Do you know how to build analytics from conversational databases?

Peter Kim of Forrester has written a thought-provoking article on the future of the advertising agency. The report argues that consumers now rely less and less on marketing messages when in buying mode. Instead they seek guidance from family, friends and others in their respective communities to guide them toward purchase decisions.

Peter’s views via AdWeek

(Agencies are) “in “a world of hurt” because consumers are tuning out the messages the industry is predicated on producing. Instead, it believes shops need to be organized around communities, not disciplines. What it is calling “the connected agency” would not only know certain communities but also be active members of these groups. Pushing messages would give way to encouraging voluntary engagement, and ongoing conversations would replace time-based campaigns”.

My View:

As communities & conversations become more and more important, there is a need to understand how to build analytical models around huge "conversational  databases" that will emerge. The ability to mine data and conversations together, will become a  huge competitive advantage for service providers. The ones who will succeed are the ones who will be able to overlay the traditional transactional data with conversational data. This is a skill that needs to be built and nurtured if brands and service providers have to succeed in the future.

Comments

[Ron Shevlin]

Sometimes, I just have to laugh at reports like these.

People have relied on the recommendations of friends and family FOR AGES. To come out and say "consumers now rely less and less on marketing messages when in buying mode" is simply not a supportable statement, because we (as marketers) have never really fully understood the impact or influence of marketing messages.

What's different today is that the Internet has made it orders of magnitude easier to share recommendations and opinions, and to see what people you don't know are saying. There has also been significant growth in the number of vehicles that marketers use to get their messages out.

So as the difficulty in measuring the impact of those messages has increased (not that it was ever easy to measure), analyst firms like Forrester come out w/ proclamations heralding the increased of family/friend recommendations.

My take: Hogwash.