Poking fun at Photoshop is a staple industry. But Rosten here achieves the slick ad-like cinematography we’re all so familiar with from big budget TV campaigns.

CMO Show: 27 – 29 March 2012, Wyndham Chelsea Grand, London, UK
Get the sponsorship prospectus.

The CMO Show 2012 has arisen as a direct result of our client demands that we concentrate on the latest opportunities for CMOs in all business.

The CMO Show 2012 will incorporate key perspectives from leading CMOs alongside insights from the industry’s major vendors on how they can maximise the opportunities presented by Data Analytics, Social Media and Globalisation.

The CMO Show is specifically devoted to addressing the pertinent opportunities and challenges uncovered in the extensive research we have undertaken with CMOs, Marketing Directors and Executives working within the marketing industry.

If you would like to receive a copy of the sponsorship prospectus please register your interest here:

GET A COPY OF THE SPONSORSHIP PROSPECTUS

We’ll email you the prospectus and call you to discuss the opportunity.

For further information about the event, please visit the event website.

2012 marks the 10th Anniversary of Quadriga Consulting.  To celebrate, we’re running a series of seminars throughout the year…

On Thursday January 19, 2012 we’re holding a two-hour seminar called Socialising the Business.  The event is free to attend.  The seminar will held at 10.00am and repeated at 2.00pm.

Socialising the Business will look at how social tools – such as social media, social CRM and cloud technologies – are transforming how all types of businesses do business in international markets.  Therefore the seminar will be of interest to Marketing Directors and Managers, Business Development Managers, CEOs and Business Owners and Corporate Communications Executives.

Jeff Peel, Managing Consultant at Quadriga Consulting, will be joined by Michael Kerr, Managing Director of Provita Animal Health, who will touch on how his company is developing its international business – supported by the social web.

By attending you’ll find out more about:

• How the corporate web site is being transformed by next generation content management systems
• How businesses are embracing social media to engage in conversations across the globe
• Why easily implemented social tools can make collaboration easier for your staff and suppliers
• The challenges of implementing a social media marketing strategy

The seminars will be held in the meeting room at Lisburn's Premier Inn

The events will also be a good opportunity to network with your peers from other businesses.

Reserve your place

The seminars are free to attend and will be held at Lisburn’s Premier Inn Hotel on January 19, 2012 (we’ll be running separate morning and afternoon sessions – and we’re limited to just 25 attendees at each session).

We expect considerable interest in these events. So please reserve your space as soon as possible.

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.

First, there are a lot of blogs – so creating compelling content is essential to stand out from the crowd (oh and there’s the minor matter of search optimisation as well).  High traffic, compelling, blogs need to have some edge, or possibly even a little naked aggression.

It helps, of course, if the company CEO is well known – even within a relatively niche area. But even with a well known CEO it’s often difficult to extract compelling content. Not all people with loads of personality can necessarily write. Most celebrity autobiography writers rely on ghost writers to, ahem, “help” – why should a busy CEO not do the same when planning his CEO blog?

Second, it’s not even about talent, it’s also about time. Many senior managers are just too focused on running a business. Freeing up time for blog writing is rarely a priority – never mind re-tweeting such content around Twitter.

Third, blog content creates another work-load – namely dealing with interaction. If a company is well known or market leading the blog is an ideal environment to take a pop at the brand. The blog will fail if all negative or risqué is expunged.  Therefore, comment moderation and response is a big deal – never to be underestimated.

Then there are design issues, house style issues, legal issues, etc.

Our advice to clients is to let us build the corporate blog in parallel with the company. Together we can identify original content that will help enhance the corporate brand – at the same time as building dialogue with important corporate audiences – channels, suppliers, customers and the media. We can also put in place policies for escalation or resolution of issues – and can commit to pre-defined SLAs.

One thing is clear, however. Social media content management is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. Management of content across social media can be a headache – but we can help alleviate the symptoms and avoid the possibility of a full-scale migraine.  In fact we might even be able to induce warm fuzzy feelings if we can establish clear return on social media investment.

Contact us if you are wrestling with social media content problems.

Incisive Media, one of the world’s leading B2B information providers, has selected MediaCore, a Digital Asset Management system from Belfast-based software company Aetopia (www.aetopia.com).  Quadriga worked with Aetopia during its earliest days helping with marketing and business planning. 

Incisive is using MediaCore to manage and monetize its vast digital archive. The publisher employs over 750 staff across 3 continents and serves the financial and professional services markets globally. It publishes over 100 print titles including some of the most recognised brands in the sector including Computing, Accountancy Age, Investment Week and Legal Week. They also run over 100 websites, including Clickz.com, Legalweek.co.uk and Yourmortgage.co.uk generating in excess of 35 million page impressions a month.

Incisive took the MediaCore product on trial and after 9 months have decided to roll it out throughout all their divisions and titles.

David Worsfold, Group Editorial Services Director said:

“We are using the MediaCore system to store, display and sell the thousands of photos from our many events. We are impressed with its ease of use and scalability. It gets great feedback from our readers”

Aidan McGrath CEO of Aetopia commented:

“We are delighted to have such a prestigious customer as Incisive. This implementation allows us to demonstrate that MediaCore can handle huge, multi divisional organizations and is truly scalable”

Aetopia was founded in Belfast in 2005. It won the N.I. heat of the Intertrade Ireland Seedcorn competition in 2006 and secured private investment in 2007. It supplies Digital Asset Management software to the Publishing, Photographic and Archiving sectors.

Jeffrey Peel of Quadriga Consulting said, “Handel Export is a highly respected export consultancy that focuses on key export markets for UK companies.  The company recognises that social media – blogs, social networking and Web 2.0 applications – are transforming the export process.  We have decided to partner with Handel to take advantage of the company’s great reputation in international markets, and multi-lingual skills.”

According to Suzanne Hill of Handel Export, “We have worked with Quadriga Consulting to build our own social media presence.  We can see the opportunities that social media can bring to exporters that wish to extend their reach into international buying communities through social media tools.  By working with Quadriga we can create export focused blogs, Twitter streams, and other social media outreach approaches – in local languages and reflecting local nuances.  We can also ensure that messages reach the right people on the right networks.”

Social media is changing everything.  Media and market fragmentation, changing patterns of media consumption and increasingly active, engaged consumers mean the old media reach models are in disarray.

STOP PRESS: SPEAKERS ANNOUNCED

This rapid social and technological change presents the marketing services industry with both challenges and opportunities:  how can we help organisations engage in better conversation with their customers?

To help, FRONT, in conjunction with Quadriga Consulting, is launching a new initiative for marketing professionals: Conversations.

The Conversations concept is unique as it brings together great opportunities for networking with insight into the thinking of marketing professionals.

The format is as follows.  Over 2 hours there will be five conversations of around 10 minutes each.  Professionals who reflect various facets of the marketing communications mix will be interviewed by Quadriga Consulting MD, and author, Jeffrey Peel.  These conversations will be video recorded and will be available online after the event.  During the event there will be opportunities to mingle and chat with attendees and conversation participants. 

Register Your Interest

The first event will take place in London on the 26th of March between 6.00pm and 8.00pm, at OneAldwych. The conversation line-up will be announced shortly. Attendance will be by invitation only, but please register your interest if you’d like to attend.

Working with social networking and blog research specialists Quadriga Consulting Ltd and itoi Research in London the firm is recruiting Mom bloggers from across the USA to participate in a discussion via the Internet.

As part of the exercise, a new blog has been created – that goes live today.

So, if you are a Mom blogger and resident in the United States, and want to take part please take the time to read the first 2 starter posts and comment.  McCain Foods wants to hear your views.

NB: Replify Media & Analyst Tour Planned for Mid November US, East Coast…scroll to the bottom of this post for more details or Register Here for Boston and Here for San Fran

Replify (http://www.replify.com), the WAN optimization and application acceleration software firm – today announced general availability of Version 3.0 of its Reptor acceleration suite of products.

The Reptor is a 100% software based WAN Optimization solution that allows network managers complete control and visibility of network resources through the new Reptor Enterprise Manager. The new Reptor Enterprise Manager offers visibility of each and every client on the network, offering fine-grained reporting on individuals’ experience for applications and protocols. The new overview capabilities also facilitate clear analysis of the acceleration for each business critical application.

Other improvements have also been incorporated into version 3 that will further enhance Replify’s market leadership in the all-software WAN optimization space – as evidenced by over 100 deployments in over 40 countries worldwide.

According to Kevin Donaghy, Replify’s CEO, “We are establishing clear blue water between ourselves and the competition with this release. The product is already recognised as one that is simple to deploy and a no-brainer for accelerating applications used by latency and bandwidth constrained mobile and remote workers. As well as producing this enhanced reporting we’ve now added even better acceleration for CIFS, Windows files sharing, and HTTP traffic.

“Our XDR optimization technology, for example, has been improved still further. From an end user’s perspective it means that data gets to users in seconds rather than minutes – and there is no need for investment in new boxes at the server or client ends. That’s what makes this product truly unique. It used to be that application acceleration was only for the chosen few but now anyone that uses slow or mobile connections to company servers can get massively improved application performance – and it’s a doddle for the network guys to implement back at base. Plus they can see who’s using what and when using a fabulous visual management console.”

PC Quest, the Indian based enterprise software magazine, recently tested the Reptor suite. Their final verdict was:

“If you see the ease of configuration and performance against pricing, it is a brilliant product. On top of it, the licensing model is versatile making it suitable for setups such as BPOs, test centers, etc.”

Further details of the test are available here…

Quadriga Consulting is in the process of organising media and analyst briefings on Replify and its Reptor Suite of Products.  Briefings are planned for the US East Coast for 10th/11th November and West Coast 13th and 14th November.  If you would like to schedule a briefing please use our contact form at the bottom of our Contact Us Page.