I stumbled upon this Google video on using search results to understand the health of your brand versus other brands. I thought it was interesting – but very dangerous.
[Data and information in the wrong hands can become weapons of mass insight destruction!]
While it does answer some burning marketing questions – such as “how strong is my brand versus other brands”?, it could potentially be valid – since it is based on searches made by consumers, and therefore are ‘consumer-action-based’, and it is possible to monitor these across time – as per the video, it still leaves a lot of questions.
- Why are things going up or down?
- In the example, there was a surge in one of the brand’s “supposed brand strength”. Can you trace that back to something relevant?
- The search terms are also revealing in the example video: the top search term is “digital camera batteries”. Now, how do you explain that? From my perspective, that actually indicates a potential problem/opportunity – that consumers have 'battery-related’ concerns and/or interests more than “digital camera” per se.
This is really interesting – but again, data and information [plus graphing, visualization techniques and statistical testing] can become weapons of insight destruction in the wrong hands.
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