Social Media Thinking

15.11.12

Yet another successful Marketors Think Tank Seminar, this time at the CASS Business School. Entitled "Using insights from social media to drive ROI" it addressed why traditional market research fails to capture how consumers are interacting with brands. Starting with an exercise using Twitter information the speaker, Mark Westaby, director of Spectruminsight one of Europe's leading social media specialists, set us the task of defining who drinks what in a mix of faces and brands. The whole audience were wrong, which clearly proved the strength of social media in measuring and evaluating communications. The further examples offered by Mark were increasingly illuminating covering as they did a number of sectors. Social media research can clearly get to places in the customers mind that cannot be reached by previous approaches.

The following Q&A session added to the depth and breadth of the topic. My own question related to the research findings of the recent Presidential Election. Statistics were released regarding the voting patterns by culture, ethnicity, geography, etc but the one that stood out for me was that the majority voting for Obama, who majored on social media, were the unmarried voters, the singles, the people who are more likely to spend time on social media. So my questions were, what percentage of the population uses Twitter regularly, and what are the gaps in a community profile when just measuring via social media. Mark acknowledged that there were sectors of the community whose opinions could not be reached, but stressed the strength of the insights available from those that could be evaluated on-line.

The reception after gave us the opportunity to continue the topic, with the Mistress pitching in on her subject of field research, an activity which, despite social media activities, continues to offer valuable insights for companies. In all an enlightening and entertaining evening.

John Flynn
Master Marketor