Psilog

Key learnings from a meeting with David Plouffe, campaign director of the Obama 08 election.

Philip was able to ask David Plouffe what it takes to convince a leader not to go for the mainstream sentiment as detected in regular market research and polling but instead to show leadership by doing what "seems to be right". The answer was as brilliant as it was straightforward. "If you know where you are going, that's easy. If your strategy is clear, 95% of decisions are easy. I am a great fan of "no incident decision making" he said.

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This week Philip will give a workshop on BIMIA (business intelligence and marketing intelligence engineering) at the ESOMAR Congress in Montreux and will address the root causes of the fact that most companies intelligence infrastructure looks more like slums than well planned suburbs. He will address the challenges global intelligence and insights managers face today.

Insights as a function is, or should, predominantly...

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Philip gave a workshop web 2.0 and a Pecha Kucha speech in Montréal at the ESOMAR global conference Frontiers, in both sessions highlighting how close we are getting to a state of virtual intimacy that starts to feel real.

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Whatever your political opinion you'll find it hard not to be moved by the video compilation made by will.i.am and the black eyed peas.

We love the message that there is nothing false in hope, we love the song line ( we use it often towards our clients) and hey, we love Fergie.

To enjoy... see below

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We’ve cracked the nut. We have made getting consumer and customer feedback fun, easy, intuitive and … valuable by respecting how humans feel, how their emotions trigger their behaviour and by being there with them… Want to find out? Have a look at our presentation and paper for the ESOMAR Excellence Congress in Berlin. Now there’s a city that makes us dream about Dita…

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Your data goes in, but it rarely leaves. At least according to Robert Scobble. It made me think about what the real value is of social networks. What are they actually doing and where do they go wrong? I have to admit: any social network I join asks me the same questions over and over again. Usually it ends up being an endless list of boring stuff. Meaning: self-evident. For me.

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The proliferation of "user-generated" designs signals the "democratizing" of innovation. Or so the saying goes, at least when you talk to experts like Eric von Hippel, a management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. he argues that ordinary people, armed with inexpensive digital tools and networks can band together to push their own innovations. And furthermore "the people" can also hijack existing technologies, taking them in directions only dimly envisioned by the original creators. However...

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Just as we're starting to get a grip on things in web 2.0, comes along web 3.0. Not an entirely new concept as such, but nonetheless. As it goes, long live the people who never bothered to figure out what to do with the internet, they'll never need to.

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3 communication angles on beauty and how to trigger interest for your brand:

Dove, Danone and... Fit Light Yoghurt.(see example below). All three however start from the same premise. Low self esteem triggers the desire to be "more beautiful". A desire that we have mapped out to get to grips with the most powerful ways to differentiate brands that address beauty in the fragrance business. Not starting from the presumption that all young women have low self esteem is definitely an option... We have identified 5 (life stage related) beauty desire platforms for women and 5 for men.

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 In a World of Abundance* we should all be more interested in what is not material, yet meaningful. One of the most exciting initiatives in this field is non-object. We can't wait for the book to come out. Take the time to watch the previews. And then weep.

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Ask Callaway TV. Now here's an example that proves my position in my latest post. Content is king. Even boring golf content. For some it's so interesting they adapt their media behaviour for it. For who? Ah. That's where superior profiling comes in. TV ( and radio) stations have been doing it for years ( some with us) and use the profiling to steer content generation, not just for positioning and communication. That's the key for success. Too bad I'm a Taylormade fan (see fellows button below). So yes...the brand plays a role too but not the leading one.

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Ask Bud. I guess by now they've learned that there's still a difference between making great 30 second tv spots and actually running a TV network. Moving your competitive area from Beer, Light Beer, No Carbs Beer or euh... any other Beer to entertaining beer drinkers and competing with Hugh Hefner or your next door football team proves to be a bridge too far for A-B.  An early warning for Joost TV?

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Nielsen/NetRatings has issued a study showing that the top 10 social networking sites saw traffic grow 47% over the last year, with MySpace (367% increase) and MSN Spaces (286%) seeing the biggest growth. And these are only the internal growth figures. What about the number of social networking sites available today? The offering appears to be growing exponentially as well (though no hard data is to be found, yet).

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Why bother with the complexities of Second Life? After all before getting proficient at using the SL environment there is a steep learning curve to tackle (most likely the reason why the average life of an avatar is below 3 months, or so they say). And why go to a different platform if all you need can be right on your desktop?

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Here we go again: Second Life as "the" phenomenon of our times... The strange thing is that the concept as such is more mature than we often realize and it seems that they're the ones attracting the attention and finally breaking open "the market" for this way of thinking. (who remembers ...)

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We've spent ages in the industry, working with market research and decided to break away. Fundamentally so. The reason is pretty simple and voiced in the most eloquent manner by David Lowden from TNS during the latest ARF conference: "The research company of the future will be a partner with its clients." ???? SO what has it been up till now?

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