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Measuring Your Brand Buzz in Consumer Generated Media

Cymfony's CEO Andrew Bernstein is off to Ad:Tech New York this week.  Besides attending the event he's participating on a panel tomorrow at 3:00pm entitled "Measuring Your Brand Buzz in Consumer Generated Media."  Organic's Mark Kingdon is moderating with Pete Blackshaw of Intelliseek, Jonathan Carson of BuzzMetrics and Dave Balter of BzzAgents rounding out the panel.   The panel is being produced in conjunction with WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) to address questions such as "How can the impact of word of mouth be quantified?"  How does WOM impact the brand? And how does WOM impact your marketing mix?"  Additionally, the panel will discuss social trends that are birthing big changes in how companies do business.

"If you can't measure word of mouth, you can't measure the rest of your marketing efforts, either." 

In preparing for the panel, we pulled together a few Cymfony case studies on how we help clients develop a program to begin to measure, benchmark and analyze online discussion and consumer generated media.  Although we are unable to identify the client, I believe the following example is a good illustration of how company can take the first step in setting up a measurement and analysis program and some general results. 

One of the world’s leading electronic payment brands asked Cymfony to analyze all mentions of the company on blogs, usenet groups and forums.  In a nutshell, they wanted to gain insight in to the collective consumer conversations to tailor product development, marketing and public relations campaigns. 

We started the project by conducting a media audit or "discovery analysis" to determine what was being said about the company across all targeted media.  We needed to determine the volume and frequency of conversation as well as the major topics and the relevance to specific product groups.  One of the major goals was to be able to quickly view positive and negative feedback over a period of 15 weeks and use the intelligence as feedback to the product development, marketing and PR functions.  Once we agreed on the goals of the program we needed to determine what type of CGM tracking should be performed on an ongoing basis. 

Cymfony worked with the company to establish core metrics for a baseline consumer generated discovery analysis program.  Online conversations containing mentions of the company were identified and analyzed weekly for subject matter and negative or positive sentiment.  The volume of activity and key themes were analyzed and were aligned by relevancy with the company’s product groups.  Volume and content of discussion was then monitored to determine residual consumer reaction to competitive developments.

Over the 15 week period, the company found no residual negative reaction to competitive announcements.  Using Cymfony's automated dashboard platform and onoing reports from the consulting services team, the company is now prepared to see the actual conversations as consumers begin further scrutiny.  They will be able to see the real-time volume of activity compared to weekly norms.

The company was able to identify negative discussions about certain electronic payments not being honored by some merchants, and the lack of notification shown by the merchants who DO accept payment.  These comments were shared with the product group action was immediately taken. 

Additionally, the company was able to monitor a crisis situation about a news story that broke involving a corporate customer.  The company watched closely through real time postings and comments and were about to quickly learn that no direct negative feedback was associated with the company in online conversations about the incident.  The company was then able to establish baseline metrics for typical weekly conversation containing references to the company, and has monitored spikes in volume above the weekly norms.  And the company was able to get a glimpse of consumer goodwill they earned based on calls performed by its fraud protection service.

Posted by Cymfony on November 7, 2005 at 03:40 PM | Email this post Permalink

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