Matt Galloway offers a well-researched, and well-articulated overview of CGM analytics space the New Communications Forum newsletter. As with starting WOMMA, it's always a tad bizzare drawing attention to an article that highlights competitors, but when you helicopter up a bit you realize that Matt's piece is about so much more than three vendors in the CGM space. He's talking about a fundamentally new, consumer-centered approach toward media measurements, informed and reinforced by the presence of a growing roster of players. That's a very big deal, and a game-changer for marketing and consumer understanding.
Seeding CGM: Some important perspective here. I left P&G in late 1999 after leading or co-leading over a hundred "tests" in the interactive marketing space, from online sampling to online ad testing to multi-brand online "content" initiatives. It was all incredibly rewarding and stimulating, but my #1 conclusion after this dizzying "test and measure" dance was that the web is first and foremost about "listening." You can't target or start a meaningful conversation with consumers without first listening, or "respecting" the boss. You also can't manage what you can't measure. The web, it struck me, was not only blossoming into the world's most potent "focus group" -- far more insightful, candid, and even honest than traditional research -- but also unleashing an almost unstoppable flow of highly-measureable consumer-generated media (CGM) that in effect was stealing "attention" from the controlled grasp of marketers. The CGM analytics movement that Matt Galloway describes is about putting a meaningful "meter" on that process. I really could not imagine a more exciting time to be in marketing. Yes, I really mean that!
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