White Paper: "Designing Around People"

We are Valtech. We create value through technology.

Thursday, 11 October 2012

Designing Around People

White Paper

Valtech

120 Aldersgate Street

London, EC1A 4JQ

United Kingdom

www.valtech.co.uk

Author:

Name: Jonathan Cook

Title: Head of New Media

[email protected]

Twitter: @trendshed

mailto:[email protected]


Valtech 120 Aldersgate Street | London, EC1A 4JQ | United Kingdom

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ___________________________________________________ 3

1. Why Design Around People? __________________________________ 4

2. Facebook Versus Hype _____________________________________ 14

3. Monetising Facebook As A New Channel ________________________ 18

References ________________________________________________ 25



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ABSTRACT

This whitepaper provides evidence that the internet has entered a third phase in its evolution and

is currently being rebuilt around people. Significant evolutionary change usually provides

opportunities for innovation, both incremental and disruptive.

Whilst people orientated systems are benefiting both applications designed for B2B and B2C

users, this whitepaper focuses predominantly on use of applications integrated with Facebook as

a business channel. Whilst some companies have seen huge success with their Facebook

initiatives, others have stalled. This whitepaper provides evidence and tactics to successfully

monetise the Facebook channel.

Jonathan Cook, October 2012



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1. WHY DESIGN AROUND PEOPLE?

1.1 Introduction

The internet is being rebuilt around people. This whitepaper argues that rethinking businesses

around people first, rather than technology or content is the most important focus that firms who

use software can have.

Fig 1 Three evolutionary phases of the internet

If we grossly simplify the evolution of the internet, then three broad evolutionary phases emerge. In the early days firms did little more than copy and paste existing print marketing content and push it on-line. Over time we became more sophisticated, we allowed people to interact with web-sites, to comment and buy. As the internet evolved we mashed up services to play video and allow people to Like or Tweet our content and implemented more advanced features and services. There is now, however, significant evidence that we have entered a 3rd phase in the evolution of the internet, that applications are being designed around people as the first priority. In an article in the Economist in November 2011, Ron Conway, often described as one of Silicon Valley’s “Super Angels”, gave his view on where significant wealth via the internet will be generated next. In his opening paragraph Conway stated: “One might think that the “social web” is maturing. In fact, I predict it is only at the beginning. I believe the current and future crop of talented young entrepreneurs will build applications enabling deeper connections between users and the world around them—and the evidence will be seen in 2012 in the start-ups that attract our seed-stage investments, with mobile prominent in our sights” Conway’s opinion begs the question, is mobile merely an enabling technology which helps us build better people orientated services connecting users? Is mobile currently popular purely because it satisfies very human cravings for immediacy, convenience and personal interaction? Advocates for people orientated concepts argue that we have already entered the 3rd phase in the internet’s evolution and that companies who are rethinking their businesses around people as the first priority and relegating technology or content to secondary considerations are reaping the benefits of innovation.



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Certainly there have been some very high profile businesses which have grown hugely by treating people orientated concepts as a distinct business strategy. Countless more companies have experienced the benefits of smaller incremental innovation, through taking small tactical steps in better connecting people within software systems. Having said that, some firms who have experimented with Facebook as a channel have stalled. They haven’t been able to mirror the success of firms who have experienced run-away growth, nor have they been able to make the Facebook channel relevant to their customers. This whitepaper goes on to explore:

Examples of people orientated applications

Discusses how increased scientific understanding of human beings is underpinning the

significant growth of companies with people orientated digital strategies

How to better utilise Facebook as a channel

1.2 Examples of People Orientated Applications

Companies are increasingly building people orientated applications. Most of these applications do

not represent a revolutionary change in business strategy, instead, these applications tend to be

incremental innovations. These applications are successful because they better integrate and

connect people.

In December 2010 the respected management consultancy McKinsey released a report detailing

statistical analysis of companies that had engaged in various social business activities, building

better software to power “social business processes”. McKinsey broke their findings down into

three different types of software application:

1. Internal

2. External & Suppliers

3. Customer Related



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A survey of 1,598 company respondents reported the benefits (shown in the diagram below) of

utilising social technologies internally within their businesses, with “increased speed of access to

knowledge” being reported as the most significant benefit.

Fig 2 Benefits of social technologies in internal facing applications

A typical example of social technologies utilised with an internal focus are “Social Intranets” which

drive benefits such increased speed of access to knowledge. Traditional intranets can be quite stale

environments, a combination of technology and content, where the content begins to decay the

moment it is published. Social intranets, however, add people into the mix and inject the

necessary spice to breathe life and utility into an intranet.

Within a social intranet, for instance, you can navigate content by what your boss has read, or see

what experts in your company have been reading, it adds a whole new dimension.

A social intranet allows you to not only find the author of a case study, but also see which of your

colleagues were responsible for delivering individual parts of the service. This means that you can

easily reach out immediately to someone who can answer the very specific question that you might

have.

A social intranet becomes more useful over time, people post and broadcast their expertise on

platforms which come alive because they are populated and more natural. Adding people into the

mix transforms the leverage of intranets.



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With respect external facing systems, McKinsey surveyed 1,088 company respondents who

reported the following benefits of social technologies:

Fig 3 Benefits of social technologies in external facing applications

Typical social applications with an external focus include collaboration tools such as SharePoint

and electronic chat products.

There are, however, examples of companies taking an even more sophisticated approach to

integrating people within external facing business processes. Teva, a large Canadian

pharmaceutical company publicly reported it had reduced its manufacturing cycle by 50%. Teva

has deployed not only the SharePoint collaboration application, but tools such as Strategy-Nets to

connect disparate people across the supply chain who do not work together, but have common

interests and also an application called Moxie to fine tune this ad-hoc communication across a

complex ad-hoc external networks.

This networked innovation has provided Teva with new tools to manage the strategic direction of

its wider supply chain. Of course Teva’s competitors share elements of this wider external supply

chain, however, since Teva has created influence over this network it has put itself in a better

position to compete.



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We are all more familiar with the use of social technologies in customer orientated applications,

whether branded Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. Many of us are also increasingly aware of

companies who use listening tools to interact with customers mentioning a brand on social media

platforms to provide proactive customer service. Other firms are starting to generate significant

business intelligence, through listening to customers and interested third parties on social media

and blogs, often to generate a more realistic understanding of how their company is perceived

externally. McKinsey surveyed 1,708 company respondents who reported the following benefits of

social technologies within business processes focused on suppliers and 3rd party external purposes:

Fig 4 Benefits of social technologies in customer facing applications

The prime focus of this whitepaper is the use of Facebook as a channel. There have been some well publicised successes, as well as other initiatives which have seemingly dribbled away and failed. At Facebook’s F8 conference in September 2011 several companies stood up and launched new applications. These companies discussed what they thought would make their services successful. Removing all the marketing froth, each of the companies re-iterated some common themes. Their applications were said to be “social by design” and “frictionless” and would allow people “serendipitously” to “stumble” onto content that pleased them. Two months after the F8 conference those same companies had achieved some amazing results:

The Guardian built an app for Facebook which had been installed by nearly 4 million people, generating an extra million page impressions each day. Half the apps users were 24 and under, a traditionally hard to reach demographic.

A social reader app for Facebook which drew more than 3.5 million monthly active users.



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Yahoo! built a deep Open Graph integration into its site and more than 10 million people chose to turn on the social news experience. A 600% increase in traffic coming from Facebook, and those people were reading more articles than an average user.

More than a million users connected their Facebook accounts to the new social experience on the Independent’s website. Many of the most shared and most viewed stories were from the late 1990s, as a result of increased social virality.

Spotify had added 4 million users after launching its Facebook integration at the F8 conference 8 weeks earlier.

Whilst each of these Facebook concepts examples show impressive growth, they all fundamentally share broadly the same idea, that when people are logged into Facebook they can see what their friends are reading or listening to giving them the opportunity to explore that content too. TripAdvisor, on the other hand, are a great example of a successful Facebook concept which takes a different approach. TripAdvisor’s traditional content and technology driven on-line business was very successful and provided a popular restaurant and pub review service for users. Overtime, however, TripAdvisor experienced trust issues. Since it was possible to write reviews with anonymous “internet handles” there were complaints that venues had written false glowing reviews to promote themselves. Equally some businesses complained that their competitors had written fake reviews which seriously impacted their business. In December 2010 TripAdvisor launched a deep integration of their service with Facebook. Overnight trust issues evaporated when users of the Facebook version of the service increasingly saw reviews which were attributed directly to real people’s Facebook profiles. The Facebook integration provided significant additional benefits to users. Consider the adjacent screen shot of the Facebook integration.



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Fig 5 TripAdvisor’s Facebook integration

When compared to the compared to the traditional TripAdvisor service, the Facebook integration provides the following additional benefits:

Personalised navigation - It is now possible to navigate by your own friends activity.

This is a far more personal and interesting navigation experience than standard web-

search experience delivers.

Judgement – We all know friends who are tight fisted. If we see our cost conscious

friend has given a positive recommendation or “liked” a venue we can be fairly sure that

this venue represents value for money.

Expert versus idiot – We know friends who we might consider to be expert on a

subject. Indeed we also have friends whose opinion we most certainly wouldn’t trust, for

instance, someone who is an appalling cook. When we can see how people we know have

been interacting with a web-site, it enables us to take our own knowledge of those

individuals to form a better judgement. We know how much we might trust a friends

recommendation, since we know exactly how much we value their opinion on different

subjects. Using our friends activity in this way also helps us to avoid things we are likely

to want to avoid, which is just as valuable as finding something new shiny and exciting.

The real world – unlike anonymous reviews, we can pick up the phone to people we

know and get a whole bunch of information we’d never glean from a traditional web-site.

Our friends can provide us with the benefit of their experience, for instance “you really

should visit that pub on a Sunday because their roast dinner is brilliant”. No amount of

expensive software coding could mimic that sort of useful interaction. Putting people in

the mix transforms a web-site.

Within a year of launch 85 million people had tried TripAdvisor’s Facebook integration and when

compared to the traditional web-site TripAdvisor measured that Facebook users were 27% more

engaged and twice as likely to contribute.



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In a world

where we are

increasingly

swamped by

choice, people

orientated

applications

are just better.

For instance

when faced

with hundreds

of TV channels

to browse, it is

a better

experience to

be able to

browse

through what

your friends

have watched,

or to flick

through the

films that your

friends have

flagged for

you.

Fig 6 People orientated experiences will become more common place because they are just better

1.3 The Power Of People

The process of designing applications and digital marketing strategies around people as the first

priority is sometimes known as “Social By Design”.

Companies that live and breathe the concepts of social by design, talk of building applications

which make it easy for people serendipitously to stumble upon new content or products that they

are attracted to frictionlessly.

This short-hand way of speaking, obscures the deep lessons that these firms have learnt. In

essence, these firms have understood much of the scientific research into human beings and then

worked out how to beneficially exploit this knowledge.

Lessons have been drawn from numerous disciplines such as anthropology, psychology and

sociology. Companies have been taking research within fields such as how the brain works, how we



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decide, the make-up of social networks and how we are influenced across social networks and have

then translated this knowledge to determine how to build better applications and design superior

digital marketing strategies.

Valtech’s previous Whitepaper titled “Simplifying Facebook Commerce Part 2 V1.1” provides more

commentary regarding how the lessons from increased scientific understanding of human beings is

being exploited, however, the most important points to understand are that we rely on other people

to both find new products or services we might be interested in and also to help us to decide to

reject or approve options.

Research shows that we tend to

have four or five people who we are

very close to and with whom we

interact with several times a week.

We both subconsciously and overtly

rely on these close relationships to

help us make decisions.

For instance just through

mentioning the brand of a car in

normal conversation, we

subconsciously observe how our

close friends react and this helps us

make a judgement of our own

towards that make or model

Fig 7 Scientists have mapped typical human networks

As per the diagram above scientists have mapped out an understanding of human relationships

and not just the number and intensity of relationships, but also how the way we interact with

people changes the further they get from our core social group of four or five people.

Since the core group of people tend to be quite similar to us, we have evolved a subconscious

strategy of scanning people two steps removed from us in order to ensure that we stumble across

new ideas, products, events, services or shows that might interest us.

Now consider our reliance on other people to both help us make decisions and to find new things

we might be interested in, especially when you think of how we seem to live in a world where we

are bombarded with more and more information.

In fact this trend for an ever increasing onslaught of information has been quantified somewhat, by

Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google when he stated:

“Between the birth of the world and 2003, there were five exabytes of information created. We [now] create five exabytes every two days. See why it’s so painful to operate in information markets?”



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In simple terms the amount of information in

the world is increasing at a vast speed. Yet we

only have one brain. Our close friends help us

to make decisions and our wider network of

friends helps us to stumble on new things we

might be interested in. Those companies which

understand our natural strategy to cope with an

onslaught of information and design software

applications which leverage this very human

capability will build better, more useable, more

useful and ultimately more successful

applications.

Fig 8 Why rely on one brain when you can rely on many? When you compare the vast speed which technology changes, to the comparatively slow speed that human beings have evolved there are two simple points to take note of:

Those companies that try to bend people around technology will fail

Those companies that bend technology around people will succeed

This whitepaper has only touched on a fraction of the research into human beings which is being

exploited to improve new software concepts. At minimum companies should take note of the key

trends in building better software applications around people. As the quantity of information and

choice in the world continues to increase, it is the companies that provide a more useable human

experience that will be most attractive to users.



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2. FACEBOOK VERSUS HYPE

The diagram below shows the familiar Gartner Hype Curve, a graphic representation of the

maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies.

Fig 9 Gartner hype curve

Of course any one of the technologies in Gartner’s diagram could be blended together to build

overall digital concepts which work better for people than is being achieved by existing services.

The central thrust of this whitepaper is that individual technologies should be ignored in the first

instance, since it is more important to think about people and design business concepts around

them and then to consider technology and content considerations latterly.

The secondary purpose of this whitepaper is to consider Facebook as a channel and how companies

can better use it and better bend it around customers. Specifically we explore how to approach

new application concepts which are under-pinned by Facebook.

For the last couple of years the hype around Facebook has been overwhelming and the promise of

the platform has drawn companies in. It is fair to say that the concept of “Facebook Commerce” is

currently in the descendancy, towards the “trough of disillusionment” on Gartner’s model above.

Whilst many companies have experienced run-away success, others have tried to harness the

platform and not yet been able to generate similar success.

Many of those companies which have struggled have seen the allure of the phrase “Facebook

Commerce” as the green light to replicate traditional eCommerce websites, although within a



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Facebook page. However, it is better to think of Facebook Commerce as being any type of

business use of the Facebook channel, rather than an as a specific “eCommerce” opportunity.

Having said that, there are successful shop applications which have been implemented in

Facebook. Consider the Oriflame example built by Valtech. On the face of things the functionality

of the Oriflame application below looks very much like a traditional eCommerce store, with the

ability to navigate products and then click buy:

Fig 10 Swedish launch of Oriflame Facebook Commerce store

What sets the Oriflame Facebook store apart from a traditional eCommerce site, is that it was

designed around people. Oriflame run an agent based sales business model with 3 million

independent agents operating around the world. The Facebook concept for Oriflame was designed

around people, it was designed so that each individual sales agent could have their very own

representation of the Oriflame Facebook store. The concept thus connects each sales agent with

their friends and also their friends, friends via Facebook.

The primary consideration for Oriflame was how to better connect individual sales agents with

people in their local area to improve sales? Facebook was selected as the secondary choice as best

technology platform to deliver on this ambition.



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Most businesses are not agent based, thus the Oriflame model can’t be translated wholesale to

serve other companies, yet there remain strong reasons to consider utilising Facebook to underpin

digital concepts as discussed in the table below:

Aspect Comment

Scale In October 2012 Facebook announced that there were now 1 billion users of the

platform. We sometimes get dulled by large sounding numbers, but this is a truly

massive user base.

Stickiness Neilsen reported data that shows that people spend far more time on Facebook than

any other digital platform. Measured in billions of user minutes for one month in

May 2011 in the United States :

Facebook – 53.5

Yahoo! – 17.2

Google – 12.5

AOL – 11.4

MSN – 9.4

YouTube – 9.1

eBay – 4.5

EA – 4.3

Apple - 4.3

Microsoft – 3.4

Figures for the UK show data for less companies, but record the same effect, that

people spend more time on Facebook than any other digital platform and also about

three times more time than the next closest platform.

Penetration More than 50% of the British population are Facebook users. More than 50% of the

population of countries as diverse as the US, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan and

Canada are also Facebook users.

In short if Facebook is sticky and it is also the place where people spend their time

and half the population of the country are users, then if nothing it makes Facebook a

contender to underpin many digital concepts.

However, it is important to consider where your key markets are located, since not

all countries have such high percentage usage amongst the population, for instance:

Russia – 5%



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Germany – 30%

France – 39%

Italy – 39%

China – 0.04%

India – 5%

Word-of-

mouth

On average people on Facebook have 130 friends. Friends activity on Facebook acts

as a pointer to help people stumble across things they didn’t know about previously

and might be interested in.

Any activity on Facebook such as a “like” or a wall update that a friend has read an

article or even purchased an item acts as a positive word of mouth recommendation

towards a brand.

Connects

Groups

People tend to be connected in groups together with other similar people, for

instance, groups which are defined by similar interests, of a similar social

demographic or groups of people who live in the same area.

This connectivity give brands the opportunity to target and market themselves

towards specific groups with a strong level of precision and social influence across

those groups.

Given these significant strengths, there is every chance that Facebook as a channel for branded

applications will emerge from the trough of disillusionment on Gartner’s Hype Curve model and

that both firms and Facebook users themselves will value interaction with brands on the Facebook

channel. Afterall, in the real world, we tend to like local shops who recognise us as good customers

and seem to treat us especially well because they know us. The key issue that brands need to

address is how to make this interaction appear natural and not forced.

Furthermore the wider Facebook ecosystem will continue to evolve and as firms build applications

which hook into the platform, this will spark additional opportunities for innovation and new

possibilities. Every successful application which plugs into the Facebook ecosystem grows the

strength of the network. Thus rather like plugging into a socket to source electricity, brands might

consider Facebook a compelling platform to plug into in order to tap a ready built social power

source and network.



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3. MONETISING FACEBOOK AS A NEW CHANNEL

Many brands that have attempted to exploit the Facebook platform have attempted to re-build a

traditional eCommerce store directly within Facebook and then have quietly taken them down

again. You have to ask yourself, what benefit there is for consumers in merely replicating what is

already available on traditional web-sites within a Facebook page?

Whilst it is an obvious point to suggest that brands need to consider that Facebook is a social

platform, there is certainly benefit in examining how social relationships form.

If you think about your closest friends, you tend to have strong trust in them, you have numerous

shared experiences, you will feel more comfortable in telling them something personal and you are

likely to also be comfortable behaving in a more extrovert way around them than you would a

stranger. Now this level of trust and understanding didn’t happen overnight. Even your close

friend was once unknown to you, but over numerous conversations over a long period you have

formed a close bond.

The way that we build trust in a brand is very similar to the way we build personal friendships.

Gradually over time, through numerous points of exposure, either through advertising or by

utilising a brands products or services, we move from zero knowledge to trusting and favouring a

brand with our custom. We may even reach a point where strongly favour a brand and closely

identify ourselves with it, almost as we were a fan of the brand.

The lesson to learn is that brands can’t expect to suddenly “park their tank” on a Facebook page

and expect consumers to appreciate this. Facebook is a social platform and social relationships

with both friends and brands are something that need to grow over time. Facebook themselves

articulate this viewpoint with the short-hand phrase “many lightweight interactions over time” and

suggest that for brands to be successful on Facebook they need to generate many lightweight

interactions over time in order to build trust and familiarity within the Facebook environment.

The diagram in figure 11 below is borrowed from Paul Adams, one of Facebook’s global product

managers, who uses it to explain how Facebook’s own products are designed with a flow of

interaction which increases to suit the depth and intensity of a growing relationship i.e. Advertising

products are considered the entry level product and then as a relationship grows, that a branded

Facebook Pages provides the next-step product which is suited to serve a maturing relationship

between a brand a consumer.



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Fig 11 Facebook’s model to grow relationships between consumer and brand

If you consider Facebook application concepts such as TripAdvisor or Oriflame, then these would

fit on the diagram above in the “time to get heavy” phase of the diagram above:

TripAdvisor – existing users of the service were invited to login via Facebook from the

traditional version of the web-site. Thus TripAdvisor had built a relationship with people

over time and they trusted the brand sufficiently to log-in via Facebook. TripAdvisor were

able to provide immediate value to users of the Facebook version, since it mapped the

locations people had travelled around the world and gave a new navigation option (to

navigate via friends rather than just traditional search).

Oriflame – Many Oriflame agents had Facebook accounts. By adding a store to their

own homepage, each agent was merely presenting a store to people who they had already

built a relationship over time. Through stimulating conversation, purchases, comments

and “likes”, Oriflame agents were then able to ensure that friends of friends saw this

positive “word of mouth” message spreading. Once again Facebook gave Oriflame

customers something which the traditional sales model couldn’t provide (product parties

and door-to-door sales). The Facebook solution gave a platform to chat about products

without waiting for a sales event, it also gave consumers the ability to purchase without

having to wait to be contacted by the sales agent.

3.1 Think Big but Start Small

In this whitepaper we have indicated that designing around people is a catalyst for both

incremental as well as disruptive (radical) innovation. It is relatively easy to come up with



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imaginative digital concepts, underpinned by Facebook when you use the concept of “connecting

people” as lens through which to view innovation .

Fig 12 Using people as an innovation lens

As per the diagram above, it is the radical more disruptive concepts which have the potential to generate the greatest value. Whilst we encourage people to think big and bring to market more innovative concepts, we would also recommend starting small for the following reasons:

Good practice – best practice development is founded on building the minimum

marketable feature and releasing something, however small, which takes a viable and

useful step towards implementing a more ambitious vision. Proving the approach and

gaining feedback from the real world is a valuable tool to building what the market

actually values.

New Media – Facebook is a new media. It will take time to understand how to use it

properly. When telephones were first marketed, people thought it would be a broadcast

device to transmit audio from concerts and church sermons to people at home. Brands

should be prepared to listen, learn and adapt to customers in order to understand how

users relate to Facebook applications. Given it is also possible to target products to people

biased in favour of their own social preferences, it will also take some practice in order to

understand how to understand how to profile customer segments and define the social

triggers that activate prioritisation.



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Social relationships – Since social relationships grow over time (many lightweight

interactions over time) there is no harm in starting small. In fact there is benefit in

starting small and lightweight rather than trying to launch an “all singing, all dancing”

feature rich application. Why not start small and start building this relationship today,

rather than wait for an impressive application to be built?

Time To Market – An ambitious idea will take time and effort to plan and budget.

Starting small enables brands to generate real life knowledge that either rapidly proves or

disproves a more ambitious business case, without incurring significant expense.

3.2 Minimum Marketable Feature

Valtech has been involved in helping customers conceive imaginative and ambitious digital

application concepts underpinned by Facebook. When looking for the smallest meaningful next

step to take in order to proceed with a more ambitious plan, we have found that “popping up” a

branded application around a specific event such as Christmas, Valtentines day or the Spring

season and then popping the application down again and taking stock of what has been learnt is a

good initial starting step.

The inspiration behind this pop-up approach was based on our analysis of data within Facebook.

As a research and development project Facebook had been measuring and recording positive and

negative sentiment amongst Facebook users by country over time. Within a week of Valtech

pointing out the value of this data Facebook removed searchable access their sentiment data

(sorry!), however, we can summarise our findings. Firstly the diagram below shows a screen grab

from Facebook’s sentiment analysis tool, measuring sentiment amongst Facebook users in the UK

during 2011 and 2010:

Fig 13 Sentiment analysis amongst UK Facebook users 2010/ 2011



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At Valtech we were curious if there was any pattern in sentiment, so we mapped the major spikes

to dates and found the following:

Event

Number

Comment

1 Christmas Eve – December 24th 2009 – positive sentiment spike

2 New Years Eve – December 31st 2009 – positive sentiment spike

3 Valentine's Day – February 14th 2010 – positive sentiment spike

4 Mothering Sunday – March 14th 2010 – positive sentiment spike

5 Grand National horse race – April 10th 2010 – positive sentiment spike

6 Heatwave in The UK - May 23rd 2010 – positive sentiment spike

7 Father’s Day – June 20th 2010 – positive sentiment spike

8 Aftermath of student riots - December 10th 2010 – negative sentiment spike

9 Christmas Eve – December 24th 2010 – positive sentiment spike

10 New Years Eve – December 31st 2010 – positive sentiment spike

11 Valentine’s Day – February 14th 2011 – positive sentiment spike

12 Mothering Sunday – April 3rd 2011 – positive sentiment spike

13 Grand National horse race – April 9th 2011 – positive sentiment spike

14 Father’s Day – June 19th 2011 – positive sentiment spike

15 UK Riots - August 9th 2011 – negative sentiment spike

We concluded that this data revealed the following conclusions:

Predictable – that there were predictable dates which marketeers could plan around,

when they know that sentiment will be both high and positive.

Activity – that spikes in predictable positive sentiment correlate to peak periods of use of

Facebook as a platform. (Positive sentiment spikes correlate to a greater number of photos

being uploaded by users and thus represent high traffic events on Facebook).

Probability of purchase – when people are feeling more positive, there is also an

increased chance that they will buy or react favourably towards a brand. There is a greater

chance that people might “like”, comment or buy during a positive sentiment spike, which

increases the number of friends of friends who might see positive “word of mouth”



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interaction on their wall and stumble across a brand for the first time.

Thus for many ambitious digital concepts, we have defined the smallest minimum marketable and

useful step to take as “popping-up” an application for a short period around an event such as

Christmas such as a:

Social catalogue

Event based offer

Invitation / Check-in to a physical event

Social pop-up-shop

Each of these being small steps which can be popped up, presented to consumers in a manner

which make sense as adding value in a social platform and which can be taken down gracefully and

the knowledge from the exercise being utilised as inputs to developing a more ambitious concept.

3.3 Product

Whilstbrands can set-up free pages on Facebook these are quite limited, whereas bespoke

development of dedicated applications is expensive.

In order to solve this issue Valtech has created a product to enable our customers to pop-up

concepts quickly and easily, hosted in the cloud in order to minimise impact on existing

infrastructure and teams.

The single most useful feature of this product is that you can profile customer segments within the

platform and since it is integrated to Facebook’s Open Graph data, it is possible for marketeers to

begin to experiment with understanding how to prioritise products towards people based on their

own social preferences. For instance within Facebook you can use data such as age and gender,

together with preferences, for instance, such as they “like” music, football and David Beckham to

target and prioritise the visibility of Product A over Product B.



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Features:

Open Graph

social data

integration

Payment

Scalable

Cloud based

Multi-

channel

Low cost

entry

Fig 14 Valtech’s customisable Facebook pop-up shop product

This product provides a simple way for our clients to experiment with understanding how to profile

their customer segments, and determine which social triggers are strong mechanisms to choose in

order to:

Better profile customer segment

Better target customers segments

Present more attractive offers to customers

Increase sales

END OF DOCUMENT



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REFERENCES

Where Angels Will Tread, The Economist, November 17th 2011

http://www.economist.com/node/21537967

Social Business By Design, Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim, February 2012

Facebook, Developers Blog, How-to: Improve the Experience for Returning Users, May

2012 https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/05/08/how-to--improve-the-

experience-for-returning-users/

How Many Friends Does One Person Need? – Dunbar’s Number and other evolutionary

quirks, Robin Dunbar, February 2010

Everything Is Obvious *Once You Know The Answer, Duncan Watts, July 2011

Grouped – how small groups of friends are the key to influence on the social web, Paul

Adams, November 2011

Gartner Hype Cycle, Wired, October 2012

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2012/10/gartner-hype-cycle-2012/

The Social Media Report, Nielsen, September 2011

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/

Social Bakers, October 2012, http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/

Cultural Events Marketing and F-Commerce, Jonathan Cook, August 2011,

http://trendshed.com/2011/08/30/cultural-events-marketing-and-f-commerce/

http://www.economist.com/node/21537967

https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/05/08/how-to--improve-the-experience-for-returning-users/

https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/05/08/how-to--improve-the-experience-for-returning-users/

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2012/10/gartner-hype-cycle-2012/

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/

http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/

http://trendshed.com/2011/08/30/cultural-events-marketing-and-f-commerce/

Technology

White Paper: "Designing Around People"