The Future Place Blog

Is listening the new asking?

One of the fastest moving areas of market research is the area of text analytics, from blog and buzz mining through to computer aided qualitative data analysis software. One of the factors that makes this area so interesting is that many of the companies who are offering services are not market research companies and the way they use their software is competing with research budgets but offering a different service, for example identifying individual influencers so they can be targeted.

In order to explore the area of text analytics, NewMR are holding an online event, with three two-hour sessions to suit time zones in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

The call for synopses and sponsors is open at the moment, so if you want to speak, sponsor, or simply attend the NewMR Listening Event visit the NewMR.org website.

Some Great Fringe Events!

The Festival of NewMR is getting really close now and the buzz is beginning to build, including some great Fringe events, i.e. event organised by other people.

What’s best, online qual or in-person qual?
This is the question being debated online on Friday 10 December. The debate is being organises by BAQMaR (the exciting organisation based in Belgium) and has some great speakers for and against. Find out more by clicking here.

Under 30, Find out about the RLF challenge
The RLF (the Research Liberation Front) are a great example of a British phenomenon, people pretending to be joking, whilst actually engaged saying something serious, usually something that can’t easily be said in polite society. At the moment the RLF is focusing on how the MR industry should attract and develop new talent and is organising a great event to coincide with the Festival of NewMR. Find out more by clicking here.

Measuring the Discourse about NewMR
Nigel Legg is conducting a project to find out and report what people are saying about NewMR and will be presenting his findings here.

The LonBono Fund
Henrik Hall is a Swedish researcher who is trying to make a difference and has created a project that is helping market researchers from less developed markets to attend conferences and events, so that knowledge and contacts can be shared. Find out more here.

More Fringe Events?
There are other events being developed and they will appear shortly on the Fringe’s main page. If you have an event you would like to contribute, contact me as soon as possible to discuss.

 

 

 

#TestItTuesday – Putting Twitter to work

One really good example of the way organisations can use Twitter is provided by a few of the UK’s fire services, such as Norfolk and Lothian and Borders, who use the hashtag #TestItTuesday (on Tuesdays) to help remind people to test their smoke alarms.

Tweets are sent out on Tuesday to remind people to check their smoke alarm, and ideally people reply when they have checked them. The numbers following and replying are modest at the moment, but this is one that could grow and grow.

Some great word of mouth papers

Dr Paul Marsden and written and spoken extensively on Word of Mouth related topics and some of his papers are available on his website, viralculture. I would strongly recommend them to anyone interested in this field.

I particularly like the "Seed to Spread" an analysis of the way communities such as Tremor are being used to understand consumers and drive advocacy.

Free CGM monitoring report from Forrester

Thanks Max, for pointing us towards the Forrester Consumer Generated Media report, published thanks to Nielsen BuzzMetrix. The report is an invaluable read, and free thanks to BuzzMetrix, I guess part of the reason for BuzzMetrix putting it in the public domain is the positive write-up they get in the report, along with competitor Cymfony.

The body of the report is just 9 pages, which makes it an easy read. The report points out that that whilst products such as Google’s Blog Search, Alerts, and Trends are free, they are too limited and too time consuming to be used as a method of monitoring a brand’s WOM on the net.

One interesting feature of Forrester’s evaluation is they did not include companies which focused on a single medium, such as press clippings services or companies only monitoring blogs. Forrester clearly recognise that WOM is wider than any one manifestation of discourse.

The report found Cymfony and BuzzMetrix to be the strongest players in this international market, the main criticism of BuzzMetrix was that it did not mine mainstream media channels. MotivQuest and Biz360 were listed as the closest rivals. Factiva, Umbria, and Brandimensions did not fare so well, being relegated to the category “considered for specific use”.

Ethics and Word of Mouth

Womma reports that the US Government’s FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is to host a seminar on protecting customers in the WOM world. The seminar, which will take place on 6 November, is intended to open a dialogue between Government, business, and technology players on emerging viral marketing techniques, as well as the proper role of advertising in social networks and user-generated media.

For more information about the seminar click here.

Now that WOM is becoming a larger part of market research we need to start a debate about the ethics. Is it alright to pose as somebody else in order to enter a social network? Is it alright to lurk in discussion rooms? What about posting false topics for discussion? In the early days of the Internet as a medium for research organisations such as ESOMAR were quick off the mark to provide guidance on what can and should be done, this needs to happen now, for WOM related research.

Word of Mouth and Womma

Womma is the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and www.womma.org is their website. The site has a wide range of material and sources for anybody who wants to know about this fast growing area. The library sections links to both books and papers and a few case studies. The site has lists of events, newsletters, blogs, training, and lobbying actions.

Womma have a blog, not surprisingly, but they also have a specific research blog, covering topics such as “Why do consumers Generate WOM?” and “MySpace Knows Your Friends and They Love to Talk”.

One section of the Womma website is devoted to WOM Basic Training and goes by the cute (or ironic depending on your taste) name of the Wombat blog. Subjects in the Wombat blog include: “How to join the Conversation” and “Creating advocate communities”.