Research robots conducting mass ethnography for insight generation presented at QRWEBA2011 conference organised by Merlien Institute

1. DigiViduals™
Research Robots conducting mass ethnography
for insight generation
1
London Brighton Rotterdam Lausanne Hamburg New York Chicago Los Angeles Shanghai Melbourne

2. FaceTrace® measures what matters most for brands, designs, communication &
human experiences - the nature and level of their Emotional Appeal
Which of these faces best expresses
how you feel about this product?
Contempt
To what degree did this
Sadness Surprise product make you feel
[selected emotion]?
Neutral What was it about this product that
Happiness Anger made you feel this way?
[Use patented MindReader®
to capture reasons]
Fear Disgust 2007
BrainJuicer © 2006 2007
Award 2
Winner

3. A window into the world you want to understand…
DigiViduals™
are robotic researchers programmed
to represent a particular type of
person, brand or trend, conducting
automated mass web ethnography
to build up a rich, detailed picture
of their lives from which understanding, insights
and new product ideas can be generated.
Turn on, tune it and squeeze the insights out.

4. How Digital Characters work
Programmed with key words that represent their
attitudes, opinions and lifestyle
Search Twitter for matches to these key words
Then comb the social media landscape for
matching material

5. On Nicole’s Twitter page we find re-tweets from people who talk like
Nicole; providing understanding of what moves people in their daily life
Savage Tribes
Decorative
Aromatherapy
Candles
Nicole

6. Nicole’s Lifeboard:
Cute, domestic Coffee, chocolate
Village life
Sociable, romantic
Mythical, labyrinthine
adventures
Social conscience
Delicate, colourful,
quirky, intricate
Nicole
Edgy, Gothic, dark

7. Nicole’s Video:

8. Generating insights from the TV Digital Characters…
Digital Characters™
Ideas tailor-made
LifeBoard & Digital Character
for the Digital Character
Reverse engineer
the INSIGHT…
From DigiVidual™
and the idea

9. Nicole – key insight
Narrative
Nicole Nicole is fascinated by design, fashion and
Female craft objects. She’s genuine, sociable and has
an infectious zest for life. She’s a magpie –
alive to the joy that little things can bring. She
Age 38
can often be found hanging out in the cooler
Lives London parts of town – a source of inspiration for her.
Profession Jewellery Designer She loves the buzz of the big city but revels in
Lives Hammersmith the intimacy that the urban village provides.
She is very popular but has a close circle of
friends who admire her warmth, elegance and
Insight generosity.
“There are times in my life when I need to say sorry or cheer up a
friend and or be coquettish or just plain silly. Wouldn't it be great to
express my sentiments creatively in candy”.
Theme Creative Kitsch
Idea to Illustrate
Cuties are large, wrapped, flat, sweets [Cute dog with curly coat and a bald patch
saying "Bad hair day repair". Cute dog with eyes lowered looking sorry saying
"Sorry, I'm a bad hound :-(" Cute dog with long lashes saying "Down boy!".

10. What makes a great insight?
Wow, you really understand me..,
Resonance
“Yes… but “Yes, you really understand
tell me something me – almost better than I
new” understand myself!”
Weak Edge
…almost better than
I understand myself
“Does nothing “Yes, great insight,
for me…” but not for me…”
Low

11. Applications…
Segmentation/tgt Audience Enrichment & Understanding
Brand Persona Enrichment and Understanding
Trend Enriching / Tracking
Insight Generation
Insight Tracking
New Product Development
11

12. Mobile Music Digital Characters

13. Introducing our 9 Digital Characters
19 years old 30 years old 44 years old
Peggy Mark Richard
Belonging / Status driven, Unassuming
inner child – outer directed; / thoughtful –
Little Red Into appearances Decent guy
Riding Hood – Gordon Gekko
Wannabe
Ingaborg Matthias Julius
Challenging/
Rebellion; Sociable, confident, Doing the
Mature – Rebel successful – work right thing –
with a Cause hard, play soft Active caring
Lara Pedro Miguel
Longing –
Style, technology the simple
Empowerment
– My Way facilitating quality things in life
– the Real Deal matter

14. Case Study

15. DigiViduals: Oreo and Su in Malaysia
- BrainJuicer has already worked on DigiViduals with Kraft, in Europe
- For this pilot, we created 2 digividuals:
- Oreo DV – based on the brand construct
- ‘Amazing Su’; DV based on the target consumer definition
- Su brought back a great deal of information – which we constructed
into a film to bring her to life:
- To see how to inspire the team to understand brand/consumer
better, what can be improved etc

16. Current Oreo Communication in Malaysia

17. Amazing SU – the DV brief
Su juggles multiple roles and cherishes active engagement with her kids.
A pressure in her daily life is making enough time to spend quality time with
her family.
She spend her weekend in malls, shopping for groceries, going cinema with
her kids
She’s a Facebook-er, enjoys posting pics of her kids & family
When not at work, she’s shuttling kids between school & extra classes
Su is a non/lapsed Oreo user. Her kids consume biscuit with hot beverage
(Milo), consume 5 times a week
Su knows Oreo and is aware of the special way of eating Oreo i.e. Twist,
Lick and Dunk but she has yet to be bonded with the ritual to put Oreo into
her basket.
In general, Su has no emotional connection to Oreo and TLD ritual.

18. Digividual Su

19. Pets
Family & fun
Fun
Provider
Family
Art Pop
Community
& tradition
Future Health
Appearance

20. Su and Oreo
• Su cares about her family and wants' to ge
stuff right
• Other members of her family can have a
big effect on Su (and her buying habits)

21. Su and Oreo
•However Su is more than
an extension of her
family, there’s Su the
individual
•Su isn’t going to
purchase Oreo’s to
consumer herself (she
may purchase Oreo’s for
her children)

22. Su and Oreo
- If we want Oreo, to become
more than a substitutable
brand that Su buys for other
family members we need to
bring Oreo into her world
- One way of doing that is
through cooking, e.g. Oreo
cheesecake recipe. Su
get’s to enjoy the fun of
Oreo (with her family), but
is also validated as a
provider for her family,
whilst doing something she
is good at

23. Han Zantingh – MD Asia
han.zantingh@brainjuicer.com
+86 13818210785
23
London Brighton Rotterdam Lausanne Hamburg New York Chicago Los Angeles Shanghai Melbourne
A Leading International Online research agency

24. Presented at the Asia-Pacific conference on
Qualitative Research in Web 2.0
22 & 23 Feb 2011, Macau SAR
For more information
Please visit: http://www.merlien.org