“Analysis paralysis” and “desktop fodder” are two phrases I’ve heard over the years associated with reporting and analysis that subsequently takes you on the road to marketing nowhere. Moving beyond reporting, dashboards, and analysis is not rocket science – what is required is a desire to test some of the conclusions out in the marketplace. Action tends to generate inspiration while the reverse (for me at least) is more difficult to achieve.

A few brief examples of acting on social media analysis:

1. Blogger outreach – Susan Getgood has an excellent post on reaching out to bloggers, which starts with social media analytics to identify relevant individuals
2. Improve natural search through social media campaigns – often this involves nothing more than consistently and diligently “spreading the word” about your current assets and can be done through a vendor partner or by dedicating resources internally
3. Optimize SEO – based on themes (like those listed below) extracted from unstructured data using semantic analyses, tags can be created to automatically (and dynamically) update sites based on conversations people are currently having about your products or services
4. Modify existing digital assets (e.g., messaging) based on emerging concepts – use modified targeted banner ads within social network communities through ad networks if you have a bit more budget
5. Tap into your favorite social network community to spread your message (based on concepts gleaned from social media analyses) – setting up a Facebook profile is an obvious beginning but note that Facebook is looking to move beyond the “walled garden” by providing the ability to externalize profiles – more to come
6. Learn how to do a bicycle kick on a beach in Brazil (OK, no connection but what is a blog entry without a little fun?)

Conclusion

Testable marketing strategy can be implemented quickly and, in the quick-time world of social media, its impact can be measured on the back end by examining common social media metrics (e.g., activity and sentiment) as well as other web and primary research metrics.

Ernest Hemingway once said, “Never confuse movement with action”. So dive in, engage, and act upon data with testable strategy. Because Hemingway also said* that “understanding social media is a crucial step in implementing a fully developed brand strategy.”

*No he didn’t.

Tags: Brand Management, Social Media Insights // Add Comment »

The 2008 Olympics have already been marked by both shattered records and controversy, making it the perfect event to cover in Social Media. CI tracked eight selected Beijing Olympic sponsors— Visa, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Lenovo, UPS, General Electric, Kodak and Panasonic— over a selected time period of 8/2 to 8/13. We compared each sponsor’s Olympic-focused conversation from the six days prior to the Olympics (8/2 to 8/7) to the first six days of the Olympics (8/8 to 8/13).

Three sponsors in particular stand out as having achieved a significant Social Media lift: Coke, McDonald’s and Visa. Coke, when referenced near the Olympics, experienced a 17% lift from the first time period to the second. A great deal of conversation surrounded their Bluetooth campaign, which is the first instance of Bluetooth marketing in Olympic history.

Activity around McDonald’s and the Olympics increased 51%. People posted most often about their TV commercials and their large, temporary store on the Olympic Green.

Visa’s Olympic-focused activity increased by an outstanding 141%, showing the huge success of their campaign. Their role as the sole payment method of the Olympics, as well as their mid-Olympics release of the special-edition Michael Phelps commercial contributed to this drastic increase in Visa’s buzz.

Tonality was overall positive for all selected sponsors, although UPS/Olympic conversation accumulated a bit more negative sentiment when pro-Tibet protestors stormed a French UPS store on 8/6.

Although negative sentiment for the sponsors continues around human rights issues, the majority of these posts do not single out specific sponsors. Individually, these eight sponsors have been generally well-received by the overall public, and many have shown an increase in Social Media activity as the Olympics continue.

CI will continue to track the Olympics through the completion of the games and follow up with our new findings.

– Jackie Wood

Tags: Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture, Social Media Insights, Social Media Monitoring // 1 Comment »

Collective Intellect’s President Tim Lefkowicz kicked off the start of the 2008 Summer Olympics by appearing on the Fox Business Network (FBN) Money for Breakfast Show anchored by Alexis Glick which follows pre-market business headlines. FBN sought Collective Intellect’s opinion on the results of the pre-Olympic Sentiment around the major brands that are advertising at the Olympics, and we are expecting to return later in August with more interesting insights.

Referring to CI’s latest report, Glick, asked about how the traditional Big 3 of VISA , Coca-Cola and McDonald’s were doing heading into the Beijing games. Joining Lefkowicz and Glick was Mark Sunshine from First Capital to discuss these three big sponsors from the financial market perspective. Sentiment calculations list positive sentiment for VISA, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds. The other brands mentioned as part of this pool are GE, Kodak and Panasonic.

Lefkowicz predicted that “VISA was the Brand to beat running up to the opening ceremonies” based upon CI’s reporting.

A few highlights from the conversation are summarized below:

Visa had a positive sentiment of 67%, the largest share out of the Big 3, which can be contributed to VISAs campaign with the “Come Together” Olympics narrated by Morgan Freeman as well as another AD which features US Olympic team swimmer and gold medal contender Michael Phelps.

McDonald’s themes are much focused media campaigns on Olympic China advertising like “I love it when China wins.” Mr. Sunshine mentioned that McDonalds is actually down playing their Olympic involvement in the U.K. to avoid possible boycotts over alleged human rights violations by China.

Coca-Cola’s “Bird’s Nest” campaign does well with their theme of cooperation, and their embracement of social media and the younger demographics. Coca-Cola is a mainstay of the Olympics.

For the complete version of FBN’s “Gold Medal Marketing Show”, watch the following clip: http://snurl.com/3cw7y

Tags: Blog Analysis, Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture, Social Media Monitoring // Add Comment »

As the CEO of Collective Intellect, I have the pleasure of interacting with dozens of companies, agencies and technology vendors every month who are at the forefront of social media engagement. These interactions are confirming that the importance of social media is real. I wanted to share some of my perspective on how companies gain strategic advantage through social media engagement, and to do a plug for why Collective Intellect should be a key component in your approach.

As a serial entrepreneur, I have been at the frontline of customer relationships many times. Through these start-up experiences, I have discovered that new business services exist on a continuum from tactical operational improvements to services of truly strategic import. The good news for investors and users is that services everywhere along this continuum have the potential to create value. The dynamics of the value provided have a significant impact on the client’s (i.e. users) underlying business models.
From my perspective, it is clear that many earlier adopters of Collective Intellect’s services are adopting them in ways that deliver strategic advantage. I would like to highlight some the strategic potentials associated with social media engagement.

• First, social media engagement is being used to increase revenue and market share. More and more consumers trust web sites for recommendations and advice than ever before. Several weeks ago, General Motors announced that it was shifting 50% of its marketing spend to digital. The reason was that traditional media was primarily valuable for building up awareness for new vehicle models, but digital media is where consumers made consideration and preference decisions on which cars to purchase based on their own online research and conversations.

• Second, social media engagement is being used to optimize messaging delivered through social media and through traditional media. Identifying the key issues and concerns of authentic voices found in blogs and other social media allows companies to deliver the messages most important. Coca-Cola recently opted to encourage and recognize user-generated mash-ups of creative advertisements rather than continue to try to enforce trademark protection. Now, if you create a cool Coke commercial, you could get sponsored to create the next one.

• Third, early adopters have less competition for the attention of creators and users of social media. Thus, the odds of meaningful engagement will never be higher than now. We have clients that are creating meaningful relationships with the key influencers in social media around topics that are associated with their brands and companies. These relationships form a foundation for future interactions that start to integrate these companies and citizens in valuable communities.

• Fourth, innovators are striving to harness the value of the social media content in their web properties to engage clients. We are working with several clients to build next generation publishing models that integrate social media influencers together in ways that support specialized vertical topics. These early models, if successful, will provide enormous first mover advantage for these clients.

If you’re an adopter of social media engagement, I encourage you to contact Collective Intellect today; so you can take advantage of this outstanding opportunity.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

Collective Intellect (www.collectiveintellect.com), the leading social media analytics company helping businesses track, understand and use social media, today closed its second round of institutional funding by raising $6.6 million from venture capital firms led by Grotech Capital Group and including existing investors Appian Ventures and Croghan Investments and new investor Crawley Hatfield Capital, LP.

Proceeds from the investment will be used to dramatically expand Collective Intellect’s marketing and sales initiatives, leading to expanded distribution of its monitoring services and analytics-based content, as well as broader application of the company’s insights in social media campaigns. This round of funding follows the $2.6 million infusion that Collective Intellect received in February 2006 which was led by Appian Ventures and included other accredited investors in Colorado and New York.

“Social media is now a mainstream phenomenon impacting the bottom line of every business,” said Don Springer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer for Collective Intellect. “This investment validates our success in providing these businesses with real-time intelligence on social media, empowering them with the actionable insight to create relationships, optimize campaigns, and invite closer one-on-one participation. We now have the resources to become the standard in how companies measure the impact of social media.”

Collective Intellect specializes in comprehensively tracking, filtering, ranking, and analyzing social media content for a wide array of businesses. The company refined its approach by helping financial services clients with more than $100 billion in assets utilize social media to make smart business-building decisions. Across blogs, discussion boards and social networking websites, Collective Intellect employs advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to identify and analyze social media.

“Collective Intellect’s management team has a strong record of generating substantial returns to its investors,” said Joseph Zell, General Partner at Grotech. “Collective Intellect enables marketers and communicators to engage in the single largest trend shaping consumer behavior today through data-driven decisions. Their instantaneous data allows social media to be actionable as well as informational. We are confident that Collective Intellect is poised to achieve even greater success.”

More on MarketWire

Tags: Brand Management, Public Relations // Add Comment »

Lawson DeVries, a vice president at Grotech, said the immediacy of Collective Intellect’s technology gives it an edge.

“It allows brands in real time know how their advertising campaigns are going,” he said in a telephone interview.

• From interview with RedHerring http://redherring.com/Home/24134 #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

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Techcrunch posted a blog about us.

“The service is most useful for marketers who need to understand how well their brands are being received by the media and general public. It tracks discussions about particular topics being posted on news sites, blogs, and message boards. For instance, MTV could decide to check out what people think about “The Hills”. Collective Intellect will use graphs and lists of discussion items to show how sentiment has changed over time, and where the bulk of discussions come from. The analytics can be refined by choosing narrower topics, such as actress Audrina Patridge, to see what people are saying about her in particular.”

• TechCrunch blogged us. Sweet, except for that UI piece. http://tinyurl.com/6b284y

Tags: Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture, Public Relations, Social Media Monitoring // Add Comment »

Robin did an interview with the Wallstreet Journal regarding coca-cola and superbowl advertising. You can check it out here, and I’ve included a short excerpt below.

Questions for Hal Curtis
And Pio Schunker
By SUZANNE VRANICA
March 11, 2008 3:36 p.m.
Super Bowl Sunday may have been five weeks ago, but marketers are still trying to evaluate just how well their commercials preformed during the game.

A new study released this week shows Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl ad staring Charlie Brown was the most talked about ad online two weeks after the gridiron matchup, according to Collective Intellect, a company that analyzes blogs to see what people are posting online about products and brands.

The Coke spot, set at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, features Stewie and Underdog balloons fighting over a huge Coke balloon. The two characters bounce around the New York skyline bumping up against office and apartment buildings. The twist: the two are outdone by Charlie Brown, who swoops in and grabs the beverage. The spot cost about $2.3million to create, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Robin Seidner, the director of marketing for Collective Intellect, says Coke’s ad had 350 blog post the day after the game, while Pepsi’s ads had 250 posts. Some ad executives believe the spot has a good shot of winning an award at the Cannes Lions festival, which is the most prestigious honor in the industry. It’s something new for the Atlanta beverage giant, which has been hampered by a lack of sizzle when it comes to its advertising in the past few years. Coke has struggled to create ads that please the younger set and at the same time don’t turn off older consumers.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture, Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

Nearly two weeks have gone by since No Country For Old Men won Oscar honors for best picture. We tracked 11 advertisers before, during, and after the show to determine blog buzz. This enabled us to calculate a lift value off of the pre-show buzz to figure out who received the coveted earned media share of voice post the event. Overall discussion of the event was decidedly negative with only 32 million viewers as reported by Nielsen.

Probably the most interesting marketing story came from Dove who received the biggest overall lift from the pre-show buzz at nearly 500 percent with their UGC (user generated content) commercial contest. This spot from winner Celeste Wouden spawned comments such as

“Kudos to Dove for knowing how to use Social Media 3 as we like to call it to GREAT advantage! Hey, these folks are REALLY good at creating commercials. Watch out agencies”

Lift Percentages by Advertiser

Advertiser	Lift Percentage
Diet Coke	190
GM	58
L’Oreal	100
Mastercard	83
Dove	475
JCPenney	147
Bertoli Foods	25
Mars	0
American Express	37
Toyota	57
McDonalds	82

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture // Add Comment »

Sure, the Super Bowl is long over and now sports fans are focused on college basketball. But, if you were an advertiser, or the agency that put together the creative, you’re still wondering, “what was the impact, did we achieve something?”

Better yet, was our Super Bowl ad (or ads) worth all the money we spent?
You may know how many eyeballs you reached, but what’s your long term impact across social media, especially since so much buzz happened during the event itself?

While most of the articles and posts that ran post game were all about the big advertisers — Bud, Salesgenie, Pepsi — what about others? 248 ads ran from the pre-game through the post-game — so clearly, there were many others. Almost one month later, how many of them do you even remember?

If you are an advertiser, we’re giving you the opportunity to find out your results. We recently compiled results across social media for all Super Bowl advertisers, and we’ve put together — for each advertiser – your Super Bowl Advertiser Scorecard. The Scorecard will provide you some overall metrics from the social media side that you can apply to the rest of your post-reporting.

Want the Scorecard? Get in touch with us

Wouldn’t you like to review a copy of the Scorecard? We want to share these results with the right people in your company and agency, so if you want us to review the Scorecard with you, get in touch with us at darren @ collectiveintellect dot com, or send us a tweet to CollectiveIntel.

To get the Scorecard for a company you must meet one of these criteria:

1. part of the team which put together the ad campaign or made the decision to run the campaign
2. someone who worked on the creative
3. part of the media buying team that purchased the ads
4. the supervisor or executive-level person who oversees the brand

If you aren’t an advertiser, we’ll be releasing our final report on longer-term results next week, which will be available to anyone who wants it. Stay tuned for more details on that.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture // Add Comment »