BrandsEye

Women take centre stage in State of the Nation 2013 online conversation

Michaella Kissack — 2013-02-15T14:09:08+00:00

President Zuma's annual address generates over 49,000 online conversations.

CAPE TOWN, 15 FEBRUARY 2013 – On a day when the shocking news of Paralympian Oscar Pistorius appeared to dominate social media, the President's annual State of the Nation address still managed to draw the crowds. From the speech in 2011 with 6,000 online mentions, this year's address delivered just over 49,000 online conversations. This represents a steady growth from SONA 2012's 45,000 online mentions as more South Africans jump on to social media platforms to discuss, debate and comment.

Whilst build up to the address still lends itself to chatter online, the significant majority of the conversation took place on the day. Over 41,000 of the almost 49,000 mentions were generated on Valentine's Day and 60% of it was taking place on Twitter. Online press sites generated a very small contribution towards the overall total and the remaining 39% of the conversation took place on Facebook.

Indicative of the way in which South Africans communicate online, the vast majority (70%) of the conversation was conducted in English and everyone was talking – from the average citizen to highly influential authors such as Helen Zille, Zwelinzima Vavi and DJ Fresh.

Sentiment towards the speech was largely neutral on the day with online South Africans either merely reporting what was being said or hotly debating the issues without much reference to the content of the speech itself. Emergent conversation themes from the online chatter included education, jobs, and corruption but it was women that took centre stage and in certain ways no one might have expected.

The President's impassioned condemnation of violence against women in Zulu generated significant conversation with the hashtags #stoprape and #anenebooysen playing a prominent role in the social media space on the night.

It was, however, the unintended consequence of scheduling the State of the Nation on Valentine's Day that provided an unexpected and light-hearted trend in conversation online as many joked, commented or debated how the scheduling conflict meant the President might avoid having to choose between his wives on this traditional day of love.

"This year's SONA conversation was quite varied. There was frustration towards the issues with little comfort found in the content of the speech. There was passionate solidarity to put a stop to violence against women. And there was a bit of Valentine's Day fun for those not that keen to take it too seriously," said Taryn Walker, CEO of BrandsEye, South Africa's leading online monitoring and insights software provider.

"The most valuable insight, however, is that more and more South Africans are becoming comfortable having these discussions online. We're seeing us move towards a space where the richness of the debate around the issues that really affect the State of our Nation is growing year on year."

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BrandsEye Hints at the Impressive Bookmarks Build-Up

Michaella Kissack — 2012-10-31T12:19:21+00:00

#Bookmarks2012 is officially trending!

The Bookmarks Awards have already created over two million Opportunities-to-See (OTS) the online #Bookmarks2012 conversation alone. In comparison, last year there was just over half that in OTS, illustrating the rate at which the digital industry is growing in South Africa.

The award season is upon us, and to those involved in the industry, the first of November couldn’t approach fast enough, as the prestigious Bookmarks Awards take place.

If the online conversation around the Bookmarks this year had to be paid for, it would have cost R 875 685 thus far, compared to R 243 371 at the same point in time last year.

With 184 awards spread across four main categories, volume figures of online #Bookmarks2012 attest to how the digital industry is expanding and how the Bookmarks highlights this. The volume figures have more than doubled that of last year’s. But the shortlisted digital agencies already know of these high conversation rates. They also know how much online hype the Bookmarks has caused.

How do they know this? A large majority of the finalists for the awards use BrandsEye to track their brands. Their online communication efforts have been tracked, allowing for accurate management and insight mining from the feedback of data, ensuring that future campaigns have improved effectiveness and efficiency - the Bookmarks noticed their efforts.

According to the trends BrandsEye saw last year, the online conversation of the Bookmarks more than tripled on the night of the awards. With the current conversation being so positive and sourced from multiple media types, BrandsEye has no doubt that the popularity of the awards this year, both online and offline, will increase significantly.

BrandsEye is proud to be sponsoring and awarding 4 categories this year, and is extremely excited to release the final report of data and insights on the #Bookmarks2012.

Find us on Facebook or Twitter!

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Monitoring the Daisies

Stacey Rumble — 2012-10-18T09:15:07+00:00

@staceyrumble

Each year BrandsEye partners with Rocking the Daisies to learn about what people have to say about the festival. In return, the BrandsEye-landers get festival passes to experience the festival vibe for themselves and generally make a big deal about it. So what did we learn?

This year 6 805 people posted online about Rocking the Daisies. While this will include people who were upset they couldn’t attend, that does mean that more than one out of every three festival attendees talked about Daisies online!

There have been 14 756 mentions of Daisies in the last five months online. That’s more than twice as much as Heritage Day/National Braai Day received. If 6 805 people tweeted, this means that most people who spoke about Daisies online, tended to speak about the festival at least twice or more. That’s a healthy measure of brand loyalty for you!

Most of these publicly-available mentions came from Twitter. There was still of course, lots of conversation about the festival on Facebook, but many of the attendees are more than likely to have quite high privacy settings and we wouldn’t want to infringe upon them – what we’re reporting on here is what we’re allowed to monitor.

The benefit of inviting famous bands and artists to your festival is getting coverage from highly influential sources. This means that Rocking the Daisies saw incredible return on investment from their online conversation.

There were 15 287 380 Opportunities-To-See conversation about Rocking the Daisies this year. If Seed Experiences (the guys who brought you Daisies) had paid the online community to talk about their festival, it would have cost them R 3 324 775. These values are more than all of the conversation generated about Lady Gaga coming to South Africa!

Highly influential authors (of which there were many) included DJ Fresh, Poppy Ntshongwana, 5fm, Bloc Party, Rob Van Vuuren, various clubs and as well as several press websites’ profiles. People spoke the most about seeing Bloc Party, getting tickets, being generally excited about the weekend and having a good time.

There were an incredible 4 287 mentions of #RTD2012, with conversation about the festival generating 3 603 re-tweets. Many of these were related to headline act Bloc Party, which in itself generated 16% of all conversation (2 410 mentions to be exact).

There were 1 801 tweets which engaged with official festival profile, @rockingthedaisy but interestingly a further 799 tweets incorrectly referenced @rockingthedaisies in their tweets.

Interestingly there wasn’t all that much conversation about the various bands – we’ll put this down to the fact that not too many people were busy on their cellphones during the festival. That said, the band that scored the most volume (other than Bloc Party) was Desmond and the Tutus, which generated 91 mentions.

And just for laughs, festival-joke, “Alan and Steve” appeared in conversation 176 times. We were seriously hoping that “Alan” and “Steve” would have popped up on this word cloud but people were just so excited for the festival and had such a great time that the prevailing themes of conversation were overwhelmingly positive.

Thanks to Seed Experiences and to all of the Daisies' Sponsors, Organisers - we had an amazing time!

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Celebrating South Africa's Heritage Online

Michaella Kissack — 2012-10-05T07:02:31+00:00

On September 24th, South Africa celebrated Heritage Day offline with a braai and online with #BraaiDay. But, as many of our clients know, it’s very unlikely that just one phrase (in this case a hashtag) would be used in relation to one topic, event, or brand. On Heritage Day, four of the most popular phrases were #BraaiDay, #NationalBraaiDay, #HeritageDay and #HappyHeritageDay. The total volume of all four of these was 7 476 mentions on the day.

There were 6 078 individual authors who contributed to these mentions. The difference in the figures means that phrases were mentioned more than once by one individual in an online space. The small difference, however, is a good sign, indicating that there were a lot of unique authors contributing to the conversation, name a South African that does not enjoy a Braai?

A number of well-known people and brands contributed to the conversation on the day, including Bryan Habana, Woolworths, Pabi Moloi, Bonang, Helen Zille, Anele and AB de Villiers. In an online space, especially Social Media, well known people such as these tend to have a high following, and therefore are able to influence more people through one message or mention – the higher the following, the more reach the person has, as the potential for more people to view the mention is higher. This is also known to BrandsEye and our clients as Opportunities-to-See (OTS). BrandsEye is able to calculate this figure based on a 1-10 scale of influence.

Based on all the authors, on all levels of influence who contributed to the Heritage Day online, the total number of Opportunities-to-See the conversation was 6 641 805. Additionally, BrandsEye is able to attribute an average rand value to conversation by looking at how much it would have cost to advertise to the same number of individuals. This is known as Advert Value Equivalent (AVE). The AVE for Heritage Day was R1 545 466.

The data that has been communicated to you above is an example of some of the high level figures and information that BrandsEye is able to capture. For our clients, this is type of data about a brand is valuable in terms of monitoring progress over time and understanding who the authors are that are creating the most amount of Opportunities-to-See (OTS), and generating the highest Advert Value Equivalent (AVE).

This snapshot of information can be communicated to you in written form like it has above; however, BrandsEye realises that a ‘snapshot’ view of a brand’s online conversation for a month can be better expressed and understood in a standard visual format that can illustrate clearly where progress has been made or lost. That’s why we’ve built an infographic report to save you time and allow for easy feedback and sharing.

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The Online Olympics - Social Media Takes Gold

Michaella Kissack — 2012-08-13T13:28:26+00:00

This year, the Olympics was celebrated more widely than ever. People were able to view the events, keep up to date with athletes in real time, and participate in the global conversation through the ever increasing use of the internet, specifically Social Media.

BrandsEye, the leading online insights company in South Africa, used the Olympics as an opportunity to track the online conversation around South African athletes. In doing so, BrandsEye made it evident than an event can unite people online through common conversation in a way that has never been so popular, and illustrated how the use of Social Media impacts both the athlete and his supporters.

For South Africans on the Social Media platform Twitter, two of the most popular hashtags, which serve as conversation aggregators, were #TeamSA and #Team_SA_2012. Throughout the Olympic Games this year, South Africans proved their support, pride and loyalty by uniting and continuously using the two hashtags while their athletes competed. By the end of the Games, #TeamSA had been used 45 085 times, and #Team_SA_2012, 13 824 times.

Between the last Olympic Games in 2008 and this year’s games four years later, Twitter users have increased drastically. As athletes at the Games utilised Twitter as a platform to connect with their supporters, the wide use of Social Media proved to have negative effects for some athletes. Among them, Greek athlete Pareskevi Papachristou, was disqualified from the London Olympics for tweeting a racist joke.

Alternatively, followers are not always supportive, as British diver Tom Daley found out, after a Tweet by @Rileyy_69 mentioned the disappointment Tom was to his father, who had passed away just over a year ago. With almost 1.5 million followers on Twitter, Daley’s retweet of the unkind message sent his supporters into an uproar against @Rileyy_69 to the point where he was arrested.

Although Social Media proved to have its negative side effects, the positive effects of its use were overwhelming, especially for home-grown swimmer Chad Le Clos. On the days of and almost every day that followed his win against Michael Phelps, Chad was trending. Chad Le Clos, including his Twitter handle, @LeClos_Swim, received a total of 56 336 online mentions. He has 67 853 Twitter followers.

In comparison, Cameron van der Burgh, a fellow South African Gold Medal swimmer, received a total of 3 833 online mentions, including his Twitter handle @CameronvdBurgh. Cameron has 35 133 Twitter followers.

An even bigger testament to the power of Social Media in 2012 was Chad Le Clos’ father, Bert Le Clos, tweeting from his own account, @BigBertLeClos, and engaging with his son’s supporters. With only 1 796 followers and 39 tweets in total, Bert received 2 070 online mentions and managed to create 5 834 445 Opportunities-to-See (OTS), and generate an Advert Value Equivalent (AVE) of R1 331 657.

More than ever, Social Media is serving as a glue bringing athletes closer to their supporters and bonding them with followers that have an identity. South African athletes who competed in the Olympic Games, such as Chad and Cameron, were shown how Social Media allowed for more active participation, and how much support and pride was behind them. The high engagement that came from not only Chad, but his father, Bert, gave followers a sense of importance and value, which is one of the largest uses of Social Media platforms today.

The negative effects of these online platforms are evident, however, additionally evident is that people, in this case athletes, can be in control of the outcome by either being specific about the content they put out there, or using a tactic such as retweeting to change the direction of online conversation.

As not only South Africans but the world used the platforms of Twitter, Facebook and various others to keep up to date with, and support their team at the 2012 Olympics in London, it became obvious from early on that Social Media would take the gold medal this year for aggregating the most conversation about one event, in one space.

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The World Celebrates Madiba Day Online

Michaella Kissack — 2012-07-25T12:43:24+00:00

Did you wish Madiba a happy 94^th birthday? If so, how? On Facebook? Twitter?

We began tracking #MadibaDay from July 1^st. For 18 days, we watched as the number of online mentions of the day began to climb.

Volumes of conversation increased week by week:

July 1 - 7: 3 680 online conversations

July 8 - 14: 28 532 online conversations

July 15 - 17 (the three days leading up to Madiba Day): 32 144 online conversations

Finally, after much anticipation, Madiba’s 94^th birthday on July 18^th brought people from all over the globe together on various online platforms. This conversation generated 128 538 online mentions, more than double the amount generated in the 17 days that lead up to the day.

164 601 people participated in the Madiba Day conversation since the beginning of July. This means that 86% of the global contributors to the online #madibaday conversation made an effort to mention it at least once. The remainder came from other enthusiastic contributors who engaged in conversation twice or more on the day.

In 2011, just 19 206 South Africans took part in the online Madiba Day celebration. This year the number climbed to 66 632 people – an increase of over 300%. Interestingly, South Africans only contributed 35% to the total global online conversation.

The countries that participated most included the USA, generating 14%, as well as the UK (8%), Spain (3%), and Venezuela (3%).

The total of 190 377 online conversations created over 364 million Opportunities-to-See (OTS) Madiba Day conversation. This means that based on everyone who mentioned him, over 364 million people in that audience had the Opportunity-to-See the Madiba Day conversations online.

Additionally, with this much exposure (OTS) from people of various influential standings, the amount of online conversation generated an Advert Value Equivalent (AVE) of over R83 million.

Highly influential people, both local and international, tweeted about Madiba, his birthday and 67 minutes. These included Gareth Cliff, DJ Fresh, Bonang, AB de Villiers, Claro Ronaldo, the White House, Eddie Izzard, and Richard Branson.

#MadibaDay was a global online gathering, which united people from all over the world to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 94 years online.

If you’d like to see these results in a visual format, check out the infographic which BrandsEye put together.

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Computicket Goes Gaga

Michaella Kissack — 2012-06-25T09:35:13+00:00

Six days ago, Big Concerts made it known to the public that a ‘Big Announcement’ would be made as to which major artist they’d be bringing next. Consumers speculated whether Adele, Madonna, and Lady Gaga would be chosen to come to South Africa later this year.

The suspense created a lot of speculation from South Africans. It wasn't long before it transferred to the online space where the conversation continued and BrandsEye monitored.

South Africans’ speculation generated 4 064 online mentions. For more context, Father’s Day, which was over the same weekend, generated 4 602 online mentions.

Online conversation about the #BigAnnouncement and @LadyGagaSA generated 3 544 mentions.

Of the 4 064 artist predictions, Adele was only mentioned 24 times online, Madonna, only 40, and Lady Gaga, a significantly higher number at 1 152 times.

14% of conversation about the announcement result was negative, with the remaining 86% of online mentions comprising neutral and positive sentiment, with much excitement that Lady Gaga was the chosen performer.

The next phase of tracking involved ticket purchasing, which generated 8 467 online mentions – more than double that of the artist predictions! @computicket was mentioned in 63% of them. Anger and frustration was expressed continuously throughout the day around online ticket purchasing queues. Less than 2% of the online conversation was positive.

By the end of the first day of ticket sales, there were 13 435 320 Opportunities-To-See (OTS) the online conversation. Additionally, frustration with Computicket generated an Advert-Value-Equivalent (AVE) of R3 078 222.

With 63% of ticketing conversation directed at it, Computicket noticed that its customers were unhappy and managed to maintain contact with them on Facebook and Twitter. Computicket sent out exactly 44 tweets around #LadyGagaSA.

In the two days that followed, online conversation had decreased by about 25% to 2 278 online mentions of @computicket and #LadyGagaSA. Overall sentiment is now much more positive with people celebrating having their tickets.

From the time people found out there would be a Big Announcement from Big Concerts, to the time people had their hands on a ticket, there were 16 505 online mentions.

In total there were 41 000 530 Opportunities-To-See (OTS) the online conversation, which generated an Advert-Value-Equivalent (AVE) of R9 341 451.

93% of this conversation took place on Twitter, which was a convenient way for angry customers to direct their frustration at @computicket. Generating 96% of all mentions, consumers were the largest driver of this online conversation.

From the #BigAnnouncement, to the online ticketing queues, and finally the relief of having a ticket, the anger at not being able to purchase a ticket drove over 50% of total online conversation.

This is a good demonstration of how a brand’s name can be so negatively perceived in such a short space of time.

There’s no doubt that online conversation can travel quickly, particularly if there are so many Opportunities-To-See (OTS), but bad news travels faster.

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Social Media Sizzles Steers

Michaella Kissack — 2012-06-19T09:30:07+00:00

Fast food restaurant, Steers, has offered its Wacky Wednesday burger deal for years but this week’s Steers R10.00 Rib Burger special created a lot of offline and online hype.

Steers’ Rib Burger promotion was mentioned over 7 000 times online on Thursday alone. In 24 hours, the volume of online conversation had reached 10 425 mentions. In comparison, the announcement of the new Springbok captain only generated 1 973 mentions in the days following the announcement.

Trending topics which transfer to the online space tend to increase at a rapid pace, as the online audience is intrigued and then gets involved.

A burger sold at 60% less of its regular price managed to increase online conversation about the brand by 99 times what it usually receives. The wave of conversation can also die down just as quickly, with Steers’ online conversation having decreased by 81% by the next day.

The offline activity within Steers outlets was mirrored online, where social media platforms also provided an opportunity for consumers to voice their opinions. For businesses involved in social media, monitoring online conversations shows how consumer perceptions are influenced offline, and are an opportunity to gather information and insight for future reference.

7 000 people turned to Social Media to discuss Steers’ special and there were 7.5 million Opportunities-To-See (OTS) conversation about the brand. Online communication, mostly through Social Media, is a powerful tool to spread a message fast and wide.

88% of online Steers conversation has taken place on Twitter. Additionally, the far reaching disappointment generated an Advert Value Equivalent (AVE) of R 1.7 million.

Unfortunately, Steers was unable to meet the intense demand for their R 10.00 Rib Burgers resulting in disappointment. However, if a business can create a campaign that is received positively and is taken up by the online community, the internet can be a fast and cost-effective way of creating awareness and a positive perception of your brand.

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Conversation backing the Bok Captain

Michaella Kissack — 2012-06-06T14:54:00+00:00

@michaellaemma & @staceyrumble

‘South Africa coach Heyneke Meyer said Jean de Villiers would captain the Springboks in a three-Test series against England in June’. This is just one of the 1 973 mentions that we tracked after the announcement on Monday.

We found an overwhelmingly positive response to the news, where our proudly South African Springbok supporters accounted for 68% of the conversation, which took place 81% of the time on the social media platform Twitter.

The conversation we monitored wasn’t limited to South Africa. The world’s leading rugby nations, including New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Zimbabwe, together, contributed over 15% of online mentions about the new Springbok captain. This is a great illustration of how social media platforms provide the opportunity to bring a community from around the world together over one topic, in this case #rugby.

De Villiers’ new captaincy was received extremely positively, with less than 1% of online mentions displaying negative sentiment towards the choice in Springbok captain. In the small pool of negative sentiment toward the announcement, one of the comments that stuck out was, ‘With de Villiers as captain and useless players like spies, kankowski, oliver. We can be lucky we’re playing #England and the #Kiwi’s’.

BBC Sport, which boasts 251 935 followers on Twitter, published an article on its website titled ‘Jean de Villiers will captain South Africa against England’. Between these highly credible sources, including The Guardian, Rob Vember, and Liezel van der Westhuizen, and the large majority of consumers, the announcement of the new Springbok captaincy gave 3 620 485 people the Opportunity-To-See (OTS) the online conversation.

Finally, had the online publicity attributed to the announcement been given a figure, we have calculated that the Advert Value Equivalent (AVE) of the announcement that Jean de Villiers will lead the Springbok team as captain is R 829 107.

We look forward to seeing the online and offline support for the Boks and its captain continue to grow, and that the weekend brings them a proud victory!

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Rich Data : The Competitive Edge

Marié-Louise van Zyl — 2012-05-10T09:10:07+00:00

A large number of companies are realizing that they have a promising source of revenue at their fingertips: their existing content assets. While this information is packaged as print and online media for consumers; more innovative companies are discovering additional uses for the vast amounts of unstructured information. By creating meaningful information— with charts, maps, images, and lists —companies can break this information down to help business owners make key decisions.

BrandsEye has managed to create a way of sourcing meaningful data by searching for branded mentions and using filters to draw out the specific data required. Not only is the data displayed as “what you need, when you need it”; but you could also have this data human verified by the BrandsEye crowd.

The crowd is the concept of having your data crossed checked by a number of individuals (and potential consumers) and peer verified as relevant or irrelevant, what language it is, the country it came from, and (my personal favourite) what its sentiment toward your brand is.

This represents the cornerstone of rich data; turning stand-alone pieces of data into vital, must-have information about specific audiences. In other words making information more digestible, searchable, and valuable; allowing easy segmentation and selection.

Data segmentation of data has been used for many decades to give marketers the edge by communicating to the right groups of customers. Nowadays, as the online conversation volumes grow, businesses need to be more resourceful and effective in reaching and engaging their customers, forcing them to come up with more precise techniques to segment the market.

There are many ways in which a market can be segmented and a marketer will need to decide which strategy is best suited for a given product or service. Sometimes the best option arises from combining different strategies.

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