I Spy With My BrandsEye

With BrandsEye  being such a valuable program we thought that we should develop a way of showcasing its many uses. That in a nutshell is what “I spy with my BrandsEye” is. Every month we will track one or more new celebrity or brand that is topical at the time. Then at the beginning of each week we will write a post describing what happened over the past week and highlight anything of particular interest.

Who is this Susan Boyle?

For our very first ‘I spy’, we have chosen to track Susan Boyle. In case you are one of the few that have not heard this name, Susan came into the spotlight when she appeared as a contestant on the latest series of Britain’s Got Talent. When Susan walked onto the stage no doubt the judges, the audience members and the home viewers filed her into their ridiculous category that these reality shows are so famous for. But despite her unpolished appearance, never been kissed 47 year old Susan wowed the judges and just about the whole of the United Kingdom when she sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserable with an unexpected angelic tone.

Viral Greatness:

The buzz around Susan has been phenomenal. The 850 video clips of Susan on the Internet have collected over 100 million views and 290, 000 comments. The clip of her singing on YouTube alone has been viewed over 51 million times since it was uploaded on April 11 and is the fifteenth most discussed clip of all time. Boyle has broken all kinds of viral records so for the next few weeks we will be monitoring the buzz around Susan Boyle as she progresses in the competition.

We have been tracking Miss Boyle for three days now and this is what we have found:

Where were the mentions coming from?

The following graph is a breakdown of the media origin of the mentions.
 

•  According to the data, a massive 89.29% of the mentions were consumer generated. This comes as no surprise since     Susan Boyle has reached such high viral status and the show Britain’s Got Talent is consumer based.

• Susan’s viral storm has been fueled by Twitter  with 66% of the consumer mentions originating from Twitter and 54 % of the overall mentions coming from the microblogging platform.

How credible were the sources?

Every source carries a different credibility rating ranging from 1 (low credibility) to 9 (authoritative). The credibility rating refers to how trustworthy a source is.

• The majority (80%) of Susan’s mentions had a low credibility. This is a result of the consumer generated media, mainly from Twitter, which carries a low credibility because any joe blog can tweet. This large number represents the opinion of people like ‘you’ and ‘me’ and should not be underestimated by their low credibility. Internet users are surprisingly quick to believe ‘a person like me’.

Were the mentions positive and negative?

The sentiment attached to a mention refers to what degree the mention was positive or negative.

• The general sentiment with regards to Susan is positive with her average reputation score currently sitting at 1.71 (out of a possible 5). This is a positive score but is not as high as we might have predicted. Why is this? 13.5% of the mentions carried a negative sentiment, the same percentage as praises.

• The negative mentions are over a variety of issues. A low credibility blog vows that Susan should leave the competition in light of new and more talented contestants. Another negative mention suggested that Susan was picked specifically by producers as a ‘character’ that would create hype around the show. We will be keeping our eye on these topics over the next few weeks. 

• 29% of the mentions were endorsements with 42% coming from Twitter. A further 13.5% of the mentions were praises. The praises comes from Twitter posts (63%), blog posts (25%) and comments on YouTube (12%), all of which express amazement and surprise in Susan’s voice.

In the weeks to come…

After just a few days of tracking we can already see a pattern emerging with regards to the online buzz around Susan Boyle. It is evident that consumers are making the most noise and that generally mentions are positive. Over the next few weeks more patterns will surely come to light. It will be interesting to see how long Susan’s viral storm can last with today’s consumer attention span. Will Susan be just a flash in the pan or will the storm get stronger? Next week we will explore her reputation and see how her performance has impacted it. We will also take in more in depth look at the data and what it is telling us.