Aqute Research Blog

Sony Ericsson Xperia blogger relations

A very good blogger relations website from Sony Ericsson, for the UK launch of the Xperia handset.

Comparing trend charts on Facebook Lexicon and Google Trends

Facebook Lexicon and Google Trends both let you chart trends in searches for popular keywords. Flawed tools, of course, but better than nothing.

Here are two charts you might want if you are interested in word of mouth recommendations (Facebook first, Google second):

And here are two charts you might want if you are interested in brands (Facebook first, Google second):

If you do more of these, the general result is that people rarely talk about specific brands, Pepsi, Coke, McDonald's and Nike seem to be exceptions.

And on a completely different tack, here are the Facebook and Google charts for the build up to The Dark Knight (particularly in the US, since both these charting tools are US-biased):

(I assume the Google Trends scale is slightly offset, rather than that Google users are prescient). Interestingly, the viral campaigns barely registered. You could argue that viral campaigns target influencers, so you only want to reach a small number of people who will have a large effect ... but whether these influencers even exist online is a debate for many another day.

Did-you-know #118: eBay neighborhoods

eBay neighborhoods are online discussion fora hosted by eBay. They aren't very popular but they aren't barren wastelands either:

• Coffee Lovers - 7105 members
• Dogs - 6003 members
• Jewellery - 3858 members
• Harley Davidson - 3440 members
• Cats - 3189 members

Does anybody real watch viral videos?

According to Viral Video Chart, the top ten videos of the past year have been:

• Miss South Carolina
• Paul Potts sings Nessun Dorma
• Prisoners in the Philippines dancing Thriller
• Dramatic Look hamster
• Sarah Silverman and Matt Damon
• Battle at Kruger
• Leave Britney Alone
• Free Hugs Campaign
• Daft Hands - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
• Evolution of Dance

Regardless of whether these are indeed the top ten or not (the numbers don't tally with YouTube and it seems a little odd that Obama's Yes I Can and Dove Evolution don't make it in), they are certainly some of the best known viral videos.

But - how many real people have watched these videos? I don't mean us in the industry, or anyone in Silicon Valley, or most of the employees at companies such as IBM, Sun, BT, the BBC ... companies heavily skewed towards technology. I mean normal people that brands (evaluating viral video) might want to target? And yes, the technology industry does employ some normal people, but you get my point.

I have asked around (no expenses spared here when it comes to methodology) and I can't find any. Not a single one. Which doesn't mean they don't exist but it does make me suspect that the influencing prowess of viral video may not be as clear cut as it seems at first glance.

20 million views is enough to make a video one of the year's top ten. Assume that on average, each viewer watches a video twice (I have watched most of the above a lot more than that). So 10 million viewers. Say that 60% of these are in the US, 30% in Europe and 10% elsewhere (I am guessing that the list above is very US-centric, despite Paul Potts being in it). So 3 million in Europe, of which say 1.5 million in the UK.

Comparing that to BARB TV viewing figures (a huge leap, I realise), 1.5 million is a typical audience for programmes such as Neighbours, the Simpsons, Hollyoaks, Newsnight and Ready Steady Cook. Yet, most people I know have watched these programmes (half of the people I know watch these programmes regularly), and no one I know has watched the viral videos. More significantly, everyone in the universe knows about those programmes, but I still can't find anyone normal who has heard about the above videos. I am particularly interested in the Paul Potts videos. Around 80M views all told, so say 40M viewers, of which surely a good 10M must be in the UK despite his US promotions and his worldwide success. That's more people than watch Eastenders. Surely not. I don't doubt that viral video is reaching a lot of people, but more investigation is needed into who these people are and how they overlap with marketers' target audiences.

PS I did eventually find one person who has watched a viral video. A twelve year old nephew of a friend in Malta has seen Ahmed the Terrorist. It seems perfectly normal that teenagers are a big audience for viral video, and a very important one, but still not the one sought by the likes of Dove or BMW. 

Addendum: Facebook has about as many members as Evolution of Dance has views. And that trickles through to me as "quite a few people I know are on Facebook" but "nobody I know has watched Evolution of Dance". The same broadly goes for MySpace or Linkedin or for much smaller websites. I realise this blog post depends on the validity of the "people I know" sample, so apply the same question to your peer group (of peers who don't work in technology) - do they watch all these viral videos?

Viral video: finding the relevant audience

I am not a big fan of organising massive viral video campaigns (few of them reach the right people and almost none have good brand recall). But I've been meaning to look at YouTube's video statistics for a while, so I have taken three keyword pairs for brands that would want to create viral interest online, and looked at where their YouTube video traffic is coming from. In each case, I took the first result returned by YouTube, rather than the most popular, on the grounds that people are more likely to watch that, rather than resort by most viewed.

Gordon Brown

• Total views: 267,000
• Clicks from top 5 referring websites: 64,287 (24%)
• Top referrers: Turkish news website, Turkish news website (same one), Turkish news website, Turkish news website, Hungarian  celebrity magazine

David Cameron

• Total views: 39,000
• Clicks from top 5 referring websites: 371 (1%)
• Top referrers: Bebo, Hungarian news website, Guido Fawkes blog, French politics/culture magazine, psychology community

Olay

• Total views: 6,500
• Clicks from top 5 referring websites: 200 (3%)
• Top referrers: Australian advertising industry website, American music blog, same American music blog, local Houston, Texas blog, Greek advertising humour blog

Dove

• Total views: 7,000,000
• Clicks from top 5 referring websites: 134,000 (2%)
• Top referrers: American radio show blog, Turkish news website (same one as for Gordon Brown), Polish video portal, Turkish news website (same one), Russian news website

BMW

• Total views: 7,000,000
• Clicks from top 5 referring websites: 57,000 (1%)
• Top referrers: South Korean car blog, American car blog, video clips website, Spanish car blog, Romanian version of Digg

Mercedes

• Total views: 39,000
• Clicks from top 5 referring websites: 371 (1%)
• Top referrers: Danish astrology website, Polish video portal, French video portal, Romanian news website, Russian car website
  

So what does this mean (from what is hardly a comprehensive study)? As far as small details go, Eastern European traffic is comparatively significant (not a surprise if you monitor social media traffic regularly); and if YouTube data is to be believed, there is either a huge long tail, or ("and", as it happens) a huge proportion of direct searches on YouTube. More importantly, it becomes clear that measuring the effectiveness of a social media campaign is not straightforward. Despite the  ease with which websites such as YouTube aggregate audiences, you still have to go out and find out where the relevant audience is interacting with your message.

BBC Dawn Chrous - web 2.0 features without the fanfare

The BBC is asking everyone to wake up early and listen to the Dawn Chorus (officially now over, although the birds are probably unaware of that). The website combines web 2.0 elements in a way that adds value, does not attract more attention to the technology than the content and will seem natural to people for whom such features are new. Tags (made to look simple and natural), map mashups and podcasts (well, nearly), for example. As well as the usual BBC array of video ... they're not being precious either, including old school screensavers and wallpapers. And a mini Oddie, surely in a class of its own. Particularly impressive is this new fangled video/audio/text map mashup which crams in a tonne of advanced features but again looks seamless and simple to use (as an aside, the map is the most interesting mapping of local data that I've seen outside news/weather/traffic). Dawn Chorus is probably missing a message board element, but is a great website nonetheless.

What Etsy can teach UK companies

Online crafts community Etsy has been growing in popularity, and is no doubt set for a successful future. I don't want to write in general about the wonders of Etsy, because a lot of that has been said already (through press and in blogs, both wise and moronic), but I do want to point out the relevance of Etsy to UK companies in various sectors. I am referring to adopting the principles of Etsy rather than suggesting the impractical, unwise and almost impossible idea of a UK company buying Etsy.

• CPG. Susan Mernit suggests that Etsy attracts "moms who want to run home based businesses". As such, it should be of interest to companies such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever, whose raison d'etre is these women. The thinking behind Etsy is similar to the thinking behind communities such as Mumsnet, which are currently the holy grail of online CPG marketing. Being Etsy-like would make CPG companies real enablers of the dreams of women who want to run home businesses, would create a tangible link between the brand and those women, would encourage loyalty and reliance on the CPG company - materially improving the lives of those women in a way that advertising promises but usually does not deliver. The Etsy structure could also provide a way to solve the problem many parents have of what to do with the toys and clothes that their babies grow out of so quickly.
• Retail. The suggestion that Martha Stewart (herself not a million miles away from being a CPG brand) should buy Etsy was not surprising but nonetheless interesting (the idea may have been little more than guesswork from Valleywag, but it turns out that Etsy and Martha Stewart do in fact find each other attractive). We don't have a Martha Stewart equivalent in the UK (Delia has never expanded beyond the kitchen), but there is some fit between the Etsy concept and retailers such as John Lewis, (US company) Whole Foods Market, Selfridges or Harvey Nichols. These retailers have all made some gesture towards the Etsy ethos offline, and hosting an Etsy-style service online could differentiate and greatly extend their commoditised or non-existent websites.
• Countryside publications. Susan also points to the appearance of Etsy at the US Country Living Women Entrepreneurs event. Indeed, I was first introduced to Etsy by Designer's Block, which is very much in the Country Life mould. Country Life (now owned by Time Warner) could well breathe life into its mediocre online listings section by giving local craftspeople a platform that actually helped them sell their products. The same goes for Archant Life, owner of titles such as Cotswold Life. There is potential for a a Country Living fair made up solely of Etsy-style merchants, particularly given current trends towards local, organic, ethical products.
• Local directories. One of the interesting things about Etsy is the impression it gives of being a local website, despite its US/international base. In part this is because Etsy promises/delivers what we believe "local" merchants will give us - things like personal attention, honesty and uniqueness of product. Etsy is not a million miles from Yell's People Behind The Numbers campaign, which tries to inject a personal element into the impersonal listings of a yellow pages directory. By the same token, municipal authorities could adopt the Etsy model to promote the likes of Savile Row, Islington Antiques Market or Borough Market (forgive the London-centricness).
• Regional newspapers. For the same reasons as local directories, regional newspapers have a natural affinity with Etsy principles. Online classified listings are an important area of investment for regional newspapers as their revenues decline. Regional newspapers are also debating which of the various available local and hyperlocal strategies will work best for them, and an Etsy model for local merchants fits in well with most of them. Also of interest to regional newspapers (and to local directories, especially given the dovetail with the similar Google print advertising initiative) is Etsy's plan to launch a cooperative advertising programme.
• Finance. The link between Etsy and the finance industry is not as clear cut (although Etsy founder Rob Kalin cites Muhammad Yunus's Banker to the Poor as inspiration), but it does give me a gratuitous opportunity to mention the popularity of online microlending to the point that Kiva has more money than it can lend. This desire for connecting with small craftsmen and merchants is similar to Etsy, so much so that eBay has invested in its own microfinance website, Microplace. Not that the borrowers need to come with the do-good appeal of living in a developing country: lending to peers in developed countries is also proving popular (in the UK, we have Zopa). And what could be closer to the Etsy ethos than Lloyds TSB's For The Journey ads?

"Doing an Etsy" is not easy - Etsy makes it look easier than it is, and a lot comes down to the details of execution. Nor is it easy to avoid straying into eBay territory, wherein lies tried and tested futility. But Etsy has proven that the concept is popular, and I have indicated above some of the ways in which Etsyness could help UK companies.

Social networks for the elite

The Economist wants to launch a social network for the elite (in so far as its readers are elite). Likewise the FT and Courvoisier. And if you think laterally enough, Rolex.

Hello Kitty social network

The Hello Kitty virtual world is coming. Surely the virtual world to end all virtual worlds, the mother of all social networks :) .

Other companies should copy MyStarbucksIdea

I already wrote about how MyStarbucksIdea is not a community, but Jim at NetBanker positions MyStarbucksIdea as a good template for companies to follow (he says in finance, but it could be anywhere of course). Companies such as FirstDirect and Virgin Atlantic would seem very natural fits, but in fact most companies would benefit from the positive publicity of rolling out something that is actually quite cheap ... the cost and effort comes in implementing whatever the top suggestions are ;).