Category Archives: Business

Cellphones have had a profound impact on many things in this world. It has not only revolutionized telecom industry but has also left its mark on how many operations are conducted and industries function. I want to specifically talk about a couple of areas where cellphone is changing the dynamics of the game.

First is market research. A big part of traditional market research is polls and surveys. Cold calls are made to people to ask questions. With more and more people carrying cellphones, it is harder for pollsters to get the complete attention of the survey taker. A person on the go is less inclined to waste time and money (cellphone minutes) speaking to a pollsters. You may argue that there are still a large number of landline phone connections out there to be sufficient for pollsters to meet their targets and form a decent sample. That may be true today, but it comes with a big caveat. Numbers show that a growing number of households with all members carrying a cellphone are opting out of getting a landline. This brings the sample down to households with a stay at home member who still values a landline. Add to it the bulk of people putting their (cell)phone numbers on the no call list and you get the complete picture. In short, traditional market research has had a big negative impact due to the advent of cellphones.

Second area I want to talk about here is social media. Cellphone has raised the amount of activities on social media dramatically. With a growing number of people carrying a cellphone with data connection, people are constantly connected to their favorite social network. They post their views, share recommendations and post pictures on social networks. This is live as it happens and is off the cuff without premeditated state of mind. You may argue that it is mostly coming from the younger generation, but the fact being average age of a person active on social media touching 40, that doesn’t seem to be the case. In other words, social media is having a big positive impact due to the growing use of cellphones.

Now bring these two areas together and you get what MavenMagnet is trying to leverage. We use social media as a base for our market research. We do not believe that traditional market research is to go anywhere anytime soon, but the kind of insights we can drive off social media can provide a more truthful and real perspective on concerned issues. These insights are derived without bothering the people by calling them or asking them questions, making cellphones a big asset for MavenMagnet market research.

Historically great effort is put in getting the right sample for market research. A few thousand set-top boxes define the rating of every television show, an exit poll of 1000 voters define who’s going to win a general election and four groups of 15 people define the positioning statement of your favorite products. When millions of people view television, vote in an election and use a particular product, the onus on these select few to collectively make a definitive statement to the general public is gigantic. And that in turn defines the importance of sampling in market research.

When we use social media for market research, one of the great luxuries and benefits is the availability of large amount of data to tap into to draw insights. But on the flip side, it also brings with itself complexity of dealing with large amount of data. Talking about sampling, couple of important things are the sample size and the recruitment process to form the sample.

The sample size for drawing insights in social media is usually much larger as compared to what traditional market research uses for the same purpose. But what is the right size? Is it a few thousands? Tens of thousands? More? This is a very interesting question, but before answering this, we should touch a bit on the recruitment process.

While traditional market research focuses more on the people participating in the research, we focus more on the information people are sharing. We use this information to find out what are their viewpoints and opinions. We also consider the people behind the opinions to account for the impact they are creating, but that is done in context to the conversation they are having. This way we make sure that the sample we have gathered is completely random, as it should be in a good market research study.

We do not define the size of sample in our study but let the study results define it. We keep collecting the data and keep analyzing it till patterns start to emerge and clusters start to appear. After doing this for considerable amount of data, the patterns get solidified, themes become clear and insights are apparent. This process of getting to insights from data is just beautiful and the insights are credible as well as actionable to help you make great business decisions.

Social media as a whole looks like total chaos. 200 million tweets flying around every day (stats as of September 2011), a billion or so Facebook posts every day and more than a trillion YouTube videos. If you think 200 emails in your inbox Monday morning is chaotic, try to comprehend this. It’s like every common person out there with a microphone allowed to speak what he or she wants to speak. In other words, chaos at its absolute best!

But just like chaos theory in mathematics, this social media chaos when deciphered using technology and looked upon by expert eyes has to do with there being great order in what looks like total randomness. And when you look closely enough at this randomness, patterns start to emerge which are nothing but absolutely beautiful.

Take for example a Presidential debate. People watch it on their televisions and use social media to express their opinions. Immense volume, contradicting opinions and complete chaos. But by using thematic analysis to extract the core themes out of the noise, we can find patterns in people’s opinions and their support towards a candidate. We can use predictive modeling to figure out what the candidate should speak or what she should not by analyzing the trends and sentiments in the conversations happening on social media.

The same technology and techniques can be applied in social media to find anything from how to spend millions on an advertising campaign to learning how a deadly disease is spreading in a country, from inferring the impact of a brand integration in a television show to understanding how a civic revolt took an entire nation to streets.

The beauty of information extracted from the chaotic social media is unparalleled to any other way of doing market research. The reason being it gives an opportunity to everyone, big and small, introverts and extroverts, book-smarts and street-smarts to express their views and make their voices heard. The data is vast and the power is immense. The debate is continuous and the reach is unmatched. All you need is the right technology and the right techniques to make sense of it and strategize your next move.

P.S. Try us at MavenMagnet to show you the beauty we are talking about!

Media companies for ages have debated and argued about the importance of distribution over content and vice versa. Now as the line between content creation and consumption has blurred, the debate has trickled down to the crowd. It all started with the new forms of distribution coming in picture giving way to new forms of content creation and consumption.

Distribution evolves over time. Evolution started with the printing press publishing books, magazines, newspaper. Went on to radio for transmitting information followed by television to listen and watch the content. Then came along cable television, Internet, satellite radio, mobile and social media to take distribution to new levels. Every evolution in distribution has led to the evolution of content in the way it is curated and consumed.

Of all the forms of distribution, the one that arguably had the biggest impact is social media. Social media has redefined distribution. For years content development had gatekeepers. The few people who controlled the channels of mass distribution of content had the power on which content was worth distributing and which was not. Internet came along to lift this control on distribution to a large extent. But the real freedom of distribution (at least in most parts of the world) came along with the social media. Blogs made every individual with a point of view an author. Digg, delicious and other bookmarking sites gave the power to the crowds to bubble up what’s worth reading and what can be ignored. YouTube came along to take video broadcasting to a new level and twitter gave everyone with the skill and guts to write a 140 meaningful characters the power to change governments and embrace or kill brands.

This new form of distribution has led to a big change in content creation. It’s a world of intense focus. You can no longer produce content for everyone. You have a much better chance of getting attention of a select few than getting the eyeballs of everyone. Success has embraced the Justin Biebers and Lady Gagas of the world who understand their audience, engage with them and intensely focus on delivering content for them.

There’s a big change in content consumption. Packages no longer work in social media. It’s a world of a la carte. You read that article on The Economist when the title appeals to you in your twitter field, you watch that Saturday Night Live skit that focuses on what you care about and you download that song that you want to listen again and again.

Still there’s no arguing that content is super important. I believe it is more important than ever before. The new channels of distribution has given everyone the options that never existed before. The attention span of your consumers is less than ever before. You got to be on the top of the game when it comes to creating content. But what’s more important for any kind of content creator and attention seeker is to make sure you leverage the new forms of distribution, reach to the right audience and engage them to make you content bubble up and get your share of three minutes of glory. Because at the end of the day, content may be the king, but distribution is god!

There are many problems out there that are not that apparent. Many times it happens that the consumers, the people for whom you are creating your product (or service), do not sense the problem. They don’t feel the need of that something which you think might make their lives so much better. There are numerous examples that come to mind. Take Lotus 1-2-3 for example. No one ever asked for a spreadsheet software. No one thought that they will be using one. Some smart engineers created it, some software savvy marketers associated a marketing need for it and today no information worker can live without a spreadsheet software.

The most important thing to consider here is how to make people realize that they should use this product. When you are creating product with a vision in mind to solve a not so apparent problem, the best way to go about marketing it is with the help of mavens. Find a set of early adopters who share the vision with you. Involve these people in product development. Talk to them. Listen to them. Make them feel a part of the grand mission. Give them the product at attractive deals. They will help you market the product further. They will make other realize that the problem your product is solving does exist and how the product is solving that and help you cross the chasm.

Graphical User Interface or GUI is said to be one of the great innovations of the 1980s. Whoever saw GUI on a computer during that time was wow-ed by the interface and its capabilities. Few years later, GUI became a very common part of computing interface. People started to expect that in a computer. Then came touch. People were wow-ed by touch terminals at airports. Now it has become ubiquitous for all tasks like ticketing, getting quick information etc. Similar progression will continue for innovations in the future. All that is happening here is yesterday’s wow are becoming today’s expected and in the same spirit, today’s wow will become tomorrow’s expected.

Wi-fi receivers in laptop, touch on cellphones and broadband in homes were all wows yesterday and became expected today. Similarly if wi-fi in planes, 3D movies and civilian space expedition are wows today, they are very likely to become expected tomorrow. And there are some things that are unimaginable today that will become wow tomorrow and people will start expecting them the day after.

Bottom-line, don’t rest on your laurels if you were able to wow the world on one occasion. Your customers will start expecting that from you and there will be many clones lined up to cash on that tomorrow. Keep reinventing and wow them again and again. This in some ways explains the success of Apple. They stayed true to their address–1 Infinite loop–by forming an infinite loop of innovations over the last decade. They regularly come up with the next wow product just when people start expecting their last breakthrough product from them and their competitors. In a nutshell, key to success is to stay on top of the industry by continuous innovation.