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Big Data Goes Social

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I attended the Social Media Week New York “Big Data Goes Social” Panel discussion hosted by Bloomberg on Tuesday, where our very own Francesco D’Orazio, our Chief Innovation Officer and Head of Social Intelligence, gave his thoughts on a number of key questions around the value of big data.

He was accompanied by other distinguished panelists namely Paul Sweeney, Head of Research and Financial Data Analytics at Bloomberg; Michael Nelson, Research and Analytics for Bloomberg Government; Lisa Joy Rosner, CMO at Netbase; and Mark Cooper, Co-Founder of Offer Pop.

There were 4 key themes I took away from the discussion:

Big Data Goes Social Panel

Image by Sherrie Rohde

Trusting Big Data

The first centred around the area of trust. People are still not sure if they can trust social data. Lisa Joy Rosner told an interesting story regarding a yogurt client. Retail data showed the company that the top selling flavour was vanilla, but all the buzz and conversation from social data was telling the business a different story. Pineapple flavour was what customers were getting really excited about yet this was not translating into sales. The reason they established was that in most stores there were not enough pineapple flavoured yogurts stocked so customers would default to vanilla because their favourite flavour was simply unavailable.

Big Data Talent

All the panelists agreed that the data or the technology behind it, each on its own, is not enough to extract real value and meaning to drive business actions. Smart people who can connect the dots and help understand the “why” as well as provide contextual and behavioural insights are vital.

That’s why D’Orazio argued that looking at Big Data from a research POV is important. Having researchers who are technologists and can bring a mix of quantitative and qualitative skills to the table – a combination of the social sciences, anthropology and statistics – is what is needed.

That said finding these types of people is not easy. Nelson pointed out that a recent McKinsey report stated that in the next 4 years there are going to be 140,000 to 190,00 unfilled data scientist jobs. An additional challenge is that there are 1.5 million managers who needed to be re-trained in the area of Big Data so people are able to understand what’s possible and what’s not. Without a basic understanding of statistics, Nelson pointed out that businesses will draw the wrong conclusions from the data and make bad decisions

Big Data Poll

Image by Twitter user @matylda

Making Big Data insights Actionable

Aside from people there were other key points to making sure data-driven insights were actionable. Michael Nelson argued that there needs to be a culture of transparency as well as a culture of “combat” when it comes to big data. Make all the data transparent and available to the whole company and encourage debate and discussion around it.

This tied in with Francesco D’Orazio’s point on decision making. If you really want to derive value and meaning from big data then you need to re-engineer how your company makes decisions based on what the data is telling you. Dashboards delivering live feeds to executives can quickly become redundant if the process of responding quickly to what the data means has not been thought through.

The benefit of researchers who get technology (rather than technology companies trying to do research) is highlighted in the way big data is collected. D’Orazio pointed out that Face’s Pulsar platform doesn’t just track data by keywords now but also by reach, audience and content. Wrapping this with a solid research framework is key to delivering robust and actionable insight.

Privacy and Data Ownership

Unsurprisingly privacy was a hot topic of the debate. Lisa shared some interesting facts from a recent study she had done with JD Power that showed that 32% of consumers had no idea that they were being listened to. The conundrum of the privacy issue around big data was highlighted by the statistic: 48% don’t want to be listened to, but then 58% said they did want to be listened to if they were complaining or needed help.

There was also concern that European law may limit the ability of companies to analyze data in order to personalize their offerings. Transparency was key to solving the privacy debate said Nelson – if I tell you what data I’m collecting and the benefit you get in return for collecting this data about you then you will give me more data.

However D’Orazio felt that this was rarely true – the benefit of big data is with the company not the customer. In this sense he said that a much bigger looming concern was around data ownership. Customers at some point will realise that it is in their interests to control their own data (personal data lockers) and this could have major ramifications on current business models.

A final thought

One final thought that we were left to mull over is preparing ourselves to manage the trend of social data going visual when most technology listening platforms are built around text. In 2013 we are going to need to crack visual mining. Now there’s a challenge!

Blog, Future of Research, Innovation

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Old World To New World

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This article was originally written by Face CEO Andrew Needham for the GreenBook Blog, but we wanted to share it here too. Making technology and innovation central to your company’s culture can seem like a big task, but it doesn’t have to be.

Old World Map

I gave a talk at the Cello Partner Day on “Old World to New World: making tech and innovation central to your thinking”. For me there are three important drivers to making tech and innovation central to your company’s culture:

  1. Be curious to explore new things
  2. Have the desire and motivation to change NOW!
  3. Be constantly frightened of what could sink your business next week.

There’s no excuse really as innovation doesn’t always have to be about the big and scary things: it can be about the small things too. Ultimately we innovate to be better, faster, cheaper, more creative or more valuable than our competitors. Fortunately things don’t move quickly in the research industry so we have more time to innovate than we think. Also we should remember that most good ideas have been thought of; we just need to ask whether they have been applied to what we do and if so, how well have they been applied and could we do them better.

Here is the deck I presented which is based on the framework from Scott Keller and Colin Price’s Encouraging organisations to change: the influence model, which I thought was a useful way of sharing some Face examples of creating an innovation culture. It breaks it down into the following four simple steps:

1. A compelling story: I understand what is being asked of me and it makes sense

Having a vision and a plan to achieve it is key; asking the question of the role you want technology and innovation to play in that plan essential. Things don’t happen by accident, so start by mapping out client needs (those that are here now and also the ones that you can see coming over the hill) and build an innovation pipeline against them. Think not just about innovating in terms of research technology or research frameworks to answer these needs, but also think about bringing research to areas that don’t have them. It’s about future-proofing your business.

2. Reinforcement mechanisms: I see that our structure, processes and systems support the change I am being asked to make

Doing pilots as part of an “always in beta” mentality is a great way of demonstrating to the whole company that you’re serious about experimenting. The mantra of “test, learn, do” is at the heart of what we call Face Labs, our internal innovation network – as is working with forward-thinking clients to help develop new approaches.

Fundamental to this philosophy is being prepared to fail/get things wrong and learn from them. Hack days; opening up to individuals and companies both inside and outside your organisation; and writing and talking about innovation (at events, in the press, on your blog or on Slideshare) are good examples of proving to your employees that you’re serious about making tech and innovation central to your thinking.

Finally, do you have a line in your P&L to fund your innovation? If not then why not?

3. Skills required for change: I have the skills and opportunities to behave in the new way

One of the most important decisions we have made at Face has been creating the role of Chief Innovation Officer. Francesco D’Orazio, Face’s CIO, has overall responsibility for driving our innovation pipeline; he is in charge of Face Labs and is rewarded for our successes.

People, rewards and training are one of the hardest areas to get right. First start with recruitment by thinking about what type of people do you want to attract into the organisation as well as what skills do these people need to have (something that is driven by your vision and your plan). Secondly with existing team members it’s critical to ascertain the necessary training skills needed for them to succeed in your company. From a rewards point of view it’s often not just about the money. We send team members to SXSW for a week, for example, something that is seen as one of the best innovation rewards.

Finally it is about embracing technology to run your business and that means at the very least embracing tools such as Basecamp (or something similar in terms of project management), Skype and Evernote (becoming paperless) to drive efficiency and collaboration. Recently we have added PivotViewer to our technology tool set as it makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data by visualising thousands of related items at once, enabling us to see trends and patterns that would be hidden when looking at one item at a time.

4. Role Modelling: I see my leaders, colleagues and staff behaving differently.

The old adage that “actions speak louder than words” is key here. I can speak from personal experience along with Face’s MD Job Muscroft – we not only introduced the above tools into Face’s processes (whether that was from a management, marketing, sales, promotion or research point of view) but we also made sure that we were the first to use them on a regular basis. Our Twitter and Slideshare accounts are evidence of that!

Blog, Conferences, Future of Research, Meet Us At

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Andrew’s Opening and Closing Remarks at ESOMAR’s Qualitative 2012

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Earlier this month Andrew Needham, Face’s CEO, chaired Esomar’s Global Qualitative Research Conference in Amsterdam. The main thread of his speech was the rapid pace of change and what this means for qualitative research. Here are some excerpts from both his introduction and closing remarks.

ESOMAR Qualitative 2012 banner

It is the speed and impact of this change that is worrying for many of us.

Greece and the Euro Crisis represent just one of the many manifestations of the changing world order: how to achieve growth in a developed world laden with debt? Others such as the speed of change in terms of product life cycles; globalization – the shift of importance to emerging markets; sustainability of world resources, changing demographics and the challenge of ageing populations on western economies are all significant challenges in their own right.

But that is not to mention one of the biggest drivers of change – namely the impact of the social web on everything we do. EMarketer’s report at the end of 2011 predicted the tipping point would happen this year when 60% of marketing budgets would become social.

Andrew Talking

A major Ad Age article in 2011, entitled “Will Social Media Replace Surveys As A Research Tool?” brought the implications of this to bear on our very own doorstep. The top Research Executive, Joan Lewis for Procter and Gamble, the world’s biggest research buyer, predicted the dramatic decline in the importance of surveys by 2020 because of the rise of social media.

More recently Marc Pritchard, P&G’s Global Marketing and Brand Building Officer, outlined the company’s new approach to digital marketing as it aimed to build “lifelong, one-to-one relationships in real time with every person in the world”.

For research to help companies like P&G achieve such an ambitious goal, we are going to need to embrace change.

We can start by asking ourselves some important questions, questions we had in fact discussed as a committee that had helped shape the agenda for this year’s conference. How well as a research industry are we responding to change? Are we moving fast enough? Are we being innovative enough? Are we helping our clients to keep up and stay ahead of their consumers? What role should qualitative research play in the more continuous and adaptive marketing ecosystem that is emerging, and do we have the right skills and tools to make us fit for purpose?

Some of the answers to these questions are in the papers and presentations we are about to cover over the next two days, but it’s worth quickly drawing out a few key themes below:

Andrew Talking

1. Quality
The panelists at the session “Ensuring the future Growth of Market Research” at Esomar’s Congress in Atlanta highlighted the importance of quality and scientific robustness if research is to remain the true keeper of insight. It is critical that we apply the rigour of qualitative methodologies as we apply new techniques presented to us through the use of technology. We are fortunate to have Unilever attend to explain their thinking behind their Accreditation Programme designed to ensure gold standard in the quality of Qualitative Research.

2. Speed & Action
It is incumbent upon us as an industry to make sure that quality insight is delivered more quickly and cost effectively than we have ever done (or needed to do) before so that we can help companies speed up decision-making processes rather than just help people make better decisions more slowly. Promise’s paper with Sony talked about how to instill insight for competitive advantage by helping companies become Strategic Foresight Organisations. It can also mean doing more with less in these straitened times as Insites demonstrated in its paper with KLM.

3. Innovation
Making sure that we are constantly innovating with new approaches and techniques that deliver robust, actionable insight will also become increasingly important in a world that is changing so quickly. Firefish’s paper with BT, Face’s paper with Nokia, Brainjuicer’s paper with Kelloggs and Engage’s paper with CNBC were all good examples of this.

4. Qualitative Skills
And finally “Will the arrival of Big Data – where there’s now so much qualitative data available for free – change the whole business model for qualitative research? Do all qualitative agencies need to be plugged in with real time social data so we can help companies like P&G build 1-2-1 relationships in real time with their consumers? If so they will need to have an understanding of quantitative and social intelligence skills so we can connect the dots. The panel discussion Qualitative Skills in the New World should not be missed!”

Andrew’s concluding thoughts on the Conference

“For me there were two important themes that come out of this year’s Conference.

Andrew at ESOMAR

“First of all the big opportunity for us as qualitative researchers is that in a world of increasing data obesity there is going to be a massive need for more human analysis – more depth, more richness, more rigour, more clarity of insight – all the skills we can bring to the table as qualitative researchers – rather than less. We are perfectly placed from what I have read and seen at the Conference to be the true custodians of insight.

“But we shouldn’t think this was naturally going to fall into our laps. One frustration or concern I have is that we’re not moving quickly enough to keep up with the speed of change so that other categories of business are being afforded the opportunity to muscle into our patch. To win in this space we are going to have to combine rigour with speed – it’s not a question of either or: we need to do both well. In my view this will increasingly mean that qualitative research is no longer delivered purely on an ad hoc project-by-project basis (as it has largely been done to date with a focus group-based model) but on a more continuous, real time and strategic basis. Promise’s paper with Sony was a clear example of this.

“Secondly, what excites me and should excite all the bright young students that are sitting in front of me is that for the first time in the history of research we can help clients deliver in a meaningful way on the mantra of putting consumers at the heart of their business to give them competitive advantage. This will require different skill sets where we will need to combine qualitative skills with quantitative and social intelligence ones. Insites’s paper with KLM is a good example of bringing all three together.”

Andrew finished by concluding that new roles and titles are going to emerge in the coming years so that a recruitment advertisement for a qualitative researcher in 2020 will read and look very different to what we are seeing today. The day will come, he surmised, when it could be as cool to work in the research industry as it is supposedly to work in advertising!

Blog, Co-Creation, Insights

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Face Speaks to Oxford’s Next-Gen Business Leaders

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Last week I spoke at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School as part of a two-stage series on co-creation we do every year.

My three hour session with 40 MBA students was only ever going to be a teaser to some of the key methodologies we apply as part of our co-creation approach – a process that we implement usually over a 4-6 week period. Still, we were able to experience some of the gamification, rapid prototyping and immersive elements we bring to the creative stages of the process, as well as evidence the importance of mixing individual thinking through crowd sourcing with group thinking via more co-creative skills.

Yet one of the most important aspects of co-creation we explored that is often unappreciated is that, if applied properly, it is a fantastically robust and exploratory form of qualitative research.

Our inverted co-creation process helps us to move from tantalising observations, intriguing themes and territories to genuine captivating insight while always staying true to that insight and constantly validating it through every stage. It is this part of the lecture that students found the most stimulating and challenging and where I think they learnt the most.

From an insight perspective they left with a good understanding of how to apply a simple process that helped them in three critical ways :

  • Move from what were really just observations to crafting genuine insight
  • Understand the importance of relentlessly asking “Why” – why do people do or act in the way they do
  • Evaluate the underlying truth about needs, wants and attitudes that drives behaviour they have seen

Insight has a “because” in it…

Better understanding consumers’ emotional drivers as well as improving the quality and shaping of social ideas before the quantitative testing stage is becoming a key focus for clients. My blog 2012 through the lens of client needs points out that too much blind reliance on testing things to death has seen some of the “magic” and “creativity” in marketing lose out to the “logic”. Last Thursday, with the help of a small cohort of MBA students, was a good lesson in how to redress this balance.

For further reading, here are a few slides we presented to the MBA students on the three step process of Insight Generation.

Insight Generation Process
View more presentations from Face, the Co-Creation Agency

Augmented Research, Blog, Future of Research, Innovation, Insights, Social Media

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The Death of Surveys: What Next?

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Mountain PeaksFlickr: By The Paperclip

This article was originally published in Research World Magazine‘s March/April 2012 issue. In it, Andrew Needham, Face CEO and Founding Partner, discusses what needs to be done for social media analysis to provide real research insights.

“Will Social Media Replace Surveys as a Research Tool?” This Advertising Age headline from March 2011 sent ripples through the industry. Joan Lewis, the top research executive of Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest research buyer, predicted a dramatic decline in the importance of surveys by 2020 due to the rise of social media.

Her reasoning was simple: with so much real-time data about our customers, structured research is less relevant. The decline of surveys was used as one example in a much bigger debate about how the research industry must change if it is to keep up with emerging client needs. As she said, it is less about methodology or sample representation and more about finding that game-changing insight. But in a consumer landscape that is changing so quickly, how do you efficiently extract meaningful insight from all the ‘big data’ consumers are producing? How do you connect all the dots?

The answers to these questions lie with technology and learning new skills. The research industry needs to embrace technology to develop social and community-based tools that are better configured to the needs of client CMI departments. In terms of dashboards, tools such as Radian6 and Sysomos are very good when it comes to social listening, but we are in the business of generating social media insight. Crafting quality insights requires customised data, and bespoke algorithms and modules. Clients are demanding more depth when it comes to understanding audiences’ relationships with a brand via the social web. A key challenge has been anonymity. Trying to pinpoint an audience demographically has not been possible, but it has been possible to track relationships through passions and interests. By developing a more dynamic and real-time approach to audience segmentation, brands can deliver content that is relevant and meaningful.

Technology can also help researchers extract more meaningful insight from the data by moving beyond analysing conversations by volume and doing more to understand the data’s impact and influence – its ‘visibility’. This requires weighting the data using specific algorithms for each social media channel. Furthermore, all current social media mining tools look only at content, and overlook context and behavioural data. This means that most of them are not making the most of the data feast. When it comes to community platforms there is much that can be improved, but integrating social media data in real time is key. Real value comes from mapping the data onto the rest of the research toolbox.

These innovations need to come thick and fast because clients want to be able to connect the dots between different data sets to better project what is going to happen in the future. To do this effectively requires more human analysis and consulting working alongside technology. The industry needs to look outwards so it can attract different types of people with different skill sets. Finding researchers who are also technologists, or technologists who are also social anthropologists is difficult, but we are going to see a greater mix of technological skill sets with more traditional ones. This mix will lead to the development of new methodological frameworks, powered by technology, to help gather and analyse those game-changing insights in a consumer landscape that is changing so quickly.

As Joan Lewis said, “When we’re doing it, we need to do it well. It’s really been easy for people to take the idea that the world is changing as an excuse to do really poor work. And there’s no excuse.”

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