Why Do People Behave The Way They Do?

After a brief (okay...not that brief) hiatus from the blog, we are back again. I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and that 2012 has started off in the right direction.

I've been reflecting a lot on why people do the things they do. The things we are expected to do, like pay our rent or drive on the correct side of the road. The things that take an amazing amount of courage, like defending those being exploited or showing kindness to people who have wronged us. The crazy things we do, like bungee jumping or falling in love.

I’ve made a career off the pursuit of answers to these and other such questions. A pursuit often motivated, admittedly, by the desire to unravel these mysteries for the express purpose of influencing people to buy more of my client's fast food, choose their banking services, recommend their particular brand of mobile phones to family and friends. But there is also a more genuine motivation behind my fascination with this topic:  with so much going on in the world - from the rise of international terrorism, to America's first black president, to the global financial crisis, to citizen-led protests resulting in the removal of fascist government leaders - this is an extraordinarily interesting time to be alive. A time that is as perplexing as it is exhilarating. Gaining a better understanding of why people behave the way they do a small way of converting some of that bewilderment to delight.

Many great thinkers have tussled with this same pursuit. And scanning the academic and scientific body of work devoted to the question makes two things plain. First, there are as many answers to the question as there are people willing to take on the challenge of answering it. Second, rarely are the offered explanations uncluttered enough to be accessible to the non-academic.

But there is a single framework that can be applied that is elegant in its simplicity and yet full of strength, merit, and flexibility. It's a logical approach that may not precisely explain all the reasons behind human behavior, but does an exceptional job of teasing apart the component parts that go into a person's decision to act (or their choice not to act). By using this framework, someone with a basic degree of instinct can draw important conclusions about why their best friend ditched them to see a movie with the girl from the third floor. Or why their parents choose the family car they drove. Or why Neda Agha-Soltan risked her life to demand change in the way her country was run.

At its root are three elements that have anchored our American legal system for more than 200 years: Motive, Means, and Opportunity. In this sense, "motive" is defined as the reason a person gives to account for behavior. "Means" are the physical, mental resources required for action. And "opportunity" is that moment of truth when someone is faced with the decision to act or not. The existence of these three elements is crucial for any behavior. No behavior is possible without them. You are no more likely to purchase a box of dishwasher detergent from the convenience store down the way if you are at home on your sofa (lack of opportunity), than if you are flat broke (lack of means) or if you don't have an automatic dishwasher at dishes to clean in the first place (lack of motivation). Such behavior will only happen if you're standing in the convenience stores dishwasher detergent aisle with money in your pocket and a dishwasher full of dirty dishes (or, some strange affinity for dishwasher detergent). Similarly, you will only find yourself getting off your sofa to the convenience store down the way for dishwasher detergent if you have dishes to clean, money in your pocket, and you are able to weigh the decision to get up or remain lounged.

Barriers certainly can stand in the way of these elements, complicating our behavior.  A cold, rainy night may dampen ones motivation to make a trip to the store. Having only a jarful of coins as the sole means of payment may complicate the transaction to the point that one decides it makes more sense to wait until payday Friday to purchase detergent. Falling asleep on the sofa effectively rules out the opportunity one has to rise and begin the journey to the detergent aisle in the convenience store. What these barriers do is eliminate for us one or more legs of our decision, making it impossible for us to willfully undertake the behaviors they rule.

Yet even in an environment free of barriers, the existence of these elements only puts us in a position to adopt a behavior. Something more is needed. Something to compel us to action or inaction. Something to trigger an emotional response that compels us into action or inaction. That something is what I call simply "The Spark".

The Spark is the emotional event that activates a behavior and it takes many forms:

Last week, more than 2,000 people gathered at the Apple Store in Beijing the night before the planned release of the first iPhone 4S in China. But when security officials believed the crowds had grown out of control, the planned release was scrapped. As could be expected the crowds did not take kindly to the decision, the store was egged, and police were required to dispel the crowds. The disappointment triggered by the (poor) Apple employee who had to break the news to the waiting customers was what I term a “Real Spark” that led to the crowds’ behavior. It was a clear, authentic event that led directly to an emotional response.

A Few weeks ago in Philadelphia, three men who believed Kevin Kless was yelling and making gestures at them beat Kless to death. It turns out Kless was only trying to hail a cab. The men’s misinterpretation of Kless’s shouts and gestures that triggered their emotional reaction is what I call a “Misread Spark”.

In August, Opelika police launched ‘Operation: Iron Snare’ to lure suspects wanted for refusing to pay child support to police custody with the ruse that they had won Alabama-Auburn tickets. The sting involved much fanfare, as the suspects were showered with attention by local news teams and cheering fans when they showed up at the ticket collection location, only to be told after identifying themselves they were being placed under arrest. The enthusiasm the suspects felt over “winning” tickets – enthusiasm which compelled them to drive to an unknown location to claim their winnings – is the result of a “Fabricated Spark”.

The final type of spark is the most complicated but, perhaps, could be the most frequent spark one will encounter. I term it the "Usurped Spark" and its use is frequently the result of a group of people or an organization operating under a strong personal agenda. When the Usurped Spark is applied, an emotion-triggering event is seen on the surface as the most likely reason behind people's behavior. But a deeper analysis reveals that other, more motivating forces are at work. The obvious "spark" simply provides the opportunity for the group to act upon its true trigger. 

There are few uncontroversial examples of Usurped Sparks as, by definition, this spark implies that the people it compels to action are perhaps disingenuous and at least opportunistic. But a good example of this kind of event that is backed by an accumulating amount of evidence happened during this summer's London Riots. Mark Duggan's shooting by London police was largely viewed as the spark that touched off the unrest which began in Tottenham and quickly spread to much of England. But while surely everyone who partook in the riots and looting knew of Duggan's demise, few could honestly say they were burning buildings, absconding with stolen sneakers, or squaring off with police because of that event. Rather, the shooting and the resultant unrest gave rioters the opportunity to unload frustrations with the London police, the UK government, and their opportunity to make a living that had been building for years. In this way, the Mark Duggan shooting touched off an emotional response that had been swirling below a thin surface for some time.

I’ve found this approach to be very helpful when analyzing behaviors. Hopefully you can use it for practical purposes as well.

Eat, Pray, Don't Get Attacked By Monsters

A little pre-Halloween required viewing. Data on where and how you can best avoid being a monster victim. A true Monster Survival Guide in video form! Click on the image below the video to go to the interactive Monster Stat site.

Thanks to Almond Loh, Jill Solarczyk, Oddie Gopalan, and Ryan Delafosse for their creative, design, and research skills.

Analyzing Social Networks: What Can Be Learned By Stealing A Consumer’s Diary

It was American author Stephanie Barron who penned the phrase: “I never feel that I have comprehended an emotion, or fully lived even the smallest events, until I have reflected upon it in my journal.” Without knowing it, Ms. Barron may have offered marketers one of the most important ideas of the last ten years.

Emotions play an enormous role in how we, as consumers, operate. Emotions drive our decisions, trigger our actions, and direct our beliefs. The emotion a brand or a product or a campaign evokes in a consumer directly contributes to its market success, or failure. Marketers understand this and have invested mountains of resources into the collection, analysis, and study of human emotion. Agencies need only look to the amount of money they’ve spent on focus groups and consumer one-on-ones as proof.

Which brings us to the wisdom of Ms. Barron. The act of writing has been shown to expertly clarify and present human emotion. What this means for marketers is that they are surrounded by a rich, raw, candid, and – for the most part – free source of human emotion:  the ceaseless streams of social media conversation whirling around them. In a sense, consumers are opening their diaries to marketers through every update, Tweet, and post.

At Draftfcb, we set off to measure human emotion expressed through the written word by collecting consumer conversations conducted over Twitter, Facebook, Blackberry’s BBM platform, blog posts, and chat rooms, among others. With this data in hand, we placed a framework of emotion over these conversations to evaluate which emotions are expressed, how frequently, and the strength of them. The framework we used was based on research conducted by a leading expert in human emotion, W. Gerrod Parrott of Georgetown University. In his model of human feelings Parrott details six primary emotions:  Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy, Fear, and Surprise. Taken together, the emotion framework and the scores we have collected for each emotional term is packaged in a tool we call our “Emotabase”.

Using our Emotabase to analyze several key consumer product categories, we have learned answers to critical marketing questions, including: What do consumers really feel about brands? What emotions should we as advertisers use to draw consumers to brands? Which product categories bring consumers the most joy, which create the most anxiety, and which evoke the most anger? The results may be somewhat surprising.

For instance, the most evocative product category in the conversations we tracked was beer, with nearly 44% of the social media posts, Tweets, and updates that included an emotion. The least evocative was frozen pizza, which showed up about once every 33 times a consumer made an emotional comment about a brand.

The financial institution product category evoked the most consumer ire, where utterances of “Anger” were found more frequently than any other product category we watched, and by a wide margin. Quick service restaurants were the most sorrowful product category for consumers. But consider that the primary emotion “Sorrow” as defined by Parrott includes the sub-emotions “disappointment” and feelings of neglect.

And the product category that has been winning the battle for consumers’ hearts appears to be telecommunications. Consumers heap glowing praise on Apple, Blackberry, HTC and others in this category more frequently than brands in other categories. This is perhaps not too surprising when one considers the marvelous technological advances brought to consumers by devices these companies manufacture. It seems that I am not the only consumer who would admit to loving their mobile phone.

 Distribution of Emotions by Product Category

Two primary emotions, “Love” and “Sorrow”, dominate social media discussions of brands with

more than half of the emotions expressed, falling into one of these two categories

Using a technique we call “PassionPeaks” at Draftfcb, we can assess the “Prevalence” (i.e., frequently) and “Relevance” (i.e., intensity) of primary emotions in consumer conversation. Through this analysis, we have earned interesting insights by observing consumer reaction to brands in general.

For example, we saw “Anger” expressed infrequently in the conversations we tracked, appearing almost half as frequently as “Joy”. That’s good news for brands trying to deflect consumer frustrations from themselves. But “Anger” was, however, the emotion expressed most passionately by consumers. So while consumers weren’t often angered by brands, they certainly did unload some strong emotions when they were mad.

Perhaps the most unfortunate news for brands over that last year was the lack of the emotion “Surprise” in the consumer conversation. Logging in as a distant sixth place, the dearth of “Surprise” clearly indicates that few brands have mastered the art of building anticipation into their consumer relationships.

PassionPeaks Analysis of Consumer Emotions

In the conversations we tracked, consumers expressed negative emotions with much

more intensity than they used when expressing positive emotions

By better understanding consumer emotions, brands can better design programs that attract and retain consumers. By examining emotion in social media discussions marketers not only earn accurate portrayals of consumer sentiment, they do so in ways that are extraordinarily efficient. Social media offers marketers a truly guilt-free peak at consumers’ diaries.

Getting From “Here” To “There”: Converting Offline Events To Online Impressions

The connection between the online and offline worlds is an important consideration for marketers. Brands fully recognize that face-to-face interactions with consumers are an important way to tap the extraordinary Word-Of-Mouth power of the digital world. As the average Facebook member has around 130 friends, a favorable post mentioning a brand carries -- one could confidently say -- a healthy ROI.

Yet few brands know how to do this well. And many who find clever ways to kick down the walls between online and offline still have difficulty getting their heads around why they do what they’re doing. Central to this struggle is an inability of marketers to project how the investments they make in offline promotions and other experiential events translate into digital impressions.

While this is a complicated problem, the moving pieces inside the equation are easily identified. And that is where marketers should start: understanding the players and steps involved in getting from “here” (offline event) to “there” (digital impressed earned through word-of-moth). In the end all marketers really need to concentrate on boils down to four consumer roles and three important metrics.

 

To begin, let’s define the consumers involved and the roles they play:

(A) Digital Followers: These are the people who already give the brand permission to digitally converse with them. They are the brand’s Facebook fans, those following the brand on Twitter, those who subscribe to the brand's YouTube channel. These are, in nearly every sense, the people who are most likely to pass a favorable word or two about the brand on to others.

(B) Event Participants: These are the people who show up at the brand’s event and – importantly – participate. And we should define “participate” in this way: they make a gesture of digital acknowledgement toward the brand. For example, they become a Facebook Fan, follow the brand on Twitter, or add the brand to a Google+ circle (therefore becoming a Digital Follower), or they engage at the event enough for the marketer to learn they are already a Digital Follower of the brand. In other words, these aren’t people who show up, grab a sample, and take off.

(C) Digital Promoters: As the tag implies, people who endorse the event online. They broadcast a “Like” or a “Check-In” for the event, they post to their Facebook wall about it, they add a mention to their Google+ stream, they Tweet. And each mention they make reaches the list of friends or followers they have, thereby putting in motion digital Word-Of-Mouth.

(D) Digital Impressions: Simply, these are the eyes that see mentions of the brand's event. They are the people who interact with the brand by viewing an endorsement – a Tweet, a Facebook post, an uploaded video – from someone they trust.

The objective, then, is to usher as many people possible through each role in the most efficient way available. Maximizing the number of digital impressions an offline event yields is truly a multi-step process that requires marketers to act before the event, during the event, and following the event. But so long as the marketer is  cognizant of those steps, actions, and – perhaps most importantly – the metrics they are trying to optimize, they can ensure the offline event garners online attention and digital impressions.

It all begins with your Digital Followers. Certainly, this is not always the first place marketers look when planning an offline event, but it should be. That is because these are the consumers who are most likely to pass along favorable mentions of your brand. The more of them marketers can make aware of an event, the more likely will the event generate online buzz and digital impressions. But even more importantly, marketers know a bit about the Digital Followers of their brand. Marketers must begin by searching existing Digital Followers for those who live or work in areas near the offline event. By dropping them a note to say where and when the event will be and asking them to tell their friends, marketers maximize the attention the event will get. A marketer’s success at effectively recruiting for the event should be measured through a metric called “attraction”: the ratio of Digital Followers the brand has to the number of Digital Followers who participate in your offline event.

Ensuring high “engagement”, the percent of event participants who promote the event through some digital means, is what drives the marketer’s next moves. While the quality of the offline event certainly impacts how many Event Participants choose to pass along recommendations for it, there is little excuse for marketers to fall short of an engagement score of 100%. Because the marketer’s focus should be squarely on making it as simple as possible for Event Participants to send endorsements of the event to their friends and followers. This means setting up a wireless hotspot at the event, a location-based check-in, ready-to-use hashtags, a sharing platform (e.g., AddThis). Basically, the marketer must make it so easy for event participants to broadcast the event that they can’t help but promote it.

The final metric marketers should use to guide the process of translating offline events to online impressions is “amplification”. Quite simply, amplification in this sense is the ratio of Event Promoters to Digital Impressions. It is the number of people who see the endorsements posted, Tweeted, or shared by Engaged Participants. This is where finding and recruiting key Digital Followers is important. As we’ve already seen, the average Facebook member has around 130 friends, so any message broadcast through Facebook already reaches a large audience. But a large (and growing) percentage of Facebook members have literally multiples of that number of friends. Over one-quarter of members have more than 1,000 friends. And when someone with that large of a following is a friend of a brand, it is the marketer’s responsibility to know who they are.

Converting offline event to online impressions can indeed be a complicated, confusing challenge. But by breaking that challenge down it is fundamental parts, focusing on the four key roles of consumers and the three critical measures of success, marketers can maximize ROI for their events.

Quitting The Data Race For Favor Of Something Better

Got data?

If GSP was asked to create a tagline for the challenges facing CMOs over the past five years, it could do worse than this simple device. That’s because for some time now the marketing executive’s agenda has been dominated by the need for and interpretation of information. Theirs, their industry’s, their consumers’. Yet the greatest challenge facing the CMO today is much different from what perplexed them just a few short years ago.

Five years ago, the CMO was buried in data. Data purchased from vendors, industry and subscription data they’d accumulated over the years, data from their own analytics teams. What they needed was help sorting through those heaps of information, determining what was important, and figuring out what it meant. But more often than not, attempts to construct effective systems of data analytics were reduced to exercises of frustration.

Why?

For one thing they were told they must have data they frankly didn’t need. This is because, whether willfully or not, nearly every marketing organization entered a “Data Race” in the last five years, amassing stockpiles of information as a testament to their marketing prowess. And there were the data companies, happy to indulge their fears of “falling behind”. The result was a fattening of already confusingly plump data assets, a race with no absolute goal.

Compounding problems introduced by the Data Race was the fact that many CMOs were sold snake oil. Much of the data proffered by vendors was not sound. Not in structure or sample size or other glaring element, but rather in purpose. The data sold simply had no breakthrough purpose. Its “insight value” was blank or redundant to another data source or far too narrow to make an impact. In the most extreme cases, data they snapped up measured how consumers engaged with a product or service in the past, not their intent for the future, effectively leaving organizations to market to consumers in similarly out-fashioned manners.

Worse yet, the CMOs own organizations – and often their consultants – could not save them. Primarily because the analytic teams in these organizations (which many spent millions of dollars to construct and fortify) were built on the notions of academia. The collection of people assembled into a top organization’s analytics team was the smartest group of people one could hope to meet, with impeccable academic credentials. But for all their qualifications, their devotion to making the algorithm a centerpiece of the marketing plan doomed their ability to connect the consumer experience to anyone outside the Ivory Tower. And the CMO’s high-minded marketing and business advisors (not the least of which their Advertising Agencies) were either too indifferent to care or unwilling to challenge the analytics team’s righteousness.

What this experience should teach us is that there is no substitute for marketing instincts. And, in part, this leads us to the greatest challenge facing the CMO today. And it’s not “having the sharpest marketing reflexes”. That’s like saying the lion’s greatest challenge is eating its food, ignoring that its real challenge is catching the food in the first place (or, for the smart ones, motivating someone else to catch it for them).

No, the greatest challenge facing CMOs today is knowing what questions their marketing programs need answered and understanding how data can provide those answers. Doing so requires marketing executives to be at once thorough and audacious. Thorough because they need to explore the information gaps that could help them improve their program performance, leaving no stones unturned. Audacious because anything can be measured, and they should never relent to anyone telling them differently. Being told “no” means they are talking to someone who can’t say “yes”.

The CMO can then set off to what any good marketing executive does best: designing hypotheses and collecting the answers that either prove or disprove them. With these in hand, the CMO can develop marketing programs that correctly address important consumer needs and root solutions in accurate benefits. The ability of the marketing executive to do this is the most important measure of their worth. Truly, data does not transform a bad marketer into a good one. But it does turn a good marketer into a great one.

Got instincts?

What The London Riots Taught Us About Social Media

The march began peacefully enough. Just a few days before, what started as a routine encounter with Metropolitan Police quickly and tragically unraveled resulting in the death of a London citizen. Now on this day in Tottenham, mourning friends and family are joined by hundreds of supporters, many who harbor suspicions that London police systematically discriminate against minorities as surely as their use of aggression and intimidation had grown out of control. And just as that fateful encounter with police had turned, this somber, peaceful demonstration quickly and tragically descends into a dark and violent expression of frustrations that have been mounting for years. The event sparks a calamitous string of riots, fueled by high levels of youth unemployment and a smoldering discontent with the current English government. The year is 1985.

Twenty-six years ago the death of Cynthia Jarrett and the subsequent Broadwater Farm Riots in London’s north very much mirrored the events surrounding this summer¹s devastating London Riots. But what began on 4 August 2011 with the shooting death of Mark Duggan at the hands of Metropolitan Police and -- ­ in a chilling re-telling of history ­ -- exploded into violence during an initially peaceful march in Tottenham was in one way very different from the events of 1985:  this summer's unrest was meticulously documented in literally millions of Tweets, BBM messages, Internet news mentions, and Facebook posts. And the electronic record of the 2011 London Riots tells a fascinating tale of the power and effectiveness of social media.

What follows are five observations on the role social media played in the London Riots born from an analysis of data earned from Twitter, Facebook, various online news feeds, a host of chat services / blogs, and Blackberry's BBM messaging service.  

Social media channels quickly became the obvious and most effective means for rioters and riot observers to communicate during the chaotic days following the Mark Duggan Justice Walk. The channels offered instantaneous connections to great numbers of engaged and passive populations in and around London. Significantly, they also offered the easiest path to international communities. 

BBM, Blackberry’s free Internet-based instant messaging service, played a primary role in the planning and execution of much of the city’s unrest. As the smartphone of choice of London youth, Blackberry enjoys a considerable chunk of the UK’s communication market. BBM connects these Blackberry owners to one another instantly and allows for a single message to be broadcast to large audiences. 

But what made BBM critical during the London Riot was the fact that the channel is untraceable. Indeed, Rioters learned from past international events, such as the Spring Arab Uprising, that authorities could track Twitter and other social media channels. As Scotland Yard monitored Twitter for signs of unrest, London rioters secreted messages to one another through BBMs. BBMs became the perfect communication “utility” for riot planners and participants.

While rioters were BBMing covert plans to one another, the rest of the engaged world was receiving a blow-by-blow account of the London Riots through Twitter. Reports of new sites of unrest, first-hand accounts of the riot’s destruction, and unfiltered reactions to the events were broadcast throughout the tumultuous days in a thick stream of terse messages.

Frequently, Twitter was used to push BBMs to the audience outside Blackberry’s instant messaging system – as Twitter users literally copied and pasted BBM messages they received into Tweets – extending the life and reach of the communications.

Tweets of the riots quickly blasted outside the UK, flashing across the world to Twitter users in the US, Asia, mainland Europe, and elsewhere thereby enabling an international audience to partake in the London Riot conversation.

Among international communities, the United States had one of the largest responses to Tweets rolling out of the UK. Tweets (and Re-Tweets) from US citizens closely and quickly mirrored the riot-related messages originating in the UK. Although the US Twitter traffic peaked slightly later than traffic in the UK, it did so in a more pronounced manner.

But perhaps more interesting was the response of US news media outlets. While stories of the London Riots were most certainly broke by UK news media, the US news machine quickly and fervently picked up those stories and distributed them to their followers through instant messages, Internet-based newsfeeds, and Tweets of their own. For the US news media, the London Riots became a more intense story than the more sustained and balanced coverage the riots received in the UK. Perhaps such attention from the US was the result of a slow domestic news desk or, more likely, American news outlets’ preoccupation with schadenfreude.

One thing that is certain is that as news of the riots intensified, expanded to international markets, and earned greater levels of social media attention so too did the draw for looters and riot participants. In this way, the scale and scope of the London Riot was extended.

While instant messaging proved to be the preferred source of information-sharing around the London Riots, Facebook played an important role in the expression of reactions to the unrest, as well as the circumstances surrounding the event. London Riot Facebook pages quickly shot up, including pages devoted to reporting riot activity, pleas for Londoners to band together to stop and clean up the riot’s devastation, and tribute pages to the riot’s principal martyr, Mark Duggan. 

But in terms of Facebook Fans, the most influential and valued pages where those dedicated to mocking the riot’s events. And by a wide margin, as riot mockery pages garnered Fans at a rate four-times faster than the next most popular category of riot-devoted pages. The examples offer insight into Londoner’s thoughts on the riot and rioters alike:  nearly 150,000 people became Facebook Fans of “The Idiot London Riot Looter”, a page which cleverly exposed the idiocy of many London teens who perpetrated crimes and acts of violence during the unrest; “Planking in the London Riot” earned over 50,000 Fans, many contributing pictures of themselves familiarly lying prone among police in riot gear and burning shops. 

The creation of these pages and their collection of Fans interestingly “democratized” reactions to the London Riots. It’s easy to consider Facebook pages outside the top five list presented above that resulted from the riots:  pages devoted to fundraising, looter identification, victim’s stories. But while there were undoubtedly pages created in such categories, they failed to collect a high number of Facebook Fans. In this way Facebook became an open structure of “opinion quantification”, lending a numerical-based indication of people’s interests and response to the London Riots.

An analysis of the emotions expressed through social media channels during the London Riots reveals important insights into the tone and tenor of the unrest. Among the top ten emotions voiced in instant messages, Tweets, Facebook posts, and other digital communications, emotions related to “connection” led the way while “freedom” logged in at number ten. To be sure, the riot in the UK were not fueled by the need to escape an oppressive government but rather a sense of unity for a common purpose. The emotional profile of the social media conversation makes sense in this context.

Yet several things about the emotional thumbprint of riot-related discussion remain unclear. Given the scale of the riots’ destruction, perhaps it was to be expected that concerns for safety and security would permeate the UK social media conversation. However, as the riots’ flashpoint was Mark Duggan’s death and the obvious distaste for London’s looters it is puzzling that expressions of “justice” were not more prominent.

Much more clear is how those emotions played out over the course of this summer’s events. August 10^th marked the emotional highpoint for riot-related conversation – the same day, not coincidentally, that the riot reached its most violent and tumultuous point. Also interesting to note is that expressions of “pain”, “power / control / responsibility”, and “safety / security” hit an early peak just days into the riotous activity when the world was graphically introduced to the unrest. Conversely, “connection” peaked sharply on the riot’s darkest day, while “acceptance” slowly gained weight as the unrest wore on and the reality of London’s situation took hold. Taken together, these emotions provide a lasting, indelible cast of the London Riots’ emotion tone.

CONCLUSIONS

Social media channels – BBM, Twitter, Internet-based newsfeeds, Facebook, and others – played several prominent roles in the London Riots of 2011. Chief among them were social media’s part in…

·      Providing communication “utilities”

·      Enabling an international audience

·      Extending riot’s scope and scale

·      “Democratizing” reactions to the event

·      Setting the event’s emotional tone

The cumulative effect of social media led to a summer of unrest in London that far eclipsed the Broadwater Farm Riot events some twenty-six years ago, despite the fact that each began in almost the same way and under a nearly identical set of circumstances.

A more devastating and awesome illustration of social media's power may not soon be seen again.

Remind Me Why SXSWi Sucked?*

* In a purely objective, quantitative, data-based sense

Summer is in full swing, meaning we're mid-way through 2011. Therefore I thought it appropriate to look back at one of the biggest events of the year so far: the 2011 SXSWi festival in Austin, Texas.

Anyone who was there knows this year's event was, in a word, enormous. Every year the festival becomes better attended, offers more to do and see, and provides greater discussions on an ever-broadening set of digital and marketing topics.

Yet despite its majesty, something about the 2011 SXSWi festival bothered me. Namely, the fact that data and its use in marketing played such a small role in the event. Take a look at the video above for a more detailed investigation.