The Power of Advertisments: Social Media Research Calls Out Nivea

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Baby, it’s cold outside!
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Though the holiday season is over and we are no longer singing Christmas songs, baby, it’s still cold outside. Dry skin, chapped lips, cracked hands are all common occurrences during the winter so this is the perfect time to review the performance of a few skincare brands over the last year.

For three popular brands, Aveeno, Nivea and Olay, we gathered hundreds of thousands of opinions from across the social media space. We then plotted the percentage of verbatims that were positive over a time span from January 2011 to December 2011. The trend lines are quite positive and reasonably stable across the entire year. In most cases, at least 40% of all verbatims were positive and Olay consistently led the pack.

But wait! What is the drastic drop Nivea saw in August when the percentage of comments that were positive dropped from about 44% down to 32%? It certainly wasn’t a seasonal trend as neither Aveeno nor Olay experienced a similar change. What happened in August to set the social media space on fire?

When we dive into the data, two popular topics bubbled to the top – advertisements and racism. Indeed, people were talking about a specific Nivea advertisement and they were furious.

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Many perceived the advertising image to be racist, and comments and opinions rolled in from polls, tweets, online newspapers and all other forms of social media. Here are a few (masked) verbatims taken from social media:
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• “Is this ad also offensive to anyone else out there????”
• “The ad has to be trashed. I’m not buying a NIVEA product as long as this terrible ad is on the air.”
• “I don’t know who the f*** their advertising team is, but they dropped the ball big time”
• “Won’t be using Nivea aftershave anymore. Let’s see how they do WITHOUT my UN-CIVILED DOLLARS”

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Indeed, if we track sentiment daily in August, we can see the precise day when the advertisement caused the stir – August 18. And, we can see the precise day when Nivea issued an apology – August 19, the day sentiment reached its lowest point and began the long climb back up.

Both of the above charts illustrate the sometimes short attention span of consumers. After an apology from Nivea, consumers quickly forgave them and forgot about the ad. Sentiment returned to normal fluctuations.

Perhaps it’s the power of an apology, but it’s more likely the power of a strong brand that pulled them through.

The Battle of the Bulge: Does our favorite celebrity ambassador represent our favorite weight loss program?

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

By Jennifer O’Brien

Happy New Year! Did you make a resolution for 2012? Many did and I’m sure that ‘shed a few pounds’ was at the top of the list for many people. Television commercials advertising weight loss programs are plentiful right now as weight loss companies vie for your hard-earned dollars. As always, celebrities are a key component of their commercials.  Jennifer Hudson has been the face of Weight Watchers for some time, and new commercials feature Mariah Carey using the Jenny Craig diet and Janet Jackson using Nutrisystem.

But does having the favorite celeb also mean having the favorite program?  Let’s take a look at what social media has to say.

We gathered hundreds of thousands of verbatims from thousands of different websites and evaluated opinions toward three weight loss companies. The first chart below shows opinions reflecting the spokesperson for each of the three companies. Although the percentage of comments that are negative (red) is about 14% to 16%  for all three brands, there is a higher percentage of positive comments (green) for Janet Jackson (29.8% positive).  The smallest percentage of positive comments goes to Mariah Carey (23.3% positive) while Jennifer Hudson (26.6% positive) sits in the middle.

Based on these results, Nutrisystem is winning the celebrity contest.  Does this mean their program is also preferred?

The next chart shows the percentage of comments/messages/ status updates that were scored as negative (red), neutral (blue) and positive (green) for each of the three companies overall.  This time, Weight Watchers has the lowest percent of negative comments (8.6%) AND the highest percentage of positive comments (33.5%), making it the social media fan favorite. Nutrisystem comes in second with 12.4% of comments being negative and 29.1% being positive. Finally Jenny Craig has the highest percentage of negative comments (14.0%) and the lowest percentage of positive comments (28.2%).

So what is our conclusion? The favored celebrity does not make the favored program. We love you Janet Jackson, but Weight Watchers is in the lead.

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Related links
Social media monitoring vs social media research: Can you see the difference?
The Conversition Hierarchy of Social Media Insight
Coke it is! Or not. I’m not sure. I can’t tell.
Apple pie, Apple orchard, Apple cider, or Apple iPad
Battle of the Brands: Blackberry vs iPhone

Like A Survey #MRX

Friday, November 4th, 2011

Conversition Survey Reveals Attitudes towards Social Media Monitoring & Analysis Tools and Technology

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

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81 Percent of Market Research Agencies Agree Social Media can Complement Insights Generated by Traditional Research Methods
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Toronto, ON – October 27, 2011 – Conversition, a pioneer in the Social Media Research industry, recently surveyed 601 clients of Research Now to determine their usage and attitudes towards social media data platforms for the purposes of measuring consumer engagement and gaining consumer insights.

Conversition conducted a 15 minute study focused on the usage of social media monitoring tools and technology to engage consumers, or gain insight into their existing or emerging needs. In order to fully comprehend the potential that the Social Media Monitoring & Analysis (SMMA) industry has in different markets, Conversition surveyed Research Now clients based in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The findings showed highly encouraging results for an industry quickly being adopted by researchers. In particular, responses regarding the use of social media for insight purposes illustrates that SMMA has entered the „early majority‟ within prime English-speaking markets. More specifically, 81 percent of all market research agencies (MRAs) surveyed agree that SMMA can complement insights from custom and/or ad hoc quantitative and qualitative research.

When asked specifically about the potential that SMMA has:

• 65 percent of all responding companies agree that SMMA will become a substantial channel for market research in the future.
• 63 percent of all responding companies agree that SMMA has immense potential to drive consumer insights.

“What’s clear from the study is that the market research community is ‘switching on’ to the power and insight potential of social media data,” commented Michael Mayers, Vice President of Business Development at Conversition.

The survey also found that:

• 85 percent of MRAs believe that human intervention is still needed to maintain the quality of social media data.
• 58 percent of MRAs believe that data quality issues (e.g. spam, erroneous data, and difficulty of understanding the demographic profile of respondents) currently restrict the use of SMMA for insight purposes.

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Mayers adds, “Social media data represents an emerging research channel, and data from social media can be a rich source of information for consumer insights. At the same time, perceptions over data quality are an issue, and our response is that whether managed by the client or the vendor, social media data requires the involvement of experienced and knowledgeable humans to provide those all important checks and balances.”

Methodology
Fieldwork was conducted between August 19 and September 15, 2011 among 601 clients of Research Now based in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. The breakdown by country was as follows: United States (344), United Kingdom (165) and Canada (91).

About Conversition
Conversition is an online social media data collection business unit based in Toronto, Canada and New York, NY. Conversition listens to consumers by applying scientific principles to the collection and analysis of social media data. Its strength lies in combining the expertise of respected market researchers with an in-depth understanding of social media.

About Research Now
Research Now is the leading global online sampling and online data collection company. With over 6 million panelists in 38 countries worldwide, Research Now enables companies to listen to and interact with real consumers and business decision makers in order to make key business decisions. Research Now offers a full suite of data collection services, including social media sampling, and operates the Valued Opinions™ Panel and e-Rewards® Opinion Panels. The company has a multilingual staff located in 22 offices around the globe and has been recognized for four consecutive years as the industry leader in client satisfaction. Visit http://www.researchnow.com to learn more.

Press Contact:
Heather Milt
1-206-200-8207
hmilt@researchnow.com

For a copy of the full report, please email hello@conversition.com.

Social Media Sentiment: H8ers and

Monday, August 15th, 2011

H8ers! <3ers! Isn’t social media just full of people who have radical opinions? It’s been a while since we first shared information about the distribution of opinions/sentiment in social media so we thought it was about time we conducted our little experiment again.

For six different sets of data, we gathered hundreds of thousands of sentiment scores and prepared frequency distributions of the results. As you can see below, some brands have more positive (A, B) sentiment while others have more negative (C, E, F) sentiment. You can also see that some brands have more flat (E) or peeked (C) distributions, or longer tails (A, B). No matter which particular feature of a brand’s chart interests you, it is clear that all of the distributions are reasonably normal, they are generally bell shaped.

So is social media full of haters and lovers? Most definitely not. Most social media data consists of lots of moderate like and dislike, plus a healthy representation of haters and lovers. Now the only puzzle is determining which of these charts reflects the sentiment of 1) autism, 2) Lady Gaga, 3) Obama, 4) Steve Jobs, 5) Toyota, and 6) Walmart.

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Related links
Are Only Crazy People Commenting About Brands in Social Media?
Article in the Vue: Words I’ll Live to Regret
Cell + Survey + SMR: A Social Media Mashup #MRIA2011 #MRA_AC #MRX
There is no question but the research validity question

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Who Hates Google+ the Most: 16 Views from 16 Networks

Friday, July 29th, 2011

Whether you were lucky or unlucky to be the first or last person on Google+, most people who  wanted an invite have now checked out the newest threat to Facebook and Twitter.

Are you a Twitter fan who hates the intruder? Are you a reluctant Facebook user desperate for a new option? Are you a die hard Googlite jumping for joy over yet another Google product? We decided to find out who the fans of G+ are.

First, the standard Conversition methodologies were applied including collecting thousands of comments about Google+, Google Hangouts, and Google Circles from across the internet. Whether the comments were written within the Twitter, Facebook, or Google networks, or from thousands of other forums, blogs, and websites, a wide sample of opinions was gathered. Second, we evaluated how positive or negative the opinions were. Third, we examined the sentiment based on the source of the opinions. Drum roll please….

• Twitter: Yessiree – Twitterites generated the smallest percentage of positive opinions, just 20%. Surprised? Doubt it.
• Facebook: Did you think they would be second after Twitter? Nope, Facebook users fell closer to the middle with 27% of their opinions in the positive space.
• Google+: What? Not the most positive? Nope, 29% of their opinions about G+ were positive. Guess they’re not biased after all!
• Digitalpoint: Who, you ask, are these people? A very passionate group of computerites of whom 46% give Google+ the thumbs up. Be here and be square!

I must admit that I’m most surprised that Google+ users didn’t have the most positive opinions. Which result surprised you?

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Related links
How important is sampling? Well, how important is gay marriage?
Norms: Striving to beat the worst of the pack
Tracking the Mood of Americans: Use Twitter if you want to prove they’re happy
Starbucks Logo Changes for Good

Upcoming ESOMAR 3D presentation: Tell me what you want, what you really, really want

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

3D DIGITAL DIMENSIONS 2011
(ONLINE + SOCIAL MEDIA + MOBILE) RESEARCH
MIAMI / 26 – 28 OCTOBER

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TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, WHAT YOU REALLY, REALLY WANT
CREATING DESIRED RESULTS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA RESEARCH

Annie Pettit, Conversition and Research Now, Canada
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This presentation will teach you how to generate the social media research results you desire regardless of what the true results are. I will demonstrate how to gather social media data from the internet using inappropriate sampling methods, and how to select the wrong pieces of data and code it incorrectly. The topics of sampling, weighting, data quality, sentiment analysis, and text analysis will be highlighted so that you can understand the full range of options for mistreating data. The ultimate goal will be to create set of data that reflects our predispositions towards a topic as opposed to reality.

Attendees are required to come prepared with a sense of humour  (i.e., I will be speaking in jest!)

Social Media Sentiment: H8ers and <3ers

Friday, July 8th, 2011

H8ers! <3ers! Isn’t social media just full of people who have radical opinions? It’s been a while since we first shared information about the distribution of opinions/sentiment in social media so we thought it was about time we conducted our little experiment again.

For six different sets of data, we gathered hundreds of thousands of sentiment scores and prepared frequency distributions of the results. As you can see below, some brands have more positive (A, B) sentiment while others have more negative (C, E, F) sentiment. You can also see that some brands have more flat (E) or peeked (C) distributions, or longer tails (A, B). No matter which particular feature of a brand’s chart interests you, it is clear that all of the distributions are reasonably normal, they are generally bell shaped.

So is social media full of haters and lovers? Most definitely not. Most social media data consists of lots of moderate like and dislike, plus a healthy representation of haters and lovers. Now the only puzzle is determining which of these charts reflects the sentiment of 1) autism, 2) Lady Gaga, 3) Obama, 4) Steve Jobs, 5) Toyota, and 6) Walmart.

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Related links
Are Only Crazy People Commenting About Brands in Social Media?
Article in the Vue: Words I’ll Live to Regret
Cell + Survey + SMR: A Social Media Mashup #MRIA2011 #MRA_AC #MRX
There is no question but the research validity question

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Dear Brand, you are never to talk to me even if I talk to you first: The Social Media Puzzle

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Ok, so in the last couple of posts, we agreed that not everyone feels comfortable about brands responding to comments they make online. Sometimes, people want to make a comment and then just be left alone. But when is it acceptable for brands to respond?

We conducted an online survey (based on the e-Rewards survey panel) to determine how people feel about companies responding to them about a comment they made in the social media space. We surveyed a census representative sample of 1000 Americans and 1000 Canadians to find out in which situations they thought it was appropriate for a company to respond to them about comments they’ve written in social media.

First of all, it’s interesting to see that there are no situations where there is 100% (or even 90% or 80%) agreement that it is appropriate for a brand to respond. In fact, even when people write a comment on a brand’s website, only about 54% of people think it’s acceptable for the brand to respond to them. And, it doesn’t matter if they casually mention a brand or tweet directly to them, about a quarter of people indicated “it is never appropriate for a company to respond to you about comments you have written in social media.” Wow!

So who are these people who think it is never appropriate for a company to respond to them? Perhaps it is some odd, demographically unique group of people? No. It’s very slightly more men, slightly fewer younger people, slightly more uneducated people, and slightly more people without children. Just remember, when you generalize to say that most people are ok when a brand responds to their comments in social media, you’re ignoring the preferences of a lot of people. 26% of people.

Commenting in social media means you want a response, right? Wrong!

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

If you talk to people about social media engagement, you’ll hear a common thread – people want to be responded to when they make a comment about a brand or company in social media. People like it, they expect it, it should happen. This always makes me wonder about people who make comments online but don’t necessarily want to chat with the company. Do such people exist?

We conducted an online survey (based on the e-Rewards survey panel) to determine how people feel about companies responding to them about a comment they made in the social media space. From a census representative sample of 1000 Americans and 1000 Canadians, we identified 152 people who said a company had responded to them when they made a comment online.

Given a multiple choice question listing a number of positive, negative, and neutral feelings, we asked survey responders to select as many items as appropriate to describe how they felt (which means these numbers will add up to more than 100%).

About 41% of people said that they liked being responded to and about 40% of people said they appreciated being responded to. That is a nice, healthy, positive number. However, about 10% of people were annoyed and about 10% felt that they were being stalked. Would you be comfortable annoying 1 out of every 10 people you talked to?

Now, if about 41% of people liked or appreciated it when the company responded to them, that left a lot of people who did NOT necessarily like or appreciate the response. Perhaps they didn’t care one way or the other, or they actually disliked it. Either way, they did not feel the need to indicate that they liked the response. What are the demographics of the group of people who didn’t like the interaction?


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So now let’s think again about the generally agreed upon idea that people want to be responded to when they write something about a brand online. Is that really true? I don’t think so.

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Related links
Are Only Crazy People Commenting About Brands in Social Media?
There is no question but the research validity question
Cell + Survey + SMR: A Social Media Mashup

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