What's interesting about Online is that it's one of the only media available where you can actually -- where it actually functions as an opportunity to capture and analyze that conversation. So, from our perspective, the discussion online is an aggregation of all media channels.

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This is PodTech.net. Welcome to Marketing Voices, featuring a fresh perspectives of innovative marketing leaders and examining how social media is changing marketing throughout the world. Here's your host, Jennifer Jones.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Hi, this is Jennifer Jones, and today on Marketing Voices, I have Bradley Silver who is President of Brand Intel who is also part of the Brand Dimensions Group, and we are going to be discussing metrics and all of social media today on Marketing Voices. This is one of the biggest challenges marketers face, and it's something that's come on email to me by many, many people out there that have listened to this show and always they are asking me, how do you really measure this return on what I call influence, and so Brand Dimensions and specifically Bradley Silver heads up a company that's a leading research company that really analyses online consumer published content and he does deal with Fortune 500 companies. So, we're talking to a fairly significant sized company here today, but having said that I really wanted to give all of the listeners a chance to hear from a real expert in this area. So Bradley, thank you very much for joining me on Marketing Voices.

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
Thank you for having me.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Great. Well, my first question is somewhat of an open-ended one. So how do you kind of start working with a client and really start to get a snapshot in the sense of their brand when you begin working with them?

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
The first step in the process is to really understand what the objectives are of the research campaign; it's not from our perspective area where you go in looking to conduct high-level tracking. The information that we are able to access is so rich and insightful that our clients are really using the information in a highly strategic capacity.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Can you give me some sense of the kind of companies that you do work with where you realize that some of it maybe so confidential you can't, but just kind of give us a sense of who are some of the clients that actually use your services?

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
Well for example, from automotive space, we analyzed the entire automotive industry for companies like DaimlerChrysler. We analyzed all of the television network programs for companies like ABC and CBS. We are very strong in the gaming sector and work with a number of clients in helping them develop strategic marketing campaigns to launch new gaming products. We are very big in the film sector as well as pharmaceuticals and financial services.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, what are kind of, some trends that go from vertical sector to vertical sector that you've actually noted, given that they are so diverse in their lines of business, as it relates obviously to metrics and brands?

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
Well you see, you ask a very interesting question focusing on metrics and brands. And the process or the evolution that we take our clients through is very much one that begins with listening and learning, and then one of participating in the conversation. And the reason we began with listen and learn is because you need to understand those particular metrics and how they differ from sector to sector. So, you could look at the automotive sector and then compare that to the entertainment sector and the types of scores that we generate on, on what we refer to sentiment, which is the emotional context of the consumer relative to their perceptions of the brand or the product or a particular attribute of the brand or the company itself.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, now are you looking at blogs, podcasts, all of the various social media forms that are out there?

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
We are - and our focus is primarily online; so any form of, what we refer to as consumer published content, and in some cases, media content as well. The lines between traditional and new media are blurring where you -- a lot of journalists are moving into the online space and synthesizing with bloggers who are becoming as influential as major media outlets. So, it's becoming more and more difficult to create the distinction between, say a newspaper and a blogger, for example.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So do you find that a lot of the reasons that people come to you is specifically to address sort of their brand in the blogosphere?

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
I think that the information that we provide is an aggregation of all media channels. So, we are often asked that question and a new client may say, "Are your metrics going to give us an assessment of what's happening online?" And from our perspective, the answer is no. It's more important in that if you take -- you at least think about where conversations or the initiation of a conversation occurs; it could be inline at the grocery store or at a football game or at the dry cleaners; it could be an article that you've read in a magazine or a newspaper; it could be a newspaper broadcast; it could be one of your Podcasts. And that will initiate a conversation, and that conversation occurs everywhere in our daily lives. What's interesting about online is that it's one of the only media available where you can actually -- where it actually functions as an opportunity that capture and analyze that conversation. So from our perspective, the discussion online is an aggregation of all media channels.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So not to get into too much of the real what I called nitty-gritty technology; I mean, how exactly do you go about doing this? When I say 'exactly' - I mean give me some broad sense of it without again going into a real technology discussion.

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
So, we built a proprietary Internet monitoring technology that enables us to go and analyze data across all channels of the Internet; and we only go where data is in the public domain. So anywhere where there's the expectation of privacy, we will not enter. That information is downloaded into our database and one of the things that we've accomplished which I'm very proud of, is a Link Map of the Internet. So, we have a map of the Internet that helps us illustrate how web pages are interconnected, and our Link Map has over 62 billion links which translates into over eight billion web pages, and by March of next year, we think that we will have captured consumer comment number 30 billion. So you look at that in context of other research opportunities, and the data volumes are immense.

That information is then processed through a series of algorithms, which are used to extract irrelevant information. And then, relevant content is passed over to a team of data analysts, and we have over 400 data analysts, who sit across North America and they will do information contextualization. That information is then passed over to our project teams, who will then put the final phases down and provide the final research component.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So ultimately, what does a client get when they work with you in terms of output?

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
So one of the things we do is, we work very closely with our clients to define what their objectives are upfront. And you talk about metrics and there are no standardized metrics for this type of information. One of the reasons for that is, the conversations and the perceptions consumers have to different brands across different sectors, really vary in range, and they vary quite dramatically. So, from our perspective, the first thing we want to do is, conduct a historical analysis. And that is one of the benefits of working in online space; because everything is time stamped and it is mostly maintained on the internet, you have the opportunity to go as far back in time, almost I would say to about 2000-2001, to create benchmarks. Once those benchmarks are established, you can then begin to analyze the changes in momentum and perception and involvement and consumer attitude based on what's happening today. So, typically our clients will use us to validate marketing strategies or strategic decisions; they may be launching new products, a new marketing campaign, there may be activity from a competitor, which they worry will have an impact on their brand in which case we will use our data to go out and analyze on a regular basis to determine what impact that activity is having on potential sales, market share, perceptions towards the brand.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, what kind of cost are we talking about? I realize you can't get very specific for one client or another, but give me a range if you could, just for people.

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
Typically, starting point is about $50,000 to $80,000 for a very short-term campaign. And then enterprise clients are well into the million-dollar range.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So it is; it's very technology intense, and so therefore takes a lot of dollars to really be able to get some sense. And so, in terms of the big client, are they looking at a year campaign before they can really feel that they can actually affect perception in a sense?

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
It depends on the industry and the cycle -- product life cycles of the industry. So something like a marketing campaign you can address in short order. Whereas if you think about a product change to a vehicle, that could be yet to your process. So, it really changes from industry to industry. I think what's important, and I want to go back to the question you asked about metrics if I can?

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Yes sir.

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
What's really important from our perspective is, understanding the quantitative and qualitative component of the metrics. If you think about some of the challenges facing marketers today there, the audience is much more fragmented than it used to be. Reaching people is much more difficult; you think about the category 18 to 29 or even arguably 18 to 35 and a lot of these individuals no longer watch television the way they used to. Some won't even have telephones, they'll use their cell phone as their primary means for communication. So, the markets become highly or very specific in its interests. So, we like action, but we like specific types of action. And so from that perspective, it's becoming much, much more difficult for marketers to reach their target audience and to understand their audience. And that's one of the areas where we are able to help our clients. We are able to target very specific niche audiences and from a qualitative perspective, really understand what their needs are and how they make decisions and what their influences are, and what trends they are following and which trends they are ignoring.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Yeah, it's very impressive. I spent 25 years in marketing and all that, and I came out of a firm called Regis McKenna where in the 80's we tried to really measure word of mouth on a one-off basis and it just was painful. And we developed perceptual studies, and did - exactly we're talking about a benchmarking perception before and after, but it was months of work before we really got any really good data. And now you're talking about, you can get that kind of data probably in about a week and a half. So, it's very impressive.

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
And the other component that's important is, understanding a taxonomy within each industry. So again, tied to metrics, what you are really looking for is, defining a taxonomy of attributes. And I don't want to be too technical, but really what that means is how every product in the world is defined by a set of emotional, physical and external attributes. And when you define the taxonomy of attributes that are important to the consumer and also those same attributes, which can then be translated into some kind of business outcome, that's where the data becomes very interesting.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Well, we could probably do a whole another Podcast on that but I am going to have to end here and just remind my listeners that I have been talking to Bradley Silver, who's president of BrandIntel and the web site for your firm is what?

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
www.brandintel.com.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Great, and you are based in Toronto?

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
We are based in Toronto and we have offices in New York, Chicago, LA, Charlotte - and I am not sure if I am leaving any out - and our operations office in Singapore as well.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Yeah, I know, it's very impressive. And I came across this company just because I was doing a lot of googling and all of that on metrics in this whole social media space and your firm really stood out. So, thank you very much for being on Marketing Voices.

Bradley Silver - BrandIntel
Thank you so much. I enjoyed speaking with you.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Thank you, and to all my listeners out there, until next week, may all the voices you hear be marketing voices.