IBM survey of 1,734 highlights a frankly disgusting lack of accountability in the marketing ‘industry’. Some highlights:

-56% are not prepared to be held accountable for marketing RoI (what the hell have you been doing for the last 60 years???)

- 44% do not view social media as a key engagement channel - a shocking 74% do not track the landscape. Fair enough - I mean, its not like your consumers matter to your business or brand perception at all, is it?

- Despite this, 80% still primarily use market research as a primary source of information - you know the kind, the ones that say to 25 people ‘I’ll give you £50 to tell me what you think of me’.

- 70% of the marketers surveyed said they feel incapable of analyzing and responding to the glut of data available about their consumers, yet only 28% want to increase their technical skills. Translated: 42% of CMOs do not understand how to deal with data but don’t want to do anything about it.

It seems to me that marketers everywhere are being found out (finally). Its no longer enough to hide behind TV audience figures and statistically insignificant market research data as measures of success. The world has become more open, collaborative and insightful, and this report suggests that (most) marketers are not willing and/or equipped to deal with it, and sooner or later they will be usurped by smarter, rational people who can prove the value of what they are doing.

I imagine that it will be sooner rather than later.

Annie Pettit (@lovestats) from Research Now - interview about social media research.

Very interesting thoughts and one of the few thinkers in this area that I have found. I agree with almost everything she says.

Almost.

A couple of (well, three) points:

- There is few hints as to the practical applications of such data. She throws it back on the audience by asking why you would want to survey, but it seems to me that there is a massive leap from ‘what the audience is saying’ to ‘how to engage with the audience’ via the vast black hole that is ‘strategy’.

- The ‘constructs’ she talks about appears to be very advanced conversation analysis, yet have no reference to sentiment, content delivery mechanics, audience-specific preferences and behaviours, etc. I believe that the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of research is as- if not more- important than the ‘what’ (see Human Digital methodology and product!)

- She is 100% right when she says that ‘quality research takes time’ - social media monitoring tools are alluring because they are instantaneous but pretty useless. However, she talks about social media being a ‘6-10 hour survey’. In my experience, truly useful research is a 4-6 week process initially, followed by 18-24 months tracking.

To be clear, I get these impressions from the above video. I’d love to know her process and output when delivering social media research to see what actually goes on behind the scenes there. I suspect that our philosophies towards data and research and hers are closely aligned.

A brief post that serves two purposes - one from a personal, interest-led perspective, one from a professional perspective.

First, the personal. Last night I went to see Brazil v Ghana in an international football friendly at Craven Cottage, stadium of Fulham Football Club. It was an utter disgrace. Not the football, although Ghana’s lack of discipline and Brazil’s lack of cutting edge mean that both sides left a bit to be desired in what turned into an attack v defence game for the second half.

The disgrace was the planning, organisation and ineptitude of the Fulham staff regarding ticket collection. Thousands of people - Brazilians, Ghanians and British - were being serviced by 2 small booths to collect pre-paid tickets. There was no order, no queuing system, no security for what the organisers would have known (because they printed the tickets) were a vast crowd of people arriving between 15-45 minutes before kick-off.

As a result, a scrum commenced - crowds were pushing in from all sides. 15 minutes after kick-off, thousands were still outside trying to get tickets.

It was a thoroughly dangerous situation - people were raining sweat, bodies were being crushed, others came close to fainting. The whole ordeal was utterly avoidable with prior planning and common sense. Fulham FC and the police should be ashamed of their actions.

Which brings me to my second perspective, the professional one. Problems with my phone meant that I was unable to access the internet during the game. I returned home about 30 mins after the final whistle expecting to see a wave of indignation on Twitter about the situation for me to add my voice too - complaints of missing the first half, paying good money to be suffocated, the lack of information, hopes that no-one was seriously hurt, etc.

One Tweet*. (http://twitter.com/#!/benjilanyado/status/110795886384254976)

That was it. In London, where thousands of people faced, at best frustration, at worst an extremely dangerous situation, in a scenario that involved sluggish authority response, appalling service from the main hosts (and beneficiaries) of the event and a genuine concern for public safety, the most I could find on the incident was one Tweet (through Twitter search, at least).

We get consumed in our little industry bubble and think that social media is truly the democratization of news and that everybody is just waiting to share information. In reality, it is just a small minority of people who actually are.

Just 3% of internet users are content producers. Trust the data, otherwise you’ll be shocked when your expectations are not met. This is something I forgot last night.

*note: English language search through Twitter only

US debt, expressed in $100 notes.

“Information Aesthetics has partnered with the Wikimedia foundation to support their visualization competition called “WikiViz”. To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Wikipedia, they call for data and information visualization experts, computational journalists, data artists and data scientists to create the most insightful visualization of Wikipedia’s impact. Other partners include FlowingData, Visualizing, Periscopic and Unidad International.

WikiViz aims to receive effective but compelling visualizations of how Wikipedia impact the world with its content, culture and open collaboration model. The deadline is at Friday August 19, 2011, and most of the jury members should be known to you. The 3 finalist teams will receive funding to present their work at WikiSym conference, an international symposium on Wikis and Open collaboration. This year, the symposium will be organized at the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View, California.

Potential topics include the imprint of Wikipedia on knowledge sharing and access to information, its impact on literacy and education, journalism and research, on the functioning of scientific and cultural organizations and businesses, as well as the daily life of individuals around the world, or the areas of knowledge, geographical regions, organizations and people Wikipedia has not been able to reach.”