I wrote this analogy back in 2005 and called it My Online Brand Intelligence Analogy and it is still apt and even more important now that attention data tools have matured and implicit and explicit interests are trackable by such tools as are offered by Particls and Attensa that exploit the attention economy. If you don’t yet know about attention data or its more practical cousin apml, you need to read about them after you let me know what you think about my analogy…
Let’s consider the chimpanzee. There are several ways to learn more about the chimpanzee: through dissection, in captivity, and in the wild.
Although dissecting the chimpanzee to see how the physiology works is essential as a form of training and education, dissection doesn’t help with knowing the behavior of the chimpanzee.
You might be able to make assumptions about how intelligent it is or what it eats, but in terms of behavioral studies, its irrelevant. This is similar to posthumous studies of market data — there is no life there, only corpse.
Polling and focus groups are like observing the behavior of the chimpanzee in capacity — you have a living, breathing, chimpanzee, but you have one that is under stress, duress, and has been partially acclimatized to appeasing its handlers — it wants to keep safe, it wants to be fed, and it wants to get out — so observing chimpanzee behavior in captivity is like observing consumer or market behavior in focus groups — you have real-live response, but you have the response of something that is beholden to you, that is wondering what’s in it for me — you have corrupted behavioral data.
If you want to really know the true behavior of the chimpanzee, you need to observe it in the wild. And to get the best concept of the behavior of the chimpanzee, you need to become — or at least be accepted as — a chimpanzee.
Jane Goodall was a pioneer in the behavioral study of primates because she was accepted over time into the community of chimps. Online brand intelligence can study and report on brand and consumer behavior in the wild, in the wilderness.
Where behavior is true, honest, and living.
