Posts from — May 2011

One of the main questions clients ask us is how they can use social media monitoring for their business. By now everybody recognises the importance of social media, but we need to be aware that there is much more we can do besides listening to and engaging with social media conversations. Used in conjunction with traditional research, buzz tracking can be a powerful tool for any company to generate ‘real-time’ insights about the things that matter to consumers, thereby optimising their communications and developing business strategies that connect with people.

• Early warning system: social media monitoring gives immediate feedback into how your brand is perceived, what is happening right now around your brand (eg: news, PR, a bad review) and how people are reacting to things you do. When Gap released its new logo, it was immediately hit with thousands of comments on Facebook and Twitter criticising the change and this resulted in Gap switching back to their original logo.

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The Onion and The Economist are required reading for many market researchers.  Conveniently, the two publications sometimes cross-reference each other.  Like when The Onion “reported”…

‘The Economist’ To Halt Production For Month To Let Readers Catch Up

LONDON—World-renowned news and opinion magazine The Economist announced plans to suspend any new online and print content for the next month in an effort to finally allow subscribers a chance to catch up…

Seeing my own stack of unread issues of The Economist, I decided to catch up (whilst The Economist went on publishing, of course).

Two articles immediately lent themselves to our topic of data presentation.  One article suggests  a compelling correlation, the other offers a cunning comparison.  Both are relevant for market researchers and how we look at data.

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