Last few weeks I have been speaking a lot about social media and its application across domains and brands. This week I want to talk of something that several would love to be part of. We have worked with some top notch clients in defining their long term road map of innovation and defining areas that they would play in future. Our contribution in this process was to evaluate the opportunity landscape for these markets that the client was evaluating.
The opportunity landscape analysis is based on a 360 degree evaluation of the industry. It starts with a process of understanding components of the opportunity landscape, defining the players in the industry, understanding the future disruptive trends that will impact growth and lastly the consumer behavior patterns that will shape the usage and adoption of the category.
Tall order? I am happy to say our teams have evolved an excellent approach to size a variety of markets. We have sized the hair oil market in GCC countries, Indonesia, Africa on one hand, the bio active paper market should it become a commercialized product for starters. We have also sized the airport LED market if consumer driven examples were not enough to impress you.
I called the analysis a 360 degrees approach- how so? We rely on a combination of secondary research; some thought leader interviews and social media as a proxy of consumer behavior as data sources to understand any market. The uniqueness comes from understanding consumer behavior such as purchase frequency, propensity to buy, value sought, adoption of product categories from social media and then being able to quantify them in the modeling approach.
Let us examine all the steps.
Understanding the components of the opportunity landscape- The starting step of any market assessment project is to be able to understand the components and then size them. Here again, we have used a combination of data sources to understand the components. In one case we were asked to understand the health and wellness market. All our standard research techniques revealed segments around healthcare, beauty care, food, physical fitness and hygiene for starters. We used social media to uncover additional segments such as financial wellness, environmental wellness and spiritual wellness as additional spaces that consumers associate with wellness.
Once the components are understood, the next step is to size them using a market modeling technique that can rely on demand side or supply side analysis of the market. The supply side analysis is a well used method in the industry that relies on understanding players in the market, their sizes and then using them to estimate the rest of the market. The demand side needs us to get into an assessment of the potential consumer base that would have the propensity to use/ buy a product. Let me explain with an example. In one of the cases we were asked to evaluate the market for a product that would help consumers measure the quality of their sleep. Since this was a market dominated by medical devices, we did not have too many existing devices that defined the market well. At best, they gave us a current view of the market and not the potential of the market. We used the starting point as the population either suffering from sleep disorders or those pre occupied about their health. We applied the filter of higher income as these were higher priced products. We used social media to understand the propensity of the people to adopt such products, this quantified number gave us the final potential population size.
One of our clients wanted to understand the size of the forensic DNA test kits for crime. We used a two step approach, one started with number of crimes in a market and the fact that drove the need for stain collection and testing in that market. The second approach needed to assess the market based on the number of arrests made in a market and the number of new people into the offender database. The new offenders all needed DNA testing and added to the total market assessment.
My teams talk of all kinds of markets that they have prided themselves on sizing. Some examples are neutron detectors market, sensors for heat, temperature and air quality, LED lighting markets for airports, cord banking market, forensic DNA tests for crime and several more. This is our sense of humor- we are weird that way!
- by Priya Venkataraman
Conversations Multiplies, Numbers Speak
In a world where we measure, analyze, and compare anything and everything – have we completely understood the power of digital media in building a successful brand? In the past 4-5 years, as Facebook and Twitter started conquering the social networking space, there has been an uproar about utilizing consumer conversations for market research. There are various research and studies which talk about different ways of utilizing this data to identify the Share of Voice for a brand by considering the number of mentions in comparison to its competitors, or measuring the sentiment by understanding the tone of conversation. A few companies have been successful in applying advanced analytics techniques to Facebook and Twitter data, and predicted Box-office hits and holiday season behaviors. Still, I hear a lot of questions from clients:
- Can you combine the traditional sales data with digital media insights to derive better understanding of sales performance?
- Can digital media explain the drivers of peaks and troughs in sales cycles?
- Can you enrich the behavioral segments by understanding their unmet needs?
The single answer is “YES” – you can do all of these.
At EmPower InnoLabs, we have not only succeeded in quantifying the unstructured Social Media data but also integrated it with traditional datasets such as transactional, sales, or survey data.
The more we explore the applications of advanced techniques in digital media data, the insights are more powerful and actionable. An application of Factor Analysis in a diapers study revealed that consumers perceive “Absorbent Capacity”, “Comfort” and “Smell” to be more related and important than “Price” which has very distant relation among these themes though we usually expect the other way.
In many of the consumer perception studies that I have worked on, Multi Dimensional Scaling (MDS) is applied extensively in an unconventional way. For example, in one of the market entry assessment studies, a CPG company wanted to understand the “Ayurveda” market in Europe. It was found that customers associate “treatment” to long duration chronic diseases whereas “prevention” was more associated to the benefits derived out of ingredients.
In a recent Promo Analysis Project for a Pharma company it was found that, on a particular month there was a dip in sales for a particular drug. The sales and promo data had shown reasonably good correlations and were not able to explain the dip at that particular time. We ventured into digital media and collected the conversations on the particular drug for the specified time period during which the analysis was executed. This data once integrated to the sales and promo data threw an amazing insight – the particular drug had a lot of negative sentiment in the digital media due to its side effects and patients were asking their doctor for an alternate option!! This way, we integrated qualitative data into time series-based regression analysis successfully.
The need for “actionable intelligence” is greater than ever and there are many opportunities out there still unexplored. Integrating digital media and traditional analytics for research is very much possible and if you would like to discuss these thoughts (or your own alternative suggestion), please contact innolabs@empowerresearch.com and we will be happy to help.
- by Anupama Muraleedharan
Life Beyond Adverse Events And Reporting
Last week I wrote about Black swan events in social media and how it had the power to destroy brands and countries. I was feeling very good about accomplishing this blog piece- when my boss subtlety pointed out to me – that no discussion of negative virality in social media is complete without covering adverse event and its reporting impact in the pharma industry. Like all points made by bosses I thought it was good one but grudgingly admitted into my list of things to think about!
So here I am, ready to talk about adverse events of drugs in social media.
MedWatch, the reporting cell of the FDA, captures all instances of adverse events from a variety of sources for the year. There were around 758,890 reports received by the Adverse Event reporting system (AERS) during 2010, of these 673,259 were entered into the system.
The FDA mandates the following five data elements be included in any reporting procedure:
- an identifiable patient
- an identifiable initial reporter - patient, a family member, or some other person (e.g., doctor, pharmacist).
- identity and contact information for the responsible person (i.e., the manufacturer, packer, or distributor submitting the serious adverse event report to FDA)
- a suspect drug
- a serious adverse event or fatal outcome
How do the adverse event and the reporting of it manifest itself in social media? There are two angles, I wish to offer here.
The first angle is of the prevalence or occurrence of adverse events in social media.
In one of the past projects we had done, we found that we had around 17.1 million searches on asthma for a particular period of time. During the same time, there were around one million active conversations on asthma for the same period. This works out to be around 5% of them actively participating in conversations.
We also found that of those conversations actively talking about asthma only 10% of them spoke about drugs and its usage in their conversations.
Negative conversations of drugs vary from 20% to 2% of all drug related coverage. Of these negative conversations, EmPower had not found the conditions for adverse reporting to our clients at any time.
So this translates, on an average, to around 1 person with a negative experience among every 1700 people interested in asthma.
The most common forms that negative conversations take place in social media are around dosage and difficulty in administration, shopping around for alternate medications and the inability of the patients to take the burden of side effects. As you can see, of the above, side effects form the closest to adverse events and they form a still smaller portion of the total social media presence.
The second angle is of the reporting of these small but significant events from social media.
The four identifiers of adverse events are almost impossible to achieve in social media. EmPower has found profile information on conversations to an empirical 40% of all discussions. Of these, the markers of identity as defined by the FDA such as personally identifiable information of the reporter and the patient are almost never available, due to several security concerns of the online medium. This makes for impossible reporting.
So the big point to be made here is AE reporting is a small portion of all the things that happen around a drug in social media. It is a small but very important portion. We have demonstrated this successfully, by offering negativity tracking solutions for several drugs in the industry.
This leads us to the next crucial question of, how can pharma companies use the tracking of negative sentiments from social media.
Let us start with an example of a drug in the constipation category. One of the patients using one of the drugs was complaining of side effects like crampy abdominal pain and bloating and was considering quitting medication. However, on advice of other patients, he discovered incorrect dosage as the primary cause of the side effect. Once that was corrected, he found the same drug to be effective. We have sometimes found side effects arising out of the lack of knowledge on dosage and administration and not necessarily the performance of the drug.
This example illustrates the power of the influencers to help fellow sufferers in their disease lifecycle. Several pharma companies have used this influencer networks successfully to provide the support for their drugs. They have used this network of influencers to educate patients on the dosage and administration of drugs and built a case for that drug that have moved beyond the condition to improving quality of life parameters.
This holds true not just among patients, but among physician networks too. We have discovered the most common cause of the drug complaint among physicians is the pricing or the lack of clear guidelines to treat the condition when it exists with other co-morbidities. Here again, it forms a great case of clearer communication amongst HCP’s.
In conclusion, pharma companies need to listen to social media discussions of their drugs not just for AE- but use this opportunity to understand their patients and physicians better and hopefully to communicate to them better.
- by Priya Venkataraman
Enough of good things have been said about social media and I as a social media consultant – am a strong supporter of all of it and more! Virality of messages have successfully shaped brands and taken campaigns to unprecedented heights. It has made stars of normal people and taken brands off their pedestals. It has brought down barriers of information generation and it has leveled the playing field.
We have also known and seen the dark side of the viral nature of the media. We have heard of Dell Hell and the entire Middle East uprising started and fed by social networking sites. It has led brands to devise new ways of connecting with their consumers beyond the norms of marketing.
For a moment let us examine the base reason underlying this negative focus of social media messages. Human brain, according to some researchers has been programmed to recognize and act on negative / crisis situations. So the basic human behavior and open nature of the medium does have a tendency to focus on the negative or crisis and then spread it. Is this situation new due to the online world? Even before the advent of social media, negative messages for the brand used to spread by word of mouth and traditional media. What makes this situation unique then? The fact that is consumer generated and often with none of the pre existing barriers in the other traditional media or marketing world.
I was reading the book “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He sums up the Black Swan event as something that hits you from the realm of “what you do not know”. It is defined by three main characteristics rarity, extreme impact and retrospective predictability. If I take this idea of the “Black Swan” to social media I can define it as situations that are bad for the brand or corporate, extremely innocuous and have the tendency to be ignored. Let us look at a couple of these rare and innocuous events.
When the Greenpeace started a campaign against Kit Kat for its unsustainable palm oil sourcing practices, the adverse reaction of Nestle to the Youtube video posted and thereafter the reaction of the person managing the facebook fan page snowballed into a large protest situation for the brand. One video that was first taken off YouTube was all that it took to start the tide of negativity for the brand. The surprising part is this was not the first time that Greenpeace clashed with Nestle over its practices, but what really turned the tide was the viral reactions it drew from the people and ultimately resulting in a campaign to boycott Nestle products.
Similarly, the Middle East uprising has been fed by the rise of social media. Six months ago if someone had written about the use of Twitter and Facebook and its role in the Arab uprising, I would have been skeptical. I would have quoted facts on the low Internet penetration and regimented access to make my point of how it would never work. Six months later, we know that journalists, university students and opposition to the current regime in those countries have been communicating the events via social media. The role of facebook and twitter has been established beyond any doubt.
Social media is the great global leveler. It does not matter which geography the 20 year old who tweets and social networks comes from, the fact that they have grown up on technology is very important. Hence messages that was previously very contextual for geographies have the tendency to spread across globally. In both the cases of Nestle Kit Kat and the “Jasmine revolution” the event that triggered it was very small and almost mundane- but with the aid of social media spread with great negative impact to the brand and countries stability.
We, at EmPower Research believe that Black Swan events can happen to any brand corporate and country. Hence, we offer monitoring and negativity tracking solutions to all our clients. In the case of a large food and beverages company we track the corporate negativity index in a list of key sites. We wait for an inflection point before we trigger reports for customer support or corporate communications or brand teams to action on. These reports focus on the reasons for the negativity and over a period of time we are able to track the corporate reputation of the brand.
Will we ever able to foresee these events to be able to warn our clients adequately? Might not. Will we able to track the inflection point so that clients can action on before it becomes a crisis? Absolutely yes.
- by Priya Venkataraman
Recently, I attended ExL Pharma’s Digital West Conference in San Francisco. Debjani Deb, Managing Partner spoke at this conference (Download presentation). Here are some notes from my interactions with pharma industry executives at this well attended, and interesting conference.
- While we have a long way to go, I was very pleased to see how far we have come (though pharma companies may not believe it ! ). The conversation was no longer around how to handle AE reporting. Most companies have realized that they need to apply the same principals as they do with other channels and have a process in place to report. If they find an AE, and it meets the 4 conditions, they report it
- FDA regulations are no longer awaited with bated breath. Companies have developed stringent internal policies and are following them rather than playing the waiting game
- Realization that digital is yet another channel, treating it as yet another channel – albeit with different rule of higher engagement and fewer controls
- Citizen journalism is here to stay – recognize it and be pro-active and not reactive. There is a new breed of opinion leaders shaping perceptions, awareness and consideration. Recognize them, hear what they have to say and engage with them
- Payors play a large role as influencers – incorporate them into your strategies
- Think Digital not social. Mobile is big and about to get bigger as stakeholders interact with each other and consume information in different ways
- Understanding stakeholders before starting any initiative online – what they need, when do they need it, where are they looking for it. Don’t start initiatives for the sake of it
- Measurement is necessary, but first figure out the objective and then measure against it
- Its very important to listen – listen to learn from, and listen to engage with stakeholders
- by Vrinda Deval
The Pen Is No Longer Mightier Today!
In today’s world of jargon, I have found a new one for myself – as I help clients in understanding media behavior, I realize I am now a mediacrat. I delve into various forms of communication vehicles and try to identify nuances for my clients to improve their business decisions, on various matters.
While performing this role, I am reminded of journalists and reporters of the past era like Mark Tully (BBC), Anita Pratap (CNN). They were quite powerful in their times as their pen would drive individual minds and seed opinions in a certain direction. The column-centimeter was the ultimate battleground as journalists turned opinion leaders and often made heroes or zeroes of virtually anything; be it a government, head of state, celebrity or the common man on the street. They were the warriors of what is often called the Fourth Estate or more commonly the Press. In India, the practice of putting stickers titled “PRESS” on vehicles is somewhat of a prestige and carries on, to this day. This is done to send a subtle warning to all about the occupant of the car and what he/she could do with the backing of this profession.
However, times are changing. Today, you may want to invest in a sticker titled “e-JOURNALIST” as a new weapon has emerged to take over the press warriors – I call it e-ink.
e-ink or social media in its more popular form denotes the ability of the common man or anybody at that to shape opinion by sharing their thoughts, inputs, feelings, trials, tribulations, critique, etc. on the ever-accessible Internet. While the traditional press could sometimes wield some clout in starting the thought process among its readers, e-ink allows any thought process to get documented, shared, discussed and disseminated to a much larger audience, and also those that do not have access to the original traditional media piece. This makes this medium truly powerful and a clear game-changer. While the traditional media clout is restricted to its readership, which is typically a smaller sub-section of the population, e-ink has no boundaries and can be infinite in reach as it is fuelled by many like-minded human carriers who amplify the author’s point of view through several networks like Twitter, Facebook, delicious, dig, reddit, blogs, forums, etc. basically, it is the H1N1 virus of the digital world and can either harm/benefit the context in which it is used.
Net net, the verdict is clear – the pen might be mightier than the sword, but e-ink is the clear winner in today’s times.
EmPower’s clients recognize this phenomenon and have engaged with us for multiple needs – most of them want to be clued into e-ink behavior with respect to their categories, brands and their overarching corporate identity, itself. EmPower has pioneered several methodologies to assist clients in understanding the scope, extent, influence, outcome and impact of both the traditional press and e-ink. This helps our clients to understand how their business decisions are dealt with in both forms of media and more importantly, how one media’s reaction is played out by the other. These are very exciting forms of research in today’s times and as you can gauge, boredom is not an option 
Our methodologies like PRISM, ASPIRE, SMMART help us to identify critical decision making points like tonality, perception, awareness, reconsideration and influence in both forms of media for various programs that our clients have seeded in the form of both offline and online initiatives. While traditional press opinion is typically very scientific and judged on hard facts, social media or e-ink reveals that perception can also quite often get crafted basis softer issues in consumer’s mind. Another interesting phenomenon is that e-ink is more often used for poor product/service/brand experience than for praise. This again underscores the importance of e-ink for today’s firm. I need not cite case studies here to emphasize the force of e-ink. The best possible case is probably that of the Twitter Revolution that brought down a nation – Egypt. Need I say more……
EmPower also helps clients with Pareto analysis of media – by identifying the 20% of those opinion generators that drive 80% of opinion among the mass online population on the strength of their sheer popularity, reach, expertise and goodwill. These so-called influencers are typically either journalists or publication outlets themselves in traditional press or could be a blogger/forum/twitter handle in the e-ink space. EmPower has very strong credentials in this space across multiple domains in various geographies. In summary, EmPower Research is well placed to harness the power of e-ink to help today’s corporates in their business activity.
- By Arun Swamy
Does My Opinion Count?
Does it matter I do not like Aishwarya Rai and love chocolates? Does it matter I like brand X, read Mills& Boons and that I am 33 years old ?
As a consumer, I wonder- am I important to a marketer? Do I fall into a segment definition that would make my opinion on a brand/ category / topic matter for that marketer to do something about me? Is my opinion on facebook, part of the quantitative insights that make the brand or the aha’s that make up the insights?
These questions are interesting to me as a researcher.
Primary research is clear that there is quantitative or qualitative research. Quantitative research picks up a population frame from a universe, samples it and generates quantitative analysis of the brand/ category/ topic. Qualitative analysis takes a small sample and uses them to understand a topic in more detail and possibly generate a hypothesis from it.
Social media can do both. Basis the opinions generated by millions of people of any topic of interest, we can generate the quantitative analysis for the brands. By listening to a few influential people talk about the brand we can help generate hypothesis for further testing. That is good news, but how can that be done?
We at EmPower Research have learnt that we can borrow some principles from our well established primary research cousins. Let us take an example of a research project that needs us to measure a brand or categories performance in social media. Ideally, we would look at all conversations on a brand or category and then analyse what is being said. Inspite of all the tools in existence in the market; to mine all relevant social media conversations is an exercise fraught with errors. So we do the next best thing, we set a population frame using search strings and then pick out a sample for our reading and analysis. This is the STRANDS methodology that we have used across multiple clients successfully.
One of our clients wanted to understand social media conversations around severe allergic asthma. We defined an exhaustive search string and used this across multiple social media channels to mine all relevant content- population frame set.
We discovered that stakeholder conversations fell into a patient lifecycle of pre diagnosis, diagnosis, treatment and lifestyle. We used the stratified sampling methodology to ensure adequate representation across social media channels; strata representation from each of the patient lifecycle stages; adequate representation of stakeholder and lastly the brands representation.
We then used the sample to read and provide quantitative analysis and insights for the client. This might sound simple, but believe me, we have taken years to get it right and convince our clients about the validity of this research approach. Is this fool proof, of course not? Remember social media research pertains to opinion of those people who participate online only, for starters.
What are the areas that social media turns out to be a more powerful than traditional research. To understand consumer segments (what do moms think, how do teens perceive charity), topics that consumers do not react favorably to or forced to react favorably when questioned(sustainability, fertility anyone?). That is a topic for another blog…
- By Priya Venkataraman
Social Media – The Game Changing Beast!
I received an invitation to a conference the other day and the mailer described the conference as an event where stakeholders will be gathering to discuss the future of “a trend that is being described as the biggest thing to happen post the Industrial Revolution”. And guess what that trend was – Social Media! For days I had been thinking about the magnitude of the impact that social media has had on the lives of individuals, businesses, institutions, almost everything – and finally this descriptor very aptly summed up what I had been trying to fathom and articulate for a while!
Traditional boundaries and rules of communication are quickly changing as social media rages like wild fire and challenges all pre-set norms both in the personal and the business communications space. Increasing penetration of the internet across the globe, along with the proliferation of mobile connectivity and applications, is fueling the growth of social media and making it an all-pervasive phenomenon that allows people to be connected and exchange ideas, opinions, experiences, likes, dislikes, anything/anytime/anywhere. The statistics for social media usage are quite mind-boggling too. According to www.insidefacebook.com, there are 21,655 companies on Facebook and 550 million Facebook users worldwide – and this number is only growing at breakneck speed! The last I checked, Twitter was estimated to have 200 million users, generating 110 million tweets a day and handling over 800,000 search queries per day
A few years back the advent of weblogs revolutionized the way people expressed their opinions and thoughts on the World Wide Web – making everyone hail it as the new media which defied the limitations of time and space that encumbered traditional media content. Now blogs are almost passé and is looked at as “old” social media that does not have the speed, virality, agility that micro-media such as Twitter or social networking tools such as Facebook have. If blogs were considered fast and viral once upon a time, the new forms of social media are getting exponentially faster, better, much more viral, connecting people across the globe through networks that are unimaginable. To add to it all, the social media frenzy is now catching up with people of all ages, genders, nationalities, professions, and is not limited to the young, tech savvy upper crust only anymore. It is allowing the free-flow expression of pure, unsolicited and undiluted opinions and sentiments of all social media participants from diverse backgrounds on products, brands, services, companies, ideas, governments, regimes, public figures, just about anything and everything possible!
This outpouring of individual expressions through a very fluid and easy to use medium has resulted in rapidly fuelling and shaping public opinion on myriad topics/issues. A single conversation or comment can suddenly gain momentum and gather a lot of supporters or detractors on the way. This can make or mar the future of whatever/whoever is the subject of conversation within no time. Look at what happened in Egypt. The uprising in Egypt is an example of how social media stoked the fire of rebellion and helped mobilize thousands of people that eventually brought down the ruling government. Social media was not the cause of the rebellion but the enabler that brought thousands of people together and of course the rest of what happened in that region is now history. The point to recognize here is that if social media has the power to bring down governments, it can certainly also be proactively used by entities to influence peoples’ choices during the democratic process of elections and help form governments too! The same principle applies to influencing consumer choices for anything that they need to select/choose/buy.
There is no longer any doubt that the volatile opinion of the masses can be easily shaped and influenced through even seemingly very innocuous social media comments and can have completely unpredictable, far-reaching, positive or negative effects on the fate of the entity being discussed. Hence marketers, PR professionals, governments, non-profit and for-profits organizations, are all sitting up and trying to get their arms around this relatively new yet un-suppressible phenomenon that seems to be permeating every aspect of our lives. Given the ubiquitous and seemingly omnipotent nature of this medium, organizations and institutions both in the private and public sector are scrambling to tame this beast and preempt damage to reputation, avert crises situations, and save their fame and fortune. The smarter organizations are however going several steps ahead and looking at social media as a tremendous window of opportunity. They are harnessing the power of social media to not only avert the dangers that the medium poses, but also to proactively influence stakeholders to consciously make affirmative choices for what these organizations have to offer over that of their competitors’ offerings, grow the loyalty base, grow the influencer/advocates base, create amplifiers in social media who will carry positive messages about them and help enhance mindshare, reputation, support, sales, revenue, etc.
EmPower has been doing pioneering work in social media listening and research over the last several years. While some of our clients are still only in the social media listening phase and want us to simply monitor chatter about them, other more advanced user clients regularly engage us to do much more involved research studies for them using our proprietary social media methodologies and frameworks that we have created over time. Such research studies include but are not limited to perception and reputation tracking, KOL/KIB identification, market segmentation, market opportunity assessment, purchase intent determination, brand tracking, etc. With the increasing awareness and recognition of the threat and opportunity that this medium presents, we are seeing a growing number of organizations across industry sectors jumping on to the social media research bandwagon and coming to us for help. They are realizing that there is no turning ones back to this beast – the only choice left is to confront it and make the most of what it has to offer! Are YOU there yet?
- By Shoma Bakre
Having always looked at Social media as an aid to research rather than a medium I personally participated in, to a certain extent there was always a distance in my viewing of it.
This changed when I finally persuaded myself to enroll in facebook (ofcourse this move got partially foiled since my 70 year old mom very soon followed me, and now keeps commenting on all my “beer loving” status updates with things like – yes, it makes u fat! Yes, it increases your cholesterol!) From being only a sporadic participant in the beginning, I have now morphed to it now becoming almost an all consuming passion – and the big reason is this virtual community of lovers of a certain period and genre of music. This group is a) ever increasing, b) highly interactive and c) very demanding (they play many games and have quizzes, and now, having established expertise of sorts, if I cannot participate in one of them, due to, say, a meeting, I get messages/ pokes and all other demands for participation!) What was even more interesting to me was an actual meet and greet the group conducted in my city last weekend which was attended by almost a 1000 people!!!
Interestingly, this ties in with a lot of work EmPower Research is doing on virtual communities/ advocacy and influence identification in social media. One of the interesting trends as an example is this thing called “Mass Mingling” which is precisely what I am experiencing – an online community propagating physical socialization (marriages as an outcome of online dating is a good example here). This is also interesting and kind of counter intuitive, because the need for self expression as an individual is what gave rise to the facebook phenomenon (after all who otherwise was interested in inane “status” messages?) Also facebook itself started with, and succeeded at being a medium for connecting with people you knew/ know. But, interestingly enough, it has now brought together hitherto strangers that are bound by mutual interests.
This is what is fuelling companies’ interest in what they call community marketing – allied to the digital revolution forcing them to “go where the audience is” not “bring the audience to where I am”. Community marketing is still in the nascent stage for brands – in most cases communities, fuelled by the topic/ subject area/ interest are more a sharing/ entertainment option rather than a brand endorsement/ negation one. Having said that, for mass brands, the opinions and behaviors of participants in communities is hugely insightful in crafting newer media plans. EmPower Research has specialized in tracking communities of interest for an identified target segment, and advising organizations on outreach plans basis analysis of opinions seen in those communities.
This tactic is of interest to many domains – one can see it applied to the pharma world as an example (for rare diseases, it is probably the biggest source of patient insights for pharma companies since patient identification is so challenging), to the CPG world interested as an example in moms of various kinds (see also EmPowerResearch’s mom index), to the tech world (monitoring buzz from user groups, community forums and discussion boards has proved really helpful for many EmPower research clients – and can be used to clarify doubts of users/ generate prospect leads/ outreach to amplifiers/ even poach from dissatisfied competitor clients), the services world (a financial services client of EmPower has used communities to “ignite word of mouth” for themselves)…you name it, we can use it!…
Back to me and my facebook group – I just received a request from 2 of them to become my “friends” – so my social circle is truly diversifying in a manner totally contrary to my personality – and, willy nilly, I am being forced out of my researcher/ analysis mode, to an active participant/ “consumer” mode! This does lead me to believe, that, privacy concerns/ individualism/ personalization/ customization/ nuclear families/ “me time” and other associated concepts aside, what Darwin and his breed taught us is forever true – Man is a Social Animal indeed!
- By Sangita Joshi
A Mother’s Day Present
Either you are a talker or a listener. Especially online. Feels like everyone is either talking or listening online. Take my wife. She is the talker, posting Facebook updates, putting up pictures, making comments. Me, I am the listener. I guess that is why she is the creative person in the family and I am the market researcher.
But she is also a mom. And increasingly moms are talking and marketers are paying attention. Listening and tracking the influencer moms is not new. Everyone has been doing that for a long time. But what does it mean for your brand? Does it actually sell more? That is the big question. We all have been trying to figure that out. And we just got one step closer.
We at EmPower recently launched the Mom Index of Purchase Intention (MIPI). Why is it a big deal? Because now for the first time we can link the conversations to the purchase intentions. Yes, not all conversations are equal. We like it when moms talk about our brand but love it when they are talking about purchasing it, have purchased it or recommend purchasing it.
We believe that this MIPI is the missing link to understanding the link to how conversations impact sales. It is not sales, yet, but that much closer to sales. THAT is why I am excited. And will continue to listen.
- By Nazim Fazlani
