Jeffrey Henning
Social Physics – Harnessing social influence for change
Sandy Pentland of MIT’s Media Lab discussed what he calls social physics, a combination of Big Data and social interactions. While metadata has been much in the news, Sandy shared examples of using metadata such as cell phone location trails and credit card records to understand where people go and how often. While we have always understood the role of social influence on consumers, social physics lets us quantify it. For instance, you can’t predict what apps consumers will download on their smartphones from demographics, but you can predict with 45% accuracy what apps consumers will download by analysing their proximity network, call network, friendship network and colocation network. Sandy also discussed the rise of data privacy rights for consumers and the importance of companies to follow them.
You love the web…but how much?
Emmanuel Huet and Gabriela Barrios of The Boston Consulting Group discussed the challenges measuring the value of the Internet when so many consumers consider it to be free. For priced goods and services, typically the analysis is of consumer surplus: how much value are people receiving in excess of what they are paying, and does that apply when they are paying nothing? Willingness to pay is the traditional measure — when you ask consumers how much they would pay to use Facebook, they get angry, they suggest marginal amounts (e.g., $2 a month), and they complain about founder Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth. As a result, the team instead looked at value of loss aversion (“How much would you need to be paid to keep this?”, “Would you rather receive this amount of money or keep the ability to do this?”). They did conjoint and MaxDiff experiments asking people to trade off 3 months of Internet access for different amounts of money or for other experiences. They found that access to the Internet was worth 2% to 6% of the income of consumers across a range of countries, with the highest value producers be banking, online and retail applications.
Conflict Maps in Social Media – From traditional arenas to 2.0 environments
Maria Angelica Aya Zarate of OMD, Colombia provided a case study of using conflict maps to understand controversy around a Columbian TV show about Columbia’s guerilla war: many Columbians felt that the fictional series was disrespectful to those who were murdered, “disappeared” and displaced. Wehr’s conflict map model provided an analytical framework for interpreting social network data, including data from politicians, activists, media, academics and general influencers.
Making Your Brand Pinteresting to Youth
Caitlin Krulikowski of Fors Marsh Group recommended brands use Pinterest to engage with young adults. Social media content has evolved from long-form blogging, to Facebook updates, to Tweets, to photos. The growth of Tumblr, Instagram and now Pinterest has led to the “rise of the Visual Web”. By February 2013, Pinterest had 48.7 million U.S. visitors. Marketers take note — 69% of users find an item on Pinterest that they either purchase or want to purchase. Your average “pinner” is white, female, under 30, with some college education with top Pinterest boards used by 18 to 24 year old users are in the categories of DIY and crafts, women’s fashion, and food and drink. Many want to be entertained, to laugh and to “get better at doing something”, which is unique for Pinterest as compared to other social media sites.
Crowd Power – How co-creation leads to strong product innovations
Andrea reported that “a strong insight does not necessarily lead to a strong product idea.” She conducted a multivariate analysis of 109 FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Good) concepts which found that the most important factor is a relevant benefit. “Without a relevant benefit, even the concept with the strongest insight will fail.” This reproduced findings from industrial product innovation for consumer innovation and underscored that by focusing on the relevant benefit earlier in the innovation process, you can improve the success of resultant products.
What’s in Store for Mobile Marketing
Greg Stuart of the Mobile Marketing Association discussed the rise of mobile. “The truth is mobile changes everything,” he said. The MMA recently built a marketing positioning framework for mobile: the promise – “mobile is the closest you can get to your customers”; the personality – “best friend”; and points of difference — “already the consumer preferred way to connect with your brand”. But mobile can’t change marketing’s respect for consumers, and the organisation has drafted a commitment to consumer satisfaction: http://MMAglobal.com/consumer.
Mobile Research Panel Discussion
Reg Baker led a session discussing mobile market research requirements. He conducted a survey of respondents to determine familiarity with ESOMAR market research guidelines. Many were conservative in their answers but there was not as much awareness as there could be. So go read the ESOMAR Guidelines for Conducting Mobile Market Research!
