Friday Five article roundup for Oct 5-9, 2015
This week saw a couple of big announcements in big data and Safe Harbor. Add to that some help with your segmentation strategies, remembering that behind all analytics and interpretation of data are humans, and ideas on changing the way we measure brands, and you have this week’s Friday Five!
Dear Dr. Jay – How long will my segmentation last? – Chadwick Martin Bailey Blog
Segmentation: it can feel like a double-edged sword sometimes (at least to me). It’s a handy way to group a large audience, but it can miss nuances between audiences. And, when set, it seems it rarely gets revisited. However, Dr. Jay Weiner from Chadwick Martin Bailey does a great job helping explain segmentation, how many segments you should have, and how often to review your segmentation. This definitely applies to market researchers and marketers alike.
IBM launches new 2000 employee unit to dominate big data – Business Insider
I feel like big data just got bigger with Ginni Rometty’s announcement of a consulting unit solely dedicated to helping companies capture, store, and analyze big data. It’s the last piece that makes this especially noteworthy. Using Watson Analytics, their machine learning tool, this group will be helping companies find insights in the big data being collected – and already has, from the sounds of the example cited in the article.
Is Safe Harbor still safe? – GreenBook Blog
Another big announcement made this week gave many companies pause (if not sent them scrambling): the European Court of Justice issued their opinion this week that Safe Harbor should be struck down. Many news articles reported the Oct 6th announcement as a full ruling, but it seems this was an opinion, not yet a ruling. But Jason Anderson does a fantastic job of looking at the implications for market research.
The human side of data analytics – Brand Quarterly
While IBM’s announcement about their big data consulting group is really cool, Colin Strong reminds us that behind any data analytics are humans. Machine learning might sound like it’s being all done by computers, but the truth is that humans are telling the computers how to group and slice and query the data. At the end of the day, all the data cuts in the world can’t stop the fact that, as my favorite quote from the article says, “…none of us are immune from misinterpreting data.”
4 reasons why consumers view brands as relationships – Juntae Delane
This theme of the brand experience evolving from a simple matter of brand loyalty (which I know is anything but simple) to a relationship between the consumer and the brand is one that I’ve read about and seen much more lately. This affects both marketers who are trying to find how to adjust to the increased interaction consumers have with brands and market researchers, who may need to move beyond items like the Net Promoter Score and move more strongly into what can feel like even more difficult metrics like do they “love” or “just like” a brand? As Mr. Delane puts it, “…if we measure brands the way we measure healthy relationships, we can easily trump the competition.” (Which raises the question – how would a market researcher measure the health of a relationship?)