Marketing in the Digital Era - Selected Excerpts

MArkETing in THE DigiTAl ErA

A diverse sAmpler of mArketing titles from pAlgrAve’s professionAl Business progrAm Selected Excerpts from: How to Measure Digital Marketing Brandjack!

Engaging Customers Using Big Data Predictive Analytics, Data Mining, and Big Data All Thumbs Brand Media Strategy The Mindful Marketer

CONTENTS 3 How to Measure Digital Marketing 8

Brandjack!

13 Engaging Customers Using Big Data 18 Predictive Analytics, Data Mining, and Big Data 23 All Thumbs 28 Brand Media Strategy 33 The Mindful Marketer

Palgrave Professional Business books are written by the best minds in business, combining topical writing, cutting edge research, and strong industry case studies.

In this sampler we have included chapters from our recently published and forthcoming marketing books. Essential reading for professionals in the field, our marketing books explore innovative concepts with an international scope, covering issues that range from consumer behavior to brand building to digital marketing. These books show marketing and advertising professionals across industries how to hone their strategies and skills in today’s ever-evolving technological landscape.

To order any of these books, please visit www.palgrave.com and enter the promo code PM14THIRTY to receive a 30% discount.

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978-1-137-34068-9 | January 2014 $35 | ÂŁ24.99 | $40 CAN Hardback | 272 pages

Digital marketing has become a necessity for almost all companies and organizations across the globe, but few companies measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and so the return on investment debate continues. How to Measure Digital Marketing explains how to assess the success of a digital marketing campaign by demonstrating what the digital marketing metrics are as well as how to measure and use them. This insightful and in-depth book also features interviews with experts and real-life case studies to help marketers navigate the digital world and to better understand and demonstrate the value of digital marketing.

Laurent Flores, How to Measure Digital Marketing, 2014, reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan

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4 • An Excerpt from How to Measure Digital Marketing

From 360° communication to integrated marketing communication

Executive summary Brand communication is becoming more and more difficult, with the fragmentation of media, shrinking advertising budgets, and increasingly “ad zapping,” “mediavore” consumers (those with a voracious appetite for any form of media).

Brands can no longer communicate through 360° communication, as they no longer have the resources, and customers themselves choose their own forms of exposure to messages. As a result, communication and marketing must be integrated and organized around the customer’s preferred points of contact. This is the role of integrated marketing communication (IMC), which focuses on customer needs and aims for maximum ROI, by favoring certain media over others.

Ever more difficult brand communication Advertisers today face a real challenge. On the one hand, traditional sociodemographic characteristics have become less relevant for understanding the behavior of their various publics and segmenting markets. On the other hand, the Internet and digital media in general (all of which is, of

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An Excerpt from How to Measure Digital Marketing • 5

How to Measure Digital Marketing

course, one of the reasons for writing this book) create new opportunities for contact between audiences and brands, and for combinations of advertising messages and communication media.

Whereas marketing in the 1970s was characterized by “product marketing,” where it was a matter of selling rather than persuading consumers to purchase, today, more than ever, marketing has to be customer focused if it is to attract. Today’s more informed customers choose how they would like to be approached. For brands, it is becoming extremely difficult to stand out. On average, consumers are appealed to (consciously or unconsciously) by more than 300 messages a day. So, it becomes difficult to attract the attention of customers who are increasingly selective, only paying attention to certain messages, favoring some contact points rather than others, all of which can vary depending on the situation.

Within this perspective, while 360° marketing has long advocated developing communication distributed across a maximum of media and contact points, so as to somehow “encircle” the consumer, integrated marketing communication (IMC) gives priority to the customer and their choices, and therefore opts for some contact points at the expense of others. More precisely, IMC seeks a better return on communication costs by implementing a strategy based on a channel architecture, operating in synergy and conveying consistent messages. It is determined by statistical data on customers, and their perceptions and behavior. It offers a brand the capacity to use all tools and areas of communication, boosted by digital, with a requirement for return on investment (ROI). Since IMC is focused on the consumer, its goal is to bring increased efficiency. Whereas the aim of 360° communication is the utilization and synergy of all points of contact between the consumer and the brand, IMC seeks to go further by analyzing the relevance of and return on every touchpoint, based on an in-depth analysis of consumer behavior.

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Increasingly customer-oriented marketing

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6 • An Excerpt from How to Measure Digital Marketing

From 360° communication to integrated marketing communication

Increasingly “mediavore” consumers How we access and consume information has undergone rapid change over the past few years. The rise of platforms, including Google, YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and the BBC iPlayer, as well as the introduction of new devices, such as netbooks, IPTV (Internet protocol TV), smartphones, tablets and connected/smart TVs, have fundamentally affected how many of us now use and interact with media. Given that all of these appeared in the past decade, as we look forward to 2020, many expect even greater change as the acceleration of new technologies increases.

While some of the new platforms and devices that will have an impact are yet to be invented, many others are already in development and being planned for mainstream roll-out. As such, there are several impending shifts already visible as we look at the future of media consumption. Many consumers are becoming “device agnostic” – moving from one media to another, and enlarging contact points to access content and information – causing global media habits to evolve rapidly. Device agnostic consumers have dramatically increased their content consumption by switching from one channel to another. A recent study in the USA,1 for example, found that: consumers in their 20s (“digital natives”) switch media venues about 27 times per nonworking hour – the equivalent of more than 13 times during a standard half-hour TV show ... All participants in the study wore biometric belts that monitored their physical responses as they used media throughout more than 300 hours’ worth of nonworking time. They also wore glasses with embedded cameras that kept track of what platform they used and for how long. Though hardly definitive, the research paints a worrisome picture for marketers in a world where consumers turn from screen to screen in search of something that captures and retains their attention, yet often cannot find it.

On this topic, Médiamétrie’s 2011 Media in Life study has traced the evolution of French people’s media behavior and consumption since 2005. Year after year, the French increase their contacts with the media.

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An Excerpt from How to Measure Digital Marketing • 7

In 2010, people living in France had, on average, no less than 41 contacts with digital media and entertainment every day, an increase of 7 percent compared to 2008. All age groups are affected, although it is among 18–24-year-olds that this phenomenon is most pronounced, related to their increased use of the Internet and smartphones. Clearly, today’s youth are “mediavores.” They enjoy a diversity of media: in the course of a single day, nearly a third of French people are in contact with at least five major media (TV, radio, print, Internet, and cinema). In 2008, the figure was a quarter.

The “classic” media – television, radio, press, and cinema – dominate the media landscape, since almost all the population (99 percent) are in contact with at least one of them in a day. The various forms of digital entertainment – video, landline, and mobile phone, music and video games – also have a huge following, with three out of every four French people accessing them every 24-hour period. Digital entertainment is engaged in regularly throughout the day, unlike mainstream media, which are characterized by high prime-time consumption.

Not specific to the so-called “developed countries,” this situation can be extended, and is in fact further true for the developing economies and, specifically, Brazil, Russia, India, and China, where above average adoption of mobile devices and social networks accelerates the trend of “mediavore” consumers.

A large number of contact points with specific and complementary roles The multiplicity of media contacts and the volatility of consumers make the principle of 360° communication increasingly less appropriate. First, the consumer prefers certain media rather than others, and second, the dramatic rise of media budgets means that advertisers have to make choices, since their budgets are less elastic. So they have to focus on the most effective points of contact. The Internet has not only changed the media landscape, but has had a huge impact

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How to Measure Digital Marketing

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978-1-137-37535-3 | June 2014 $35 | ÂŁ22.99 | $40 CAN Hardback | 316 pages

Containing 140 engaging case studies, from BP to BeyoncÊ, this is the first book to analyze brandjacking – when brands are willfully or accidentally misrepresented or attacked. Combining crisis communication and social media management, Brandjack! charts the growth of the trend, offering advice to those who find themselves at the mercy of brand pirates.

Quentin Langley, Brandjack!, 2014, reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan

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An Excerpt from Brandjack! 9

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Brand and reputation Brand and reputation

The etymology of the word “brandjack” is obvious – it merges “brand” with “hijack.” But it is worth considering, for a moment, the meaning of the word “brand.”

FORGET YOUR BRAND. You don’t own it because it is literally nothing.

You can spend all sorts of time and money trying to manufacture public

3

World English Dictionary offers as its primary definition: “a particular product a characteristic that serves to identify a product.”

Its second definition Theoretymology of the word “brandjack” is obvious – it1merges “brand” with is “hijack.” is aworth for a moment, meaning that itBut canitbe tradeconsidering, name or trademark.

Naomithe Klein, authorofofthe Noword Logo,2 “brand.” might prefer the sixth definition: “a mark of disgrace or infamy; stigma: he bore English the brand of a coward.”

In its marketing, branding is“amuch moreproduct than this.

World Dictionary offers as primary definition: particular Wikipedia notes that: “The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass or a characteristic that serves to identify a product.”1 Its second definition is identity – it affects the personality of a product, company or service.” In that it can be a trade name or trademark. Naomi Klein, author of No Logo,2 practice, the word “brand” is interchangeable with the word “reputation.” The might prefer the sixth definition: “a mark of disgrace or infamy; stigma: he former is preferred by marketeers and the latter by those in public relations bore the brand of a coward.” In marketing, branding is much more than this.

(PR). I prefer the word “reputation” because I find it clearer. People not actually Wikipedia notes that: “The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass engaged in PR or marketing often equate “brand” with the logo or trademark identity – it affects the personality of a product, company or service.” In without seeing the deeper meaning. This book has the word “brand” in its practice, the word “brand” is interchangeable with the word “reputation.” The title simply because “brandjack” sounds better than “reputationjack.” You may former is preferred by marketeers and the latter by those in public relations assume, however, that unless I have stated otherwise, any time I use the word (PR). I prefer the word “reputation” because I find it clearer. People not actually “brand,” I mean it as being synonymous with “reputation.” engaged in PR or marketing often equate “brand” with the logo or trademark The choice wording an impact the subject Take thisinquote without seeingofthe deeperhas meaning.

Thisonbook has thematter. word “brand” its from Leroy Stick,“brandjack” the expertsounds brandjacker the satirical Twitter feed title simply because better behind than “reputationjack.”

You may @bpglobalpr: assume, however, that unless I have stated otherwise, any time I use the word “brand,” I mean it as being synonymous with “reputation.”

FORGET YOUR BRAND. You don’t own it because it is literally nothing.

The choice an of impact on the subject matter.

Take this quote You of canwording spend allhas sorts time and money trying to manufacture public from Leroy Stick, expert brandjacker behind the satirical opinion, butthe ultimately, that’s up to the public, now isn’t it?Twitter feed @bpglobalpr:

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10 • An Excerpt from Brandjack!

Brandjack

It sounds both scary and insightful. But what if he had said “reputation” instead of brand? Then his remarks seem less radical and rather more obvious.

Your reputation has always existed in the minds of other people. Marketeers tell people that they can decide on their brand. To PR practitioners this is always a negotiation: a two-way process of communication. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) says that your reputation is “the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.”3 It should be obvious that within that troika, what you say is the least important. We know and practice that in our own lives. The person who says he loves you, but keeps beating you and stealing from you deserves to be judged by his actions and not his words. More positively, Cordelia’s actions ultimately impress King Lear, not her modest but honest words.

So if your brand is your reputation, you don’t get to decide what it is, and you never did. This reality is merely rather starker in today’s world of social media.

That organizations have critics is also, of course, nothing new. One of my early posts on Brandjack News was titled “Back to the seventies.” It was about a planned industrial dispute in the UK. Unions are among the many big battalions with which organizations have long had to contend. Competitors also fall into this category. But when coalition forces entered Iraq, it was not Saddam’s much hyped army that was to cause them trouble. Iraq’s conscript army was one of the largest in the world, but it did not stand and fight. It ran away.

What coalition forces had to learn to contend with was asymmetric warfare.

Large armies being attacked by small, highly mobile units, or even individuals. There were no battles, just improvised explosive devices. The battle in reputation management is similar. Asymmetric warfare pits your corporate PR department against bloggers in pajamas. The rules have changed dramatically, and just like the mighty US Army, you cannot assume that size makes you invincible. Far from it. Size makes you an easy target, and leads others to sympathize with your opponent.

This is why Greenpeace likes to portray every battle in which it engages as David versus Goliath – and Greenpeace sees itself as plucky David taking on the mighty Goliath. No matter that Greenpeace is actually one of the most sophisticated and professional campaigning organizations in the world. No matter that campaigning is its core business, with the bulk of its multimillion dollar resources devoted specifically to PR. (In passing, when I joined the Global Media Relations Office of Shell International, there were already two people in the team.) Most nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) deny that they engage in PR at all, although to professional outside observers it seems

Brand and reputation

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An Excerpt from Brandjack! • 11

as though that is most, or even all, of what they do. They talk about having media teams, campaigning teams, advocacy teams, and the rest, but think that “PR” is something the big bad corporates do.

For all these reasons, brandjacking is not new. People have always had their own thoughts and opinions about you. But now they have new platforms to broadcast these opinions, to make contact with others who share them, and to draw themselves to the world’s attention and to yours. This brings risks to every business and every organization. But it brings opportunities too. Twitter is a platform through which people can broadcast their hatred of you. But what if those people have always hated you, and you just didn’t know about it before? Well, now you do. And now you know why they hate you. Perhaps you can do something about it now.

For PR practitioners, this is not new territory. Excellent PR has always been about two-way communication. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) said in 1982 that: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”4 Inherent in that definition is the idea that the organization cannot simply persuade the rest of the world to adopt its products, it needs to adapt its products to what the rest of the world wants. This is the world of make what you can sell, not sell what you can make.

For years, PR academics have been obsessed by a long slow-motion argument about something called excellence theory. In the way of academic debates, years can pass with neither side responding. The debate began in 1984 and, at the time of writing, the last major contribution was in 2001. In the meantime, the real world has changed.

The University of Maryland’s James Grunig and Todd Hunt devised excellence theory,5 in which they argued that PR progressed through four stages: 1 Publicity model: the organization seeks to gain coverage under the theory

that all publicity is good publicity.

2 Public information model: the organization seeks to inform the publics;

truthfulness becomes important.

3 Two-way asymmetric model: the organization listens and learns, but still seeks to persuade the publics to its point of view.

4 Two-way symmetric model: the organization and the publics seek to learn from each other and adapt to each other.

Excellence theory has been controversial. It was criticized by L’Etang and Pieczka in 19966 with the suggestion that the fourth and final stage is unrealistic. Grunig himself accepted in 20017 that the two-way symmetric model

12 • An Excerpt from Brandjack!

6

Brandjack

is idealistic. But we need to consider that the entire media environment has changed since Grunig and Hunt first advanced their theory. In 1984, the Internet was unknown outside the military and academia. In 1994, it was still the pastime of a limited number of geeks. By 2001, the Internet was established, but the era of Web 2.0, involving two-way communication and mass usergenerated content, was barely beginning. From the vantage point of 2014, the two-way symmetric model no longer looks unrealistic, and may even be starting to look dated. With lone individuals such as Leroy Stick and Dave Carroll already exercising considerable power in the marketplace, we are faced with a new five-stage model. Like stage three, it is a two-way asymmetric model, but with the asymmetry tipped decisively in favor of the publics.

L’Etang and Pieczka’s argument may have been valid when they made it, but it has been swept aside by history.

Notes 1

Via dictionary.com, accessed 01/20/2014.

2

Klein, N. (1999) No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Toronto: Knopf Canada.

3

CIPR: www.cipr.co.uk/content/careers-cpd/careers-pr/what-pr, accessed 01/20/2014.

4

PRSA: www.prsa.org/AboutPRSA/PublicRelationsDefined/Old%20Definition, accessed 01/20/2014.

5

Grunig, J.E. and Hunt, T. (1984) Managing Public Relations. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

6

L’Etang, J. (1996) “Corporate responsibility and public relations ethics” in L’Etang, J. and Pieczka, M. (eds) Critical Perspectives in Public Relations. London: International Thompson Business Press.

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Grunig, J.E. (2001) “Two way symmetrical public relations: past, present and future” in Heath, R.L. (ed.) Handbook of Public Relations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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978-1-137-38618-2 | July 2014 $30 | ÂŁ19.99 | $34.50 CAN Hardback | 240 pages

Big Data is rapidly transforming a number of business functions across many industries, the biggest transformation being in how we market to our customers. Engaging Customers Using Big Data shows marketers today how to seek small samples from their customers to observe their behavior, predict changes, and act using a series of unconnected business actions.

Drawing on a series of examples from big data pioneers, such as PF Chang’s, Best Buy, Google, and IBM, Arvind Sathi describes how each marketing function is undergoing fundamental changes in this era of more detailed analysis, discovery, and connection.

Arvind Sathi, Engaging Customers Using Big Data, 2014, reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan

14 • An Excerpt from Engaging Customers Using Big Data

5

FROM SILO’ED TO ORCHESTRATED MARKETING

INTRODUCTION So far, I have explored the power of observation and the ability to collaborate with customers. But how do we convert all this into a razor-sharp focus on a specific set of customers? The marketer has now the opportunity to use this power to bring the customer to a positive decision about a product, whether this is a first-time purchase, a repeat purchase, or a tweet to friends exalting the virtues of the recently purchased product.

These decisions happen over time and require a series of collaborations.

Without a proper conductor, the musicians hired to influence the customer can at best create musical noise. How do we orchestrate these powerful tools to collaborate with each other? This chapter discusses how marketing efforts can be pooled across the silos to influence a customer through the stages of marketing. How would marketers coordinate the effort to reduce cost and the annoyance factor and use the power of collaboration to improve the relationship with their customers?

I poured through online advertising information and found that many large telcos invest tens of millions of dollars in advertising with Google. For example, AT&T invested $40.8 million in Google advertising, and Verizon invested $22.9 Million in 2011.1 According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), telcos invested 12 percent of the

An Excerpt from Engaging Customers Using Big Data • 15

108 ENGAGING CUSTOMERS USING BIG DATA

$20.7 billion in overall US online advertising in the first half of 2013.2 The payments are made either directly to Google or through the realtime bidding system operated by advertising agencies, demand-side platforms (DSPs), and supply-side platforms (SSPs) to purchase online spots from Google. Presumably, much of the advertising happens through the communication infrastructure provided by these telcos.

I was curious about how much of this advertising was directed to an existing customer and using a basic advertisement. Telco marketing to a customer should know for certain who the customers are, and be able to refine the advertising based on what the customer has already purchased. Given that Google offers advertising opportunities to a DSP, is there a way the advertising agencies can direct the DSPs to bid for different advertisement based on customer status? Can marketers focus their advertising based on where the customer is in the buying cycle?

As I talked to a number of telecom providers, I found they are in various levels of maturity in targeting their advertising to their customers, based on past purchases and current customer interest as observed through their browsing behavior.

The orchestration requires a couple of components, which can be shared across these organizations. It also requires a clear navigation through an external exchange of information, keeping in full view privacy policies and differences in customers’ privacy preferences. Some of the challenges in orchestration are organizational. Marketers need to fully understand the data bazaar introduced in chapter 2 (and explained in more detail in chapter 7) and how each player is economically motivated to participate. This new infrastructure tears apart the advertiser, agency, publisher, and media research network of the past and puts in place a new ecosystem led by information services giants like Google and Facebook. This chapter will describe technological, organizational, and legal / regulatory issues faced by marketers and how orchestration is being achieved by the pioneers.

Let me focus on the “work-at-home” customer whom I discussed in the previous chapter. Through analytics, a marketer finds a segment of

16 • An Excerpt from Engaging Customers Using Big Data FROM SILO’ED TO ORCHESTRATED MARKETING 109

telecom customers who are in need of big bandwidth during the daytime, in a residential location as they work from home. How do we identify members of this segment? How do we track each member of the segment as we organize marketing campaigns? How do we keep track of someone who is responding favorably to the campaign and could easily be an early adopter of the program? How do we accelerate the campaign to support shopping and selling to the early adopters?

Can we seek the help of early adopters to attract their social group and influence others to follow suit?

CUSTOMER PROFILE As I answer these questions, the first obvious orchestration asset is the customer profile. In the broadcast days, marketers treated segments of customers, established marketing programs to reach each segment, and provided channels to support these segments without an explicit need to record the status of the campaign with each customer. Now, as we turn from broadcast to collaboration, the first question is, whom to collaborate with? A customer profile provides us with a list of prospects. As we proceed with collaboration, we must keep track of each of these customers and track their buying process by keeping track of their needs, their response to marketing campaigns, and their current understanding of our offerings.

In any enterprise, there are likely to be many views of prospects and customers. Most of the fragmentation comes from divergent views across organizations. While customer care organizations focus more on customer interactions, billing organizations track billing information.

If my son and I are sharing a customer account, customer care may have knowledge of places he visits, as in service addresses, while a billing organization may only care about his billing address, where they send the bill. Customer master data management (MDM) solutions are popular ways of bridging views and bringing together a single unified view. However, over the past decades, this integration has been focused primarily on intraorganization sources of traditional “structured” data.

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110 ENGAGING CUSTOMERS USING BIG DATA

Most often in a structured data environment, the data must be integrated across a couple of organized sources, each carrying a customer ID as well as a customer hierarchy. As different sources are combined, they represent their IDs at different levels in the hierarchy and carry other information about the customers that can be used for merging customer data. For example, a customer care system that collects web clickstream data may deal with an individual customer and carry his/ her name, user identification, location of interaction, and so forth. The data in the billing system, however, may carry an account identification associated with a billing account for a household and the household billing address. A unified customer profile may carry many customer IDs from a customer care system mapped to a single billing ID from the billing system and, depending on the analytics requirement, the appropriate data can be organized and summarized from either of the two sources.

Usage data, which is described in chapter 3, provides the dynamic extension to the classic MDM-type solution. Unlike structured data, usage data may be used to create a number of customer attributes, which may change over time. For a quick-service restaurant, such as Starbucks or Panera Bread, loyalty card data can be used to identify a large number of customer profile attributes. These attributes may include usage preferences, locations, response to promotions, local weather patterns, and so on. In the location analytics example, I discussed mobility patterns, such as “work at home.� While the raw location data associated with a subscriber is fairly structured, these attributes and related microsegments are relatively more dynamic. Most marketers offering loyalty cards have begun to mine usage data to align additional customer attributes to static customer information available from customer service and billing. By adding usage data, we can start to differentiate these customers based on product usage, service location, time of day, day of week, or other significant attributes of interest to a marketer.

With the wide availability of social data, we have opened up the customer profile to also take into account social sources, including

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978-1-137-37927-6 | July 2014 $45 | ÂŁ29.99 | $52 CAN Hardback | 260 pages

This easy-to-read, in-depth guide provides readers with a solid understanding of predictive analytics, and how it should be applied to improve business decision-making and operational efficiency. This includes how to avoid the pitfalls and dangers of introducing predictive analytics to a business area for the first time; legal, ethical, and cultural issues that need to be considered; and a contextual road map for developing solutions that deliver real benefits to organizations. This how-to guide will help managers make the most of these technologies to improve their business strategies.

Steven Finlay, Predictive Analytics, Data Mining and Big Data, 2014, reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan

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Introduction

Retailers, banks, governments, social networking sites, credit reference agencies and telecoms companies, amongst others, hold vast amounts of information about us. They know where we live, what we spend our money on, who our friends and family are, our likes and dislikes, our lifestyles and our opinions. Every year the amount of electronic information about us grows as we increasingly use internet services, social media and smart devices to move more and more of our lives into the online environment.

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Until the early 2000s the primary source of individual (consumer) data was the electronic footprints we left behind as we moved through life, such as credit card transactions, online purchases and requests for insurance quotations. This information is required to generate bills, keep accounts up to date, and to provide an audit of the transactions that have occurred between service providers and their customers. In recent years organizations have become increasingly interested in the spaces between our transactions and the paths that led us to the decisions that we made. As we do more things electronically, information that gives insights about our thought processes and the influences that led us to engage in one activity rather than another has become available. A retailer can gain an understanding of why we purchased their product rather than a rival’s by examining what route we took before we bought it – what websites did we visit? What other products did we consider?

Which reviews did we consult? Similarly, social media provides all sorts of information about ourselves (what we think, who we talk to and what we talk about), and our phones and other devices provide information about where we are and where we’ve been.

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20 • An Excerpt from Predictive Analytics, Data Mining and Big Data Predictive Analytics, Data Mining and Big Data

All this information about people is incredibly useful for all sorts of different reasons, but one application in particular is to predict future behavior. By using information about people’s lifestyles, movements and past behaviors, organizations can predict what they are likely to do, when they will do it and where that activity will occur. They then use these predictions to tailor how they interact with people. Their reason for doing this is to influence people’s behavior, in order to maximize the value of the relationships that they have with them.

In this book I explain how predictive analytics is used to forecast what people are likely to do and how those forecasts are used to decide how to treat people. If your organization uses predictive analytics; if you are wondering whether predictive analytics could improve what you do; or if you want to find out more about how predictive models are constructed and used in practical real-world environments, then this is the book for you.

1.1 What are data mining and predictive analytics?

By the 1980s many organizations found themselves with customer databases that had grown to the point where the amount of data they held had become too large for humans to be able to analyze it on their own. The term “data mining” was coined to describe a range of automated techniques that could be applied to interrogate these databases and make inferences about what the data meant. If you want a concise definition of data mining, then “The analysis of large and complex data sets” is a good place to start.

Many of the tools used to perform data mining are standard statistical methods that have been around for decades, such as linear regression and clustering.

However, data mining also includes a wide range of other techniques for analyzing data that grew out of research into artificial intelligence (machine learning), evolutionary computing and game theory.

Data mining is a very broad topic, used for all sorts of things. Detecting patterns in satellite data, anticipating stock price movements, face recognition and forecasting traffic congestion are just a few examples of where data mining is routinely applied. However, the most prolific use of data mining is to identify relationships in data that give an insight into individual preferences, and most importantly, what someone is likely to do in a given scenario.

This is important because if an organization knows what someone is likely to do, then it can tailor its response in order to maximize its own objectives.

For commercial organizations the objective is usually to maximize profit.

Introduction

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An Excerpt from Predictive Analytics, Data Mining and Big Data • 21

However, government and other non-profit organizations also have reasons for wanting to know how people are going to behave and then taking action to change or prevent it. For example, tax authorities want to predict who is unlikely to file their tax return correctly, and hence target those individuals for action by tax inspectors. Likewise, political parties want to identify floating voters and then nudge them, using individually tailored communications, to vote for them. Sometime in the mid-2000s the term “predictive analytics” became synonymous with the use of data mining to develop tools to predict the behavior of individuals (or other entities, such as limited companies).

Predictive analytics is therefore just a term used to describe the application of data mining to this type of problem.

Predictive analytics is not new. One of the earliest applications was credit scoring,1 which was first used by the mail order industry in the 1950s to decide who to give credit to. By the mid-1980s credit scoring had become the primary decision-making tool across the financial services industry. When someone applies to borrow money (to take out a loan, a credit card, a mortgage and so on), the lender has to decide whether or not they think that person will repay what they borrow. A lender will only lend to someone if they believe they are creditworthy. At one time all such decisions were made by human underwriters, who reviewed each loan application and made a decision based on their expert opinion. These days, almost all such decisions are made automatically using predictive model(s) that sit within an organization’s application processing system.

To construct a credit scoring model, predictive analytics is used to analyze data from thousands of historic loan agreements to identify what characteristics of borrowers were indicative of them being “good” customers who repaid their loans or “bad” customers who defaulted. The relationships that are identified are encapsulated by the model. Having used predictive analytics to construct a model, one can then use the model to make predictions about the future repayment behavior of new loan applicants. If you live in the USA, you have probably come across FICO scores, developed by the FICO Corporation (formerly Fair Isaac Corporation), which are used by many lending institutions to assess applications for credit. Typically, FICO scores range from around 300 to about 850.2 The higher your score the more creditworthy you are. Similar scores are used by organizations the world over. An example of a credit scoring model (sometimes referred to as a credit scorecard) is shown in Figure 1.1.

To calculate your credit score from the model in Figure 1.1 you start with the constant score of 670. You then go through the scorecard one characteristic at a time, adding or subtracting the points that apply to you,3 so, if your

4

22 • An Excerpt from Predictive Analytics, Data Mining and Big Data Predictive Analytics, Data Mining and Big Data

Constant

670

Employment status Full-time Part-time Homemaker Retired Student Unemployed

28 7 0 15 –8 –42

Outstanding mortgage <$40,000 $40,001–$60,000 $60,001–$100,000 $100,000–$150,000 $150,000–$250,000 > $250,000 Not a home owner

11 0 –9 –12 –16 –19 0

Time in current employment Not in full or part-time employment <1 year 1–3 years 1–10 years > 10 year

0 –25 –10 0 31

Number of credit cards 0 1–3 4–8 9+

–17 12 0 –18

Residential status Home owner Renting Living with parent

Loan amount requested as proportion of annual income <10% 10%–25% 26%–60% > 60%

figure 1.1

26 0 0

43 22 0 –28

Number of days currently past due on existing credit agreements 0 (All accounts up to date) 14 1–30 days past due 0 31–60 days past due –29 >60 days past due –41

Declared bankrupt within the last 5 years?

Yes –50 No 9 Unknown 0

Loan application model

employment status is full-time you add 28 points to get 698. Then, if your time in current employment is say, two years, you subtract 10 points to get 688. If your residential status is Home Owner you then add 26 points to get 714, and so on.

What does the score mean? For a credit scoring model the higher the score the more likely you are to repay the loan. The lower the score the more likely you are to default, resulting in a loss for the lender. To establish the relationship between score and behavior a sample of several thousand completed loan agreements where the repayment behavior is already known is required. The credit scores for these agreements are then calculated and the results used to generate a score distribution as shown in Figure 1.2.

The score distribution shows the relationship between people’s credit score and the odds of them defaulting. At a score of 500 the odds are 1:1. This

23

978-1-137-27927-9 | August 2014 $26 | £16.99 | $30 CAN Hardback | 224 pages

Mobile devices are now in the hands of nearly half of the world’s population. However, 80% of mobile marketing either doesn’t work and has a high abandon rate, or doesn’t fit into a brand’s overall strategy. All Thumbs is an accessible yet practical guide for companies ranging from small start-ups to multinational corporations on how to build multi-level, campaign-driven, mobile brand experiences designed for maximum effectiveness. At the same time, it provides a strategic overview of how mobile marketing fits into an overall brand and media campaign.

Michael Kelley, All Thumbs, 2014, reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan

24 • An Excerpt from All Thumbs

CHAPTER 12 The New Chief Mobile Officer CHAPTER 12

The New Chief Mobile Officer

I WANT TO LOOK FORWARD AND TALK ABOUT how modern business marketing needs to reshape its thinking, training, planning, and organizing in the face of mobile advancement. It’s both the easiest and most difficult chapter to write. It’s very easy for me to coach and cheerlead the marketing indus-

I WANT TO LOOK FORWARD AND TALK ABOUT try toward positive change in the mobile space. As a business

how modern business marketing needs to reshape its thinking, owner with my own brands deeply rooted in traditional media,

training, planning, and organizing the face of mobile advanceI struggle and strive every day tointhink about how mobile can ment.enhance It’s both thebusinesses. easiest andAtmost difficult to write.

It’s these the same time,chapter I want this chapter very to easy for homage me to coach themy marketing be my of sortsand to thecheerlead industry. It’s love letter industo an industrypositive that has change made meinlove has As shaped who I try toward themarketing mobile and space. a business am, howmy I think, whatdeeply my vision is in in light of a new mobile owner with own and brands rooted traditional media, era. Please me asday I present my perspective onmobile how busiI struggle and indulge strive every to think about how can ness needs to evolve marketing.

enhance these businesses. At the same time, I want this chapter to be my homage of sorts to the industry. It’s my love letter to an industry that has made me love marketing and has shaped who I am, how I think, and what my vision is in light of a new mobile

An Excerpt from All Thumbs • 25

198

All Thumbs

Without question, you now know that I and others who have contributed to this book believe that mobile is soon going to be the primary platform for every human on the planet.

Why? Distribution—largely advanced and enabled by portable devices—becomes much easier for forms of communication, like video, that have until now taken up significant bandwidth.

As a result, mobile forms of communication are going to evolve, from voice and the written word to video. As such, the business mind-set has to change completely for this future to happen successfully.

The first change that needs to happen is a reconfiguring of how organizations are structured in light of mobile technology.

Most of you will agree with this notion for a variety of reasons, but many of us also know it’s foolhardy to try for such massive organizational restructuring that’s sorely needed across business.

So, let’s start small and with those eager to make themselves an example of change for the rest of their company. Let’s start with the executive officers. Titles, and as a result, functions in the corporate suite of officers have not really changed in my lifetime.

For as long as I can remember, there’s been a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, and so on. Only in the last two decades have we started to see the Chief Information Officer and, in some cases, the Chief Product Officer get seats at the table. In large measure, these jobs have simply expanded responsibilities for more budget and power, yet few have sat back and said, “In this era of mobile, are the new responsibilities aligned with the right functions and, more importantly, do we need to create different types of ‘Chiefs’ both in titles and functions?” Not seeing more

26 • An Excerpt from All Thumbs

The New Chief Mobile Officer

199

re-thinking of the executive suite is really surprising given the globalization of business, the rapid expansion of mobile technology, and the amazing evolution of the global consumer.

So, in the spirit of starting small, I propose and predict that we will see the first widely visible expansion in the executive suite—the new Chief Mobile Officer or, as I have coined it, “CoMo” (Chief of Mobile). Why? With the proliferation of mobile and its impact, we need someone providing mobile guidance, knowledge, best practices, and investment to every aspect of the business, especially and starting with marketing, activating advertising, and then moving to impacts on operations, inventory, and more. The scale of mobile and its importance to business will be reasons for companies to carve out a mobile function, invest in resources, and create a leadership position that ensures the company is operating at the highest possible level on the mobile platform. A Chief Mobile Officer function added to the executive suite puts the platform front and center as the mobile conscience of the company. While certainly mobile functions and responsibilities will reside within functions such as finance, marketing, and product development, having a centralized leader will ensure advancement and cooperation, eliminate duplication, and maximize investment.

When you stop to think about it, adding the Chief Mobile Officer really can help an entire enterprise keep up with the lightning-fast advancements in technology, software, applications, process improvements, consumer adoption of new mobile features, and more. All of the principles presented in All Thumbs really require a full-time function to ensure that the different parts of the company are working together, budgets are not being

200

An Excerpt from All Thumbs • 27

All Thumbs

duplicated, technologies have proper security, and training is happening at every level. In some instances, we are starting to see similar functions emerging along with the pain points that will prompt the evolution of a Chief Mobile Officer.

Carolyn Everson told me that Facebook recently put its engineering teams through extensive mobile training. “Mobile development is so critical to our future that Mark Zuckerberg put in place an initiative to train our coders and engineers in mobile. Over the last 18 months, our coders and engineers have gone through extensive training.”

Wendy Clark at Coca-Cola is another trailblazer who could easily become her company’s next Chief Mobile Officer. Every day she is working with her teams to build marketing efforts for the world’s most iconic and well-known brands. She pushes the different brand teams to develop mobile activation with every campaign in an impressive way.

Clark points to Facebook, as it represents one new “ladder” to climb to the future: “Facebook is a good analogy to mobile.

It’s just not comparable to the media that got us to this point.

It’s the largest platform with the most engagement of any media I can name with 50 percent of its base visiting every day. Mobile is similar in terms of engagement. As long as advertisers put mobile through the same existing [media] paradigm and structures, then it will only be an afterthought. And yet, if I look at my core target being teens and young adults, it’s the most important medium I can use.”

Procter & Gamble is a leader in more ways than one and seems to get mobile. Mark Pritchard, its Chief Marketing Officer, is also becoming its de facto Chief Mobile Officer. I saw

28

978-1-137-27956-9 | August 2014 $30 | ÂŁ18.99 | $34.50 CAN Hardback | 256 pages

In a new, fully revised and updated edition, Brand Media Strategy explores the value of advertising in mass media, the use of digital media programs, and the employment of nonpaid and nontraditional media vehicles, including a more in-depth explanation of how social media should be incorporated into marketing strategy. Drawing on case studies such as American Express, Chipotle, HSBC Bank, Kleenex, and Interscope Records, as well as a full update on all data and statistics, Antony Young provides an up-to-the minute playbook that shows marketers and their advertising agencies how to sell their brands in this new and evolving media landscape.

Antony Young, Brand Media Strategy, Second Edition, 2014, reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan

An Excerpt from Brand Media Strategy • 29

Chapter 2

the new Media pLayBook A nEW SEt oF RuLES FoR A nEW MEDIA WoRLD

i

remember as a kid growing up, discarding my Larry Bird Converse sneakers for the latest pair of nikes. I really did think they made me

jump higher and shoot the basketball better. I would later learn when I

entered the ad business that it was all about branding. nike is one brand that has wisely used its marketing to remain rel-

evant. It has transformed its Brand Media Strategy from the golden age of mass advertising to one that takes full advantage of the google and Facebook era.

Back in the eighties and nineties, nike’s ad campaigns were the gold standard of the marketing community. Michael Jordan was the face of the brand for youngsters, whether they lived in an inner city or a leafy suburb. the sneaker brand aired its first national television spot in 1982. By 1988 nike launched that unforgettable tagline “Just do it,” which became an Advertising Age top-five slogan of the twentieth century. the marketing helped propel the company to a 23 percent share of the athletic shoe market.1 Fast-forward 25 years and nike’s strategy looks very different. today, nike spend just a third of budget in traditional media.2 now, nike shows many of its ad spots only on the Internet. A two-minute, forty-six-second

30 • An Excerpt from Brand Media Strategy 16

BRAnD MEDIA StRAtEgy

spot starring soccer player Ronaldinho garnered 28 million views on youtube.3 the nike vice president and gM of north America, Joaquin Hidalgo, espouses this approach, commenting, “Consumers don’t want to be told what’s cool. People don’t want more products, they want more experiences. . . . now we put consumers smack dab in the middle of everything we do. Placing them in the center and engaging with them is what we like to do. our consumer is growing up in a different world. one big thing changing in their world is the notion that they are digitally enabled and connected.”4 For that approach, nike realized that advertising wouldn’t be enough, and the firm began to develop “experiences.” the company created an online community for runners when it offered them its nike+ sensor. the sensor records a runner’s activity on an Apple iPod. Runners upload their workout activity to a website and read web logs written by coaches.

Separately, the athletic apparel giant arranged for five coaches and seventeen pacers to lead runs through Central Park three times a week starting from one of nike’s stores in Manhattan. nike organized the Human Race, a 10K running event in 25 cities with 800,000 participants. there is no question that what Chris Anderson dubbed the long tail of media (all the small outlets that target tiny audiences that, when put together, represent a targeted mass) presents tremendous opportunities to a savvy marketer.5 nike proved this by using the tail to outmaneuver its rival Adidas during the 2010 soccer World Cup: Leading into the tournament, nike launched a three-minute video ad called “Write the Future” on its Facebook page. the spot featured famous footballers such as England’s Wayne Rooney and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo. Fans were encouraged via an online tool to edit the spot. these edited versions competed for votes.

Five weeks after its debut, the online spot had been viewed by over twenty million people. nike enjoyed twice as much buzz associated with the World Cup than official sponsor Adidas.6 nike has evolved its marketing along with the times. For their 2012 olympic campaign they chose not to showcase olympic athletes; instead, they looked to make the brand more accessible, featuring 12-year-old

An Excerpt from Brand Media Strategy • 31 tHE nEW MEDIA PLAyBooK

17

nathan jogging down a long road, encouraging everyone to find their greatness. “Find your greatness” employed social and digital communities to drive the campaign, tapping into nike+ fuel—an app to encourage everyone to participate by monitoring, recording, and sharing their daily activity. they showed how employing social media channels could create consumer engagement for their brand.

Stefan olander, vice president and general manager of nike Digital Sport, says, “We want to find a way to enhance the experience and services, rather than looking for a way to interrupt people from getting to where they want to go.”7 nike’s products continue to be in demand, and it remains the world’s number-one seller of athletic footwear and apparel.

the Media worLd iS evoLving faSt the media business has always shaped how advertising has evolved. the two businesses are intertwined like no others. they feed each other, they support each other, and they innovate together. newspaper publishers created the ad industry, radio aired sponsored programs in its early days, and television fueled brand advertising in its golden years. the eighties saw the growth of cable television and the targeting of the MtV generation, while the late nineties ushered in the Internet and an army of digital agencies and interactive advertising. this led to more sophisticated targeting, better understanding of response, and the development of corporate and brand websites along with an unprecedented level of interactivity. At the opening of the 2010s, we see the ad model is shifting yet again, with google and Facebook leading the way in remaking communications. there’s a new agenda and a new media playbook for marketers.

froM BroadCaSt to Broad “CatCh” “technology is creating new media options faster than most people can assimilate and is causing more multitasking,” says gary Drenik, president of the consumer intelligence firm BIgresearch.8 As we get greater Internet access, more bandwidth, and increased portability of media and content, we have discovered that consumers’

32 • An Excerpt from Brand Media Strategy 18

BRAnD MEDIA StRAtEgy

appetite for information and entertainment grows geometrically. Linear media is fast giving way to liquid media, in which consumers can move seamlessly from setting to setting. And it is commonplace for people of all ages to consume multiple media—print, audio, and video—at the same time. the concept of mass media has shifted. television’s top-rated show 20 years ago, The Cosby Show, reached 27 percent of the population; today’s top shows on national television would be lucky to reach a third of that audience.9 We’re seeing media’s growing long tail. As we consume more media, the existing media channels are fragmenting and new ones are being added. the proliferation of new channels means less viewer time per channel. the explosion of new video and content created by the Web and mobile platforms divides audiences into smaller and smaller segments.

Current mass media markets are ephemeral, and revenues per channel will decrease.

We are moving from a world of broadcast to broad “catch.” Consumers are harder to reach, and creating mass awareness is more complex. In the past, running a concurrent television and newspaper campaign was enough. People would see both. now viewers may see one, the other, or neither. Campaigns need to be multimedia and multichannel, and creative ideas have to travel and make sense in different formats. As many as 77 percent of television viewers go online while they’re watching, and websites of magazines and newspapers add video stories daily.10 With most media consumed with only the viewer’s partial attention, the impact of advertising decreases. McKinsey estimates that television advertising is only 35 percent as effective as it was in 1990.11 Clutter is one of the biggest problems for marketers.

An implication of this shift is that marketers need more than great creative; they need to have the message appear in the right context. For advertising to reach consumers and not be filtered out, it must be in a relevant place where the consumer will be more likely to engage with the message.

Advertising is bought and sold today in ways dramatically different from the past. Some companies aggregate audiences across multiple distribution channels—such as the digital ad networks—and others deliver

33

978-1-137-38629-8 | September 2014 $28 | ÂŁ18.99 | $32 CAN Hardback | 240 pages

At what point do big data and a 24/7 economy make us mindless, not mindful? By applying time-tested mindfulness principles and critical thinking models, The Mindful Marketer lays the groundwork to help leaders set clear priorities, deepen relationships with their peers, balance data-driven decision-making with intuitive thinking, and build strong customer evangelist communities. Drawing on case studies such as Amazon, Oracle/Eloqua, Miraval Resorts, and TripAdvisor, Nirell shares practical strategies and tools that CEOs and marketing leaders can implement immediately to thrive in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highly interconnected society.

Lisa Nirel, The Mindful Marketer, 2014, reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan

34 • An Excerpt from The Mindful Marketer

CHAPTER 5

BIG DATA OR BIG DISAPPOINTMENT? Computers are good at swift, accurate computation and at storing great masses of information . . . . The brain’s strong point is its flexibility. It is unsurpassed at making shrewd guesses and at grasping the total meaning of information presented to it.

—Jeremy Campbell1

M

y first corporate job out of college opened my eyes to the power of personal computing. As a 21-year-old, I never dreamed how much data would become a cornerstone of today’s modern marketers.

In 1984, I was appointed the International Marketing and Sales Director for one of the world’s first PC software companies, MultiMate International. Rick, my boss, gave me a Compaq Portable computer to take home and use. He secretly hoped I would spend my free weekend and evening hours crunching spreadsheets, writing sales letters, and learning DOS (operating system) commands.

I recall lugging that boxy, 20-pound computer up the stairs of my parents’ home and staring into the tiny screen. Wow! 256K of RAM and two floppy disks to store my content . . . how could I possibly use all of that space? I felt like a member of the technology elite. It was a powerful machine—or so I thought at the time.

Today, we are dealing on a whole new realm of data. Big data “farms” transmit more information across the Internet every second than the total amount of data stored in the entire Internet in 1992.2

An Excerpt from The Mindful Marketer • 35

32

THE MINDFUL MARKETER

The term “big data” burst on the scene just a few years ago, and has reshaped how we view customer relationships, reporting, lead scoring, fraud detection, and other commercial applications. Data scientist talent is highly valued, and the role is still being defined by organizations and academic institutions.

How did big data become such a hot trend, and how will it impact today’s marketers?

First, let’s define it. Big data is the process of analyzing and implementing actionable intelligence that helps companies achieve new levels of efficiencies, profits, and customer relationships. Big data-driven decision-making is different from traditional data analytics in three ways: 1. Volume: Big data applications collect and analyze petabytes of data. This is enough data to fill millions of filing cabinets worth of text.

2. Velocity: The speed of processing real-time information is often a competitive advantage in highly commoditized businesses, such as credit card companies and airlines. Today, some major credit issuers are using big data to reduce fraud detection times from 45 minutes to as little as four seconds.

3. Variety: The power to synthesize information from a multitude of sources. You can incorporate data from voice, online surveys, social networks, mobile devices, and the Global Positioning System (GPS). Today, people who carry smartphones and tablets might as well consider themselves walking data centers!

Carousel30, a digital marketing agency based in Alexandria, Virginia, recently summarized the explosive growth of big data.3 Big data initiatives can ostensibly improve the customer experience and accelerate marketing programs such as 1.

Product development. Today’s marketers can gather disparate data: voice, survey summaries, social media commentary, free-form commentary (also known as “unstructured data), and online and online customer forum content to identify key themes. These themes help them determine unmet customer needs.

36 • An Excerpt from The Mindful Marketer

BIG DATA OR BIG DISAPPOINTMENT?

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Predictive customer modeling. Imagine a mobile provider who can deliver right-time offers based on location and past purchase history. Retailers such as Amazon have pioneered personalized online shopping experiences based on a customer’s profile.

Resource planning. Indian online travel agency redBus uses big data to plan resources and maximize efficiency for things like which routes need more buses, patterns in customer demand fluctuation, the management of resources for booking requests and so forth.4 Personalizing customer interactions. Vision Critical, a cloudbased software and services company based in Vancouver, Canada, for example, uses big data technologies to enable two-way communications with communities, customers, and employees. They gather and manage surveys and peer-to-peer discussions for over 600 customers, and manage over 2.5 million customer survey initiations per month. Their work with NASCAR, highlighted in Appendix 1, showcases big data’s impact on their fan base.

Custom content creation. Most e-commerce powerhouses such as Netflix and Amazon use big data to power recommendation engines and personalize our shopping experiences. In August 2013, LinkedIn joined the personalized content ranks when they launched University Pages. This service helps institutions create custom content, searches, and other functions that provide a unique and data-driven resource for the user.

The user and technology communities applauded them for the time they invested in studying user needs and designing an application that provided high value.5 Natural language processing. Big data processing power can help companies gather huge volumes of voice, video, and written customer feedback to help them analyze and take action on the results. This helps organizations assess and respond to changing market needs at never-before-seen speeds.

For example, in the data-intensive healthcare industry, natural language processing can be can be used to analyze a physician’s patient notes. Then it can help predict the likelihood of hospital re-admittance.6

33

34

THE MINDFUL MARKETER

An Excerpt from The Mindful Marketer • 37

APPENDIX 5.1/TEXT BOX: HOW VISION CRITICAL HELPED NASCAR IGNITE A BIGGER FAN FOOTPRINT Situation: Five years ago, NASCAR’s chairman mandated that Marketing launch a brand initiative to attract the next-generation audience in order to increase viewership and sponsorship. At that time, after decades of steady growth, NASCAR’s attendance and TV ratings began to drop. NASCAR hired Steve Phelps as the CMO, and he swiftly revamped the entire marketing department.

He immediately decided to leverage the existing NASCAR Fan Council to help drive decisions such as changing game rules and launching the Gen 6 car.

Reigniting the Fan Council: Official NASCAR Fan Council is an insight community where avid fans provide feedback on how to improve the NASCAR experience. On average, NASCAR engages members at least twice a month on specific topics that influence everything from the on-track competition to business to marketing decisions. In 2008, NASCAR partnered with Vision Critical to create this community of 12,000 passionate NASCAR fans. Giving fans a voice requires no additional incentive; the fans feel honored and take pride in being a part of this advisory board, which has led to extremely high response rates for most studies.

Results: Research tripled while research costs decreased by 80 percent. Fans regained their voice, leading to key changes to the sport itself. And, in 2011, TV ratings and viewership increased for the first time in three years.

Not only have these benefits paid off for the company and its relationship with fans but they have also earned NASCAR and Vision Critical the prestigious Forrester Groundswell Award for listening to consumers and generating business results using social media.

Tyler Douglas, Vision Critical CMO, added, “with the Fan Council, we were able to create ongoing dialogue with thousands of fans that culminated in a substantial amount of data. Through Vision Critical’s analysis, not only were we able to mine the big data collection for quantitative feedback, but we were able to pull qualitative insights that allowed us to make sound recommendations to elevate the NASCAR fan experience.”7

December 2012 | 9780230340336

April 2013 | 9780230396265

January 2014 | 9781137278753

June 2013 | 9781137278500

October 2013 | 9781137279910

August 2014 | 9781137279569

April 2014 | 9781137351814

November 2013 | 9781137271471

June 2013 | 9781137276612

38

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