Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Eurostar chaos as seen in social media

I confess I have been a fan of Eurostar for 5-6 years. No longer the traipse through Brussels airport and pathetic short flight to London that somehow takes 5 hours from door to door. Eurostar changed all that for me, Leisure Select is lovely and sometimes when the price is right Attentio would pay for me to take that ticket. Two bottles of wine later and normally an interesting chat with fellow passengers and I’d be back in Brussels with a smile on my face.

But they have struggled lately with a number of issues, some acts of God, some maintenance problems but now the worst of all, a disastrous PR fiasco, with hundreds trapped under the tunnel for hours, thousands more delayed, trains cancelled and a stressed CEO getting on TV and via Wearesocial his first taste of social media.

I feel for the Eurostar team, but I also see that they act like a defacto monopoly sometimes. Their loyalty scheme is an after thought (it isn’t really a loyalty scheme) and their prices are rarely “competitive”. Still the criticism they face now is largely unfair, the snow was terrible and the simple nature of a “under tunnel” service, is they maybe stuck in a tunnel. OK they seem to be back in control.

Social media is important for them, but as I wrote to an agency contact recently, most of their work is not about social media. First they need to fix the trains and network. The CEO’s job of communication will have to be on TV and via their web site. The social piece is useful but frankly much of the twitter buzz is from social media types who are not yet full representative of the Eurostar customer base (this will change).

Social media does however provide a useful listening opportunity and as the video below demonstrates the chat is quite representative of their brand today. Many of the conversations are about “chaos”. How this changes and what next month’s hot topics are, will be clearly visible by watching the tweets, listening to blogs and responding to certain types of conversations. But lets watch this space and see how their online reputation evolves and if they do start to listen?

Recent social media chats and a prediction

Just looking at recent twitter conversations it seems companies in Belgium are becoming aware of the medium.

I tweeted I was unhappy with the sandwiches at Exki (they can be bad) but did specify I like other things they do. (They tend to focus on healthier foods and in a market saturated by mayonnaise rich sandwiches that can be a plus.) Their General Manager, Laurent Kahn reached out and asked me what the problem was and I explained my miserable meal. Two things here, firstly he uses Twitter to share stuff and secondly he doesn’t mind taking a public conversation. As it turns out most of the buzz around them is positive or neutral so he doesn’t have to be too worried. Of course the question is, what will he do with my feedback and should he add social feedback with some traditional research? Maybe they’d sell more sandwiches. We’ll see.

While I was announcing some new financing for Attentio (great news by the way!) I shared a negative experience on using PR Web. PR Web asked me what the problem was and when I explained, they showed sympathy, even if the response was a little “most customers like the new version”. Still at least they talked with me. The funny part is that Market Wire also said hello and asked could they help. They couldn’t help this time, but I now know that they are relevant for future releases and communications, that is very good as I had seen them as more for releases around stock listed companies (don’t ask me why…).

So, good that companies talk to people. Great that Belgian firms see the value at a senior level. Wonderful that companies see the potential for new business leads. But this is just the tip of a fast growing iceberg, now twitter is still niche (super niche) and the real time web is still properly years away, but its coming and all companies will need to know how to communicate to their stakeholders, manage this and ensure learnings are properly spread across departments.

My prediction is that over the next three years the CIO and IT Director will now be a main decision maker in future when it comes to listening platforms as they will integrate with many departments and be apart of Business Intelligence, Knowledge Management and CRM not just glorified press clippings or only a marketing dashboard for writing reports. Fancy a bet?

Online is hurting Traditional Research in a new way

Traditional research has obviously taken a whack since the inception of the Internet. The billions of euros that goes to online research came from somewhere, but not a problem, the major agencies have shifted larger portions of their business online or bought companies that had done it first.

What is happening now is something different, what occurred before was Internet as the medium of transport i.e. online panels, internet based questionnaire, web based focus groups, now it is Internet as the source. This is where companies like Attentio make their bread and butter. The cost is through extracting the information and while this is significant, when we do it, we have it and then once categorised and “cleaned” we can really reuse and enable insights for clients repeatedly. We get those insights from truly conversational sources such as the blogs, forums, networks where the discussions are free flowing, unstructured and unedited.

While reading Research Live (a leading research website) I saw an article demonstrating the impact. The piece was entitled Pressure from online alternatives could stunt research recovery and Morgan Stanley’s Edward Hill Wood says “in recent years ‘traditional’ MR agencies have been undercut by start-ups using purely online data collection methodologies and new approaches such as social media analysis”

Those 7 words “new approaches such as social media analysis” talk to thousands of jobs that will change, millions of euros of lost sales to research companies, methodologies that won’t exist in 5 years, but also companies who will get information quicker while you and me get listened to more. A metaphor for the impact of this is record producers. Online distribution was first a new channel to ship CDs but when online downloads emerged the impact was catastrophic. Services like iTunes, Last FM and Spotify have and will do very well but they are new approaches and most record companies simply have not dealt well with the new world. I believe as with the music analogy the Research Industry will lose revenue although a large portion will go to listening and community based approaches, but will the larger players be flexible enough to do something about that? We’ll see.

First Direct (HSBC) continued

So, I am still wowed by the look and feel of the First Direct site – gorgeous. I especially like when you group the feelings together and they “shiver” next to each other like children after a swim in the sea. But, still I have a bee in my bonnet regarding their methodology.

My own quick research using our tools and that of other companies shows a much higher amount of neutral commentary than they represent. Via Tweetdeck you can check yourself and the positive buzz is about the new site, mainly from social media types, so not much in terms of people being wowed by the First Direct product.

I asked some “people I trust” for their view

Person 1, social media analyst, not associated with Attentio – “I agree with you on the sentiment score, but I have a more basic complaint: who’s doing this for them, and how? There’s really no information there, just a big number. To have any credibility, I’d expect it to have a link to something that explains where they’re getting their numbers. Otherwise, it’s just a number from the air”

Person 2, PR practitioner, social media projects, not associated with Attentio – “I agree with you. I have a feeling there were some doubting comments about it on Twitter when it first launched, or some sort of chatter. They certainly don’t explain or justify where they are getting those metrics from”

Anyway, no one is screaming about a great injustice, just questions on what data set does this come from and what methodology they are using.  First Direct actually come across as a “nice brand”, personable, there is a lot of good stuff on the site, but help a guy out here and add where the data comes from. Perhaps they plan to do this at Social Media ‘09 where they present a case study on this initiative…here’s hoping (link via @simongrice). In the mean time just sit back and relax and enjoy the bubbles :).

First Direct sentiment monitoring – more questions than answers

I can’t help myself. If a major brand comes to the realisation that social media is important and they decide to get involved, well, I feel happy, seriously. Still, they should be able to take some scrutiny around their activities in this new medium.

I noticed First Direct, a division of HSBC are testing social media. They have a set of widgets available at http://www.live.firstdirect.com one of the most beautiful parts is a gorgeous sentiment tool showing the amounts of negative, positive and neutral buzz. If you click on a button it will group the sentiments into the 3 categories, they say -

“Every hour the happiness index sweeps the web for comments about First Direct and shows each posting as a positive, negative or neutral bubble”

When I checked, 74% of posts were positive. I am sceptical. If this is harvesting information from social media sources how come there is so much positive sentiment?  Actually, let me phrase that again, how come there is so much sentiment at all? Based on our experience, sentiment is very much present in blogs and twitter but it is very unusual to have even 50% of posts being sentimental about a brand.

To illustrate in one Attentio study, we analysed a group of mobile phone companies and LG with 50% sentimental posts (pretty much split down the middle negative/positive) was nearly twice that of the other companies, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung. My own brief study of recent posts from Trendpedia and Twitter show nowhere near the amount of sentimental posts that would drive a three quarters positive sentiment score.

It is conceivable that they are tracking some discussion forums that give mainly emotional posts and those that post, like HSBC/First Direct, but then they should be transparent as to where this is. I am not the only cynic, there is a good post and great comments here from the Next Web blog.

I want to be wrong but this doesn’t look right.

Talking at the European Parliament

Thanks to my colleague Denisa, I got an invite to talk at the European Parliament last week to a group of young journalists. The program was developed by The European Youth Press, an umbrella organisation with the involvement of 48,000 young journalists, they had a slightly smaller group of 40 journalists availing of the 3 days of workshops and presentations.

I was at a New Media workshop and spoke about how social media provides opportunities for the more entrepreneurial journalist. One doesn’t have to look too far to see how Techcrunch, Mashable and others have built up strong audiences and successful businesses by finding a niche, producing great content and monetising their brand through events, speaking opportunities, awards etc.

As we know most offline press is in decline. There are a few examples of companies increasing circulation but these are few and often free press. We all see that online is emerging to take some of that market but is not replacing the losses. On one hand Murdoch sees a world where people will pay for the news content (he has shelved some free offerings), while others see that free is the only way and business models are driven by advertising and events that come from the online profile of the site. These are interesting times, truth has a cost and someone has to cover that cost.

There was one slide with a nice Attentio graph. It was there on the basis that new media often provides a platform for online conversations that are analysable and available for anyone to get involved. This also offers a keen eyed journalist a possibility to spot trends or prove a trend by showing how the buzz emerged and grew.

We finished off with a round table discussion on how the European Parliament will use social media in the future and the general feeling was they can be more engaged but the main difficulty will be speaking as “one voice” to the conversations. Perhaps the conclusion is MEPs can connect with social media, some information can be pushed by social media but as an institution it may have to refrain from actual conversations?

Celebrand, Celebrity Brand Index with thenod.com

We have launched the Celebrand Index which is in partnership with thenod.com.

“TheNod.com is where people, products & places get The Nod from celebs and experts! Follow your fave faces & shop their stuff!”. It’s got great information on the celebs and is actually a nice implementation of “folksonomy” where people tag the celebs based on what they wear, were they where and what they were in. Thanks for your work on this Darika.

There’s more to come of course (including a bunch of lovely graphics) but for now we are explaining what the index is and some interim high level findings. Those high level findings include:

• Female celebrities more discussed

• Celebrity topic associations shift rapidly

• Some topics have high buzz but low brand presence

• Emotive conversations can indicate a celebrity’s potential to drive brand loyalty

The release is below, I’ll link to it online later.

London, 15th October, 2009: Celebrity recommendations website TheNod.com and online market research specialists Attentio have partnered to track and analyse celebrity brand associations.

The Celebrand Index has completed a set-up phase establishing patterns around celebrity “buzz” in relation to commercial sectors including Fashion, Travel, Technology, Sport and Automotive.

The index will track how official recommendations like advertising campaigns and celebrity own-brand products impact on consumer awareness, alongside unofficial recommendations such as a celebrity being spotted at a venue or using a product.

The Nod’s CEO David Lethbridge said, “The Nod tracks and lists celebrity recommendations and, via our affiliate model, sees it convert successfully into sales. We wanted a research partner to provide further data on the value, opportunities, and trends from celebrity association.”

Attentio Co-Founder Simon McDermott said, “Previous studies of this type just looked at whether celebrity endorsements work – which has been proven. Brands want to see more insights like which celebrities are generating buzz, in what sectors, and if those are positive mentions.”

Quarterly Reports:

The Celebrand Index will be released as a quarterly report showing analysis of The Celebrity 100 collated by Forbes Annually and separating male from female celebs as well as focussing on specific sectors such as Fashion, Travel, Sport, Technology, Health and Beauty, and Literature. Insights will also include rising stars, successful celebrity endorsements, and where brand opportunities lie.

Widgets for social media buzz

The Attentio free tool Trendpedia is now offering widgets that can be used to get a simple take on buzz from four “buzzy” industries. The team has chosen movies, celebrities, mobile telephones and PC/Hardware as the four defined widgets. Across the four widgets the mega buzz winners from last week are (drum roll)…

Obama – 10,052 blog mentions

Microsoft – 5,322 blog mentions

Apple – 4,551 blog mentions

It is simple to download to a blog so maybe have a look at Trendpedia.

Drug online buzz – Asthma

Many of our client projects are with pharmaceutical companies.

It stands to reason, as it is an industry that generates copious discussion online in blogs, forums and twitter. In fact many will say the emergence of social media has “democratised” medicine and medical information. Say, 20 years ago, you were sick, you had a few options to get information except from the doctor (of course an eminently qualified source), but now you are armed with more tools to talk to the doctor and discuss your therapy, this is empowering.

You’d reckon though, that medicine chat is pretty “dry”, people don’t talk about the drugs except how they can or cannot make you better. Not so, many times we come across “brand love” for medicine (I will not write “drug love”, oops there I have). Other times we see “brand envy”.

In this case monitoring for asthma drugs on twitter a certain twitter.com/swankyfancy says “Advair is the sexiest asthma medicine”. Why? I don’t know. But still she takes the time to write it. Warmly glowing I looked at some more of the buzz, and a certain twitter.com/_3mmanuel_ says “Uninsured so I blow nebulizer mist at the Advair commercials”.

These are snippets at the heart of online discussions, but they are building blocks for understanding what people think right now about these therapies and their access to these products. On one day, brand love and brand envy sit side by side…

P.S. Asthma drugs measured for twitter buzz (monthly cumulative) Advair is on the rise, Singulair on the decrease.

Twestival

This is a quick note to say that Attentio will be sponsoring Twestival again. But it is also a chance to say get cracking and buy your tickets! There is more information at http://twestival.be/. All money raised will go to charity, you can even vote for the one you believe in.

Basically you have a big bunch of social media types getting together with some great music and a bar. Perhaps a delicious irony that the best part of online social media is when you get to meet face to face. See you there!