As the media and entertainment industries move more into programmatic
and big data initiatives, we now refer to consumer targets that go beyond the
“proxy’ of age and gender and more into a “new-speak” of audience segments or
communities. But there are insights and technology companies that have a long history
of measuring audience feedback in the context of communities. One of them is
Vision Critical, which bills itself as a customer intelligence software
company. Over the past fifteen years, Vision Critical has developed online
communities of behavioral segments that gather consumer feedback in real time to
be used by their clients for ongoing feedback and insight.
Jack Myers, chairman of MyersBizNet, speaks of “Emotion
Tech,” where technology enables us to better connect consumer emotional
responses to their motivations and actions. “The current wave of new research
is transitional,” Myers believes. “It will be transcended by new neuro-based
technology that will connect emotional responses to media and advertising,
creating a completely new set of valuation insights. While this may be a few
years away, once this data begins appearing, and it will, I believe it will
make many of the current performance-based data sets moot.” Myers notes that “Emotion
Tech will make panels such as those developed and managed by Vision Critical
even more relevant, as consumers will be identified by their emotional patterns
and responses in addition to their traditional demographics, psychographics and
sociographics.”
I sat down with Bruce Friend, President, Global Media & Entertainment at Vision
Critical, and asked him a few questions about his online community-based
research service and its impact on the industry.
CW:
How many different online community groups are there? How do you create new
ones?
BF:
We work with hundreds of businesses and organizations globally that interact
with approximately five million people within and across all the Vision
Critical Insight Communities. Specific to media and entertainment, we work with
over two hundred brands today.
We
launch Vision Critical Insight Communities every week. We work closely with our
customers’ research, product, marketing and digital teams to build an engaging
online community where members can interact with our customers. Once the online
community is built, Vision Critical works collaboratively with customers to
populate the community with members. Once the Vision Critical Insight Community
is healthy with enough members--anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 people,
customers can begin engagement activities to gather feedback and insight.
CW:
Have your customers been able to get insight that’s been surprising to you?
Surprising results or surprising applications of the results?
BF:
Our customers engage with their community audience in a variety of different
ways. I’m sure that much of the feedback is either interesting or surprising in
some way and drives more informed decision-making. Aside from driving
advertising revenue, online communities are playing a huge role in anticipating
trends and preferences so that networks and publishers can deliver exactly what
their consumers want, when they want and how they want. While in some cases we
have visibility into how companies use their communities and the results, our
software is created in such a way that companies can run with it on their own.
We have great examples on the Vision Critical website with regards to how
companies have used communities. The Allure, Discovery Communications and Yahoo
customer stories on our website are all great!
More
specifically, I think the most surprising and inspiring thing I see overall is
our customers’ willingness to learn how to leverage their Vision Critical
Insight Community and use our technology to run their own projects. The
benefits here are that they realize they can turn projects around much faster
(sometimes within hours) at a lower cost, when they run the projects
themselves.
CW:
Have your insight communities been used to make programming decisions and if so
can you give an example?
BF:
Yes, there are many examples of our customers turning to their communities to
help make decisions surrounding programming. We’ve seen our customers launch
new channels, come up with TV show names, inform new and returning show
greenlight decisions and much more, as a result of working closely with
community members. We have a case study available on the Vision Critical website,
which highlights how Discovery Communications turned to its community to launch
the Destination America channel—it was quite a success.
CW:
What is the process in recruiting members for the online communities and how do
you keep them engaged?
BF:
Vision Critical works collaboratively with our customers to promote the launch
of an online community through internal databases, social media channels and
email lists (e.g., subscriber lists, loyalty programs, etc.) and so on. We’ve
even seen customers promote their communities at public events. Through this
promotional effort, people interested in being part of a community join and
actively contribute. The members have a vested interest in the company and its
success, so we find that they’re eager to share their feedback in order to help
make business improvements.
The
companies we work with engage their members in projects on a regular basis
through dynamic questionnaires and discussions. We’ve also found that community
members enjoy seeing how their insight has translated into decisions—so what we
call “sharebacks” encourage ongoing engagement and satisfaction, as well.
CW:
What kinds of metrics do your clients gather?
BF:
Companies use the Vision Critical customer intelligence software platform to
gather different forms of feedback and insight. Feedback from consumers via the
insight community is captured, analyzed and reported in real-time. Our
customers gather different attitudinal and behavioral metrics depending on the
kind of information and insights they’re looking to derive from their community.
For example, a lifestyle network may be interested in launching a new show
targeting affluent women. In that case, this kind of network may want to target
that specific audience via its insight community to learn about their
behaviors, patters, purchases, etc. in order to deliver a more targeted show.
CW:
How do your customers decide on what audience groups or types to target?
BF:
Vision Critical customers decide who they want to engage for insight based on people
they want or need to better understand, such as specific demographics (age,
sex, zip code, etc.) and attitudinal groups. In further detail, our customers
can also target and report on behavioral segments, based on their own passive
first party data that is collected from various sources such as customer
subscriber lists, sales transactions and even recently, digital media platform
usage, including social, from both desktop and mobile apps.
CW:
How does the data your customers gather relate to sales or content performance?
Can you give some examples of how this data can be used?
BF:
As mentioned, our customers use their communities in a variety of different
ways. Some turn to community members for feedback and insight to dive new
product development. Others turn to their communities to improve marketing
efforts, such as ad campaigns. We know that feedback from Vision Critical
Insight Communities has improved sales efforts and has support content efforts.
However, we just can’t provide specifics here, as this data is our customers’
and as such is proprietary.
CW:
How do you think your measurement will most benefit insights into cross
platform consumer usage?
BF:
In many cases Vision Critical’s platform is already enabling a number of our
customers to measure usage, satisfaction, performance, etc. of their content and
services across multiple media platforms or of those platforms specifically (including
OTT services, MVPDs, Digital Radio, etc.).
We
only see this increasing, as more and more of our customers take control over
their own product and content distribution data. This evolution of our
community platform is really the Holy Grail for us and our customers. Our
customers can now:
·
Build
large scale communities, numbering tens and even hundreds
of thousands of members,
·
Leverage Vision Critical’s customer
intelligence platform to capture passive consumer behavior data, which can then
immediately trigger surveys and discussion forums to understand who is consuming
and the “whys” behind those ongoing behaviors.
What’s
most exciting is that we are just scratching the surface of all the
possibilities this new type of customer intelligence community can bring.
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