The Royal Wedding was a huge hit at my house, which was a little surprising given that I am married to a Chinese American and I am a republican rather than a royalist. But having two little girls who are interested in princesses, I found myself watching along with the billions of others. Talking about that dress, the flower girls, and lets not forget Pippa Middleton’s contribution. What makes this event and other events like this so interesting is that they generate so much buzz (marketing speak for people interacting with other people about a common interest).
Understanding common interests is the key in marketing; it enables marketers to target individuals with relevant content. The challenge is to extract the interactions between people, so it was timely that I attended the Webtrends Engage conference in Sydney. Webtrends, along with others, specialise in capturing digital interactions – these interactions can then be feed into the corporate data warehouse to enrich our understanding of consumers and subsequently be used by marketing to reach out to customers with relevant content.
When Teradata talks about big data we are talking about capturing all of the unstructured data that resides in the ether and integrating it into the structured data that is the bread and butter of data warehousing.
So my text to a colleague to ensure that he was getting ideas for his up and coming wedding is an interaction; my friends’ tweets regarding the dress – another interaction; and joining the Pippa Middleton Facebook fan page – yet another interaction. All these data points are an indication of interests, and while my bank may not be interested, retailers should be.
The future of marketing is already moving towards collecting data points that tell us more about the consumers that interact with us, marketers now have the challenge of trawling through this data to look for the gems that are the next great campaign.
How are you rounding out your knowledge of a consumer outside the traditional data feeds?
