Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

This past Saturday I had the pleasure to attend and present at the first AnalyticsCamp at UNC's Kennan-Flagler Business School. I was immediately popular as Capstrat provided the coffee and breakfast (from Fetzko's) for the event. It wasn't nearly as geeky as you might think and amazing to see a couple hundred people spend their entire Saturday discussing analytics. 

The emphasis of the Analytics Camp is to bring together all the folks involved with the different silos of analytics under one roof to learn from each other and cross-pollinate with ideas from their different disciplines and experiences. My background is in web analytics, but I got more out of hearing about developments in areas outside of my expertise, which is definitely the point.

The "unconference" had an interesting communal format as attendees propose topics for presentations in the morning and everyone votes which proposals will turn into presentations. It is a somewhat difficult event to prepare for as you aren't exactly sure if your material will make it or not. Luckily mine did, more on that in a minute.

After the voting took place we all broke up into different classrooms to hear about the different topics. Most of the presentations consisted of about 30 to 40 min of slides and then more of an informal discussion with the audience asking questions. For the first session I split my time between Text Analytics & Sentiment Analysis (VoC) and Applied Advanced Analytics for Business Solutions.

Text Analytics & Sentiment Analysis (VoC) was presented by Manya Mayes from SAS and was really interesting as this was one of the fields that is outside of my normal analytics box. The technology being used to mine text and voice to understand patterns is fascinating especially when applied to improving customer service and looking for potential problems. I thought an interesting example was mining the crash data from car accidents and looking for key phrases and correlations to things like 'accerelation' and 'problem' (something Toyota is likely doing right now). With the proliferation of verbatims throughout the internet in forums, social media, review sites, and other avenues, being able to efficiently sift through that massive amount of data and see patterns will increasingly be important for companies to be on the pulse of customer sentiment and allow for quicker resolution to issues. While I was listening to the presentation I couldn't help to think of all the applications that could be enhanced with some of this knowledge such as how a company words information or content on a website, understanding problems before they become bigger issues, or even choosing the right keywords for a PPC campaign.  

I also ventured over to hear David Larson from IBM. A few years ago IBM purchased business intelligence vendor, Cognos, and its evident from Larson's presentation and even the recent TV ads that IBM views analytics as a huge growth area. I missed most of the session but one of the most important things I heard mentioned was that their is no recipe for analytics, you have to start with the business objectives and questions. All of these sophisticated tools will spit out data and information but the real trick (and the one most people are missing) is how to ask the tools to give them the data they need to answer the business question. Couldn't agree more. Before sitting down to do the analysis you have to know what you were trying to achieve. 

My presentation "Methods for tracking offline campaign through online tools" took place in the second session. This is an area that I am really exploring as Capstrat does a lot offline campaigns and trying to show some return can be more difficult than measuring online campaigns. I presented some tips I've come across in measuring them such as using indirect proxies such as keyword changes, promotional codes, vanity urls, website behavior correlations, and geo-segmentation to name a few. I got some decent interactions with the crowd and hopefully the folks that attended got something out of it.

Lunch was unbelievable, not sure where it came from but easily the best food ever at a conference. SAS totally hooked us up. I got my fill of chicken kabobs and humus with pitas. Also, it was great to see an occasional Capstrat dart being launched across the cafeteria.

After lunch, I headed up to see Adam Covati talk about 'Social Media Impact'. Huge crowd for Adam and I thought he did a great job with his presentation and the attendees were engaged in the topic. Some great points were made about making sure you have goals for your social media, otherwise measurement is meaningless. First set up your objectives whether its getting more emails for a database, growing awareness, avoiding support costs, etc. Excellent advice was given on some specific actions that could be taken and lost-cost tools that can be utilized for measuring social media impact such as using Hootsuite, ScoutLabs, Shortened URLs, Feedburner and others. Its very obvious that the biggest theme that companies are struggling with is how to measure the impact of social media as it came up countless times in multiple presentations and discussions. As a side note and plug, Adam has a new new start-up ArgyleSocial. Go check it out.

Next up was Wayne Sutton with Location-based Analytics: Measuring the Check-in. I haven't had to solve any business problems yet around the growing phenomena of applications like Foursquare and GoWalla, but there were lots of interesting discussions about the ethics and uses for the data you could collect with measuring check-ins. A lot of the conversation centered around Wayne's new startup Tri-Out and the kinds of functionality and issues they are working on to make this type of application both usable for end-users and businesses. From a marketing perspective its great to know who your customers are, when they come, where else they go but how do you reach those folks without completely freaking them out? I didn't say anything during the discussion but was entertained throughout with the smart folks in the room. I think I have a post in the works soon about the measurement and implications of all of this, but need to do some more thinking.

Last session I attended was Nathan Gilliatt's Social Media Intelligence. The conversation was free-form and I agreed with the assertion that right now, social media is sort of on its own island but will eventually be incorporated into existing fields such as public relations or marketing. As for the measurement of social media, Nathan pointed out he believes it will eventually move into the Business Intelligence space as another piece of data that can be used by an enterprise to make decisions. I'd say right now the measurement of this activity is in its infancy, but as tools get more sophisticated in mining text and sentiment (see the SAS presentation above), I can see where this will get roped in.

I hope some of the presentations I couldn't make eventually make it to the web as it was difficult sometimes to decide between 2 or 2 sessions going on at the same time. 

By the end of the day I was completely exhausted, but in a good way. Met a ton of great people. Loads of information (and food), but the discussions that took place have gotten me thinking more broadly about analytics and how some of these things fit together. I think the best thing about this unconference is the fact that we can start to build our locale community of people in this field and learn from each other. We all bring a piece of the puzzle to the conversation. By pooling together all this talent I think we can create a very interesting network to tackle the next business challenge, create the next startup, or write the next book. Really grateful to be a part of this and hope it continues.