Insight, Analytics and the New Marketing
Listening is easy
It seems like every digital marketer and agency is talking about the power of listening to your consumers in the digital space. This is fuelled by an entire industry of online listening technology providers that have popped up over the last few years. They all promise the ability to mine the incredible wealth of information available on blogs and social networks to generate insights about what consumers talk about, what’s on their minds and what language they use to talk about the brand or issues related to the brand. While the technological possibilities seem limitless I have still only seen a handful of clients use the information to actually improve their communications. Earlier this week, Emily Steel from the Wall Street Journal wrote about how Ogilvy helped IBM and Harrah’s do this.
I would just like to spend 2 minutes on the Harrah’s case study for 2 reasons. First I would like to give the credit for the work to Jim Dravillas and his team. They have really done tremendously inventive work for Harrah’s over the years. Sorry Jim – in terms of recognition I realize the doublethink isn’t quite the Wall Street Journal!
The other thing I want to point out is how the Harrah’s example shows that action is more important than listening. The Harrah’s analysis was surprisingly simple. While we have used online listening technology in the past, in this case Jim and his team simply read the top 50 tripadvisor.com ratings and categorized the topics they saw using common sense. My grandmother could have done this (no disrespect to Jim and the team – or my grandmother). What was brilliant about this case however was that the team came up with clear and simple recommendations upon which they acted by changing the communications. It’s this last step – taking action – which is always the hardest. Listening is easy.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by dimitrimaex: Listening is easy – thedoublethink : http://thedoublethink.com/2009/11/listening-is-easy/...