the network AND the top 10.

• What should we actually take from the numbers? Numbers on aggregated online usage should probably be viewed with healthy skepticism: it remains incumbent upon marketers (as humans) to question numbers that purport to describe how or why ‘people’ behave a certain way. Looking at Neilsen’s numbers for top 10 and eMarketer’s numbers for time spent online, the average active user is apparently spending 17.5% of their online time with the top 10 brands. The top 10 may be an easy media buy, but it isn't a majority understanding of what people do about anything.

In the end, it's incumbent upon all of us to remember that one's life is not merely a marketing void to be filled.

*The Math (All errors are mine)

• Total active online universe: 195,974,309 (per Nielsen)
• Total Monthly Hours Available: (30.41dx24hx195,974,309) = 14.3billion hours
• Total Monthly Hours of time spent on Top 10 Online properties = SUM (Nielsen unique visitors per property x Nielsen hours per month per property) = 208.6million hours
• Percent of life consumed by Top 10 brands: (14.3billion / 208.6million) = 1.5%
• Percent of online life consumed by the Top 10 brands: (top 10 brands total time)/(2h per day x active online universe).

Smiling at uncertainty: Auto ads + value deflation

With much the US auto industry now firmly in the surreal world of Washington, DC, it should come as no surprise that advertising is feeling the impact of the industry's troubles.

According to the Television Bureau of Advertising, local TV advertising from the automotive category--usually the strong number one local advertiser--was down a remarkable 52% from the same period last year (here). Only Food + Consumer Electronics categories were up among the top 25 advertiser categories (reflecting a back-to-basics move of twittering while eating, perhaps).

Back in January, I posted that one of five marketing trends we'd see was ad deflation among the pay-per-impression models online (here)...those pressures would seem to be accelerating in the traditional ad channels now, even as last summer foretold the decline in automobile advertising as imminent, if not quite present (here).

So What?

As ad reps now pursue landscapers, pawn brokers and plastic surgeons who have traditionally seen TV advertising prices as out of their league (here), it begs the question: what is the value of TV advertising?

The answer it seems, is that it is much less than the current market price. With local ad rate cards running at $6.66 to $27.29 cost per thousand impressions (depending on day part), effective rates are much lower for local dentists and plumbers now being courted by tv ad sales reps.

As marketers, we all undertand the importance of rationalizing advertising decisions using established goals and the means of measurement against them. But not every ad channel can deliver a directly measurable (i.e, causative) return on investment...in spite of years of rhetoric saying it could...the choice of channel may depend primarily on one's willingness to accept the very real uncertainty of not knowing the outcome of an investment before it comes out.

For local TV broadcasters, though, the auto industry's decline is contributing to a larger, more certain outcome in the pricing model: value deflation.

For a look at some 'legendary' auto advertising, harkening to a past that will of course remain there, check it:

GMC trucks (commercial)
by svarten

The Twitter Ratio: Listening, Telling, or Dialogue?

You open up your inbox find another 'JimSmith is following you on Twitter' message. Do you follow back?

Here's one way to decide that goes beyond a 'Follow everyone or noone strategy'...use the Twitter Ratio.

What? The Twitter Ratio is a simple (simplistic?) formula for determining whose talking, whose listening, and whose trying to have something to say. Or not.

Here's how it works:

1. Identify the ratio of those being followed to those following for a Twitter account.

2. Identify the ratio of updates to followers for the account.

3. When the ratio of those being followed to those following is below 1, flag as Teller.

4. When the ratio of those being followed to those following is above 1, flag as a Listener.

Now you can decide whether your new Twitter connection is a getter or a giver and you can assess the ratio against those to whom you've already connected (i.e., if you've followed a bunch of followers, then keep the streak alive and follow them!).

So What?

Three elements of a dialogue--digital or otherwise--include some form of asking, listening, and responding. Anything else can be construed as serial monologue or concurrent polylogues (aka everyone's talking but noone's listening). And while all things social need not include conversation out the wazoo, broadcasting alone isn;t exactly the definition of social media's next big thing.

So where does Twitter fit for business? Are tweets a sign of serial narcissism? Does a Retweet constitute a form of conversation? What about a direct reply? For marketers (i.e., companies), deciding on the use of Twitter as a tool for dialogue or broadcasting means taking stock of who you follow...and what you or they have to say.

Using the Twitter Ratio might help a company assess how it intends to use Twitter...with whom it wants to use it...and around what measures of success it will be evaluated.

Here's a sample of the ratios of those I am following:

Avg Followed: 14,621

Avg Following: 47,285

Twitter Ratio: 0.87

Update Ratio: 0.33

I am clearly following Tellers (sub 1.0 Twitter ratio). Interestingly, the number of updates to followers (The Update Ratio) indicates that the tellers are telling fairly frequently, especially among the large average number of followers...I've clearly chosen (subconsciously!) to use Twitter as another broadcast channel...as a listener. You?

Interface Design: Have it your way

Saman Ramahnian, An interactive AD at Crispin, Porter, Bogusky posted a Twitter notice of the new Burger King (aka BK) site--available in beta. (here).

So What?

Another burger joint's website gets a makeover, you might say. Except that this site actually takes the 'Have it your way' tagline and brings it to the interface.

Rather than force users to have BK site content the way the corporation would have them have i it (!), the BK site employs easy user controls (what's easier than a slider!) to adjust the priority of display for three areas:

1. Fun

2. Food

3. King (not MJ or Elvis, but the creepy dude from the commercials)

Noticeably missing are any direct linkages compelling a store visit (e.g., coupon/offer), but it does a nice job of packaging up the commericals and some user-engagement applications + games (remember subservient chicken?).

The interface embodies the best of useful, usable and desirable principles (prior post here).

Intriguingly, the sliders might even provide an interesting variation on analytics: by creating data from the slider's relative positions to one another, BK can perform a nifty little variation on mouse tracking to gauge the relative proportion of food, fun, and king to bring to the interface.

One can only imagine the dialogue during an analytics meeting about BK movie tie-ins:

"Fun sliders on override, Mr. Sulu! We need more fun, Scottie! Aye captain, I'm givin' her all she's got!"

See for yourself (here)

Perception vs. Reality: Function vs Philosophy

"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." -Hans Margolius

"Reality is only an illusion, albeit a very persistent one" -Albert Einstein

Here's a test for you. Check out this image (from Akiyoshi Kitaoka's site with many more like this):

What colors do you see?

Pink, orange? Others? If you said blue and green, then congratulations! Your perception is just as fallable as 100% of your fellow human beings. The blue and green spirals are the same color.

'No way' you say. Check it out for yourself in Photoshop if you like. You'll see that the RGB values of both spirals are exactly the same.

How can this be? Look closely at the boundary between the spirals moving left to right...you'll notice that the orange stripe doesn't cross into the apparently 'blue' spiral. That's the source of the illusion...the mind judges things based on what's around it and fills in the blanks...but that doesn't make it true.

So What?

It makes evolutionary sense that an organism might perceive the world by its immediate surroundings first and fill in the blanks. Afterall, most challenges to survival come from what's right in front of--or behind--you...and you may not have time to fill in the missing information about a growling bear's intent.

But for marketers, does survival mean that perception IS reality? That if we can control perception, we can control the reality of the survival of our brands, our products...our jobs?

Well, that depends...on whether you adopt "perception is reality" as a statement of function or philosophy.

Perception as functional consideration

From a functional perspective, perceptions are acknowledged as an influence that must be addressed in customer decision making.

GM (aka Government Motors) asked for trouble when it failed to deal with perceptions about product quality until, some would argue, it was too late (here).

In a functional context, perceptions are acknowledged as having their origins in the very real customer experiences that take place outside the scope of marketing. These experiences are often communicated among those who are closest to the experience: the customer and the communities to which the customer belongs (i.e., the basis for social media)...oftentimes with the experience gaps among the community members being filled in.

The good news is that a functional view of perception means that marketers can use facts to fill in the blanks that surround perceptual filters. Better yet, they can start by designing a positive customer experience and do marketing from there.

The obvious news is that facts aren't the same as assertions. If a company provides a crappy customer experience, no amount of advertising or communication to the contrary can unfill the blanks...in fact, in a globally connected, socially networked world, it might just make things worse.

Perception as a philosophy

For marketers who casually adopt a philosphy of perception as reality, well, good luck. Such a philosophy has a long, dark history of leveraing stereotypes about people's personality traits, values, and other, darker dimensions to assert control, exercise power and manipulate people as if they were, well, not people.

And in this day, no one wants to be pigeonholed without their consent.

At least that's my perception. What's yours?

SAM I am: What did you think of those green eggs + ham?

Sentiment Analysis--or opinion mining--typically involves linguistic analysis to discern what people think about something. One's sentiments are usually discerned from the language one uses when referring to some said thing.

Offline, sentiment analysis is something that humans are actually pretty good at. Of course, humans also use visual cues like facial expressions and body language to supplement familiarity and trust when we interpret another's sentiments...and even then we can get it wrong. So it's no wonder that machines are notoriously poor at understanding one's sentiments.

The challenge is daunting: The web and its social media spawn have created a seller's market in opinions (the irony of making this statement on a blog is, well, ironic). And while the difference between fact and opinion may seem clear much of the time, the practical aspects of teasing apart the two in software are not so easily algorithmized (?!).

Enter SAM: The sentiment analysis manager.

Teragram Linguistic Technologies (now a division of the statistical analysis giant SAS) developed the SAM tool to sort through the social media morass and help brand managers understand what its customers really think. It's the latest in a series of tools, such as Jodange's Top of Mind (which we're using in trial mode now), and others by Attensity, Clarabridge, and Lexalytics that attempts to understand who has an opinion, how intensely they hold it, and what trends develop overtime.

So What?

Asking for an opinion is nothing new to marketers...the challenge, as it always has been, is determining what--if anything--you are prepared to do about it. Sentiment analysis software and services are different than traditional forms of opinion seeking in the following several of many ways:

1. Minimize selection bias because they do not require respondents
2. Connect opinions from multiple sources to provide a picture of The Crowd's Wisdom
3. Support diverse visualizations of opinion including heat maps, realtionship graphs and trending charts.

Most importantly, successful development..and deployment...of sentiment analysis tools will enable companies to do what they must to learn from a market that can't be told what to think: listen to it.

Sample heat map of opinion for a client (generated using Top of Mind):

Searching for meaning: What's a browser, anyway?

Some Google employees did a bit of person-on-the-street interviewing to answer the question: Do people know what a browser is?

The video on YouTube (below) is quite instructive. When asked 'What is a browser?', the answers ranged from the expected to the sublime:

1. A website

2. A search engine

3. Google

4. Yahoo

5. The internet, where you can find anything

The creepiest respondent is at 2m20s in the video.

So What?

The browser wars being of great importance among the geek class, these admittedly anecdotal evidences indicate the widespread ignorance about basic questions of technology. They also call into question the very relevance of efforts to brand a browser...or to regulate it (see here ).

Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer...what they have in common is that they enable users to do something quite similar: access information by pushing the underlying technology behind a simple user interface.

In some ways, they have been so successful at hiding the technology--and supporting a useful, usable, and desirable experience--that they have made their 'product' brand invisible--or at least unmemorable. The fact that many people confuse browsers with search engines only supports the notion of distinctions without a difference when it comes to the primacy of utility in the digital space.

Beyond digital, the idea of branding technology is a challenge. For instance, I suspect that many of us would also fail to recognize the brand of brake pads used in our automobiles...and yet many of us rely on them daily for a very specific and important action without thinking about them. For most, it is the auto brand--via its brake engineering, sourcing and assembly decisions--that stands behind the overall braking (i.e., handling) experience...not the manufacturer of the pad itself.

A case might be made that a Branded House (standing behind the overall experience) beats a House of Brands when the user experience involves a great many complex components aggregated in support of a user's actions.

What's a PC afterall?

Making money with Twitter: Ending up somewhere else

"If you don't know where you are headed, you'll probably end up somewhere else." -Yogi Berra

Much ado has been made by Twitter-haters about the self-indulgent, ambient-intimacy of posts about latte's, bedtimes and teeth-bushing habits...especially if you aren't Ashton Kuchner or Oprah (who now, like Sting, Bono and some Brazilian soccer stars, requires only one name for recognition).

And while there are obvious insignificancies (?) filling much bandwidth, there is money being generated thru Twitter: Dell, for one, claims to have made more than $3 million from it's Twitter posts (here).

How does that work?

Simply, it works the same way the 1999 Web worked...except you have 140 characters to make it happen:

1. Post information about products, specials, offers and information with a link to online shopping cart.

2. Track referring source for visitor (i.e., where they came from).

3. Analyze completed transaction values against referring sources.

Of course it can be a little more complicated to assess bounce rates, transaction flows, direct + repeat visits, but that's all part of having a plan against objectives...

So What?

Hard goods companies (like Dell or Amazon) have a more direct measure of the money generated from their online presence. But even service enterprises can assign some measure of value to their Twitter feed.

Looking at who has chosen to follow, retweet or otherwise engage a company's twitter feed is not so different than analyzing web metrics associated with blogs, company sites or--dare I say it--direct marketing efforts.

As it turns out, measuring Twitter's value to a company is no different than measuring any other element of a company's marketing communications. Or as Yogi Bear might say: "Boo Boo, if you don't have an objective for your Twitter journey, you'll surely end up somewhere else."

To end up on a few prior posts about metrics and measurement, see here, here, here, or here

To end up the week in Jellystone, check out Yogi Bear: Episode 1

Lipstick on the pigs

Where the piggies go, so goes the poke. Market malfunctions from a fiscal flu among swine. Unelected vets debase our value in a world of trade, making paper promises fatter than the hog.

"Only a crisis in confidence" the chattering class declares, a stress test proves it. Change the game, mod the rules, a loss moves to profit.

When called to account, we're all slaughtered at the hands of Keynes.

Jackson Pollack gets his Xbox on: Project Natal and disappearing technology

Last week we posted about edutainment games in marketing (here). Today, we're looking at a different take on entertainment platforms: the Xbox360 project known as Natal and what, if anything, it means to marketing.

At the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) being held this week (everything you wanted to know here), Microsoft demo'd its vision of the future of home entertainment as seen through the Xbox360 platform. And while the current incarnation of Xbox's world is largely popularized via male-oriented war games like Call of Duty and Halo, project Natal sees the Xbox going where no other entertainment system has gone before...away, sort of.

The biggest idea here is that project Natal lets you...as in your body...serve as the game controller. From motion detection to voice recognition to object scanning, the future of Xbox is one where the controller disappears and the Xbox becomes more, well, HAL2000 like. And while Wii fans may incorrectly claim 'been there, done that', the Natal vision is a bit more than just an accelerometer attached to the interwebz via a short range wireless connection.

In the demos, Microsoft showed how full-body gaming might look. They even demonstrated how full-body painting might unleash your inner abstract expressionist (see clip embedded below). I hate clothes shopping. In one demo, Natal promises to let me try clothes on at online stores and use my high-def, eleventy-billion inch LCD monitor as a preening mirror.

So What?

Video visions of the future like Xbox's--or even tradeshow demos--have a history of failing to fully describe the future that actually arrives (where's my jet pack, for instance). What project Natal exemplifies is that for technology to be truly impactful on a large scale, it has to become invisible...making that happen is no simple feat.

By placing the Xbox experience in the person (versus the other way around), Natal allows the Xbox brand to be as differentiated as the individual in whom it's embedded. In other words, the personal context of one's experience using the Xbox-of-the-near-future will define the brand in ways impossibly complex. What defines my Xbox experience if I use it in Natal-world to shop for a new suit? Is it the online store that I purchase from...the actual physical good...or the compliments I was expecting when I wear my purchase, having confidentally (and virtually) tried it on, online?

The technology in that scenario (including the technology that is the suit!), increasingly, becomes a commoditized, invisible component of this complex, personal experience...until it fails of course.

For marketers, Natal provides yet another glimpse at the challenges facing traditional approaches to differentiation, especially when technology is involved: to be successful on a large scale, you may have to lose a bit of brand identity to that of your customers--or supply and distribution partners.

Thus, as brands and products become part of ever-more complex, interconnected systems, surviving may mean standing for less...for the lucky few who exist at the top of the pyramid, it may mean that to stay there they had to let go of something...lest it be taken. In that regard, the future is already present.

For more clips on Natal, including Steven Spielberg weighing in on the future of entertainment, see here.

Games people play: Principles of edutainment

"Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life." -Hannah Arendt

I'm not sure what that quote means, but on the auspicious occassion of the 300th RKDNA post, let's have some fun. 

Specifically, let's talk about games--and then play one. Or, if you like, let's play a game and then talk about it.

Game Types

Online games come in many forms...shooters (Quake), racers (Mario Cart), puzzles (Bejewelled), collectors (Pac Man), Strategy (Call of Duty), Adventure and others (like Chess), based on traditional board games. There are single player, multiplayer and Massive Multiplayer Online Games, aka MMOGs. If you are new to online games, get a glimpse at part of an expansive category universe at  addictinggames.com or Yahoo games . 

Regardless of type, games can play a useful role in education...and not just the kind of education that caters to the K-12 kids. Product education--on mode of action, features and benefits, and other topics in marketing's domain--need not be the dry lecture of collateral, ad copy or hyperspeed voice over in radio and tv spots. 

Principles for online edutainment in marketing

We've built several games as support for client marketing campaigns. And while there are certainly more credible opinions on incorporating marketing into gaming titles, we'll limit this post to the subject of incorporating games into marketing campaigns. Specifically, games that seek to educate and entertain about a product or brand, though not necessarily in that order. See a couple of prior game-related posts here and here.

How might one approach games as edutainment in a marketing context? For the games we've developed, a simple set of design principles has guided us:

1. Simplicity: Rules + the gameplay itself should be simple to understand and execute. 

2. Excitement: Goals should be incorporated around short and long-term progress to build and sustain excitement...using multiple levels, variations in speed, time limits, scoring bonuses, and increasing number--if not complexity--of objects.

3. Consistency: Maintaining consistency in the type of game (e.g., a shooting game doesn't suddenly become a racing game), and in the user interface (i.e., the game controls) helps eliminate distraction and un-funness (is that a word?). 

4. Feedback: Of course games should be interactive. But they should also provide feedback on success or failure during play. Ideally the feedback is tied to the educational component of the game (e.g., it should be clear when a player gets the points and the points should be associated with the learning). Feedback can take the form of interstitial messages between game levels or visual clues during certain events of the game.

5. Gemutlich and Shadenfreude: (why, bless you!) Ideally, games for marketing engage by embedding rewards for both the intrinsically motivated (e.g., building a high score through multiple plays, and increasing familiarity with the game) AND for those whose motivations are more extrinsically motivated (as in taking pleasure at beating someone else's high score).

6. Fun: The most important principle is that the game has to be fun to play. Of course fun is in the mind of the beholder, but certainly little education will take place if one's mind is not open... and there is nothing quite like a lack of fun to close a mind quickly. Mostly in the marketing context, this means balancing the entertainment against the education...when a particular education objective goes unfun, then it has to be subordinated lest the entire idea of entertainment is undermined. Online, unfun usually shows up as a page bounce or short dwell time, both of which are measures of relevance that can help in a test-learn-redeploy environment.

  

Of course, the investment in the game should be matched to the metrics for success. In our experience, our clients tend to be willing to spend a little...not alot...on edutainment.  And we try to use the principles above to guide games that, at whatever budget, deliver an experience that will leave a player wanting more.

Let the game begin

We'd like it if you would play one of our recent games...hopefully, you will like it. Tell us what you think...love, hate, indifference? Does the game deliver an entertaining and educational experience? What could we have done better?

Play Pest Invaders (here)