Who is Influential in the Debate on the Royal Wedding? ♯

The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is a very topical subject at the moment with just four weeks to go until the big day. We began tracking the debate on the Royal Wedding around the time of the couple’s official announcement of their engagement in November 2010. Just look how the volume of debate has increased so dramatically between December and March:

Figure 1: Monthly Buzz Trend for Mentions of the Royal Wedding

 
Not only are we interested in the discussion of the Royal Wedding, but we are interested in who is discussing the Royal Wedding and just how influential those voices are.
Before revealing some of the most influential voices in the debate I want to outline what I mean when I say influence and how this can be measured.

What is influence?
Influence, is the capacity of a publication, an organisation or an individual to impact the viewpoints, actions or opinions of others over whom they do not hold power.

This shouldn’t be confused with popularity. Popularity is about how many listen to you whereas influence is more about who listens to you.
This can be seen in the graphics below:

Figure 2: Popularity vs. Influence

Figure 3: Focus on Popularity

Figure 4: Focus on Influence

But what do all these links mean without context? 

Influence is topical: Those who have influence in the debate on cat-food may not have the same influence on energy supply.

We put a key focus on defining the appropriate context in order to then measure the influence of the stakeholders contributing to the online debate within that context.

So how is influence measured?

Firstly, let’s have a think about why we need to measure influence, rather than go with our own impressions or gut feel: The identification of influencers based on measurement is important as we (as humans) tend to overrate the importance of those we hear about more often and similar underrate the importance of those we hear about less (or never).

So now on to measurement; in order to measure influence, we need to take indirect influence into account.

For more than three decades academics have used something called “citation analysis” to measure the influence of academic journals, researchers and universities. In academic articles, writers cite the works of other academics. They do that for several reasons, but mainly because they believe that those they cite are relevant to the context. They reference other publications that are relevant to their arguments and to the context. In doing so they reveal which other publications have influenced them.

In citation analysis these citations from one journal to another are regarded as links. These links are extracted and transformed into a huge system of equations. When solved the result is a relative measure of influence.

This way of measuring influence was developed by Russia-born American, Wassily Leontief. He developed something called input/output analysis to measure how sectors of the economy influence each other.

Wassily Leontief was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize in Economics for developing input/output-analysis and thereby solving the illusive problems of “circular influence”.
We use this method to measure the influence of websites based on which websites link to them, and in turn, which websites link to those websites and so on.

So here it is what you’ve all be waiting for: We have used this measure to find the top 20 most influential websites in the global English debate on the Royal Wedding:

Table 1: Top 20 Influential Stakeholders in the Debate on the Royal Wedding

We have recently seen The Official Royal Wedding Website climb to the top of the chart, surpassing national news media from the UK, the US and Australia. We will be keeping an eye on the top 20 over the next four weeks to see what kind of movement occurs.

Report compiled during the period 1st October 2010 – 29th March 2011. Please email me (sophie.hill@onalytica.com) if you would like further information on findings presented in this blog post.

Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? No it's... ♯

The Goodyear Blimp!

We were walking back from lunch to the Centre Point building and caught a glimpse of the Goodyear Blimp, we hurried to our office on the 29th floor to snap some photos of this rare occasion.

 According to the Express & Star (www.expressandstar.com) this will be the first appearance of the Goodyear Blimp in over a decade (the last flight was in 1999). This particular blimp that we managed to catch a glimpse of, will be touring the whole of the UK - so keep your eyes open!

Results of the UK Insight Managers Survey 2011 ♯

We have been really interested in insight managers for a while now, but after encountering insight managers positioned in different areas within the business and with different uses and means of gathering insight, we set ourselves a mission to find out a bit more about these increasingly important and influential people.

We found ourselves a great team of insight managers and our research began!

We started off asking the question: Who are insight managers? And this was what we found:
Definition – of insight varies hugely and so does the job title. Many insight managers are from research backgrounds, but not exclusively so.
Growth - hiring of insight managers has continued to grow – despite economic stagnation.
Seniority - insight managers typically are senior, especially if from a research background, and are either line managers or departmental heads.
More likely to be found in large organisations - 85% are employed in organisations with 200 or more employees.
Skills required to be a good insight manager – the need for strong analytical skills was ranked highest priority, but more surprisingly perhaps was that the second most important attribute is considered to be communication skills, followed by the ability to influence senior management.

Once we had a better understanding of an insight manager’s general background, we wanted to find out how insight managers relate to the rest of the business.
Our questions spanned a number of areas and the responses showed:
Where they sit in the organisation - approximately two-thirds of respondents sit within the marketing department or a related function (sales & marketing).
Increasingly provide insight to the rest of the business – more than 50% of the insight is for outside their department, and more than 50 % of respondents are supplying insight to four or more departments (e.g. sales, customer management, product development, HR, IT, finance, operations).
Biggest users of insight - public relations are the biggest users of insight, followed by advertising. Consumer behaviour is the highest application for insight (compared to, for instance, insight into market competition).

In order to put ourselves in a good position to help insight managers in their day-to-day activities, we needed to understand some of the key challenges they face:
Demand on time - most survey respondents spend more time reporting writing and disseminating information than any other task (as much as 75%). This underlines the need to use tools that provide automatically analysed insight that can be presented in an accessible format to colleagues, other departments and senior management.
The management buy-in challenge - 65% said that getting management ‘buy in’ and subsequently ensuring action is taken is a challenge.
Other challenges include - limited resources and an inability to easily access forward-looking insight.

Once we knew about the current situation we wanted to start building some predictions for the future. We asked our team of insight managers about the trends they felt were starting to build in the area of insight management and how they felt these would develop in the near future:
Increasing demand – almost 80% of respondents expect that increasing demand for the insight they can provide to their organisations in the next year.
New tools and technology - and growth in online networks were the most positive, though not to all, some respondents indicated that the new tools were increasing the challenge of their job.
Social media - use of social media to monitor user complaints and learn about customer satisfaction was high, with the majority agreeing that use of social media in their organisations will grow significantly in the next few years. 81% also agree that their organisations have a significant learning curve to overcome before they can utilise social media, with over half saying that until social media’s impact can be measured, it will not be taken seriously internally.
Providing the most benefit – customer feedback was ranked the highest in terms of providing the most beneficial insight when compared with general research, industry reports and expert advice.

Want to Know More?
If you are interested in finding out more and would like to read the full report, please email me (sophie.hill@onalytica.com).

Are You an Insight Manager?
Do you want to become part of this growing networking group? - Join the Onalytica Insight Manager Forum by sending us an email at: insight@onalytica.com.

Big Plans for a Big Society and a New Budget for 2011 ♯

The UK Budget 2011 is announced today and has been driving a significant amount of the current politics debate.

Spending cuts are a key concern for many, but some publications are taking a different slant. There is an interesting article in this week’s edition of The Economist about the ‘Big Society’. Please click on the following link for the online PDF version of the edition, see pages 18 and 19 for the article referenced in this post: www.economist.com. The article summarises some of the political history leading up to the current day, discusses recent political actions and spells out some of the ideals of the coalition Government. Summing up the main strategy of the Big Society: “It brings together three things: pluralism, localism and voluntarism”.

The Big Society: How will we get there?
The article outlines some of the fundamental steps that will be taken in order to achieve the Big Society and predicts some of the potential outcomes and consequences of these. Common misconceptions of the knock-on effects include the extent of reductions to the civil service: “Pluralism could lead to a much smaller civil service than anyone thinks. ‘Once you start letting people compete, it is incredible how few people you need in the centre,’ says one of Britain’s most senior mandarins. And, since the change is technocratic not political (the state, after all, is still paying), it will be difficult for a future Labour Government to reverse”.

The strategy also entails a certain amount of decentralisation of power to local government, but The Economist highlights that: “This localism is somewhat marred by the Tories’ deep distrust of local government”.

Learning to trust is not the only problem facing the coalition Government in the journey to the Big Society. Pushing the concept of volunteerism is also likely to present its own obstacles. The article points out that even some of David Cameron’s peers have their doubts: “Volunteerism […] is a big idea. The people around Mr Cameron argue that just reducing the supply of government won’t wean people off the state; you also have to reduce the demand for it […] In practice, however, the idea has flaws […] most people lack the time and expertise required, and there is not a lot of money around to help them (thanks to the spending cuts).”

A poignant example highlights a sizeable portion of the problem: “Britons seem to band together of their own accord only when they want to oppose something – such as the Government’s plans to sell off the nation’s forests, which they halted”.

Where is the money coming from and where is it going?
The Economist visually splits out Britain’s spending and receipts in the UK Budget 2010:

  Source: www.economist.com page 19

How is it really going to work?
With a number of hurdles to surmount, the article underlines the key determining factor: Implementation, pointing out that the method is crucial: “Unless reform of the state is seen to be equitable and effective, citizens will not accept it”.

The analysis doesn’t stop there, but draws attention to two further issues: the Government’s breadth of ambition (“set against that of Mrs Thatcher, who did far less in her first year”) and that “most other rich-world governments will have to do the something similar soon. That is partly because of their fiscal situation: even America will have to start reconciling its revenues and its spending in the near future”.

“Mr Cameron, for all his haste, is at the front of a great wave” – we’ll be keeping our eyes open for the emergence of the next Big Society.

Read the full article here:
www.economist.com - See pages 18 and 19 of the PDF version of the edition.

Lots of Work Going On Beneath Our Feet ♯

Lots of building work is currently going on beneath our office in the Centre Point building. BBC London has taken a trip down into the midst of the work, deep underground, to have a look at how the new Tottenham Court Road station is shaping up. The video (please see link below) explores the current state of the work from a perspective we don’t often get the chance to see!

The new and improved Tottenham Court Road station will be six times larger than what it is currently, which will be a nice change for everyone who travels through the station. The station will be finished in five years’ time and by the looks of the drawings and plans, it will be worth the wait.

Please see the BBC London video here.

For more information on Transport for London’s latest news and details of the new station and surrounding area please see here.

Mobile World Congress - The Four Sides to Success ♯

Following on from our analysis of the global English debate of Mobile World Congress, we have distilled the four key aspects which proved successful in drawing attention in the debate:

1. Timing

• Interest peaked on the first day of the event and quickly tailed off in subsequent days proving that timing is essential: too early and the message becomes old news by the time the event arrives; too late and it could be side-lined as other messages have taken hold. HTC, LG and Nokia timed their announcements well, allowing them to capitalise on interest during the event.

2. Differentiation

• New technology and points of differentiation attract attention. LG demonstrated this point with the 3D technology incorporated in the Optimus 3D and Optimus Tab. HTC also benefitted from differentiation in driving interest in the Flyer, which was the only tablet to feature note-taking functionality.

3. Mystery

• Some handsets maintained interest over a sustained period of time; namely through creating a mysterious aura about the product. Samsung did this effectively with the Galaxy S II. Samsung spread outline images and sneaky hints of the product, but refused to reveal all until the event, which kept people wanting more.

4. Leaks

• MWC 2011 proved that the marketing efforts of the largest scale don’t necessarily guarantee a proportional slice of attention. Sony Ericsson suffered from this; its Xperia Play had a larger share of attention before its advert was aired at prime time during the Super Bowl.
• Low-key, seemingly unofficial leaks sparked discussion and spread quickly as the audience was interested in being the first to relay the news. This technique was particularly effective in the lead up to the event.

As before, if you would like to receive a copy of this report, please contact me; Sophie Hill [sophie.hill@onalytica.com]. If you have a general interest in the event and analysis relating to it, or want to know how we help companies interpret and understand the discussion around industries, brands, themes and issues then please contact us on 0207 407 7642. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed where we will be posting some of the findings.

*This report was produced using data analysed from the period 1st Oct 2010 – 28th Feb 2011.

Mobile World Congress - Summary of Findings ♯

Our latest report covering analysis on the debate of Mobile World Congress is now available - here is a summary of the findings:

• Google was the most-discussed company and held a sizeable share of the debate in relation to MWC throughout the timeframe.  

• Samsung was the most-discussed company among influential stakeholders. The Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab were the main drivers of attention.

• HTC, LG, Sony Ericsson and Nokia all benefitted from increased attention among influential stakeholders.

• Apple’s products fared well within the handset and tablet debate as they generated the highest volumes of coverage. That said, they appeared in a high proportion of collateral mentions as they were referred to as benchmark products.

• Android dominated the phone operating system (OS) debate.

• Discussion of MWC began to build in Jan, coming to a peak on the first day of the event. There was a small dip in interest on the second day and by the third day influential stakeholders had lost a significant amount of interest in the event.

• Engadget (engadget.com) was the most influential stakeholder and held the number one spot throughout the period, while other stakeholders moved around in the ranking. The debate was dominated by technology media sites during the end of 2010 as technology and gadget enthusiasts drove the debate.  Into Jan and Feb the debate became much more mainstream as official announcements drew wider appeal.

As before, if you would like to receive a copy of this report, please contact me; Sophie Hill [sophie.hill@onalytica.com]. If you have a general interest in the event and analysis relating to it, or want to know how we help companies interpret and understand the discussion around industries, brands, themes and issues then please contact us on 0207 407 7642. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed where we will be posting some of the findings.

*This report was produced using data analysed from the period 1st Oct 2010 – 28th Feb 2011.