Our very own Saul Parker and Esther Garland went along to the MRS Brand Research Conference in Central London a couple of weeks ago to talk about co-creating a global brand positioning.
We presented our learnings from co-creating the new global positioning for Mortein last year, and aimed to dispel some of the tired old myths of co-creation by demonstrating how we had used our process to circumvent the traditional barriers cited about working creatively with consumers.
You can view our presentation above but here are some of our main points:
True creative, disruptive thinking that works on a brand (rather than product level) can just as easily be done by consumers as “experts” – it’s about giving them the right tools and frameworks.
By keeping workshop design and tasks abstract and non linear, by never explicitly exposing the destination, you can free consumers up to let go and be truly creative. And by building in divergence and inspiring disruption in design you can increase the richness of output and collateral with which to build your brand.
By mimicking the creative tools and techniques taught to professionals, and removing the focus from problem solving to game playing and story telling you can keep outputs full of meaning and texture rather than rational logic.
But finally, when it comes to brand building, story telling and myth-making really lie at the heart of this. And as such rather than try and ignore cultural norms, key to building a truly resonant brand story is capitalising on that folk narrative and symbolism and re-mixing it in a newly relevant way.
We recently presented at the MRS Social Media conference in London to discuss the work carried out with O2 UK around social media monitoring and social CRM.
We designed a research + technology solution based on Pulsar called RTO2 (Real-Time O2) to help the brand plug into real-time customer insights from social media.
The conference was also a great occasion to share some thoughts on the research methodologies and processes behind social media monitoring, which is too often wrongly associated with just quantitative analysis and number crunching. Let’s make this clear once and for all: it’s not. And if this was the case people would be happy with off-the-shelve solutions, software-driven analytics and all you’d get would be a confused mass of noisy data which don’t make sense and are not of any help to whatever you’re trying to achieve.
Like in any research process, effective social media monitoring is based on building samples to ensure representativeness, preparing/cleaning up the data to ensure relevance and only then running various (and iterative) layers of analysis to get to the insights. And all of this has to happen ongoing and in real-time.
This is why what social media monitoring is really about is reducing complexity and pattern recognition and it has to be based on quantitative as much as qualitative methodologies but also on human analysis as much as software analytics.
To illustrate the research process in more detail we went through the 6-step framework we use to get from raw data to tactical and strategic insights:
- LANDSCAPE: summary of the most important data for any specific search
- LEADS: identify the leads that might be pointing towards relevant phenomena
- DRILL-DOWN: investigate the various leads through different types of drill-down action
- EVENTS: get to the bottom of what caused a specific phenomenon turning it into a well-defined event
- INSIGHTS: build tactical and strategic insights off the back of the events uncovered
- TRENDS + MODELS: bring together events and insights in a comprehensive trend that tells the story of the brand over a specific period of time + identify recursive patters and suggest actions which will cause a trend to emerge again
If we want the social media analysis industry to grow and be taken seriously it’s time to start defining and sharing research frameworks that could help us generate better insights and foster the adoption across various business segments (from Research to PR, from Innovation to Planning, from Customer Experience to CRM…)
By no means this is meant to be a solution but hopefully it will contribute to a conversation that’s getting more and more vibrant.
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*RTO2 has just been nominated for a Best Innovation Award 2010
More on the same topic:
Introducing Pulsar
Real-Time Research, where do you start
Tomorrow we will be speaking at MRS Social Media Research conference about social media analysis research frameworks and tools and more generally on how to build accurate consumer insights from online conversations.
We will be presenting the work carried on within the RTO2 project (Real-Time O2) which involved designing a social media monitoring and social CRM platform, based on Face’s proprietary Pulsar monitoring technology, and conducting ongoing social media analysis to turn massive amounts of data into real-time insights and actionable tactical recommendation and strategic advice.
We are on at 10.30 (full programme here), say hello if you’re around!
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*RTO2 has just been nominated for a Best Innovation Award 2010
More on the same topic:
Introducing Pulsar
Real-Time Research, where do you start
Francesco will be heading over to the MRS New Media and Technology conference on the 19th November to join the conversation and present. Our Head of Web Research and Strategy will be discussing real time research and collaborative planning.
Research 3.0: real-time research and collaborative approaches for adaptive brand planning
- Measuring and monitoring online conversations about brands to assess brand influence and brand visibility
- Applying qualitative analysis to determine research parameters and add meaning to quantitative findings
- Identifying the conversation hubs and the influencers across a wide range of channelss
- Using crowd-sourcing and co-creation methodologies to achieve research,innovation and planning objectives
- Building iterative models for feeding real-time insights and consumer inputs into the existing marketing process
Also on the bill are speakers from the BBC, Orange, Coca-Cola and Danone so it should be a very insightful look into the future. To see the full line up and get some more info on the conference CLICK HERE
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