BrandsEye

Information Consumption

Stacey Rumble — 2012-01-09T06:58:09+00:00

Technology is in a constant state of evolution because solving a problem breeds some form of technological innovation, which in turn brings forth new problems and needs requiring further innovation ad infinitum. Also known as, progress.

The more efficient the process of progress becomes, the more questions arise as a result and the more innovation takes place. The Internet has dramatically improved this process. As a result, the way we receive, filter and create content (and solve problems), has changed entirely.

Only in the last fifteen years or so with the widespread uptake of digital by the everyday consumer, has society’s means of consuming information transcended the inefficiencies of an analogue existence. Ironically, scientific progress was severely hindered by the absence of digital.

The process of gathering information before both the Internet and computer processing was long and painstaking, two crucial barriers-to-entry.

If problem-solving is ‘too difficult’, or simply not engaging enough, boredom and apathy set in, reducing the brain-pool of individuals dedicated (or nerdy) enough to come up with a solution.

Fewer minds wanting to get involved in a seemingly niche or complicated profession like atomic physics implied inherently less innovation because the creative process was starved of brainpower.

Since then, we haven’t looked back. The Internet has given us three critical assets: speed, quantity and to some degree, a small amount of quality.

Quantity, because we no have the ability to categorise high volumes of content in a way which makes it both universally accessible and easily searchable. Quantity, because there are more minds; there are more minds, because the Internet has made both our consumption of information and the feedback loop so much faster.

Not only can we consume and filter content quickly, we can now engage others about their content in real-time, making problem-solving live and engaging. With more and faster feedback, content is improved to the point of the best product possible.

Off the back of one creative idea, come several more questions from others within the community, who in turn create content themselves.

However, digital is not the agent of progress. We are. Even without it, progress will indefinitely breed progress. Digital is just the Nitrous Oxide making it breed like rabbits.

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Say What? How Technology is changing the way we communicate

Roger Norton — 2012-01-09T06:57:57+00:00

These days there is a strong tendency to communicate in short informal ways.

Press releases and blog posts are squeezed out as they vie for consumers’ diminishing attention spans. The all-famous 140 characters are redefining punch lines and marketing slogans. Even email is becoming curt, direct and without frills. The focus is on getting what you want to say across in quickly and clearly.

As the number of these methods of communication increase, we are seeing a massive growth in Social Media; and not just in consumer conversation but more and more also with businesses.

Large and small companies alike are using Facebook or Twitter as a means to communicate directly with their consumers. However, when not managed effectively, it can have disastrous effects, for example the recent Social Media faux pas by a consumer maliciously affronting another on @Home’s Facebook page.

As a result of increased awareness amongst corporates, we are seeing heightened interest in wanting to know both what the topics of conversations are and what public opinion about them is.

The big debate remains as to whether we are better off for it. One school of thought says that this "eternal/perpetual/never-ceasing connectedness” leads us to never really being fully present both online and offline.

The other says that as we can stay in contact with more people we are creating more opportunities to have meaningful conversations with interesting, likeminded people whom we would have never met otherwise...

Without taking sides, one thing becomes particularly clear: you need to leverage the connectedness - but at the same time, know when to unplug and enjoy the company around you. On that note...

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Social Media and armchair referees

Benedict Jackson — 2012-01-06T11:34:29+00:00

2011 has seen Social Media being used by hundreds of millions more people engaging with their friends, following celebrities and sporting heroes and gaining insight into others’ lives. Social Media is helping these individuals to get up-to-the-minute news and build relationships which weren't possible a couple of years ago. One area, where Social Media has been particularly helpful is in Sport.

Digital has streamlined our communication, making it simple for fans to converse and exchange ideas, resulting in noticeable trends in sport, often appearing during live matches e.g. #KingKallis during the last week's 5 day test between South Africa and Sri-Lanka.

The use of Twitter, Google+ and Facebook have streamlined this growth with most businesses organisations, sporting clubs, venues and NGO’s using the medium to drive traffic to build meaningful relationships with their fans/consumers.

Digital has created so many new avenues of engagement for Sports fans and their constant interactions are causing them to have increasingly more influence over sports providers and content creators. The more content these fans consume, review and generate, the more content they ultimately have control over.

However as Social Media becomes so saturated there is a very real risk of it becoming increasingly difficult to attract sports fans’ attention. Being creative around gaining followers and utilizing your natural influencers is imperative to success in Social Media and any digital space. Creativity in digital and Social Media is a must and sports brands must be able to both engage and re-engage their consumers.

Marketers need to plan to stay socially active throughout sports events and post consistently relevant interesting content that appeals to broader audiences in order to attract new consumers. With 2012 now in full swing, there is already a lot on the sporting calendar. It’s important your brand isolates which events it would like to be involved in this year and capitalise on them with extensive planning.

Consumers are already making full use of the information highway at the convenience of their armchairs; make sure your brand (note, where relevant) is involved in the conversation too.

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Progressive Music

Chandrè Reddy — 2012-01-05T06:58:31+00:00

Digital has taken the world by storm and has substantially penetrated the global music arena. It is the driving force behind modern musical innovation.

Music is undoubtedly a huge part of the web and continues to grow. We watched as the iTunes Music Store fuelled the rise of a new era in digital music and many followed. Today we have access to music at our fingertips. Applications like iMesh, Limewire and YouTube have made it so convenient to listen to our favourite tunes and to share music with others via the web. Music has also become tightly integrated with social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook, which continue to be a rising trend amongst communities. A perfect example is Lady Gaga who has a staggering 17,635,095 follows and counting. Furthermore, we are able to do live audio-streaming via platforms such as Icecast and Peercast to listen to our favourite radio stations from all across the globe, connecting people now even more than ever.

The smart creation of mobile music applications now allows us to create music on our mobiles through the recording and sequencing of multiple music tracks within the application. Amateurs and professional musicians alike are using social audio-hosting sites such as SoundCloud to share and market their music and listen to the music of others.

Also introduced to the music industry is Group Listening, which allows various users to meet virtually and DJ for one another using their personal music collections. Turntable.fm is one of the most popular online listening rooms but is still in its early stages and much development is set to come from this concept creation as indicated by online sources such as wired.com.

Digital downloads are sky-rocketing and many record labels are experiencing greater growth in sales of digital downloads than in physical formats (Link). This goes to show that digital is rewarding the artists for their hard work too while providing music consumers of music with a convenient way to access their favourite tunes.

Here are a few interesting statistics to ponder on, taken from the IFPI Digital Music Report 2011:

• 13 million tracks were licensed by record companies to digital music services

• US$4.6 billion is the trade value of the digital music market worldwide

• 1000%+ is the increase in the value of the digital music market 2004-10

This is just the start of greater things to come as industry experts have predicted much new innovation and growth over the next decade. It is certainly an exciting time for the music industry in the age of digital, so hold on tightly to your seats as we ride this journey of fusion, between digital and music, together.

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Rise of Social TV

Gareth Heuer — 2012-01-03T13:22:28+00:00

Digital technology is penetrating every aspect of our lives and it seems to be no different when it comes to television and our usage of this seemingly dying medium of entertainment.

My interest was piqued when I recently read that one of the trends of 2011 was how television has become more social (e.g. Samsung Smart TV). Talking online about what you are currently watching has accelerated as social media usage in general has increased.

It seems that those in charge of the television medium, e.g. networks, TV show producers etc, have started to realise that television may be technologically outdated and need to make certain adjustments in order to stay relevant.

“When there's something weird, and it don't look good. Who you gonna call?" Call Twitter. The second largest social network has made a tremendous contribution to how we consume television media over the past year and 2012 will be no different.

In 2011, Twitter continued to be a driving force in the convergence of social media and television. With or without the encouragement of Twitter's management or TV networks, people would naturally be inclined to talk about shows in real-time on the Internet.

An excellent case in point would be that of The X Factor USA, one of 2011's biggest reality show successes. A few months ago, Twitter released an article on their official blog called "Twitter, TV and You". It speaks of the new experiment is The X Factor USA.

X Factor had agreed that viewers could vote for their favourite singers via Twitter. This took viewers from being inactive consumers to active prosumers of the reality show. Every viewer was now able to be part of the judge’s bench by being able to interact with the other judges, contestants and other viewers etc. Viewers were now able to play an active part in deciding who the ultimate winner of the show could be - a process now being referred to as a social voting mechanism.

The article makes plain the fact that "from singing competitions to awards ceremonies to dramas, watching your favourite shows is better with Twitter".

From this success, Twitter went on to provide an actual best practice guide for producers on how to integrate this social media with your television programs. In this Producer's Guide, Twitter provided some very interesting stats and case studies of how conversation thrives online when certain shows are airing on television. It also provides some practical advice on how to actually pull off this type of strategy.

The greatest learning from the above is that television viewers are now in a position where they no longer need to watch a show in isolation, but instead can actively engage with all the parties involved in the show, which makes the viewing pleasure all the more experiential.

It seems to me that a shift has occurred from this one-dimensional consumption of television to a multi-dimensional interactive experience of television and I think that the challenge, and ultimately where the success lies, for the industry is to make the integration of these two different technologies as seamless as possible for the end-user. Something else to look out for in 2012 will be the growth of second-screen applications. Second Screen applications are those that run on your mobile or tablet device and complement your television viewing. More about that later in the year.

But for now, keep your eyes glued to this development.

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Castle Lite “Feel the Beat of the Subzero Experience”

Chandrè Reddy — 2011-12-12T08:02:29+00:00

The festive season is upon us and with it comes a host of exciting events. One which most certainly stood out and took Southern Africa by storm, was the Drake concert brought to South Africa by Castle Lite.

The concert kicked off at the Gallagher Estate in Midrand on the 9th of December for the exclusive Castle Lite “Feel the Beat of the Subzero Experience”, in which Drake performed for one night only. We had the privilege of tracking the concert's online conversation from the campaign’s inception. Within the first few hours of tickets being released they were sold out and the Drake concert was trending with the most common hashtag being #drakeSA.

We observed a staggering 35 664 online mentions of Drake prior to the concert and 37 467 mentions to date, indicating that people are still talking about the event. The sentiment around the event was extremely positive with a clear trend of excitement to have such a world class Hip Hop act in our country.

Consumers owned the online conversation, contributing to 92% of the total mentions of Drake in conjunction with the Castle Lite brand. Twitter led the online conversation above all other domains, achieving 90% of all online conversation in relation to this event. Drake has also recently released his new album “Take Care” and currently has 4, 605, 799 followers on Twitter which has been escalating at a rapid pace.

In addition to the existing online conversational trends, there was a further trend taking place at the concert with a fashion twist. Drake fans united in support of the #NoRegretFriday initiative by dressing in all-white. As a result, “White” was mentioned in 4.61% of all mentions indicating that the focus of online conversation was more about Drake as opposed to dressing in white for the cause. #NoRegretFriday was mentioned in 0.16% of all mentions once again illustrating that Drake was the centre of attention online.

Although these percentages are rather small, they contributed to the positive feedback surrounding the concert, indicating that South Africans were more reached by drinking responsibly.

The Drake concert was a great success for Castle Lite as a brand and we look forward to tracking many more concerts.

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Rocking the Daisies and DeadMau5 Online

Stacey Rumble — 2011-12-08T07:34:17+00:00

@staceyrumble

What value does getting involved with festivals offer you – and how should you get involved? Some observations about the online conversations surrounding weekend festivals and single night concerts using Rocking the Daisies and DeadMau5...

Rocking the Daisies happens once a year in Darling, South Africa. It’s a weekend of live music, comedy and outdoor living showcasing everything from the most loved local bands to the most niche of South African dance acts.

The target market:

- Guys and Girls aged 20-33

- Mostly English consumers from Cape Town and surrounds

- Some tourists, mostly American or German

- LSM groups 8-10

- Students and young professionals

DeadMau5 is a world famous Electronic-House DJ renowned for his unique sound and stimulating audio-visual displays and who recently toured in Cape Town.

Even though both events represent vastly different genres, their target audiences are actually quite similar; suggesting that this market could be reached off the back of co-branding or associating with quite a varied mix of artists and entertainers.

Exposure by the numbers:

During the lifespan of the 2011 brand (between August and October), the Daisies generated:

- 1 782 920 Opportunities-to-See (OTS)

- An Advert Value Equivalent (AVE) of R 1 609 652

Aside from backing the festival financially – the Daisies’ sponsors do a lot to support and create an awesome atmosphere on the ground. 23.9% of its AVE came from direct conversation about this year’s sponsors, most of which were either in the alcoholic beverage or entertainment categories.

Who are the top influencers?

Identify those consumers with large audiences and who are already speaking about your brand (reduces paid endorsement) and inspire them to get their networks involved.

Moreover, 13.9% of Daisies’ consumer conversation came from influential consumers, mostly on Twitter. This segment alone generated 57.2% of the total OTS suggesting how important a specific network of influencers was in keeping the Daisies’ community together.

When and where should the brand’s community be engaged?

Leverage the promotional build-up toward your event. Incentivise user interaction with and fun campaigns and giveaways in return for the most valuable content and brand evangelism to encourage positive conversation.

The majority of Daisies’ festival goers can be reached via Twitter (which contributed 72% of all conversation) and then on Facebook (4% of all conversation).

However, the Daisies festival is remote and based entirely outdoors. Few people actively tweeted or blogged about the event while they were there, so interacting with users while they’re partying up a storm won’t give you any return on engagement.

However, high levels of intensive or concentrated brand engagement are more likely to be met at one-night, urban events like the recent DeadMau5 concerts. Concerts like these are more likely to have authors engaging throughout the event purely because there is higher social media usage in urban areas and because users always have their phones on them.

The event sponsorship recipe is four-fold:

1. Provide a unique and interesting brand experience on the ground that proves that your brand not only talks the talk but that it lives up to what its advertising promises. If people have fun, they’re more likely to talk about it when they come back.

2. Leave a message: Remember to seed some call-to-action to maximise on online conversation and retain its community following even after Monday morning. Ideally encourage engagement on specific platforms – either your Facebook Wall or using a Twitter hashtag for easy identification after your campaign.

3. Take a step back: The community’s response to this is the perfect feedback loop. Find out which strategies worked for them and which ones didn’t. Find out who to call on for your next event – both your top influencers and your most avid fans.

4. Develop a slick “head held high” exit strategy if your brand isn’t going to keep its event page live until the next one and remember to thank your community for their involvement.

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Mo Mentions The Infographic

Greg Schneider — 2011-12-07T12:36:26+00:00

Movember is a month-long charity event where men are asked to grow a moustache to raise aware for men's health. Participants aim to raise money by growing their Mo's, raising valuable funds towards the treatment of cancer particularly.

BrandsEye, in partnership with Ogilvy Cape Town and Carling Black Label, tracked the international hype around the event. With the Movember data we generated the infographic below to try give some indication of the success of this annual campaign.

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Social Mo’s Saved a Million Lives

Benedict Jackson — 2011-12-06T07:29:08+00:00

Movember is a global campaign during November when thousands of men grow weird and wonderful moustaches to raise awareness and more importantly funds for cancer. Participants become a living and growing billboard as the month progresses.

BrandsEye tracked online conversations about the campaign during “Movember” and picked up 736 511 mentions.

In fact, 818 400 000 people had the opportunity to see content about Movember. As a result, Movember could be said to have reached 39.2% of global online population.

This conversation generated an Advert Value Equivalent (AVE) of R 189 408 383.

33% of Movember mentions came from the United Kingdom, followed by Canada with 28%, USA 15% globally and South Africa generating 3 %.

South Africa’s top 2 influencers were @GarethCliff (209 224 followers) and @pigspotter (86 077 followers). They tweeted and reached large audiences. The top 2 influencers internationally were Stephen Fry (3 461 311 followers) and Lance Armstrong with 3 146 542 followers.

Organisers should engage influencers like these next year to help drive conversation and awareness.

These are highly campaign driven influencer’s and supported the cause so next year social media must play a bigger role to ensure more Mo’s are grown and sprout more awareness for this hair growing cancer campaign.

In conjunction with local beer brand, Carling Black Label, BrandsEye provided data for a Movember infographic.

Since its humble beginnings in Melbourne in 2003, Movember has grown to become a truly global movement inspiring more than 1.1 million Mo Bros to participate with formal campaigns having sprouted in all four corners of the globe, with few countries left unshaven. This means a staggering 66.9% of the total Mo Bro community took their Mo--based conversations online.

Whether by growing awareness or moustaches, social media networks are the perfect platforms to drive conversation about social causes.

Yours in having grown one too,

Benedict

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Natural Language Processing

Lyndsay Lawrence — 2011-12-05T16:36:04+00:00

@LyndsayGaynor

Online reputation is becoming an increasingly important part of our everyday lives. It would be naive to think that public opinion is solely affected by ad campaigns, promotional events and the media.

In today's world, one of the largest contributing factors to a company's reputation can be found on the internet and social media sites, rather than the press. It is therefore important for a company to track and monitor their online reputation.

Natural language processing (NLP) is a field of computer science that began as a branch of artificial intelligence. A single definition is not available as it is a field of constant research and opinions differ vastly. It basically aims to 'understand' human (natural) languages with the aim of interpretation and analysis.

The main goal of NLP is to achieve Natural Language Understanding (NLU), to take in some input text in a natural human language and then be able to paraphrase and translate this text as well as answer questions and draw conclusions about it.

Modern day approaches to NLP involve machine learning, which is the development of certain algorithms to allow a system to change the way it behaves based on certain data and previous experience.

An example of machine learning can be seen in Google mail's priority inbox, which allows the user to specify what messages are important and using that information along with other aspects such as which emails you read and reply to and how long threads are. With some time, Google then uses this information to prioritise your important mail for you.

For efficient online reputation management, the relevant information pulled in from the web needs to be understood so that important questions can be answered such as, who wrote it, whether it was positive or negative?

This seems fairly simple but when you consider all the aspects you start to realise how complicated it can get. Multiple languages, SMS-style spelling, sarcasm and puns are just a few of many things that highly complicate the analysis of these comments.

As research fields, NLP and machine learning still have such a long way to go, which makes thorough data analysis using algorithms not nearly as accurate as we would like. The reality of the situation is that human-beings are still more reliable than computer-based alternatives.

The best ORM product will ultimately be the one with a rapid output of data which has been accurately verified by human-beings. For the ORM industry going forward, the Golden Egg market will not just be to amass oceans of unverified data but also to bridge the gaps of quality and time in data collection and classification.

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