The value of qualitative research
“All polls of opinion must be superficial. They reveal the top of what people think organized into common sense. What people really think is always partly hidden” - Susan Sontag Terrence Malick’s The Tree… Read More
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Homage to the Following
I’ve been fortunate enough to spend the past year-and-a-half sitting next to an incredibly talented researcher. During those 18 months, we frequently shared articles and exchanged ideas; often discussing them at length. I… Read More
The new market research professional
Last week, I attended the MRS Conference, which this year was headlined ‘The Shock of the New: Managing change through the application of insight, data, technology and creativity’. As the headline suggests, the… Read More
The theoretical & theatrical side of the web
I spent part of this weekend in (virtual) attendance at an academic conference in New York. ‘Theorizing the Web’ brought together scholars, journalists, artists, and commentators to examine the impact new digital technologies are having on… Read More
Thoughts on Brand Republic’s Social Brands conference
Last Friday, the team from Precise attended Brand Republic’s Social Brands conference in London. The conference was packed with marketers from across a range of business, and a range of marketing disciplines, but… Read More
Risk and reward in social media: why trending is the ultimate goal for teenagers
(this article has since been featured on The Huffington Post) If you live outside the UK, or don’t have a passing interest in football, you may have missed the recent ‘ball boy scandal’ which… Read More
Vine, sound bites and our obsession with brevity
“If you couldn’t say it in less than 10 seconds, it wasn’t heard because it wasn’t aired” – Michael Dukakis, 1988 Presidential candidate By the time you’ve finished reading this sentence, almost six… Read More
Social Media: human or algorithmic analysis?
Social media analytics are usually based on numbers. Whatever comment or opinion occurs in the highest volumes is considered an important trend, while low-volume minority opinions are discarded. However, research shows that it… Read More
The Pope critiques digital dualism
As regular readers of the blog will know, we’re strong critics of those who separate the online and offline into distinct and independent realities (something Nathan Jurgenson coined as ‘digital dualism’ back in… Read More
“Creating a conversation” and corporate blogging
“The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of… Read More
Facebook’s other fear
Away from the talk of how useful Facebook’s new Graph Search will eventually prove to be, this rather dream-like video promoting the service also caught my eye. It suggests Facebook is as much… Read More
Emerging trends in social media for businesses in 2013
With the exception of the Grand National I am not a betting man, however there are some predictions I am willing to put money on coming true in 2013. Having read some 2013… Read More
A question of trust
A really interesting revision of the consumer decision process penned by McKinsey grabbed my attention recently, posted via an article called “The funnel is dead: the new consumer journey”. In my experience, few… Read More
Clustering, Tolstoy and the “real world”
“At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger… Read More
First Impressions of The Second Screen…
I’m not here to eulogise about the ‘second screen revolution’. It has been around long enough for us to see beyond the sparkly novelty of people tweeting as they watch X-Factor or Downton… Read More
Which newspaper is the real social media success story?
A recent report in Press Gazette revealed that The Economist had the most Facebook likes amongst UK publications and, back in March, The Wall used it as an example of a social media success story within the… Read More
Finding the story within: why size doesn’t always matter
In a recent column in the Evening Standard, Rosamund Urwin commented on the findings of a Which? survey which discovered that 11% of the public trusted bankers. She made the slightly tongue-in-cheek point… Read More
Digital accountability and the increasingly demanding consumer
Have you had a bad experience with a company recently and your first instinct was to use social media to convey how angry you were? In the past, we’d write a letter of… Read More
The true value of Olympic sponsorship
I’ve written an article for The Huffington Post, looking at how Olympic sponsors can effectively capitalise on the exposure received. The rapid rise in social media use means these sponsors now face a unique set… Read More
Looking at sponsorship ROI through the prism of social media
We’ve spent a lot of time this year working with the sponsors of the two major sporting events of 2012 – The Euro’s and London 2012; providing integrated media insights across editorial, social… Read More
Taking social media research beyond brand tracking
I’ve written in the past about how social media offers researchers the opportunity to do more than just track brand mentions and I thought it would be useful to follow this up with… Read More
Silver Tweeters
One of the objectives for this blog is to further the idea that there’s more value in understanding the nature of social media conversations than in merely aggregating them. This is the fundamental… Read More
Teenage kicks right through the web
I recently wrote about ‘digistalgia’ and the idea that the hyper-documentation of our lives through social media is ushering in accelerated nostalgia amongst teenagers. I thought it would be interesting to build on… Read More
‘Digistalgia’: has social media shaped teen attitudes to brands?
I think, or at least imagine, it has always been the case that a shorter passage of time need pass before nostalgic tendencies develop in younger people. To a teenage girl, a few… Read More
It’s just another brick in the (research) wall
Two criticisms that we often face when discussing the effectiveness of social media research with clients are: i) People only post in very particular situations (so we’re effectively only capturing opinions expressed in… Read More
The man behind the machine: the (un)changing role of the researcher
The increasing abundance of consumer-driven data has led to the development and adoption of tools that have the ability to mine, aggregate and make sense of (a large proportion) of this information. There… Read More
Could a ‘social media poll’ prove to be dangerous?
With the London Mayoral election just around the corner, and, on the other side of the Atlantic, the race for the Presidency fast approaching, I have no doubt we’ll see even more agencies… Read More
The single hero brand: a high-risk strategy?
Samsung was recently crowned the king of the smartphone market by the media after it announced profits had surpassed expectations and doubled in size. Samsung’s results no doubt signify a blow to rivals,… Read More
People don’t really know why they do what they do
According to Nielsen’s latest ‘Global Trust in Advertising’ report word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews, either from someone they know or a stranger’s opinions online, are the most trusted sources of information for buying decisions. In… Read More
Where does social media research fit in the mix?
Social media research plays a crucial role in the research mix – uncovering insights that traditional methods cannot. As we talk with more people about how and why it is important to draw… Read More
The silent brand
“People don’t want to talk about brands, they want to talk about their lives” – Global Head of Social, OgilvyAction If you’re interested in social media, I imagine at some point you’ve read… Read More
Me, Myself and We
At the fascinating seminar given by Charles Leadbeater at Flamingo International’s latest big ideas breakfast recently, Charles described a new model of consumerism at play in Western societies: Ultimately, people are still motivated by self-interest but… Read More
Miley takes a bite out of Apple
Can Miley Cyrus damage Apple’s reputation with a single tweet about dropping her iPhone? Absolutely. Can I prove this? Absolutely not. What I won’t attempt to do here is to draw any crude correlation with… Read More
From Christmas day to the everyday
This is the second in our series of monthly posts tracking social media conversations about five of the leading global mobile handset brands (iPhone, Samsung, HTC, BlackBerry and Nokia). We are tracking and… Read More
Who is winning the supermarket social media sweep?
If you thought this post was going to be about the gameshow that made Dale Winton a household name, I’m sorry to disappoint… Nielsen data published recently shows that supermarkets are pulling back… Read More
The power (and danger) of the story
“The substitution of numbers for words seemed to make the stories more valid” – Adam Curtis Adam Curtis is a wonderful storyteller who has produced some fascinating documentaries that illustrate the tragicomic consequences… Read More
The perception of brand momentum is increasingly becoming a reality
In a lot of the research we’ve undertaken recently, we’ve noticed some big differences in how consumers perceive a brand to be doing as opposed to how well it actually is doing. The… Read More
People don’t like to be measured, they like to be valued
This has been something of a recurring theme at this Social Media Week, a theme which is at the heart of our approach to social media research. There’s a great deal more value… Read More
Who’s afraid of the big Other? The interpassivity of social media
A (slightly irreverent) look at the ‘professional’ Twitter user Following on from Claire Moon’s fascinating take on how we present ourselves online, I think it’s important to reiterate the point that any insights… Read More
Who do you think you are?
Our online identities are increasingly important – to us and those around us. Once limited by reach and scale, we can now talk to anyone with an internet connection (if they choose to… Read More
Insights from the customer comments box
On how many occasions have you tweeted an organisation or a brand to complain about their service or make a suggestion and not received a response? Were you disappointed? I’m guessing you probably… Read More
When mobile tribes go to war
This is the first in a series of monthly posts tracking social media conversations about five of the leading global mobile handset brands (iPhone, Samsung, HTC, BlackBerry and Nokia). We will track and identify the key… Read More
