Who has influence on bills in Parliament?

Who has influence on bills in Parliament?

Onalytica today launched a new website that monitors who influence selected bills as they pass thought the United Kingdom Parliament.

We expect to track a handful of bills, updating the influence metrics every month or so.

As we are not political commentators we will not be publishing much commentary along with the influence metrics. We will leave that to others.

The first bill to be analysed was the Charities Bill.

The results and the new website can be found at www.BillInfluence.com

Brands under (online) attack - a case about Kleenex

Brands under (online) attack.

(a pdf version of this article can be downloaded here - pdf, 4 mb)

A recent article in New York Times showed how the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, had to resort to new types of responses in order to respond to pressure from two well organised pressure groups. A subsequent analysis published by Onalytica quantified the influence of the pressure groups and confirmed that their influence on the public debate on Wal-Mart is indeed substantial.

Like the giant retailer brands are at risk. They can come under pressure from organised pressure groups, dissatisfied customers or disgruntled present and former employees.

As the world has moved online brands in general and consumer brands in particular have felt the increased heat.

Online, the barriers to mount an effective campaign against a brand are much lower than in the offline world. Not only can any consumer create a free blog or website in a matter of minutes, but a campaign can, thanks to email and free phone calls, be coordinated with likeminded people from around the globe in a matter of days.

Kimberly-Clark Corporation is large US company with an annual revenue (2004) of more than US$ 15 bn and a work force of 60.000 full time staff. They market paper and tissue products under a host of brand names; most famously Kleenex.

In recent years Kimberly-Clark has come under fire from a several groups of environmentalists for what they term “unsustainable forest operations” including “wiping away ancient forest”. This apparently takes place in the North American Boreal forest which stretches from Alaska to the eastern provinces of Canada.

In order to find out weather or not the pressure groups have any influence on Kimberly-Clark we analysed who have influence on the debate on their most important brand; Kleenex.

Analysing influence
Onalytica has developed a methodology whereby we can measure the structural influence stakeholders have on an issue or a brand. Initially we crawl the Internet; identify web pages and documents that contain references to the issue or a brand being analysed. The documents are downloaded and analysed for citations. (Citations are links or references to organisations appearing in the context of the issue or brand we are analysing).

The citations are turned into equations that when solved gives the influence of each organisation being cited. This method is well established in the academic world where it has been used to calculate the influence of academic journals and universities for decades.

(To learn more about influence measurement and our methodology see the technical section at the end of the article.)

Findings
At the end of our analysis we ended up with just over 1000 entities (organisations, websites, university departments, etc.) that play some sort of direct or indirect role in relation to the discussion on Kleenex.

Table 1 shows the 15 organisations who received the most references from those entities in the context of the brand “Kleenex”.

There are few surprises in Table 1. Apart from Kimberly-Clark (13th place with 24 other organisations referring it directly) the other organisations are well known media outlets.

Some search engines (for example Technorati) uses the number of distinct referrers as a measure of authority. In other words: a website with links from 10 different websites has greater authority than a website with links from 5.

There are several problems with that way of measuring authority.

First, it has as its premise that all those who link to a site are equally relevant (or have equal authority). That is not the case. In general, NY Times has more authority than the school magazine I used to write for.

Second, the method fails to measure indirect influence. If two websites discuss the same issue, but one is referenced in an appropriate context by the NY Times and the other is referenced by a site that no one visits, the first one is likely to have more influence because of its endorsement from the NY Times.

The third and possible biggest problem is that the measure assumes that all have equal authority on any issue they discuss. Again this is not only counter-intuitive; it is in fact wrong: Neither organisations nor individuals have the same authority (or relevance) on any matter: I may trust Jancis Robinson when it comes to wine and Robin Lane Fox when it comes to gardening; but I’m not sure I would do it vice versa. (Ms. Robinson the wine correspondent and Mr. Lane Fox the garden correspondents for the Financial Times.)

Onalytica has developed an issue-focused citation index for measuring structural influence that has none of 3 flaws mentioned above.

Onalytica’s Issue Influence Index™ is a linear citation index ranging from 1 ("no particular influence") and upwards. Because it is linear an organisation with an influence index of 4 can be said to have double the influence of one with and an influence index of 2.

Table 2 shows the 15 organisations with the highest Issue Influence Index™ for the Kleenex brand.

This table tells a more precise story of influence.

Kimberly-Clark and Kleenex are, as expected, the most influential.

Scott Brands, Cottonelle, Viva paper Towel Products, KC Professional and Neenah Paper are brands and/or companies in the Kimberly-Clark group.

Kleercut and Kleenxsosforet (the French version of Kleercut) are the most aggressive pressure groups.

Greenpeace International and The Forrest Stewardship Council are influential environmental lobby organisations who in this respect work with Kleercut and Kleenxsosforet.

NASCAR is here because Kleenex is a sponsor of Ford Racing; a team participating in the NASCAR races.

As Table 1 demonstrates pressure groups Kleercut and Kleenxsosforet have substantial influence. Together they command more influence on the debate about Kleenex than Kleenex itself (20.79 vs. 17.65).

Putting Greenpeace International, Action Works and The Forest Stewardship Council on the same side as Kleercut and Kleenxsosforet we get a total influence equivalent to that of Kimberly-Clark and Kleenex combined.

This cannot help but to have a negative impact on Kimberly-Clark and Kleenex.

Figure 1 shows how the organisations in Table 2 link to each other.

Notice how Kleercut and Kleenxsosforet avoid linking directly to Kimberly-Clark, Kleenex or any other of Kimberly-Clark’s brands.
There is a good reason for that and that reason is called Google.

Google has shot from no-where to owning 80% of the search engine market because their search results are more relevant than their competitors. One reason for their success is that they use part of the science behind citation indexing to calculate relevance. (However, because of the massive size of the web they have to do several theoretical shortcuts.).

I expect (but can’t know of course) that the reason why Kleercut does not link to Kleenex is because such a link would be interpreted by Google as an endorsement and thereby contribute to improving not only Kleenex’ ranking in Google, but the ranking of those Kleenex link directly and indirectly to.

This could have the adverse (seen from Kleercut’s perspective) effect of raising ranking of one of Kimberly-Clark’s other websites; effectively bumping Kleercut from the first page of search results when searching for “Kleenex” on Google.

Figure 2 shows a screenshot of a search on Google for the word “Kleenex”.

We can see Kleenex occupies the top spots, but on the first page – clearly in view – is Kleercut, one of the pressure groups from before.

Conclusion
It’s old news that pressure groups can inflict pain on sales and brand value. However, as the world has moved online brand owners are likely to face more and more effective pressure from well organised special interest groups.

These pressure groups have significantly fewer resources than the brands they are trying to influence. However, when combining their cause with the nature of the online world and (typically) a better understanding of how the Internet and search engines work, they can often gain substantial influence on direct sales and long term brand value.

Because the traditional barriers of entering the debate has been removed, brand owners need a wake up and understand how they can defend their brands effectively online or suffer the loss in brand value and sales.

© Onalytica 2005

The information in this article may be quoted when Onalytica is credited as the source. If quoted online, please add a direct web link to www.onalytica.com

Issue Influence Index™ is a trademark of Onalytica Ltd.


Influence and methodology explained.
You exert influence on people when they listen to what you say or read what you have said – and vice versa.

We form our opinion about all sorts of matters using information that has been supplied to us by other parties. Is the weather getting warmer? Is the ice at the North Pole melting? We may have an opinion on this but have we actually measured it ourselves? Most of us haven’t – we rely on news media we trust to form our opinion. But when we take in information from other sources, they influence us.

When calculating influence we gather information available in the public domain and analyse it to find out who is referencing whom when it comes to the issue we are analysing.

The way we calculate influence is equivalent to the way influence of academic journals and universities are calculates: using citation analysis.

At the heart of this type of influence measurement is a simple, but central conjecture:

Person X has influence on Person Y regarding a particular issue if Person Y is dependent on Person X for information about the issue. (“Person” can mean organisation, website, person, etc, according to the context. )

In academic citation analysis this is put into practice by a slight rephrasing:

Person X has influence on Person Y regarding the issues covered in the academic paper, if Person Y cites person X as a reference in the paper.

When measuring “issue influence” Onalytica uses the very same principle.

Based on the principles above systems of equations can be formed and influence calculated.

One of the great advantages of this kind of influence measurement is that it takes indirect influence into account.

To construct an Onalytica Stakeholder Analysis (OSA) a focus issue needs to be defined or a brand chosen. The issue can be a simple set of words or a more complex set texts and rules.

Onalytica’s proprietary issue-focused web crawler identifies and downloads any document (Web pages, word, pdf or PowerPoint documents) about the issue found on the Internet; typically around 10-20 thousand.

The documents are then analysed for references. So if a document, created by organisation X, refers organisation Y in the context we are focusing on, then we take it that organisation X deems organisation Y relevant to the issue. It also on average means that organisation Y, to some extent, influence organisation X on the particular issue.

After some consolidation and statistical filtering we end up with set of interlinked stakeholders; typically 1000 +/- 500. These stakeholders constitute a body of stakeholders whose relevance to the issue can be substantiated.

Using well known mathematical procedures we then calculate metrics of interest; mostly influence metrics.

Measuring blogging influence on brands

Should brands be concerned about the influence of bloggers?

Together with Market Sentinel and Immediate Future we examine the “famous” case of blogger Jeff Jarvis problems with Dell.

This white paper sets out to answer questions we are often asked by customers:

• How important are online commentators to my business?
• How important are bloggers in particular?
• Can their influence be measured?
• If so how?
• Are bloggers really a unique threat to corporate reputation, as Forbes suggests, or a huge opportunity as Business Week implies?
• And if so why?

Download the White Paper here (7 MB, pdf).

Who influence Corporate Social Responsibility in the UK?

According to Wikipedia, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) “is an expression used to describe what some see as a company’s obligation to be sensitive to the needs of all of its stakeholders in its business operations.”

In order to identify the most important influencers on CRS in the United Kingdom an Onalytica Stakeholder Analysis was conducted.

(You can download a more comprehensive summary with network maps here - 250k pdf)

Influence
You exert influence on people when they listen to what you say or read what you have said – and vice versa.

We form our opinion about all sorts of matters using information that has been supplied to us by other parties. Is the weather getting warmer? Is the ice at the North Pole melting? We may have an opinion on this but have we actually measured it ourselves? Most of us haven’t – we rely on news media we trust to form our opinion. But when we take in information from other sources, they influence us.

When calculating influence we gather information available in the public domain and analyse it to find out who is referencing whom when it comes to the issue we are analysing.

The way we calculate influence is equivalent to the way influence of academic journals and universities are calculates: using citation analysis.

At the heart of this type of influence measurement is a simple, but central conjecture:

Person X has influence on Person Y regarding a particular issue if Person Y is dependent on Person X for information about the issue.

(“Person” can mean organisation, website, person, etc, according to the context.)

In academic citation analysis this is put into practice by a slight rephrasing:

Person X has influence on Person Y regarding the issues covered in the academic paper, if Person Y cites person X as a reference in the paper.

When measuring “issue influence” Onalytica uses the very same principle.

Based on the principles above systems of equations can be formed and influence calculated.

One of the great advantages of this kind of influence measurement is that it takes indirect influence into account.

Methodology
To construct an Onalytica Stakeholder Analysis (OSA) a focus issue needs to be defined. In this case “Corporate Social Responsibility” was chosen. (The issue can be a simple set of words or a more complex set texts and rules.)

Onalytica’s proprietary issue-focused web crawler identifies and downloads any document (Web pages, word, pdf or PowerPoint documents) about the issue found on the Internet; typically around 10-20 thousand.

The documents are then analysed for references. So if a document, created by organisation X, refers organisation Y in the context we are focusing on, then we take it that organisation X deems organisation Y relevant to the issue. It also on average means that organisation Y, to some extent, influence organisation X on the particular issue.

After some consolidation and statistical filtering we end up with set of interlinked stakeholders; typically 1000 +/- 500. These stakeholders constitute a body of stakeholders whose relevance to the issue can be substantiated.

Using well known mathematical procedures we then calculate metrics of interest; mostly influence metrics.

Table 1 - Issue Influence Index™ (above)

Issue Influence Index™ is a generic measure of influence. It measures both direct and indirect influence and is calculated like a citation index.

The scale is linear, ranging from 1 (one) and upwards. An index of 1 can be interpreted as “no particular influence”. A stakeholder with an index of 4 can be interpreted as having twice the influence as someone who has an index of 2.

An organisation with no particular influence on the issue in focus has an Issue Influence Index™ value of 1.

Figure 1 (above) shows how organisations from Table 1 reference each other. The direction of the arrow shows the reference. The influence is consequently the other way.

The size of the dot representing each organisation is proportional to their total influence.
Three of the organisations, Barclays, Heart of the City and Investis; are not referenced by the rest of the group (nor vice versa). These 3 organisations thus derive their influence from organisations with less influence than those listed in Table 1.

Table 2 - Information Influence (Above)

Table 2 shows a metric popular in network analysis (where it is often called “betweenness centrality”). We refer to it as “Information Influence” because it gives a good indication of how central a stakeholder is to the distribution of information about the issue in focus.

News media and others with an editorial role (collection of information and then redistributing it in edited form to a large audience) usually have a high Information Influence.

Information Influence is not as good a measure of “real” influence as the Issue Influence Index™ in Table 1, but it shows who is a supplier of information about the issue to a large audience (directly or indirectly).

Figure 2 (above) shows how the organisations in Table 2 reference each other.

Unlike Figure 1 we here have a situation where all the top organisations reference each other.

Again the size of the dot representing each organisation is proportional to their real influence as listed in Table 1.

Contact us if you are interested in the full analysis.

Issue Influence Index™ is a trademark of Onalytica Ltd.

UK Evaluation Society’s 11th annual congress

December 1st I was at the UK Evaluation Society’s 11th annual congress in Manchester, UK.

Together with Anne McMurray I presented a case where we used Social Network Analysis as part of an inter-agency evaluation project.

The project was related to Every Child Matters. Our task was to evaluate a pilot project surrounding 3 schools.

Social Network Analysis is effective for measuring and evaluating issues such as capacity for knowledge sharing, inter-agency network structure and other issues relating to social contact.

These are issues that have traditionally been hard to measure and evaluate quantitatively, but Social Network Analysis can serve as an important component in such an evaluation.

Please contact Anne McMurray or Onalytica if you would like to know more about the presentation or how we can assist you with your evaluation/social network analysis needs.

Keynote Address
The opening and keynote address of the congress was given by E. Jane Davidson, Phd. I found her speech incredibly interesting.

Anne McMurray’s contact details:
Anne McMurray Consulting Ltd
PO Box 5463
Wellington Park
Belfast BT9 6YT
m 00 44 77 40 50 92 00
e anne.mcmurray [-at] btconnect.com