The document discusses how companies can use online data and social media insights to better understand customers and identify new opportunities. It provides examples of three case studies: 1) A tech company used online observations to understand why business customers were switching providers and identified a new target audience of decision makers. 2) A CPG company explored discussions around value products and discovered opportunities for new quality offerings. 3) A luxury travel company uncovered the preferences of affluent younger travelers by analyzing Instagram posts to design new services for this emerging market.

1. Dancing with the Eight Ball
Good morning, all. I’m Misia Tramp, a global Insights &
Innovation Practitioner. You could say that in my 15+ years in
the insights business, I’ve worked on a few projects and
observed people all over the world doing a whole range of
things from eating and drinking, managing their information
using technology through to exploring drivers of
radicalism….(and some other things which I won’t go into in
polite company!)From direct to digital to advertising and
customer experience design, I began to see a need. A need for
purposeful, brand building customer experiences. Experiences
that resonate across product innovation, delivery, and all levels
of customer and brand engagement. It’s been my pleasure
toimagine what is possible and make it realfor some of the most
innovative companies in the world.
The financial follies of 2008put the entire business community
behind the eight ball.Every data set changed - from what
constituted credit-worthiness to the number of people shifting
their home garden from English Country to vegetable plots.
The traditional research community found themselves the
curators of data artifactsfrom the 80s and 90s - with little to no
relevance to today’s new world.
Today we’ll be discussing how the internet can serve as your
more reliable form of big data when designing products and
communications for this new world.

2. How do you learn to dance with the eight ball vs living frozen in
its shadow.
Principle One: Shift from a Win/Lose to Learn Approach
Much of the quantifiable research that informed new
development in the past was win/lose validation – how did this
innovation perform vs last year’s results?
But that is if last year looked anything like this year…which it
doesn’t. First we have to change our mindset to be far
moreabout re-learning our categories, targets, messages,
mediums and forms. Which means opening ourselves to the
opportunity of change vs simply being frustrated by its
ambiguity.
And there is one vital data set that actually is still living,
breathing, evolving and singularly significant. The internet.

3. Principle Two: Partner with Translators vs Reporters
the right people to extrapolate insights from it.
recognize significant differences,
be able to distill millions of discussions into meaningful clusters
define their drivers
and be able to project scenarios that may evolve with time.
Critically, you need linguists pulling your data, ethnographers
reviewing and reporting on it and powerful predictive analytics
to understand potential scenarios and their impact.The people
who can identify not just the “what” but the priceless “why”.
Whose insights are timely and actionable.
And finally you need the designers, craftsmen and engineers
who will take those insights and transform them into customer
experiences that often include product,service, partner and
engagement innovation.

4. Principle Three: DefineYour Target by Engagement vs Demographic
Challenging it can be to map findings back to their pre-existing
demographic-based target profiles. Target profiles are very
often limited by the confines of that client’s media buying
division.
targets primarily defined by shared passion but also by their
shared networking behaviours. So the optimal way to identify
targets is through their level of engagementwith your category.
WOMMA defines influence/r as:
The ability to cause or contribute to a change in opinion or
behavior.
Key influencers interact with others, and those they influence
are Influencees:
A person or group of people who change their opinion or
behavior as the result of exposure to new information.
Identifying these self-defined roles and how they interact
within your brand’s organic online community can help define:
topics relevant to each unique group;
the most engaging ways to interact;
the different roles of the different online media;
leveraging their influence
This is critical to the way your brand seeds and maintains a
dialogue with them.

5. Principle Four: Listen to the silences/Explore the unexpected
Greatest flaws in much quantitative work is that the:
researcher defines the questions.
researcher determines what is important and how
important it is based on informed guesswork. The
customer/respondent then simply maps themselves on
this manufactured scale.
With online observational research, the customer’s organic
conversation should drive insight exploration. Beware of brand
monitoring. In the food category only 5% of all the
conversations mention a brand. If you are only looking for
brand conversations you are missing 95% of what matters.
Only high involvement categories like automotive see even 50%
of the dialogue being brand specific.
You’ll also miss the true scale of conversation in your category.
For example, during the wireless map wars and then app wars
The next three cases will demonstrate these key principles:
1. Shift from a Win/Lose to Learn Approach
2. Partner with Translators vs Reporters
3. Define Your Target by Engagement vs Demographics
4. Listen to the silences/Explore the unexpected

6. LEGAL: As you can imagine, many of these projects are in
progress. This makes the data especially timely to today’s chat,
but it also requires that I describe these cases “blind” to protect
my clients. I do hope you all understand.
CASES
What if your customers already redefined your industry?
Understanding the rapidly changing high tech B2B market
My client’s company had been in a state of stasis in the
wake of the recession. A hard merger, talk of a potential
acquisition, competitors spending 4x their weight in media
and Apple driving new momentum in their space.
Transformative work with them on the consumer side
through online observational work. Identifying not only
what drove people to switch high tech providers but also
what made them stay.
The priorities led to advancements in their service offering
as well as the way they packaged and promoted their
product.
We saw immediate impact on the bottom-line with a
decline in customer attrition and a spike in new
acquisitions.

7. The results of these insights made it all the way to the
board level because for the first time they had texture
behind the flat results or implications they’d seen in
quantitative reports. Now they saw the equation of what
people considered to be of“value” and what they dreamed
of from “service” in a category devoid of it.
Their next question became – could this method work for
B2B? Would we be able to isolate discussions that
discrete? Would we be able to examine the entirety of
business from large enterprise to medium and small?
Their first attempt failed. The method they used was too
broad and automated. They were getting consumer
chatter. Not the real tech decision makers. That partner
agreed their method was not optimal. So that’s where my
team became involved.
What evolved was a very effective and lean approach:
aligning all of the critical stakeholders multiple
divisions of their business units and reviewed the
consolidated results back to the senior business
managers prior to going into field.
decision making team discussing their selection
process from identification of need, examination of
options, gathering of endorsements, shortlisting of

8. options all the way to the final selection and on-going
relationship management.
The observational online ethnographies quantified
what we had identified in the groupsthrough
hundreds to thousands of discussions. They also
allowed us to map the consumer decision-making
journey across a variety of different online media
types.
Although we could map small and medium business
behaviours, large enterprise was silent to us.
Our findings were fascinating:
The category and the business’ decision making
o least influential member on the team
responsible primarily for the ongoing
maintenance of the account. Additionally, the
pragmatic/transactional way our client had been
approaching selling their products undermined
their credibility with the more executive level of
clients. Our client had to build a relationship
with a new set of customers and create a
compelling story that they were actually a
business solution provider and not simply a
utility.

9. We identified a new set of decision makersand
influencers; their differing uses of online and the
resources they tapped. We saw how each interacted
with the other and the differing content requirements
each level required for the project to move on to its
next stage.
We mapped out the enterprise decision-making
journey from beginning to end, identifying what our
customers needed from us at each step to remain in
the running – tools, content, endorsements, demos,
proposals, one-on-one meetings, special
financing/invoicing.
We identified through the online ethnos where we
had equity/strength or gaps/need for credibility.
These helped us focus and balance the priorities of
our efforts and messages.
We additionally shed light on a need for educating
the enterprises tech users on how to best leverage
our products while they were at work or at home –
opening opportunities to blend our client’s business
and consumer products.
Additionally there was a sense from many that this
category of high tech was clueless about their
industry and customer service. They felt fleeced,
underserved and pretty under-inspired. A huge

10. opportunity just waiting to be tapped by the first
company to identify it. Which they were.
LISTEN & RE-LEARN:
industry.
A new definition of our client’s
PARTNER:
Unearthing niche B2B dialogue; greater
understanding of information needs &
customer journey; experience strategy for
new B2B set.
ENGAGE:
makers
Identified new set of influencers & decision
Identified their preferred ways of using and
dispersing information
EXPLORE UNKNOWN: Separating the irrelevant from the
significant issues. Identifying unmet
service/expertise need that differentiated
us against competition.

11. What doorsopen when margins shrink?
Identifying new opportunities and unmet needs in value
CPG
grocers extremely risk adverse - cutting back their SKUs by
up to15%.
OR
introduce their next generation of own-brand value
options that never before existed and that customers are
universally embracing – from organic to exotic.
Our client had realized that the majority of their flagship
product was consistently selling at discount. They wanted
to understand value areas where they could grow.
Opportunities where they could break new ground and
maintain their margin.
What equities (both negative and positive) did their core
ingredient have overall? How did customers discuss it –
treat, healthful, familiar, flavourful? How did their criteria
change based on selection/competition? Were certain
lower cost, yet still flavourful, varieties part of the dialogue
in any significant way? What are the core topic areas and
unmet needs/whitespace for us to explore?
Oh, and did I mention ourbudget was as slim as their
margin?

12. We started with our internal ethnographers
interviewing a small set of value conscious mums.
What we uncovered were resourceful women who
navigating a sea of yellow tagsat which they are
surgical experts.
Their team had originally considered sending a survey
out to a panel. Their concern – the researcher
defining what is important. So, they asked meand my
team what they could turn around in a week for less
than $%,000. Could online ethnographies be a cost
effective validator/optimizer of our initial insights
from the original ethnographies?
The team did an EXTREMELY fast analysis and sent all
the materials in less than 10 days.
Learn: The social research confirmed what we had learned
in our ethnographies and expanded beyond;
Our client didn’t need to focus on their core
ingredient. Their brand is considered a trusted expert
so their brand power extends tocategory and not just
our core ingredient.
Our category was one that value conscious mum
leverageseveryday to ensure the whole family is
happy. Her priority is to feed them the best quality
she can within her means. And just because she’s on

13. a budget doesn’t mean she doesn’t know quality. Her
family only care that it features flavours they love.
The new definition of value quality offering in this
space is one of limited artificial flavours&colours, %
real recognizable ingredientsand avoidance of being
too sweet. Avoid at all costs a mouth signature that
felt like high fructose corn syrup. This is highly
different to what we’ve seen in this category in the
past
Their success is dependent on family-friendly flavours
being at the forefront with their specific ingredient
more as a secondary natural note.
Lead with everyday all-family flavor favourites, use
your brand as a trust mark, formulate to new value
quality palate, make your core ingredient a
sidekick/secondary message
It’s a little gem of a case identifying how we can use social
as supplementary research to confirm and further enforce
traditional observational research.
LISTEN & RE-LEARN:
opportunity.
PARTNER:
A new definition of value
Understanding hierarchy of
flavor/trust/quality

14. ENGAGE:
family.
We are an everyday treat for the entire
Mum is a tiger yellow tag shopper who
demands the best quality her dollar can
buy.
EXPLORE UNKNOWN: Our client had permission to shift
from ingredient expert to trusted category
expert.

15. What if we built for the next generation of customers now?
Designing new products/services for the next gen of luxury
travelers.
Our client is an expert in luxury travel. Inside and out. They
know what is interesting to this man. (picture boomer) What
they told us they didn’t know anything about is thenext
generation of travelers. The emerging affluent. We all agreed it
would be imperative to build our new offering and brand so
that it could scale to this traveler.
Once again, we started with baseline interviews. This time
with travel specialists – classically trained agents, experts
who had owned their own companies, museum
exploration leaders and of course bloggers.
Excited about our learning we turned to social data to
explore the findings in more detail…..
Nothing. Crickets. And that’s why it’s so important to
understand the customer context….rather than thinking
‘the data isn’t there’ was asked ourselves the question…,
“Maybe they’re speaking another language…” Which is
exactly what happened.
As often is the case with affluents, we found them rarely
writing about their vacation experiences via social media.
When they do chat, they are obtuse or keep their pages
highly private. So, how to get around it?

16. We’ve talked a lot in the past about monitoring
facebook/twitter and the problems inherent in that. This is
an interesting case of how Facebook can actually help us
find people:
o First, the team targeted Facebook and Twitter
followers of extreme luxury travel brands (for
example, the Elite Traveler Magazine’s social sites)
o Then, they conducted personal profile analysis and
hash tag identification on thousands of profiles
o They manually combed major picture sites – namely
Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr Blogs. This audience
is HIGHLY involved – taking brag-worthy experiences
to the next level – by actually showing everyone in
pictures what they are missing. By manually searching
for relevant hashtags we could zoom in on the correct
audience and get into the topic in great depth.
#exotic
#bejealous
#grateful
#livingthedream
o And the answers began to stream in
So, what did we learn once we’d found them?
We’ve all talked about the recession generated currency
of experience but this category really brings that to life.
And both boomers and millennials learned one key
thing from the recession - material goods can be gone in
a flash. But what you experience in life is priceless.

17. o Our boomers are the wealthiest, most welltravelled, fittest generation of this demographic in
the history of the world. And they’ve completely
transformed the travel industry from rest and
relaxation to active exploration.
o Our next generationalways lived in an open world.
They hunger for the most remote, authentic,
untouched areas of the globe. They’ve travelled
with their parents most of their lives so they
actually have some of the highest expectations of
any generation re: what they want from an
experience.
o Once we were able to identify the chatter, we were
able to identify their main areas of discussion.
o We discovered 3 distinct types of ultra-luxury trip
across our targets. Some that were discrete to our
individual groups and some shared. This helped us
clarify what journeys would be applicable to all and
which would polarize.
o We then explored what ingredients made up a buzz
worthy journey. This gave us focus and a baseline
for developing our new brand & its offering.
LISTEN & RE-LEARN:
What luxury means to the next
generation of affluent traveller.

18. PARTNER:
ENGAGE:
destinations
Uncovering the exclusive silent dialogue of
the elite through imagery sourcing.
Identified shared and discrete travel
Gained clarity on what travel ingredients
needed to make a buzz-worthy luxury
journey
EXPLORE UNKNOWN: Understand how we can
differentiate & service a new generation of
traveler while not neglecting our legacy
customers.
That’s my show for today. I’m Misia Tramp, Global Insights &
Innovation Practitioner. I hope this presentation has given you
a modicum of confidence to use social data as a means by
which to get in front of the 8 ball of recessionary indecision so
that you can tap this as a time of opportunity, innovation and
growth. Please don’t hesitate to phone me if you would like to
talk about how this could work for your business. I’ll be around
all conference. Love cocktails – text me, email or tweet; we’ll
do some!