The video, which has gone viral in a big way this week, is on one level a profile of the human rights abuses of Joseph Kony, the Ugandan leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

On another level, it is an incredibly well-crafted piece of propaganda. Note that the word “propaganda” can have both positive and negative connotations.  The film is a masterful call to action targeted squarely at the hearts of idealistic young people.

On a third level, it is a portrayal of the film’s creator (Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children) as a selfless hero.

I’m not quite ready to bite, Jason. By the way, I found your use of your own son to turn the emotional screws on the viewer to be particularly off-putting, if effective.

There have been many criticisms, like the ones here and here, of the accuracy of the video and the integrity of the organization behind it. Personally, I am somewhat skeptical of anything that is tied up with a bow so perfectly.

However, there is no doubt that, regardless of the specifics here, the types of atrocities described in the film exist and are a major problem in war-torn areas of the world.  Shedding light on these issues is a good thing.

What interests me most about this phenomenon is the way that a well-crafted and well-marketed film can manipulate – for good or ill – people’s emotions and lead them to action.  In this case action means viral sharing, and presumably, financial contributions.

A tremendous amount of power will accrue to those, like Russell, who understand the new technological world order, and manipulate it to achieve their goals.

But with power comes responsibility – the responsibility to be accurate, for starters.  It is our responsibility to be skeptical consumers of information, and to teach our children to have a healthy skepticism as well.

From the perspective of marketing and research, I take two lessons from this episode:

• great content wins
• respect the power of the crowd

Here’s the video.  Have a look and judge for yourself.

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This hour-long interview must be watched in its entirety to be fully appreciated. It will take some brain power on your part to fully understand Dr. Minh’s brilliant explication of his insights into the ways that the principles of physics can be applied to language, and, specifically, text analytics.

Enjoy!

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The discussion featured Lenny Murphy, editor of the GreenBook Blog, and Romi Mahajan, CMO of Metavana (Vivek Bhaskaran, CEO of Survey Analytics was not able to attend at the last minute).  The discussion was ably moderated by Ivana Taylor of DIY Marketers.

If  you weren’t able to make the webinar, here’s just a sampling of what you missed:

Gamification

Lenny said gamification is a challenge to the way market researchers currently think but that companies out the space are successfully employing game principles to their industries.   Romi said it’s possible to do gamification very well or very badly.  Using a sweepstakes as an incentive to participate in a survey panel is an example of gamification done poorly.

Consumerization

Romi described consumerization as the tail wagging the dog.  Instead of companies mandating how their employees or customers will behave, now the process has been inverted, and the customers hold the power.  Lenny said consumers increasingly own their own data and will choose with whom to share it and on what terms.

Network Intelligence

Lenny described network intelligence as an opportunity to make predictive sense of the zettabytes of data available today.  Romi added it is an opportunity to stop thinking of your limited network, for example, your company’s direct employees, and rather think about the networks to which they belong and how to start bringing that intelligence to bear.  He cited the involvement of 4 separate companies in the current webinar as a good example of leveraging network intelligence.

Social Monitoring

Romi described the geometric expansion in the amount of data available about brands, companies and individuals.  He painted the picture of a future where each of us has a brand equity ticker measuring the sentiment expressed about us on the web.  Lenny described social monitoring as a way to get to the great untapped pool of information proliferating online.

Panel Communities

Lenny described panel communities as the great compromise between the traditional online panel model and the highly interactive online community model. He described it as involving a greater investment on both sides – the research company and the consumer.  Romi urged looking at constant feedback instead of episodic interaction.

User Experience

Lenny said that since consumers have the power to choose where to go easily, a substandard user experience is no longer going to cut it.  He said that market research traditionally has not been designed with consumer experience in mind.  Romi underscored how easy it is for consumers to opt out and gave an example showing how user experience can be extremely powerful in either a negative or a positive way.

Mobile Sampling and Ethnography

Lenny indicated that the impact of mobile cannot be overstated and that emerging markets are leapfrogging the PC experience entirely.  He said the app model structurally builds in consumer consent to share and receive information.  Romi said the greatest power of mobile – more than convenience – is that is allows us contact with the consumer in situ.

Q&A

The question-and-answer session was the best part of the event.  Don’t miss it!

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(By the way, it’s pronounced JEH-vons, not JEE-vons, as Andrew explains in the video…)

Andrew presented guidelines for conducting mobile surveys, and he made suggestions for adapting Net Promoter Scores (NPS) in a mobile survey environment.

Enjoy!

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Leslie was kind enough to walk us through a demo of Crowdcast. Check it out.
Continue reading Applied Crowdsourcing with Dr. Leslie Fine of Crowdcast (VIDEO)

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We had the opportunity to sit down with Ross for a quick discussion about Socialtext, and how it’s surfacing data and breaking down silos within an enterprise organization using social tools. Here’s what he had to say.
Continue reading Breaking Down Data Silos with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext (VIDEO)

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One thing that hasn’t changed much, though, despite conventional wisdom, is how we shop. While e-commerce has certainly created substantial change, 90% of retail commerce continues to occur in a physical store, where consumers don’t enjoy the level of personalization they’ve come to expect, and brands and retailers can’t benefit from what they’ve come to learn about their customers. But it looks like that may be about to change.
Continue reading Bringing an Online Experience to the Offline World (VIDEO)

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Our thanks to Nico for this particularly valuable contribution benefiting those who are just beginning their market research education. For an overview of the Conjoint concept in general, as well as background information on a variety of other market research concepts and techniques, be sure to check ou the Resources section of Nico’s website.

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(If you are receiving this post via e-mail or RSS, be sure to click through to the Web version to view the embedded video.)

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(If you are receiving this post via e-mail or RSS, be sure to click through to the Web version to view the embedded video.)

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