Do Happy Social Networks = Financial Results?

Source: Sysomos; LiveCharts; Draftfcb analysis

Not much is strongly correlated to stock prices on the open market.

Sure there are indicators in the environment -- some leading, most lagging -- that can be used to predict what a given equity or index will do on the market. But the use of data to model and help traders, fund managers and other financial experts plan for future shifts in market prices has been a confounding exercise. Those who have cracked the code on marrying data to market performance are few (and chances are you won't be able to find them, as they're somewhere on their own personal island).

But the growing size of social networking and the immense power those networks are amassing has given new life to this pursuit. Add to the debate this small, albeit topical, finding I came across the other day.

While analyzing social network conversations around several leading United Kingdom banks over the first four months of 2011, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the sum total of positive comments made about these UK brands (the orange line in the above chart) exhibited fairly strong correlation to the price of a well known UK financial sector stock index (the white line). Not perfect correlation, to be sure, but pretty strong nonetheless. "Number of Positive Mentions" was the first metric I correlated to the index price, but I quickly looked at every other metric I could make from the social networking data I had on hand: percent of total mentions that were positive; ratio of positive mentions to negative mentions; total mentions; total "authority score" of positive mentions; average "authority score" of negative mentions; average "authority" score of any mention; etc. etc. No other metric was as strongly correlated as total positive mentions.

Interestingly, much of the positive mentions came before the stock price increased. In other words, I wasn't just seeing a bunch of congratulatory noise following a market gain for the index. I seemed to be observing positive social network conversations that preceded a run up in stock price.

The thing that really had me thinking was the fact that this correlation exists and, despite the enormous participation numbers and gaudy growth social networks are experiencing, the platforms making up today's social networking landscape are all really, really nascent.

As social networking continues to mature and gain influence, there is no doubt that correlations such as this will become much more clear. As marketers it is our responsibility to get our clients well positioned in those conversations, so they can reap the benefits of today's social networking scene and -- more importantly -- ensure that they get a piece of the benefits that are soon to come.

U2, Lady Gaga, and The Smiths: More (and Less) The Same

What happens when different people use one language to convey thoughts, hopes, and emotions? You get very different uses of that language with different themes and tenor and tonality, as well as some striking commonalities.

This finding results from a bit of time I spent investigating how emotion expressed through the written word could be quantified. As a testing ground for this subject, I analyzed emotions conveyed through song and focused on three artists, U2, Lady Gaga and The Smiths, purposefully selected for their divergent musical styles and personalities. I then selected one classic album from each artist to compile a representative sample of their work: “The Joshua Tree (U2, 1988)”, “The Fame (Lady Gaga, 2008)”, and “The Queen Is Dead (The Smiths, 1986)”. The results of this analysis were at once expected and surprising.

Using a technique I derived from clinical psychology methods (one far from being perfected..but, hey, I'm working at it), I assessed the amount of emotion each artist has poured into their songs, the themes they expressed, the range of emotions they voiced, and the emotional strength of their words.

First, interesting in their own right, let's take a look at the words of the artists presented in traditional word clouds. Note U2's use of motion, the natural world, and possession ("run", "still", "raining", "hold", "without"); Gaga's penchant for non-words ("eh", "mum", "mah", "da-doo-doo-doo"); the way The Smith's explore self-loathing and despair ("kill", "die", "lonely"); and the universal theme of "Love" (in the case of The Smiths, the love Morrissey will "never know").


U2: "The Joshua Tree" (1988)

Bono’s thoughts of earth, wind, rain and fire more than double his mentions of love.

Lady Gaga: "The Fame" (2008)

 

Not only does Lady Gaga's music make the listener feel like dancing, she tells them to dance no fewer than 28 times over the course of "The Fame".

The Smiths: "The Queen Is Dead" (1986)

The top nouns and verbs crooned by Morrissey? “Never know / want / believe love tonight”. Characteristically uplifting.

Also interesting, if not surprising, is the range of emotions. Based on an "Emotion Scale", words expressing emotion range from “Strongly Negative” (presented here in dark red) to “Weakly Negative” (lighter red) to “Neutral” (white) to “Weakly Positive” (light green) to “Strongly Positive” (dark green). The distribution of emotional words that show up in the artists' song can then be graphed across this scale. U2 muddles in the red but balances out with expressions of dark green redemption. Gaga frenetically dances her way to the happiness of positive green emotions. The Smiths’ emotions, as to be expected, remain red and true to the sad negativity of their words. Interestingly, not one of these artists spends much vocal effort on vapid, neutral emotions. See the data here:

An analysis of themes explored by each artist reveals other interesting similarities and differences. The idea of “Connection” is critical to all, albeit expressed in different ways. More than half of all the emotions expressed in U2's and The Smith's songs can be classified under the "Connection" theme, as can nearly three-quarters of Lady Gaga's emotional words. While The Lady’s connection-theme is almost single-minded (ringing through the words "LOVE", "LOVER", "ALONE"), U2 couples its thoughts of connection with expressions of “Power/Control” ("DOWN", "BEATEN") and The Smiths ruminate on the “Pleasure/Pain” of their connections ("DIE", "KILL", "SAD", "SHOCKED"...clearly more time is spent on the pain-side of the equation):

But the thing that most sets these artists apart is how frequently they appeal to the listener's emotions in the music (i.e., what percentage of the words used in their songs can be classified as emotional terms). And the results were somewhat surprising. 

Indexed against U2's use of emotional terms (who had the heaviest use), Lady Gaga's "Emotional Density" is actually quite significant. What is surprisingly low is the "Emotional Density" employed by The Smiths.

Looking deeper into The Smith's lyrics reveals that Morrissey is a victim of his own introspection. Second only to the obvious use of the word "AND" throughout "The Queen Is Dead", the word "I" shows up fully 83 times in the album. That's more than 8 times per song! Add to that total extremely high usage of "ME" and "MY" and it is clear to see how emotional words become diluted in The Smith's lyric. 

The Impact of Cross-Culturalism on American Television

 

Imagine being in a room with your co-workers. Now let’s further imagine that they constitute a random sample of American television viewers. Ask them, “So what TV shows have you been watching this month?”

You’d likely hear answers that resemble the week’s top 10 Nielsen list: CSI, Modern Family, Real Housewives of [some outrageously interesting area of the US], etc.

These TV programs are popular, for sure.  But they also have other commonalities:  high profile network backing, primetime slots, intriguing personalities, diversity.  In fact, a majority of today’s hit television programs have more or less “representative” casts.  In other words, the proportion of minority cast members for many of these shows mirrors the adult population of the United States.  Contrast that fact with the blatant racial disparity that existed just a few decades ago.

Does that surprise you?

15 years ago, the status of diversity in television was quite different.  Shows with mostly Caucasian principal casting - shows like Seinfeld, Murphy Brown, Friends, and Roseanne - performed the best in TV ratings.  These hit shows featured few minority characters, and if they did, they were most likely a guest star or a character of minimal significance.

It would be logical to hypothesize that minority casting in TV, and by extension minority  influence, experienced a precipitous increase in just the last decade. Yet, data from the Screen Actors Guild shows that minorities have experienced an incremental and not precipitous increase in share within the casting market since 1998. 

How can this difference between perceived and actual minority casting be explained?

A Framework For Examining Diversity

Measuring diversity in terms of minorities’ share of casted roles is but one way to assess the state of cross-culturalism in TV.  And in this case, it’s too myopic of an approach. Clustering TV programs by level of minority casting provides more clarity to the situation. 

Take the last 50 years of popular TV programming, and you can cluster them into four  distinct categories of casting diversity:

When plotting the Top 10 television shows for every year since 1950, a few interesting trends become apparent:

Trend #1:  “White Only” shows constituted a majority of programs until the 2000s.   But since 2005, only one “White Only” program – Two and a Half Men – made it into the Top 10.

Trend #2:  “Minority Only” shows debuted in the Top 10 in the late 1960s, coinciding with the tail end of the American Civil Rights movement.  These “Minority Only” shows had a focus on the African American experience, and included shows like The Cosby Show, Sanford & Son, and Good Times.  “Minority Only” shows disappear from the chart in 1990, the last year The Cosby Show was rated in the Top 10.

Trend #3:  “Mixed Shows” display a spotty history in the Top 10 beginning in the late 1960s.  But they had a resurgence in the 1990s and have gradually grown to a majority of the Top 10 shows today.

Tokenism Over The Years

Although never constituting a significant share of the Top 10, shows with token minorities have been a constant since 1950.  While these shows do their part in contributing to the “melting pot” that is the American TV talent pool, these shows inhabit an interesting gray area.  Neither racially monolithic nor integrated, these shows stop short of highlighting minority stories with meaningful purpose.

However, shows with token minorities have changed over the years – from using ethnicity as a comedic foil, to using minority casting for more racial representation. This is yet  another symptom of the growing influence of minorities; insensitive portrayals of  minorities have given way to tolerable, albeit culturally muted, representations.

A Few Conclusions

Minority influence in television has increased over the years, though it’s not a matter of sheer casting numbers.  The evidence lies in the number of popular shows with mixed race casting – and the storylines related to diverse cultural experience – that have emerged in the last decade.

As such, it is important to keep in mind that this medium is the context in which we  connect our clients’ brands to America’s consumers.  

[Special thanks to Michael Barin, who researched and wrote this piece. Thank you, Michael!]

Raising The Bar: From So-So to Whoa!

Another great infographic offering from digital artist Almond Loh, Draftfcb's Director of Visualization here in Customer Intelligence, this one aimed at "raising" the traditional way of building bar graphs and providing simple ways to improve how you communicate data.

Looking for data? Here's the mother lode.

Following is a (near) comprehensive list of free, publicly available data. The "I-couldn't-find-any-information-on-that" excuse is hereby invalidated forevermore:

http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/
http://datamarket.com/
http://fedstats.gov/
http://infochimps.com/
http://jmc.ou.edu/FredBeard/Secondary.html
http://klout.com
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/
http://numbrary.com/
http://oxygen.mintel.com/index.html
http://people-press.org/
http://pewhispanic.org/
http://pewresearch.org/
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipes.popular
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/UMCSENT
http://statehealthstats.americashealthrankings.org/
http://statosphere.misentropy.com/
http://takemetoyourleader.com/
http://trendwatching.com/
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm
http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com/
http://www.billshrink.com/
http://www.blogpulse.com/
http://www.bls.gov/
http://www.bundle.com/
http://www.cdc.gov/
http://www.census.gov/
http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp
http://www.clickz.com/
http://www.comscoredatamine.com/
http://www.crunchbase.com/
http://www.gallup.com/Home.aspx
http://www.google.com/finance
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#
http://www.google.com/publicdata/home
http://www.google.com/trends
http://www.grabstats.com/
http://www.infousa.com/
http://www.jdpower.com/
http://www.marketingcharts.com/
http://www.marketresearch.com/
http://www.melissadata.com/lookups/index.htm

http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do
http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php
http://www.neoformix.com/
http://www.nielsen.com/content/corporate/global/en.html
http://www.oecd.org/
http://www.pewinternet.org/
http://www.quantcast.com/
http://www.realtimestatistics.org/
http://www.referenceusa.com/
http://www.thomascrampton.com/
http://www.visualeconomics.com/
http://www.warc.com/
http://www.youtube.com/trendsdashboard#mode=compare
http://zipwho.com/
https://www.cia.gov/library/
http://blog.okcupid.com/

Unboxing The Pie: From Boring to Bling

Esteemed digital artist Almond Loh, Draftfcb's Director of Visualization here in Customer Intelligence, offers this infographic in hopes of "unboxing" the traditional way of building pie charts and providing simple design solutions to add data "bling" to your presentations and reports.

Impact of Cross-Culturalism on American Food

In “Sin City, USA” one can easily partake in several of the Seven Deadly Sins. Probably the most accessible to the denizens and tourists of Las Vegas is gluttony. All-you-can-eat  buffet advertisements dominate the billboarded landscape. Casinos promote specialty buffet items as loss-leaders intended to drive traffic, and the messaging somehow promotes the idea that eating beef and shrimp in the middle of a barren desert is a good idea.

The buffet at the Bellagio in Las Vegas rests at the pinnacle of comparable buffets in the casino world. “Guests may choose from the best of Italian, Japanese, Chinese, seafood and American cuisines, offered daily…” A person can get anything from waffles to sushi, all on the same plate. The buffet is a microcosm of the American food landscape. As choices continue to grow, the complexity of measuring and quantifying this diversification becomes more and more challenging.

Cinnamon, in contrast to the buffet choices at the Bellagio, is a constant within American cuisine. The spice is not only an American staple, but can be traced back to biblical times as an offering Israelites would bring to temple. Within American cuisine, it is best described as a banal staple of most kitchens.

Americans have evolved to think of cinnamon more as the name of an exotic dancer than the name of an exotic spice. What most Americans probably don’t know is that 90% of cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka and 100% of cinnamon is imported. From 1989-2009, the United States imported over $542 million dollars worth of cinnamon. The import dollar  valued topped out at $37 million in 1989 and bottomed out at $16 million in 2001 with a range of $21 million. Within the realm of food imports and exports this is a relatively  consistent product. To put cinnamon in perspective – coffee, tea and sugar over the same period varied by $2.6 billion, $197 million and $815 million, respectively. 

By comparing cinnamon’s unvarying role within American cuisine to other imported products, profiles can be created for those products that is automatically adjusted for inflation, currency fluctuations and  population growth.    An examination of this data over time eliminates any type of seasonality. This index, dubbed the “Cinnamindex”, illustrates the shifting palates of Americans as imported ingredients essential to foreign cuisines impact their appetites.

The first food to analyze through the Cinnamindex is avocadoes. Although some avocadoes are grown in California; the majority is imported from Mexico, Chile and the Dominican Republic. Their popularity can be tied to both the rapid growth of the Latin American population within the United States, and the culinary ripples that this culture has caused. Guacamole has become a household favorite and chains that present “Mexican Style” food in a quick-service format, such as Chipotle, have become wildly successful.

Another imported food that scored well on the Cinnamindex is the chickpea. Chickpeas, or garbanzo beans, have gone from $8 million a year in imports to over $20 million a year in a 20-year span. Much like avocadoes, the growth can be attributed to both a rise in  immigrant populations where chickpeas are a staple food, as well as the inclusion of  hummus as a snack food staple in American cuisine. To think about the differences between today’s American’s Super Bowl spread and the spread 20 years ago, the standard chips and ranch dip are now accompanied and sometimes even replaced by guacamole and hummus spreads.

While the first two foods have an immigration wave associated with the shift in cuisine,  ginger’s exponential-style growth in America can be attributed more to a culinary shift. “New” Asian cuisines such as Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean and Pan-Asian styles have fueled the proliferation of Asian flavor inspirations in the American culinary  spectrum. Most relevant to ginger has been the mainstream acceptance of sushi across all walks of life. Supermarkets and cafeterias now serve this once exotic Japanese cuisine as daily fare. Ginger in turn has shifted from an annual import value of $5 million to  $38 million per year. 

Other imported goods that showed large increases on the Cinnamindex include dates, cardamom, cumin, anise, lentils, turmeric, saffron, cassava and mangoes. As American culture changes, its tastes continue to evolve requiring new ingredients. Fortunately, in a culture that rewards freedom of choice, the buffet at the Bellagio has room to expand to accommodate the emergence of a new American appetite. In contrast to the growth of these cross-cultural items are foods such as pistachios and poppy seeds that presented negative Cinnamindex scores over the past 20 years. As foods come in and out of vogue, however, cinnamon remains the flavorful, reliable staple against which culturally influenced foods can be measured.

As a marketer it is essential to understand changing tastes within culture. Marketers must balance the adherence to classic offerings and the exploration of new brand extensions and product genres. By examining the data available, risks can be mitigated and trends can be understood. 

Ultimately, data is recursive so taking calculative risks and measuring the results leads to an understanding of the implications. In the realm of food one can always measure themselves on the Cinnamindex to gain an understanding of shifting tastes in American culture and the impact of cross-culturalism.


(Special recognition and thanks to Jason Methner for his research and writing prowess!)