Social Media Trends for 2012
Social Media has proliferated at an unprecedented rate to become one of our society’s most preferred forms of communication. It is now almost “criminal” to ignore Social Media at both personal and professional levels.
Mobility: According to Gartner, midway through 2011, more people accessed the Internet from their mobile devices, than from their PCs. As society continues its drive towards instant access to information, mobile websites will dominate how consumers send and receive information. Social Media offers real-time information exchange capabilities that give mobile apps a huge competitive advantage over the PC in this scenario.
Channels: The world’s leading hardware research firms are of the unanimous opinion that Social Media will explode faster than before given the advent of new channels like smartphones and tablets. It is projected that these NEW kids on the block will outclass PC and laptop sales as early as 2012 or 2013. This can only mean more power to Social Media.
Reviews Rule: Product reviews and consumer opinion will become consumers’ preferred method of learning and sharing opinions about products and services. The customer wants his information instantly, and tends to trust feedback from peers.
Beyond Creation: Aggregation and Curation:
Creation: Building a website and designing the various methods of delivering content, i.e., text, videos, audios, etc..
Aggregation: How the website offers access to all information to the customer.
Curation: Organizing aggregate information in a way that is relevant, coherent and easily accessed.
Companies will explore building a social layer into their existing IT systems or work with one of the new vendors that are continually popping up to create their Social Media presence. Those companies that are able to rapidly create effective aggregation and curation will have a significant competitive advantage in their respective industries.
Education: Organizations will need to train their employees on Social Media use much like they did when the company transitioned over to computers in past decades. Many individuals do not understand how to use Social Media, and as it is further inculcated into our collective society, organizational fluency will be imperative; those companies that ignore the uses and benefits of Social Media will be at a serious competitive disadvantage.
Regulation: Regulatory bodies across nations have so far adopted a “wait and watch” approach in their guidance on the dos and don’ts in Social Media. However, this might not continue at the same pace, in the future, given the sheer velocity of adoption of Social Media across the masses.
Corporate Policy: Along with developing corporate wide fluency in Social Media, companies will have to develop policy and procedures for its use. Development and implementation of guidelines for etiquette, use of materials, and acceptable use of the media will gain traction in 2012.
Applications: Social Media is providing new applications and hence, is generating increased interest. The latest success seen from Social Media, as an example, is identification of potential kidney donors. Such successes will only elevate the importance of Social Media and fuel rapid growth in its usage across both individuals and organizations, regardless of size, location and format.
Commerce: Social Media will start playing a pivotal role in facilitating commerce, whether it is in the form of online retailer visit sharing, group buying prompts, reviews sent from mobile apps, direct marketing or through purchase of game-based currency. This is another growth trajectory that will get increased attention in the coming years.
It should therefore come as no surprise, that Social Media is poised to explode at an exponential rate; these are just a few of the trends that will have significant impact in 2012.
When I say work, what comes to mind?
Is it the endless deadlines, conference calls, boring meetings, tough bosses and the whole load of drudgery? Or is it nice friendships, long chat sessions, interests, cool stuff, challenges, accolades, skills, interest, excitement and above all a great work-life balance?
As we embark on our work-life journey, most of us avoid the former and search for the latter. We shift across jobs, towns, levels, specializations as we search for that elusive goal. Organizations struggle to engage people and people struggle to be engaged.
I have been thinking about this for a while and I thought it is time for us at EmPower Research to try and break those molds. But how?
I struck upon this idea, stemming from my own inability to dance and a colleague offering to help me in that regard. The more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. If we can learn something new, have fun at it and help break our constraints of self expression, then why not? So “My two Left feet”, a program of dance for the challenged, was born. This is for those that cannot dance, those who do not know how to, those who simply do not have the confidence or the time to do so.
As part of Life 360, we began the “in-house” dance lessons program. What a response! Some loved it, some hated it, some said ‘not for me’, some laughed while some just ran! Whatever it was, we started this program 3 months ago and our classes have been growing from strength to strength. We finished a bollywood dance and are onto the dance with the attitude- hip hop.
There was something more than learning a skill in these classes. Personally, it was a welcome break from the stress of long working hours along with the chance to interact with people across the organization. The faces that I see in cubicles became names and fellow participants for me. The silos we built as part of our life gradually disseminated. We developed a strange kind of kinship out of our common struggle to learn from a very competent teacher. It brought commitment to schedules beyond work- I have had people plan their work for the day in order to attend the sessions. It brought a sense of relief in our busy lives and above all loads of joy, health and vitality.
Organizational learning anyone?
We are now bonded as a dance group with aspirations to perform in public. I am sure this effort will become larger than all of us some day. Until then, we will keep dancing away those blues.
Thank you my dancing group and our teacher- Meghana…
The Social Media Business
I remember the time when I would frequently scold my brother for spending a lot of time on Orkut … but that was in 2008. Fast forward to 2011, and he is fixated with Facebook, only this time, I’m exceptionally lenient. I only told him to concentrate on his studies as well. I have accepted social media as a part of my life… Have you?
“It is very difficult to know what the consumer thinks” – a classic statement from any devotee of marketing especially consumer behavior. To solve this, you conduct primary research, focus group interview, etc; spending more than what is enough to feed a third world nation. Today, the same demand is being made from a market researcher – to know more about the consumers. The only difference is that the consumer is shouting out loud to tell you what their behavior is. Yes, you are right … they shout in all the social media platforms – blogs, forums, comment section of the online media, twitter and above all Facebook. I, being a professional in this field of understanding consumers, am obliged to respect their words … each and every word, however unstructured they are. Thereafter, my endeavor is to find a pattern, report it to the entities that fulfill the wishes of consumers (they can be the Cokes, P&Gs of the world). In turn, the producers/ manufacturers will align their products accordingly and create messages for the consumers which they are able to relate to. Why not? The input came from the consumers, right???
Okay, I spoke about the inputs from the consumers, which let me term as “consumer to business”. We at market research/consulting firms harness this data and empower the businesses. Now the other side of the coin is that the business needs to convey the same to the consumer. Let me term this “business to consumers”. Today, in most of the television advertisements of repute, you will notice a Facebook link at the end of the ad. This is really to invite the consumers to the Facebook page of the brand and get involved in a discussion with them … not necessarily sales or after sales … but something more than that. The business is trying to build a relationship with the most imperative stakeholder – the consumers.
I shall not talk about the content part of social media though I understand that this is varied in nature and the most important component for any social discussion to survive. However, from a business perspective, I can definitely see a “consumer to business” and “business to consumer” model utilizing the power of social media not only as a platform but also as a means to an end. When I say platform, I can read pieces about all the biggies, be it technology giants (IBM, HP), market research companies (Nielsen – nmincite), IT research firms (Gartner, Forrester). They are making their necessary moves realizing the inherent power that this channel of communication has.
Now, the most matured approach is the integration of social media with the rest of the CRM components – call center data, mail, KYC data, etc. This approach is termed as “Social CRM”.
In business scenario, “Social CRM” is the area where most are concentrating, trying to reap the maximum out of it. This is evident from the fact that Gartner predicts that ‘Social CRM will surpass $1 Billion by End 2012’. I do believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg and let me end by saying that the show has just begun!
-by Arunava Talukdar
Social Media Tools in Today’s Market
The increasing influence and new applications of social media has been seen in today’s political and social world, as well as in modern businesses. This year’s “Arab Spring”, which saw populist revolutions and demonstrations sweep across Northern Africa and Middle East were facilitated by a new form of mass communication: social media. In August, riots in London and throughout England spread from the seeds of outrage disseminated through social media. Today, pharmaceutical companies use social media to recruit patients for clinical drug trials. By using social media tools to seek out conversations related to specific therapeutic areas, pharmaceutical companies now have a direct channel to reach those afflicted with conditions that can be treated. In other instances, crowd sourcing is used to test consumer reactions to products in development.
Companies are now able to directly reach such a large number of consumers that they can instantly receive feedback on several new products that would have taken far longer to test through traditional, in-person focus groups. Additionally, due to the number of consumers these companies can now reach through social media, the volume of feedback that they receive is far greater, and necessarily more representative of the population. When looking outside the business sector, one sees social media’s influence on interpersonal relationships as a movement generating resource that has never been experienced before. Within the past few years, social media has evolved and expanded in many different directions, and that evolution is sure to continue.
Social media is now the newest and fastest growing resource that companies have for gathering data about their customers and potential customers. Because it often acts like a large, continuous (albeit informal) focus group, social media can be mined for candid reactions and thoughts concerning brands, industries, trends and consumer behavior. The power generated by the consumer’s voice reaching out through these channels cannot be ignored. This vast trove of customer information is a resource that businesses must learn to exploit if they are to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. But the sheer volume of it can be overwhelming, and sometimes too much information is barely more useful than none at all. In order to harness the utility of consumer data, businesses need to capture the most useful data, and also determine what portion of the total universe of information is being captured. To accomplish these goals, social media tracking tools need to be continuously updated and refined to keep pace with changing social media platforms. This is no easy task.
Three points are critical to understanding how to capture useful social media data:
Social media is now an indispensible component of any media analysis. To take a snapshot of a brand, one must review what is being said in traditional media channels, broadcast media channels, and now social media channels.
There is no feasible way to capture and analyze all social media content available on the web.
When analyzing social media, a tracking tool is essential to corral all the social media data that is available, as well as filtering this data at a level that is manageable so that relevant data may be put to good use.
Social media chatter is collected from blogs, microblogs (e.g. Twitter), social networks (e.g. Facebook, Google+, and MySpace), chat/opinion forums, message boards, customer reviews, reader comment sections, and video/image-sharing sites. Several social media tracking and analytic platforms are already available. These products can be used to assist in the aggregation, filtering and analysis of the overwhelming amount of data that is available on social media. Some top players in the U.S. market are Radian6 (recently purchased by another industry leader, SalesForce), Sysomos’ “Map tool”, Alterian’s “SM2 tool”, Collective Intellect’s “CI Insight”, and Lithium’s “ScoutLabs tool”. Traditional media services like BurrellesLuce and Vocus have also released social media tracking products. Additionally, knowledge service companies have begun implementing social media tracking solutions of their own, as EmPower Research has done with its “EmI tool”. The market for social media “listening” is growing, and the technology has followed.
For any popular brand or topic, there will always be challenges concerning the volume of data that you will receive following a social media search. Is the content relevant? If so, to what degree? Challenges also arise when product or brand names have alternative, commonly used meanings. For example, a simple search for the toothpaste brand “Colgate” could return thousands of posts related to Colgate University. But searching only for “Colgate toothpaste,” could exclude a large portion of the relevant data. If you are only interested in toothbrushes, you may also need to wade through post after post specific to Colgate’s toothpaste product. These issues can often be worked out with some advanced search filtering. Adding Boolean logic strings can narrow your results to what is relevant without losing too much of the overall set of data.
Another issue with social media is the “spam” that appears in results. A search may be set so that relevant data returns for Colgate toothbrush results are possible, but the user will not be able to avoid the coupons that are returned as results for this product. The same coupon could appear in your results hundreds of times, thereby skewing your top line data. These same coupons could contain positive phrases, such as “great deal” within them that will also skew automated sentiment analysis results. For these reasons, human analysis will always be an important step in an overall analysis of the social media landscape surrounding a product.
A further challenge associated with using social media tracking tools is that the pricing model of many of these tools is based on volume. Businesses are hard pressed to find a service that charges a flat fee, as opposed to a volume-based pricing model. This becomes problematic because there is an enticement for companies offering social media tracking tools to provide quantity rather than quality when delivering results. Under these models, they may not have enough incentive to lower the rate of irrelevant data.
One of the main reasons why tracking tools are needed is that businesses can avoid having employees read through piles of irrelevant data. The volume can often be unmanageable. Thus, the tools that add most value are those with sophisticated analytics that can break down and organize the useful data. Using the Colgate example, a search for Colgate toothbrush could return 10,000 results, 8,000 of which have been automatically tagged as neutral sentiment by a tracking tool, 1,000 as positive, and 1,000 as negative. If the user is looking to address any shortcomings of the product, as well as dig deeper into consumer demands, a tool will allow the user to dive right into the negative sentiment posts and get to the root of consumer complaints.
The need of businesses to efficiently sift through large volumes of data to find relevant information is creating a need for the evolution from “generic listening” to “purpose-driven” listening tools. Due to the unwieldy nature of the data volumes currently generated through the existing social media listening tools, we will likely see new products emerge that focus directly on certain industry sectors. As an example, a tool could be developed that retrieves data solely related to customer service issues, allowing businesses instant notification and a direct channel to respond to unsatisfied customers and maintain brand reputation. Another example might be the tools that tier results based purely on influence weightings of the social media authors. This will allow businesses to target any necessary outreach to those whose voice is heard the most.
Collecting social media data over long periods can also bring challenges when using social media tracking tools. Several new sources may be introduced to the tool at a time. There could be a large spike in data from one month to the next, but does this mean your brand is getting more recognition, or did the tool simply obtain new sets of data? If the tool does not provide transparency as to what channels it is searching, the subscriber cannot know.
Accordingly, a subscriber will want to know as much as possible about where and how a tracking tool collects data. What blogs is it searching? What outlets exist across different regions? What percentage of Twitter feeds is the tool receiving? Is there a regional discrepancy in the number of outlets searched? This information needs to be available to the analyst in order to enable an informed evaluation of results. For example, without this type of information, an analyst might see that 95% of the social media chatter around a brand is originating from the U.S. In reality, however, the tool’s ability to capture foreign sources of social media may simply be very poor, and the volume of data from other countries may go unnoticed by the tool. The analyst could, thus, be led to a false conclusion.
Consequently, when incorporating social media findings into an analysis, it is not enough to just cite the tool that was used. For a complete view of the findings, an analyst needs to describe the tool’s capabilities. Ideally, the analyst should be able to show out of x number of total blogs on the internet, data was collected from y number of blogs. Or out of the entirety of Twitter, z % of Twitter feeds were considered.
To display the contrast between the differences of data collected between social media tracking tools, below are two different views of top line analytics from an identical search covering a (relatively short) one-month period:
The above chart shows that the same search terms may return very different results across different tools. Accordingly, this type of data must always be reviewed with the capabilities of specific tool in mind.
In addition to the universe of social media sources that are accessible, other key characteristics of tools are the automated sentiment analysis that they provide, and the ability to cover data across multiple regions. What one often finds when evaluating tools is that, for expanded geographical coverage, there is frequently a sacrifice in the sentiment analysis that is provided. Tools in the market with the best sentiment analysis use natural language processing (NLP) technology. Other tools employ a rules-based approach to sentiment analysis. A rules-based approach will target words that are tagged as negative or positive and assign sentiment accordingly. A sentence that reads, “I hate my teeth so I use Colgate,” would be tagged as negative in a rules-based approach to automated sentiment analysis. With NLP, hate would be associated with “teeth” and not “Colgate,” so this would be tagged as neutral sentiment for Colgate. The drawback with NLP is that it is heavily reliant on language conventions, and consequently extremely difficult to set up across different languages. As a result, these tools will often limit content to English language only.
Currently, it is best to have a social media tracking tool based out of the region that you would like to monitor. The organic nature of how social media is generated, and the audience it often aims to reach, is still provincial in many cases. Companies that are closest to social media content and culture will have the best knowledge of outlets to search and how best to search them.
The perfect social media tracking tool in today’s market would be able to address each of the challenges that have been discussed above. The precise characteristics of an ideal tool specifically vary depending on a company’s needs, but there are some characteristics that any good tool should have:
(1) An intuitive, easy-to-use interface is important. In many instances a tool will be sold over a short demo/trial period, and the user must be able to learn quickly how to retrieve accurate and relevant results. In the fast-paced industry of public relations and market research, the ability to run quick, ad-hoc searches or volume checks is critical.
(2) The tool should have advanced analysis features such as in-depth demographics, the ability to manipulate different cuts of data, the ability to perform searches within returned results, and in-topic comparisons which help social media anlaysts provide more detailed, robust reports.
(3) Automated sentiment analysis is a major selling point when dealing with large volumes of data. Any sort of analytics that help the user get a quick, high-level view of the data with accuracy will always be useful.
(4) Most businesses would not want to subscribe to a separate tool for each region they would like to cover. Therefore, a broad range of sources across many regions will bring customers from all over the world. This is especially crucial for those tracking global brands.
(5) A flat-rate pricing model is preferable to volume based pricing because it allows the user to experiment with different searches without worrying about skyrocketing monthly fees when not enough search filters are set.
(6) Transparency about the sources from where data is collected is important for an overall analysis of that data. The user should know the percentage of Twitter feeds that the tool is receiving, be able to access a list of blogs that can be viewed within the tool, have the ability to suggest additional sources to be added, and receive alerts when large amounts of sources are being added or removed to prevent false spikes in volumes.
At this time technology alone cannot deliver the purpose-driven results that were touched upon earlier. The most successful way to use any tool will be with a mix of technology and human analyst interaction. A trained analyst can review all available data and focus results for any purpose-driven goal prior to a report reaching the end client. At EmPower Research, our analysts are able to custom tailor social media reports to any client’s needs. Also, by employing several tools currently in the market, as well as our own EmPower Media Interactive (EmI) portal, EmPower Research is able to tailor the necessary tools and analyst expertise to each project. With so much raw data available, a trained EmPower analyst is the best method of turning chaos into meaningful marketing intelligence.
-by Ben Potter
“I was sad because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
How many of us understand the meaning of ‘count your blessings’?
I’m sure a lot. But do we ever adopt this philosophy in our lifestyles? In our daily struggles and trials, we often forget the beauty of life and the living. We forget that we can’t substitute material things for love, kindness or friendship. We fail to realize that generosity gives rise to joy; joy gives rise to calm, and the mind that is calm is filled with happiness; how it is impossible to create a better world without inner change that results from selfless service.
Our visit to Santosh Charitable Trust made us take a step back and understand what we had been missing.
As part of our CSR initiative, Life 360, we aim to contribute to various CSR events, drives and campaigns as well as create social awareness among all employees and elicit support.
Santosh Charitable Trust, which is located in Bangalore, India, provides destitute and orphaned children with an opportunity to realize their fundamental right to a better life. We reached there around three in the afternoon to find forty kids of all ages and backgrounds eagerly waiting for us. We received a warm welcome from the children and were treated with a colorful display of talents. This was followed by a small quiz and games which were thoroughly enjoyed by all. Next, there was distribution of gifts and a treat of delectable snacks. The entire time was filled with such fun, laughter and joy. We had some of the most memorable moments and didn’t even realize when the time came to leave.
Hats off to the trust founder Mr Issac who has done a great a job in providing the kids with not just home and education but a hope to live a better life. His courage and determination in running the trust is truly inspiring for us all.
To tell the truth, those ‘little bundles of joy’ were the ones who taught us lessons with their endless smiles and eyes full of hope. They brought home the real meaning of hope and how we give up on it. How hope may not be a plan but it definitely gives the direction.
It was indeed a wonderful experience and I look forward to many such visits in future. If it wasn’t for our CSR initiative, I, perhaps, would never have realized what I had been missing until now. All that time spent with those children reminds of a quote I read years ago:
“It doesn’t matter what car you drove or what house you lived in, but the world might be a better place because you were important in the life of a child.”
-by Saranga Sharma
We at EmPower Research, have a product development and innovation engine called InnoLabs.
My colleague Anupama, who heads the group, and I were sitting the other day, trying to work out the goals for the group and one of the first questions that we asked ourselves was – What would be the RoI of InnoLabs and how are we the innovation engine for the organization?
RoI in the traditional sense would have been measured as the sales generated out of the products that was developed. What about the methodology and solutions developed, tools, whitepapers worked on, POCs generated and even productivity measures generated? I would call it the innovation engine.
So let us go back to the basics – how important is R&D to a social media research company? Social media is an ever-changing landscape powered and driven by technology- so clearly there is a need to be on the ball here. So on a scale of 1-5, where 5 is very important – R&D for EmPower Research would be a 5.
R&D is important and the standard model of RoI measurement does not apply, then how else do we measure RoI and at the same time sustain innovation. Let us look at the basic roles that R&D plays in our organization.
- Commercialization of ideas
- Hold on to position of thought leader through commercializing methodologies, generate Proof of concepts to build credibility for new research areas
- Improve internal operations through better tool implementation
Commercialisatioz of ideas
R&D needs to have its ear on the ground to hear clients and sales team talk about nebulous concepts and be able spot the opportunities in them and convert to products. In short, “an outside in” view of the company is needed. Close ties with client facing groups for opportunity spotting and rationalization of the hottest trend to sustainable opportunities needs to be done. Once the potential client opportunities are identified, we need to look at internal competencies as well as client applicability to roll it out to market. An example would be the Moms Purchase Intent Index that was developed. Others would be the brand tracking solution and corporate reputation tracker.
Sustaining thought leadership
This is probably the core R&D people would warm up to. Brainstorm, generate beautiful ideas (sometimes divorced from reality), work around data, find those hidden connections and present these thoughts to clients/ client facing groups. These methodologies and POCs have a long term horizon for sales conversion and build the evangelist platform. No quick RoI here. Have you seen the factor analysis white paper on social media data?
Improving internal operations
The R&D group needs to be custodian of technology and tool assessment within the organization. Organizations in the growth phase need to take their idea and use technology to create a solid IP-able proposition. As a smaller company, we have shorter time spans and releases to be on top of the market through our EmI tool. We have also implemented several smaller tool quick fixes in the data collection process that saves the delivery time anywhere between 10% – 40% savings in effort.
The above three functions do a great job of fueling the innovation engine. At the same time, we have kept the RoI at a simple level now. We measure it as the following simple parameters- number of people touched within the organization as a result of the productivity improvement activities, actual amount of savings in projects for those improvement initiatives, web statistics of our site for the methodologies and white papers, number of queries we get for the same and the actual sales conversions among clients. So the RoI spans the entire spectrum of increasing awareness, purchase intention and actual spend.
For the R&D group to be effective, the group also needs to be able to build credibility through cutting edge work and create the value for the organization. Once the value has been created, the next step is to interface with sales and delivery organizations and create this pipeline with good ideas and implementable solutions, while showing short term value to retain the interest. By creating these pockets of success at the ground level we are able to sustain a workable model for innovation.
At EmPower Research, we incubated the group with the research division helping generate products such as the Moms Purchase intention index, STRANDS methodology etc. before we moved to a centralized group to service multiple divisions.
Since R&D is a cost center to the company, the model that works best is to have a combination of short term and long term employees that contribute to core R&D and business unit related activities.
If you want to know more about InnoLabs – please write to innolabs@empowerresearch.com
If you work at EmPower Research and would like to contribute to the research process of the organization, please contact Anupama Muraleedharan at manupama@empowerresearch.com
-by Priya Venkataraman
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
