Client on blog analytics: it’s a riddle we need to solve

Continuing with the theme of analysis of connected media (previous post) the most interesting thing I’ve read this morning is an account of a conversation with Shawn Conly, VP of Advertising and Consumer Insights at EA, the games giant who was pitched to by two major blog analytics firms in the US, Umbria and Intelliseek. The post, by Matt Galloway, is on New Communications Blogzine.

Understanding what blogs are saying about games is very useful for EA, alongside the other market research tools that the company uses:

"Ours is a market driven by trends." says Shawn. "Much like Hollywood’s opening weekend, video games are made or broken in the first two weeks of sales."

Early adopters and gamers have always been more likely to read and post on blogs and messageboards than the average consumer. Communicators and marketers in other sectors can probably learn a good deal from the experiences of firms like EA, as the blogosphere (curse that word) expands and begins to have an influence on their consumers / customers.

Mr Conly plumped for Umbria in the end – if you’re interested in what’s out there for understanding mass market conversations in the blogosphere, the post’s well worth a read.

Galloway’s conclusion supports my current view that communications and marketing have yet to create appropriate models fir understanding how connected media works (and a lexicon for describing it) and what its impact on reputation and brands is:

Overall Shawn is very pleased with Umbria’s products and service, but feels that EA is not yet getting "complete value of [the data from Umbria]" and wants to "get more out of what is provided [by Umbria]." He looks at this as an EA issue and not a short-coming of Umbria, but agrees that Umbria would be well served by bolstering the consultative aspect of their offering. Shawn is big on the potential of blog analytics but emphasizes the need of the industry – both vendor and client – to figure out the "business implications" riddle.

By the way if you have a slightly technical bent have a look at the free analysis tools on Intelliseek’s Blogpulse showcase.

[Geek footnote: This is my first post using the Flock browser – apologies if there any glitches and please do point them out to me.]

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