Live, global broadcasting is creating a new opportunity for customer insight
Quadriga Consulting has worked with some of the leading technology companies for the last decade. We have helped dynamic, innovation-rich technology companies to understand their customers and channels to market. And over the last decade we have been at the ‘bleeding edge’ of technology developments – working with companies driving technology innovation, as well as innovating ourselves, in terms of the tools we use.
Web survey tools are now well bedded-down in the customer insight tool-kit and sit alongside more traditional survey methodologies. But we are of the view that the web and social media tools are on the verge of completely overturning how qualitative research is conducted. In short, qualitative research and insight is on the verge of being transformed – forever.
Qualitative Insight: Stuck in the Past?
In the past, gaining qualitative insight was all about small groups of people – individual interviewees or small groups – providing feedback. Innovation in qualitative research revolved around the types of topic guides that might be used. Some agencies used specialist moderators – some even employed psychologists. However, innovation was, at best, incremental. Moreover, the rule of thumb remained that qualitative insight was all about smallish groups of respondents providing rich, discursive, unstructured data.
We think, given the pervasive use of social media, and the ability to video stream content across the globe, the traditional approaches to qualitative research are being supplemented by new techniques that offer huge advantages, and the opportunity for much richer customer insight.
A Eureka Moment
In 2009 we organised an event in conjunction with a client (a major global technology company). However, we were keen to try out a couple of interesting techniques, and create a new type of event. Instead of inviting hundreds of people (and feeding them all) we invited just a select few guests. However, so that lots more people could watch the event, we live broadcast it on the web. But we didn’t merely rig up a camera to the Internet. Instead, we worked with a partner firm and we used a TV-broadcast type set-up: 5 cameras, live camera mixing, live captioning. And we streamed live, using an open stream that anybody (we invited) could watch.
We also promoted the event heavily, via social media, months prior to the event. Using Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and social media optimised media releases, we pushed the events to thousands. And as speakers were secured (over 30 in all) we announced them via social media, and featured them on our social media optimised event blog.
On the day of the event we had just 80 or so people at our event venue in London (a rather lovely London hotel) – but, at any one time, around 1,200 people watched online, in 29 countries, in hundreds of cities.
And because we built social media interaction into the live stream (heavily pushing a Twitter hashtag months before the event), people watching online, tweeted, chatted, interacted. Indeed they interacted so much that we generated over 80 pages of hash-tagged Twitter-stream on the day.
Applying the Lessons to Customer Insight
Because of our background in customer insight and research, it occurred to us after this event that such vast audiences, interacting in real time, could probably be considered vast focus groups. In the past, the only feedback we obtained from conference attendees was the speaker feedback form. Now, suddenly, using social media, we had identified an incredible customer insight opportunity by aligning thought provoking content with the opportunity for audience feedback. In focus group parlance – the event is the stimulus material; the social media channel creates the discussion and augments/steers the content.
The customer insight opportunity is obvious. Over the last two years we have continued to finesse our skill-set in live streamed content. Now we’re beginning to apply these skills to customer insight. We can provide a full spectrum of services from private, highly controlled and moderated international focus groups conducted using Telepresence to large, multi-channel conferences designed from ground up to elicit interaction from extended, public or controlled audiences.
Creating Rich Thought Leadership Content
Because we create long-form video content, we can create rich client feedback, based on qualitative content analysis as well as quantitative keyword analysis of the interaction streams. We can also author white paper content, and repurpose video content (and associated feedback) for on-demand consumption (either by employees, channels, the media or the general public).
Our background in research, marketing, thought leadership and customer insight makes us uniquely qualified to conduct work of this nature. No other agency that we are aware of can bring together the subject matter understanding, social media and live streaming expertise and qualitative analysis experience.
If you would like to take your first dive into the world of broadcast-enabled social media insight, please contact us today.
Virtual ICT Week runs from 28th November to 2nd December 2011, sponsored by Eircom Northern Ireland and with support from Cisco and Microsoft.
