Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Monday, June 17th, 2013

My Data is Bigger…

“My data is bigger than your data…”

“Yeah? Show me yours and I’ll show you mine…”

An apocryphal conversation between two macho teens in the near future?

OR

“Can’t meet you later. Have incense burning duty at the Data Temple…”

The new religion perhaps?

Maybe.

“Wait. I love those red pants but I have to check what other people like me are buying. I hope they like it…”

Maybe you think I’m pushing the edge here, but when search returns more than 2 billion possibilities on Big Data, it’s a Big Data challenge to figure out what it all really means.

Let’s start with a few simple explanations to set the stage – beginning with Wikipedia:

“Big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications…”

So far so good – in other words, when a Government decides to listen to everyone’s phone calls, it’s hard to manage by having a bunch of cigarette smoking guys, with headsets, hunched over recording devices…or for that matter, if you are in a retail business, how do you track what your customer had for lunch before browsing your website, and then how do you relate that to the local search for a haircut they had just concluded related to similar people who were walking their dogs at the same moment…? You get the picture.

IBM has estimated that “Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.”

To give that some sort of visualization, let me share from an article by Theresa Riley on Moyers and Company:

“In Big Data, A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, And Think, published earlier this year, authors Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier try to explain just how much data there is in big data. They write that ‘in 2013 the amount of stored information in the world is estimated to be around 1,200 exabytes, of which less than 2 percent is non-digital.’”

What exactly is an exabyte, you might ask? They continue:

“There is no good way to think about what this size of data means. If it were all printed in books, they would cover the entire surface of the United States some 52 layers thick. If it were placed on CD-ROMs and stacked up, they would stretch to the moon in five separate piles. In the third century B.C., as Ptolemy II of Egypt strove to store a copy of every written work, the great Library of Alexandria represented the sum of all knowledge in the world. The digital deluge now sweeping the globe is the equivalent of giving every person living on Earth today 320 times as much information as is estimated to have been stored in the Library of Alexandria.”

Bottom line, Ptolemy II would be a dummy today by the standards of Big Data.

I only point out that it might be worthwhile trying to analyze the difference between what he collected and what we collect. Think about it…

And then occasionally you run into scholarly articles like this one – applying Big Data to Word of Mouth.

Frankly, I have no comment other than to say DIGIBABBLE…

Let’s be clear – this is not a diatribe against data – far from it – I have been working with and in data for the better part of my career, and I fervently believe that the right data – applied the right way – in the right circumstances cannot only help you shop or drive more profits for Big Enterprise – but actually help our world and the people in it. Sadly it won’t stop War or hatred or injustice…and maybe that is where we need to focus to learn about what our new religion really is and isn’t.

So my suggestion is that rather than follow the crowd and digibabble our way into group think, we take a step back and listen to some of the biggest collectors of Big Data (amazing how we don’t pay enough attention to the fine print).

How about this one:

“Twitter uses a far-flung army of contract workers, whom it calls judges, to interpret the meaning and context of search terms that suddenly spike in frequency on the service…Humans are core to this system,” two Twitter engineers wrote in a blog post in January.

Or this:

“There has been a shift in our thinking…A part of our resources are now more human curated.” — Scott Huffman, an engineering director in charge of search quality at Google.

And:

“You need judgment, and to be able to intuitively recognize the smaller sets of data that are most important…To do that, you need some level of human involvement.” — Ben Taylor, a product manager at FindTheBest, a “comparison engine” for finding and comparing more than 100 topics and products, from universities to nursing homes, smartphones to dog breeds.

And there you have it – the challenge in Big Data is to recognize the small data – the important data – the smart data – and there is where technology needs insight in order to be useful.

As a final thought, I return to our ability to save our world…to help humankind through Big Data – listen to Leon Wieseltier, writer, critic, philosopher, friend:

“The study of the consumer is one of capitalism’s oldest techniques. But it is not fine that the consumer is mistaken for the entirety of the person.”

Let’s not make Big Data all about shopping and profit; let’s not ascribe God-like powers to it; let’s never forget that the beauty of being human is that we are unpredictable…

Listen:

“The other day I was listening to Mahler in my library. When I caught sight of the computer on the table, it looked small.” Leon Wieseltier

Bottom line – your data might be bigger than mine – but next to Mahler – it’s very, very small…

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

Posted by David on 06/17 at 04:48 PM
Monday, May 20th, 2013

Am I God, or is it me on Facebook?

“How many of you have 500 friends or more? 750 or more? More than 1,000? OK – if you have more than 2,000, keep your hands up.  Now, how many of them will pick you up at the airport?”

Nervous laughter follows – with many knowing nods of the head…point made.

The above is one of my standard keynote routines when I discuss social networks and their power.

Truth is, we have come a long way in understanding the reality and the hype around the meaning of numbers of friends, amount of “likes,” legions of followers and such across the various social networks/channels/services – whatever – but not nearly far enough, and much of the angst marketers and even users have around numbers is grounded in market-driven digibabble and not in actual insight and understanding.

As I have written many times – look no further than Facebook’s public offering to understand that mere “thumbs ups” do not necessarily translate into dollars. And it’s no wonder that honest marketers struggle with ROI as the social companies themselves struggle with monetizing and more and more are adding subscription fees or other premium service payments to augment meager advertising returns.

Let’s be clear – social is powerful – always has been, always will be, and its amplification by digital means is exponentially powerful – when understood.

Having said that, I read a fascinating study by Fenne Deters and Matthias Mehl, from the Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany and the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA, published late last year in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/12/20/1948550612469233

Let me share the abstract:

Online social networking is a pervasive but empirically understudied phenomenon. Strong public opinions on its consequences exist but are backed up by little empirical evidence and almost no causally conclusive, experimental research. The current study tested the psychological effects of posting status updates on Facebook using an experimental design. For one week, participants in the experimental condition were asked to post more than they usually do, whereas participants in the control condition received no instructions. Participants added a lab “Research Profile” as a Facebook friend, allowing for the objective documentation of protocol compliance, participants’ status updates, and friends’ responses. Results revealed:

  • That the experimentally induced increase in status updating activity reduced loneliness
  • That the decrease in loneliness was due to participants’ feeling more connected to their friends on a daily basis
  • That the effect of loneliness was independent of direct social feedback (i.e., responses) by friends

Bottom line – we look for our 15 mgs of fame – if you will (thank you Bob Greenberg) – and like the Andy Warhol 15-minute analog model, it is completely divorced from anything but our own egocentric lives.

Ergo – it’s no wonder that it’s tough to monetize – when no one listens but yourself….

The weekend FT Magazine had an interesting take on this study – with I think a good and healthy caveat – but with a fairly strong view that we need to really understand what the real dynamics are, including the value of offline response to online postings (Digital Exponential):

“Perhaps Facebook updates make us feel connected even though nobody out there is listening. That suggests a curious view of social networking: it may have little to do with true socialising. We may simply feel satisfied with the illusion that someone is paying attention.”

The implication for brands is as clear as the implications for you and I – Who listens?  How do they listen?  And where is the real action recorded…if any?

I call to your attention a wonderful scene in a British black-comedy movie from 1972 called The Ruling Class and starring Peter O’Toole, who plays a paranoid schizophrenic British nobleman who thinks he is Jesus…listen:

“Lady Claire Gurney: How do you know you’re God?

Jack Arnold Alexander Tancred Gurney, 14th Earl of Gurney: Simple. When I pray to Him, I find I am talking to myself.”

And there you have it – how much of what we do is talking to ourselves (me included…) and even so, does it make a difference?

My sense is that the answer is with us as people, as marketers, as real friends – understanding what is and isn’t – separating the digibabble from the powerful possibilities that are ours to have – knowing and accepting the limitations while actively building on the infinite opportunities before us….

What do you think?

 

Posted by David on 05/20 at 06:05 PM
  • \The implication for brands is as clear as the implications for you and I – Who listens? How do they listen? And where is the real action recorded…if any?\ I suggest we keep that thought front and center when developing our messaging strategies, creative and content. It reminds me of how we sometimes (often) sway for the concept the ...
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    Posted by Jessica on 2013-05-21 21:00:44