What have you done for me lately: Measuring Marketing’s Unmeasurables

Fellow Dow Joneser Matt Toll emceed a session at Frost and Sullivan’s Sales and Marketing conference yesterday in sunny AZ. From what I hear the session was well received. Jeremiah, naturally, put together a nice summary post.

Question for Matt: Is this stuff really unmeasurable, or have we not yet found the best way to measure it?

I'm eager to hear more details about the event.

Thomson Business Intelligence Dismantling

Major changes in one of the old-guard in the business news and information sector:

Thomson Business Intelligence Dismantling:

"Although the announcement from TBI that went out to clients stated that the current divestiture of product lines represented a decision to 'realign specific services within Business Intelligence Services' in order to 'best align our products and resources to the markets and customers we serve,' in fact, Paul Stutler, vice president and general manager of TBI, clarified that, when completed, the transition would mean the end of TBI."

In the wake of Web 1.0 and now Web 2.0, the old research companies (Nexis, Dialog, Dow Jones, Reuters) had to embrace the future or die. Unfortunately, not enough investment was put into Thomson to keep it relevant in this always changing market.

Chinese Bloggers Posing Real Threat to Western Companies

An interesting article in The Wall Street Journal (subscription) on Friday ("It's Called the Forbidden City for a Reason," by Geoffrey A. Fowler) about how bloggers in China have been pressuring Starbucks and some other Western companies to be more culturally sensitive as they enthusiastically try to capture market share in the burgeoning Chinese economy. The article focuses on a Starbucks located in the Forbidden City in Beijing. One blogger -- Rui Chenggang -- took his distaste for the Western coffee shop's location near such a sacred area to his blog. In a week, the Journal reports, the post was viewed more than 500,000 times.

Chinese it seems are much more comfortable taking their feelings to the blogosphere than other methods we might be more comfortable with in the West -- such as complaining about the government in the press.

This means Western companies (the article mentions Yum Brands' KFC, Dell and Procter & Gamble also being attacked by bloggers in China recently) now have to become acutely aware of how their brand can be criticized in the burgeoning social media space.

Full disclosure: The Journal is owned by Dow Jones, the company for which I also work.

Social Media Site HR Departments Will Hate

HR departments take note. Here's a fairly new site -- JobVent -- that could really take off. It encourages employees to post anonymously about whether they love or hate their employer and state the reasons why. This is the type of site that companies are going to have to keep their eyes on as reputation issues could certainly snowball as employees feel they can vent without repercussions. This is a reminder that a company's stakeholders includes its employees.

Not that this is an entirely new concept. F'd Company has been around for a while but that site certainly encourages only negative comments, while JobVent encourages positive and negative comments.

Found on: The Net-Savvy Executive

Top Cliches of 2006 - from Factiva Insight

The Wall Street Journal ran what's become known around here as the "Factiva Cliche Index" today. (And lest you're wondering, just because Dow Jones now fully owns both brands doesn't mean we Factiva folk can walk right over to the editors and say "run this." Not that it hurts to be in the same building, or anything.)

Bottom line, this is a great example of text mining put to use to give information that single searches can't do. Clichés might be a fun example, but look for more hard-hitting ones coming soon.