Socially Intelligent Business

From socially intelligent
business to socially
intelligent research
Andrew Needham
CEO . Face

02Contact us on +44 (0) 20 7874 6599 or info@facegroup.com . www.facegroup.com
From socially intelligent
business to socially
intelligent research
Success in the “Pull Economy”
means understanding that a
number of significant business
principles have changed. In
a hyper connected world
information flows much faster
and more freely. Organisations
as a result are subjected to
a growing level of collective
intelligence and value creation
from outside the company’s walls
brought on by the increased
collaboration of customers,
consumers, employees and
suppliers in what is now a
much larger ecosystem of data,
conversation, innovation and
participation. This has lead to
social business models starting
to augment traditional ones
where central production is
giving way to peer production,
community based networks
are becoming more prevalent
than management hierarchies;
nearly free real time global data
flows are replacing expensive
ponderous ones. The generation
of economic capital is being
augmented by the generation
of social capital (defined as
the economic value created
through the collaboration
of customers/ consumers,
employees and suppliers in the
networked economy) powered
by social power structures
such as open source, crowd-
sourcing, customer/consumer
communities, mass self service
and social CRM that are proving
to be more effective and efficient.
There needs to be a knowledge
framework to help companies
manage this transformational
change and maximise as
much value from it in a way
that benefits the business
and the customer/consumer.
Social Intelligence
We call this social intelligence.
An adaptive, continuous,
collaborative and open
customer/consumer driven
knowledge framework that sits
at the centre of a company’s
organisation like the hub of a
bicycle wheel where all marketing
and business disciplines feed
into and out from the customer/
consumer. In this model the
empowered customer/consumer
is at the heart of everything a
company does. (See Figure 1).
Alongside the role of the
customer/consumer there are
two other key ingredients to
becoming socially intelligent.
The first is the application
of smart technology to help
manage the real time flow
and exchange of information,
creativity and value from within
and outside the company’s walls.
The second is a growing army of
people who have proficient skills
to extract value and meaning
from big data. Socially intelligent
research has a big role to play
Networked
Consumer
Innovation
Sales
Marketing
Smart People Technology Platforms
Customer
ExperienceCollaboration
Service&
Support
Figure 1
Social Intelligence
Framework

in helping companies on this
journey to becoming more
socially intelligent by helping
them to have a real time, in depth
holistic view of their customers/
consumers. Socially intelligent
research combines best in class
social media research, on-line
qualitative communities,
mobile ethnography and
co-creation practices in an
integrated way. It is powered
by proprietary platforms that
have been built by researchers
for researchers to deliver
robust insight supported by
rigorous qualitative processes.
This paper will set out what it
means for business to become
more socially intelligent and the
important role socially intelligent
research can play in this process.
New emerging client needs
James Murdoch, heir to
the global media empire that
owns Sky, Star TV, WSJ and
the The Times Newspapers
said way back in 2008 in his
Marketing Society Lecture that
“Ubiquitous Connectivity means
fundamentally that the individual
becomes the agent of everything.
It is not a question of scale it
is a different way of existing”.
Since then the transformational
power shift from organisations
to customers and consumers
has continued to accelerate,
reshaping operating business
models along the way including
newspapers and leaving
anachronistic ones in its wake
as the recent demise of Comet,
Jessops and HMV in the UK
have shown. With this power
shift to the networked consumer
we are seeing new client needs
emerging. The most pressing is
helping clients to make sense of
what is clearly a fast changing,
more complex, data obese world.
An IBM Global CEO study
last year covering 1,130 CEOs
across 45 countries and 32
industries highlighted that
organisations not only felt
bombarded by change but
many are struggling to deal
with it. 8 out of 10 CEOs
saw significant change ahead
and yet the gap between
the expected level of change
and the ability to manage
it has almost tripled since
the previous study in 2006.
What is becoming clear
is that delivering against
consumer needs and wants
in this rapidly changing landscape
quicker than your competitors
is what will drive competitive
advantage. Companies and their
brands must move much faster
and become more agile
without compromising on
quality whether that is generating
customer/consumer insight
or getting the right products
to market more quickly. The
ability to dynamically adapt and
swiftly respond to the needs
of the customer/consumer in
a continuous way is becoming
increasingly important. And
with this so is the ability to
grow an information advantage,
to uncover, process, share
and act upon customer/
consumer information faster
than your competitors.
Socially Intelligent
Companies Must
Embrace The Customer
Companies have often spoken
about how the customer/
consumer is at the heart of their
business and more often than
not have failed to deliver against
this mantra. Success in the pull
economy means doing just
that at a time when companies
feel that it is harder to achieve.
Simon Clift the ex Global CMO
of Unilever said in an article in the
Financial Times “We are behind
the consumer and that is an
uncomfortable place for us to be.
That requires a cultural change
for companies like Unilever.
We have to listen to genuine
customer/consumer concerns.
Companies aren’t set up for
that.” If companies are serious
about generating social capital
then customers/ consumers
and the role they’re allowed to
play in their relationships with
organisations has to be central
to everything a company does.
There are many examples where
this is already happening.
From Open Innovation
to Crowd-sourcing
Open innovation and crowd
sourcing business models tap
into the collective wisdom and
creativity of consumers and this
has been incredibly disruptive
to more traditional approaches.
Instead of “not invented here,”
the mind-set is shifting to
“proudly found elsewhere.”
The most notable case is
Procter & Gamble’s ambition
to ensure that over 50% of its

innovation is driven from outside
the organisation with the set
up of its Connect & Develop
platform that has secured more
than 1,000 partner agreements
on innovation. A key part of
this is the creation of www.
innocentive.com where they
help their “customers to develop
ideas and solve important
problems by broadcasting them
via the internet to the world’s
most creative problem solvers”.
Kickstarter is a U.S website
(see Figure 2) that allows
projects to turn to people
outside the organisation for
funding taking small or large
donations from thousands of
backers in return for credit or
early access to products and
services. Coca-Cola used
crowdsourcing to develop new
designs for bottle crates in
Germany and marketing ideas
for Coke Zero in Singapore.
GE has crowdsourced green
business ideas under its
“eco-magination” challenge.
By opening innovation processes
to outside voices, organizations
not only gain a broader range
of perspectives to enrich the
innovation gene pool, they also
gain valuable scale—more
resources at a fraction of the
price. And it’s not just the front
end that stands to gain: greater
connectivity with suppliers
and buyers can be a win-win
situation when it comes to
managing inventory, budgeting
and forecasting, allowing
organisations to access better—
and more— real-time data,
and refining production
and supply-chain processes on
the spot. In a McKinsey Quarterly
interview, Bob McDonald, P&G’s
CEO, said his organisation looks
to increase integration with
retail partners because “getting
the data becomes part of the
currency of the relationship.”
In some cases, P&G is even
using its scale “to bring state-
of-the-art technology to retailers
that otherwise can’t afford it.”
From Social CRM to Social
WOM Communications
Social CRM, where the
customer/consumer helps to
deal with problems, queries and
complaints of other customers/
consumers is also being applied
to a number of businesses.
Telefonica who launched GiffGaff
– “the mobile network run by
you” – relies on its customers/
consumers to service other
customers/ consumers as
part of its community driven
business model. In the area
of communications examples
of content generated by
consumers and how it is shared
is also prevalent. One of the
most famous being the Doritos
advertisements generated by
their fans and aired at the U.S
Super Bowl. If consumers don’t
generate the content, then
they play a crucial role in how it
spreads. A recent campaign we
did with the UK’s Irn Bru showed
just how powerful this is – one
customer/consumer Rachie
Figure 2
Crowd Funding

caused Irn Bru’s latest TV
advertisement to generate 1.5
million views (see Figure 3) before
it even went live. In the U.S one
of the most buzz-worthy ads of
this year’s Super Bowl wasn’t
even a commercial – it was a
mere tweet from Oreo during
the blackout (see Figure 4). The
power went out in the Super
Drome during the showdown
between the San Francisco
49ers and the Baltimore Ravens.
Oreo seized on the opportunity,
and tweeted this during the
thirty-four minute hiatus. Viewers
loved Oreo’s message, which
was re-tweeted 10,000 times in
one hour, according to Ad Age.
BuzzFeed’s Ashley McCollum
said the tweet was “super smart”
while CNET’s Daniel Terdiman
declared: “Oreo came up with an
idea so brilliant and bold that it
out and out won the night.”
The reaction left some wondering
whether the quick tweet had an
even greater payoff than Oreo’s
actual Super Bowl Ad which
cost millions more to create.
From On-line
Communities to faster
decision making processes
Continuous on-line communities
where companies can connect
their internal employees
with customers/ consumers,
suppliers and partners is
another example of where the
consumer rules. Burberry the
iconic global British luxury brand
offers a good illustration of this.
Angela Ahrendts, the CEO has
a grand vision of her company
as a social enterprise where
all employees, customers/
consumers and suppliers
share the same experience of
the Burberry brand whether
through physical stores or digital
platforms and their community
Burberry World. Through
communities companies are
speeding up cycle times by
shortening learning curves,
testing new products or ideas
with consumers using mockups,
computer-generated virtual
products and simulations.
Together with the use of social
media this is also helping to
fast track the decision making
process. In the case of Oreo
their ad agency 360i told
Buzzfeed that they had gathered
Oreo executives together in
advance, just in case something
in the Super Bowl sparked an
advertising idea. With all the
key players in one room, they
were able to capitalize on social
media’s nimbleness and acted
quickly. “We had a mission
control set up at our office
with the brand and 360i, and
when the blackout happened,
the team looked at it as an
opportunity,” agency president
Sarah Hoffstetter told Buzzfeed.
“Because the brand team
was there, it was easy to
get approvals and get it
up in minutes.”
Rachie
Figure 3
Irn Bru campaign

Customers/Consumers create
value beyond just transactions
The significant shift underpinning
all these examples (and there
are many more of them) is that
customers/consumers seek out
interactions with brands that go
beyond the merely transactional.
Empowered through ubiquitous
access to information and
therefore radical transparency
through an abundance of
choices on the web as well as
the ability to contribute and
tap into social networks in real
time and on the go they expect
companies and brands in
return to offer engagement and
collaboration models that match
the more distributed and multi
layered mechanisms of value
creation. This is driving large-
scale behaviour change where
focus on hyper-personalisation,
relevance and customisation are
critical. In a recent interview with
the Social and Digital Director of
a major global retailer he spoke
of the “role of a more traditional
retailer in a socially structured
economy” where his company
“has a very empowered
customer base with huge
expectations of relevance and
personalisation” and “Amazon
as a competitor who have given
all the power to the customer so
that they can choose what they
want, when they want.
This puts the real wind up a
retailer”. As he continued to
point out “It’s becoming less
and less important about what
we tell customers/ consumers
and much more important
about what customers/
consumers say to us and what
they are saying to each other;
it is becoming everything and
if you don’t put that at the
centre of your organisation
then you will be in trouble”.
Companies Must Apply
Technology
What is exciting is that with
the application of technology
organisations have the ability to
be socially intelligent, enabling
new strategies and techniques
that will work most effectively in
a profoundly connected society.
As value creation shifts from
workers to customers and
consumers, companies realise
they need technology to help
them manage and derive
value from a much larger
ecosystem of data, conversation,
innovation and participation.
Companies need to be able
to connect and tap into the
global network in real time and
continuously both for obtaining
value and for deriving it.
Trends like Enterprise 2.0 are
starting to put tools that make
this possible into millions of
employees and customers/
consumers hands.
Figure 4
Oreo 2013 Super
Bowl tweet

Now Every Company
Is a Software Company
David Kirkpatrick from Forbes.
com goes further. He said in a
recent article that: “regardless
of industry your company is
now a software company, and
pretending that it’s not spells
serious peril. With hardware
and software growing more
capable at exponential rates,
data of all sorts are increasingly
getting into the hands of
ordinary people—competitors,
employees and, especially,
customers/ consumers.
Extraordinarily sophisticated
tools of measurement, analysis
and communication allow these
empowered hordes to evaluate,
process and distribute the data,
along with their opinions about
it. Ordinary people increasingly
have tools that match and
in some cases exceed the
sophistication of those used
inside the companies that serve
them”. As Kirkpatrick continues
“That leads to an increasingly
urgent and overarching
mandate: Your company must,
using software and technology,
become as responsive and agile
as your customers/ consumers.
And then remain as aggressive
as they are by measuring,
monitoring, evaluating and
responding to data about your
products and services and their
impact on society”. He cites
the example of Ford Motor
Company by quoting Venkatesh
Prasad, Senior Technical Leader
at Ford “Bill Ford said recently
that when he was growing up
he used to worry about making
more cars. Now he worries—
what if we only made more
cars? Just making more cars is
not our future.” Instead, Prasad
re-envisions Ford as a maker
of “sophisticated computers-
on-wheels.” Anyone who’s
test-driven a Ford lately can
experience this: Wi-Fi receivers
turn your car into a mobile
hot spot; built-in software
helps maximize fuel efficiency;
ultrasonic sensors enable
automatic parallel parking.
The key piece now, in Prasad’s
view, is connecting their vehicles
together. “We’re rapidly marching
toward 2 billion cars, trucks
and buses on this planet,”
he says. “There’s no reason
why they should not all be
fully networked.”
Making P&G the most
technologically enabled
business in the world
Another good example is
the mission Robert McDonald,
P&G’s CEO is on to make
Procter & Gamble the most
technologically enabled business
in the world. He is overseeing
the large-scale application of
digital technology and advanced
analytics across every aspect of
P&G’s operations and activities
from the way the consumer
goods giant creates molecules
in its R&D labs to how it
maintains relationships with
retailers, manufactures products,
builds brands, and interacts with
customers/ consumers. The
prize: better innovation, higher
productivity, lower costs, and the
promise of faster growth. As an
example he cites “I personally
see the comments about the
P&G brand. This allows for real-
time reaction to what’s going on
in the marketplace, because we
know that if something happens
in a blog and you don’t react
immediately—or, worse, you
don’t know about it—it could
spin out of control by the time
you get involved. The technology
also lets us improve things
that are working. For example,
we’re rolling out a product
called Downy Unstopables,
a fragrance addition you can
add to your wash, and the
real-time comments from
consumers about the product’s
characteristics are helping us
figure out how best to join in
the discussion through our
marketing efforts. And what I’d
love to be able to do is see the
costs of product at the same
time. It’s challenging because
accounting systems aren’t
designed today like that for
operations—they tend to look
backward—but we’re working
on integrating our operational
system with the financial system
to move in that direction.”
Innovative companies in other
industries are experimenting
with ways to combine products,
services, and data to create
entirely new businesses—often
with software playing a critical
role in knitting together or
enabling these new models.
Industries from manufacturing
to consumer goods have
stitched information assets
into their traditional product

offerings and have come away
redefining the category and
raising the bar for competitors.
The example of what Nike did
with one of its shoe-lines is
well known. It created Nike+, a
sensor compatible with Apple
iOS devices (for instance, the
iPod or iPhone), to be used with
its running shoes. The sensor
allows the wearer to track
mileage and running habits and
upload data onto a Web site to
manage workouts, connect with
fellow runners, and share routes.
The line not only launched a
profitable new revenue stream
but also helped boost Nike’s
market share and created
a community of highly
engaged users.
Social computing
revolution is going mobile
The mobile Web is currently
experiencing unprecedented
growth in use. The iPhone and
Android platform in particular
are fundamentally changing
the game when it comes to
our new usage of mobile Web
applications. Smartphone
shipments are now expected to
be greater than notebook and
PC sales combined by 2012.
When coupled with the sea
changes taking place in social
there is a social computing
revolution that is going mobile.
This new mobile reality is based
on smart phones, with all their
unique capabilities such as
location awareness, video/
audio capabilities, and arrays of
other sensors. In other words,
most businesses need a plan
for a near-term future where
most interaction with workers,
partners, and customers/
consumers is through task-
specific and social applications
on mobile devices with all
their attendant strengths
and weaknesses.
Companies Need Socially
Intelligent Research
By applying socially intelligent
research, research companies
can play a big role in helping
companies to be more socially
intelligent. Understanding and
getting close to customers/
consumers in a real time and
continuous way both passively
in terms of mining social data
for insight and mobile reality
mining and actively in terms
of helping companies to
collaborate and co-create with
their customers/ consumers and
adapt to their needs quickly is
at the heart of a more socially
intelligent way of doing research.
Seamless Integration of Social
Data With Qualitative Rigour
To become socially intelligent
research companies will need to
be highly skilled at integrating a
range of methodologies and data
sets in a coherent and seamless
way to deliver a holistic view
of the customer/consumer.
It will not be enough to rely on
just one or two sources of data.
The ability to augment the depth
of qualitative with the breadth
With
Not At
Beingthere
Holistic
Real time
Smart People Technology PlatformsCo-CreativePredictive
Mocro-Macro
Figure 5
Research Principles

and scale of social data as well
as be able to use social data to
validate and scale up learning
gathered through qualitative
is vital. Integrating social
and mobile data directly into
communities, being technology
driven and full of smart people
that can apply qualitative rigour
to big data is what will make
the difference.
The Power of Real Time Insight
Mining the collective intelligence
of the social web is now
achievable with a range of social
analytics tools giving businesses
the means to deeply access,
understand and react intelligently
to all the important currents of
customer and consumer activity
that affect them across the
social universe. Social media has
created a new information map.
Traditionally competitive analysts
differentiate between primary
sources of information (experts,
competitors, employees and
suppliers) on the one hand
and secondary sources (such
as published data, articles
and market research) on the
other. Social Media Intelligence
operates on a different plane,
identifying people and their
conversations in social spaces
providing qualitative insight on a
quantitative scale. And as Jake
Steadman, Head of Social Media
Research from Telefonica O2
said in a recent interview “it is a
very important real time research
data set for us... it is the only
100% unbiased research data
set”. For both Telefonica and
the major global retailer this is
bringing many benefits. The first
is that it is allowing them to take
instant action on what they may
be doing wrong and correct it
quickly. For example Telefonica
O2 ran a text based campaign
around a Christmas offer with
a music partner and it became
apparent within days from social
data that the wording they used
was confusing to customers
and consumers alike so they
changed it and the uptake of
the campaign doubled. On a
more strategic level because
they are now building up a
long-term data set they can see
trends forming and understand
better the role Telefonica O2 can
play in customers/ consumers’
conversations. As Steadman
says “it is helping us to deliver
better customer experiences
by reacting faster to customer
needs. We are becoming a lot
smarter about learning what our
customers want and matching
that with our offering”. These
comments were echoed by
the social and digital director
of the major global retailer who
said the “immediacy of it (social
media insight) is so important;
we are able to get very real
and live feed back that is an
unedited, unfiltered reality of
what people think about what
we are doing”. He feels that
the value as a social channel is
that his company will be able to
create new customer/consumer
experiences off the back of it
Figure 6
Pulsar TRAC, Face’s Social Media Insight and Planning Platform searches the social web not just
by keywords (tracking) but also by reach (visibility), audiences (mapping) and content (diffusion)

Contact us on +44 (0) 20 7874 6599 or info@facegroup.com . www.facegroup.com 10
helping them to understand
their customers/ consumers
that much better and that much
deeper. Another key benefit is
the ability to deliver a level of
customisation and relevance to
customers/ consumers that is
impossible to achieve in such
a fast time frame using more
traditional methods of research.
He cited as an example what his
company was able to achieve
in the lead up to Christmas. He
explained “Those final seven
days make for an anxious week
for customers as there are many
“aha” moments when you realise
that you forgot to buy some of
those critical individual items.
From the insight garnered from
social data we were able to feed
into our advertising in real time
with what customers had been
saying they had forgotten. As
a result we were able to check
that we were stocking our stores
with the right items”. He also
recognises the power of social
data in helping them to achieve
the powerful combination of
being able to augment what
customer/consumers are feeling
with what customers/consumers
are doing or actually buying.
It can also help them bring to
life experience in the physical
form at a local level.
Real time social data also means
that where in the past 80% of
time was spent on gathering
data and 20% analysing it the
reverse is starting to happen
now. Types of analysis are
becoming more sophisticated.
Technology platforms such as
our own social media insight and
planning tool, Pulsar TRAC (see
Figure 6), are becoming more
focused on the needs of the
insight and planning community
where layers of insight can be
generated over and above the
basic tiers of analytics. So for
example it is possible to move
beyond key word tracking and
topic analysis to mapping brand
audiences, tracking specific
content and reach. Telefonica
O2 who used Pulsar TRAC have
re-structured around a central
intelligence hub of customer/
consumer data so that every
team whether it is insight,
brand, innovation, marketing or
CRM are all plugged in to it, like
spokes in a bicycle wheel.
The Power of Communities
However there is more to
delivering socially intelligent
research than just mining social
data for insight with the help of
technology. Having the ability to
actively engage and co-create
with customers/ consumers
in an open and adaptive way
means that customer/consumer
communities have an important
part to play in a socially intelligent
tool kit. It is the new connections
they enable between internal
employees on the one end
and customers/ consumers,
suppliers, and partners on the
other that is allowing companies
to co-create new relationships
and offerings and reinvent
their operating model.
Figure 7
1000faces Community Platform

There are abundant examples
of the value co-creating with
customers/ consumers in
continuous communities as
well as having the ability to do
this face to face is generating
for organisations. From a purely
research perspective using
on-line research communities
helps not only to deliver context
to consumer behaviour and
attitudes but also helps to
understand “the why” behind
those behaviours. A recent
example is a major food
category we are working with
who wanted to foster genuine
connections to reach real
consumer stories leading them to
the best consumer insights and
starter product ideas across the
globe, cost and time effectively.
We therefore designed a
community using our 1000faces
community platform (see Figure
7) that united stakeholders with
consumers across the world to
co-create global solutions to a
specific challenge. The process
involved generating insights
and starter product ideas
between 100 creative forward
thinking consumers and 40
client participants from 4 regions
covering 14 countries with 6
different business functions
to drive new occasions and
opportunities in the category.
The scheme produced 15 new
insights across three different
idea platforms, 80 seed ideas
for innovation and 10 starter
product ideas. And this learning
was brought together into a
globally unified perspective on
one particularly exciting platform
supported with local nuance.
The Global CMI Director for the
pilot said “This is an ideal way
of continuous connectivity with
our consumers across the globe
not just on a project basis;
the co-creation was awesome,
dynamic, collaborative,
creative and very efficient”.
The key benefits to
research communities are:
›› Building longer relationships
with consumers over time
rather than just a snap shot
in time over two hours
›› Using life logging through mobile
can capture in the moment
behaviour and observe what
consumers actually do rather
than just what they say they do
›› Seeing consumers in their natural
environments breaks down barriers
and helps us as researchers get to
the truth faster by seeing their real
routines and rituals
›› Using on-line focus groups and
forums allows the research team to
probe deeper into behaviour and
attitudes with prompted questions
›› Allows for real time and reflective
responses as well as for consumers
to open up about topics they feel
uncomfortable discussing F2F
›› Allows for builds and angles to
discussions to come not just
from researchers but from other
consumers and that often means
consumers going to places you
would never have got to on your
own or you would have predicted
with a discussion guide
›› Allows research with techniques
Figure 8
Face Inverted
Model of
Co-creation
Social data that
gives us the bigger
picture of topics,
audiences and
influencers
Qualitative that
gives you richer
insights into
individual lives
and networks
Co-create with
consumers for
solutions that are
rooted in truth and
strategically acute
Real-Time
Validation &
Content Tracking
that is dynamic
and efficient
Listening to all
the crowd
Engaging with many
your crowd
Developing
with1%ers
Validation

such as netnography to
move from a staged theoretical
world to the real world where
consumers live out their lives
›› Allows you with techniques
like crowd sourcing to combine
individual thinking with group
thinking which is critical to
successful innovation
›› Allows for consumers to build
a rich narrative and compelling
stories of what they do and
how they act over time
The Power of Co-creation
Co-creating with leading
edge consumers as part
of a well thought through
process is another essential
part of a socially intelligent
tool kit especially when it
comes to innovation and
NPD. For us co-creation
best practice is defined by
the following key principles:
Reversing the funnel:
Rather than adopt a
conventional approach
where ideas are generated
and proposed by an
intimate group of experts
then tested on increasingly
large samples of research
participants through
qualitative then quantitative
practices we begin the
innovation process by
casting the net wide,
thinking and operating on a
broad scale, before narrowing
down to work in tighter
groups on ideas that have
been generated, selected
and validated by the crowd
and shaped and curated
by experts. (See figure 8)
A bottom-up
approach is not enough:
Bottom-up processes need
to be complemented by solid
strategic direction and expertise.
Successful innovations emerge
at the intersection of three,
sometimes very different,
agendas: the consumer and
his needs, the brand and its
strategy, the expert and his
vision (he or she provides
market knowledge and
expertise, market trends).
Allow group thinking as
well as individual thinking:
Group thinking is generative and
provides elements of validation,
but it is also skewed towards
social conformity. On the
other hand, individual thinking
provides a more independent
idea generation process but
it does not generate as much
material. The best ideas often
come from building on each
other’s contribution rather than
coming up with the final solution
in one go. A balanced innovation
process needs to ensure both
dynamics are well represented.
The Power of
Mobiles as Sensors
Beyond geo-located content
on the go, a key opportunity is
emerging: mobile sensing, the
passive recording of a person’s
online and offline daily life in a
Figure 9
Mobiles as sensors

quantitative way. Sensors in the
mobile handset can be used
to capture communication,
proximity, location, and activity
data alongside the more
established prompted inputs, a
360-degree approach becoming
known as Reality Mining. This
research technique allows us to
augment qualitative research with
longitudinal quantified self data
(low level capture of behaviour,
interactions and states through
mobile) to uncover patterns and
insights that would be difficult to
spot on an exclusively qualitative
basis. We have applied an open
source platform designed by
MIT called Funf (see Figure 9) to
help us take advantage of the
increasingly widespread use of
mobile phones for modelling of
conversation context, proximity
sensing, and temporal-spatial
location throughout large
communities of individuals.
The average person is always
within reach of his/her mobile
phone and looks at it on average
150 times a day, every 6.5
minutes. This makes the mobile
phone the most accurate proxy
for a person’s behaviour. We
have broken down our mobile
research process into the
following areas:
Active Capture
Through SMS, MMS and
other mobile life-logging tools
participants are periodically
asked to log specific activities,
such as eating (e.g. taking
pictures of food), logging
any physical activity, logging
attendance to specific events,
logging interactions with brands
etc. This data stream allows
us to uncover unconscious
behaviours by establishing
correlations with specific
activities and baseline patterns.
Prompted Response
Participants are also periodically
asked to answer questions,
engage in text chats or respond
to stimulus around specific
topics, such as mood. By
stimulating self-reflection and
adding depth to the data
captured in the previous
stream, this second one helps
us investigate why certain
behaviours occur in real-time.
Mobile sensing
Passive capture of data
from mobile sensors through a
custom built Android application.
Data ranges from location
to proximity to other people,
contacts, call logs, stress levels,
temperature, applications used,
web surfing, google searching,
map usage and many more.
This stream provides us
with both a qualitative and a
quantitative portrayal of actual
behaviours ranging from daily
movements to daily interactions
with online and face-to-face
social networks.
We recently used this approach
as part of an integrated study
to help a major media company
in the U.S understand the role
and lived experience of pop
culture in people’s individual and
shared lives today and into the
future. It was important for the
media company and some of its
brands to generate a very robust
data story that had credibility
with advertisers as well as help
translate a big messy topic into
useful outputs.
Smart People
From a research perspective
having clever people who
can bring smart thinking and
an understanding of how to
apply technology to customer/
consumer driven data, content
and creativity is a powerful
combination. In a world of
increasing data obesity there
is going to be a massive need
for more human analysis to
help us understand the “why”
in an integrated way. All of this
will require more depth, more
richness, more rigour, more
clarity of insight, all the skills
we can bring to the table as
qualitative researchers rather
than less. This isn’t naturally
going to fall into our laps. One
frustration or concern is that the
industry is not moving quickly
enough to keep up with the
speed of change so that other
categories of business are being
afforded the opportunity to
muscle into our patch. To win in
this space we are going to have
to combine rigour with speed,
– it’s not a question of either or –
we need to do both well.
Mix of qualitative skills
needs to change
What is going to have to change
is the mix of skills qualitative
research companies are going
to need to bring together to

help deliver quality insight and
innovation quickly. Having
researchers who are also
technologists will be key; having
researchers who understand
qualitative and quantitative
research while also get the
social web will be essential.
We are already starting to see
this eclectic mix of skills at Face.
It means research agencies
will need to look beyond their
normal boundaries to find
ways of attracting people from
outside the industry. It will be
necessary for one researcher to
augment a number of different
skills to deliver qualitative insight
effectively, drive action from
this insight and help companies
achieve a more holistic view
of their customer/consumer.
Conclusion
The power of social intelligent
research is that for the first time
in history the industry can help
companies deliver on putting the
customer/consumer at the heart
of their organisation.
Social Intelligence is about
establishing a real time
customer/consumer centricity
– an adaptive, continuous,
collaborative and open
customer/consumer driven
knowledge framework that sits
at the centre of a company’s
organisation like the hub of a
bicycle wheel (see Figure 1)
where all marketing and business
disciplines feed into and out
from the customer/consumer.
To achieve this framework
companies are going to have
to take P&G’s lead. As Bob
McDonald says “Our purpose
at P&G is to touch and improve
lives; everything we do is in that
context. With digital technology,
it’s now possible to have a one-
on-one relationship with every
consumer in the world. The more
intimate the relationship, the
more indispensable it becomes.
We want to be the company
that creates those indispensable
relationships with our brands,
and digital technology enables
this”. Social intelligent research
has a critical role in helping
clients deliver a holistic view of
the customer/consumer through
the seamless tie up of best in
class social media research,
on-line qualitative communities
integrated with mobile and
co-creation practices. Socially
intelligent research means no
longer delivering work purely
on an ad hoc, project-by-
project basis (as it has largely
been done to date with a focus
group based model) but on a
more continuous, real time and
strategic basis. It is going to
be about connecting the dots
across multiple data sets using a
variety of methodologies; having
an appreciation of a technology
driven tool kit whether that’s
mobile, communities or social
media and combining that with
smart thinking. The future will
be bright for companies that are
prepared to make this journey
from traditional qualitative
research agency to Socially
Intelligent Insight Consultancy.

References
Competing in a digital world:
Four lessons from the software industry
Hugo Sarrazin and Johnson Sikes
McKinsey Quarterly
Co-Creation:
The Real Social-Media Revolution
Francis Gouillart
Harvard Business Review
Esomar Online Research 2010:
Designing Relevance
How open and agile research
methodologies can help complex
organisations respond to change
and stay relevant
Francesco D’Orazio – Face
Esther Garland – Face
Tom Crawford – Nokia
Esomar 3D Digital Dimensions 2012:
Future Mobile Market Research
Mining Reality Through The Phone
Francesco D’Orazio
Inside P&G’s Digital Revolution
Michael Chui and Tom Fleming
McKinsey Quarterly
Now Every Company Is
A Software Company
David Kirkpatrick
Contributor
In Marketing, People Are Not Numbers
Sam Ford – Peppercomm
Six Social Business Trends To Watch
Dion Hinchcliffe – Dachis
Openness or How Do You
Design for the Loss of Control?
Tim Leberecht – Frog Design
How social intelligence
can guide decisions
Martin Harrysson, Estelle Metayer
and Hugo Sarrazin
McKinsey Quarterly
The Quiet rEvolution In Marketing Insights
Lenny Murphy, Editor
Greenbook
The Six Stages of Social Business
Transformation
Altimeter
Big Data Goes Social
Andrew Needham – Face

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