Is A Glimpz Worth A Thousand Words? We’re About To Find Out…

 

I have been woefully remiss in honoring the winners of the past 2 Insight Innovation Competitions (in Europe and Latin America), and with the North American phase now in play I decided I better make the time now to talk about the very worthy winners from the past few months.

So with mea culpas done, I’m thrilled to introduce SocialGlimpz, the Insight Innovation Competition Wave 4 Winners!

Before I dig into explaining who they are and what they do, let me share an anecdote. Although all of the competitors in the Competition get a ton of attention and interest, immediately following the presentation by SocialGlimpz at IIeX Amsterdam I received 4 emails from 4 different leading MR firms asking for a direct introduction. These folks were so impressed with the thinking on display by SocialGlimpz that they wanted to move right then to begin developing a relationship. I had never seen that type of response to a Competition entrant before, but then again we haven’t had one quite  like them before. That was exciting for us because it meant the Competition was doing what it wa supposed to, but it was even more exciting for SocialGlimpz because it was validation that their hard work was already paying off.

To see what got everyone excited, check out this video of their presentation in Amsterdam and you’ll understand.

The company has been on a bit of a winning streak lately: right before IIeX Amsterdam they were at SxSW and were a finalist for the 2014 SXSW Accelerator. 

Here is an interview with CEO Parry Bedi by IPG Lab at SxSW:

 

 

They certainly made an impression at SxSW as well, with  OmniCom Media Group stating, “Advertisers are taking particular note of finalists SocialGlimpz, which leverages big data and insights to predict customer preferences[…]”.

So who is SocialGlimpz and what’s the big deal?

They are a team of marketers and technologists led by Sami Kaipa and Parry Bedi who have, first hand, felt the pain of connecting with consumers through traditional text based means (surveys, brochures, email campaigns, etc). They decided to do something different and applied their data sciences skills and extensive backgrounds in CRM and Marketing Automation systems to the problem space, and SocialGlimpz was born. Here is how they describe what they do:

Visuals are the new language of consumers. Across the web, consumers are abandoning text and letting pictures & videos do the talking. SocialGlimpz’s Consumer Engagement Management (CEM) platform enables brands to engage in a meaningful dialogue with consumers through visuals. We are the first to offer the three essential pillars of CEM – consumer insights (understanding consumers), user generated content (speaking their language), and interactive campaigns (engaging them in two-way conversations) in a comprehensive platform that integrates seamlessly with a company’s existing CRM and Marketing Automation systems. Companies ask a question, choose their audience and that’s it! We do all the rest from collecting and curating picture/video responses from mobile consumers, to processing the inputs using advanced data sciences (a virtuous combination of Natural Language Processing, Mobile Machine Sensing, and Image Analysis) enabling brands to take smarter product, content and communication actions in real time.

 

Pretty darn impressive.

Harnessing the power of images for insights in and of itself is nothing new in MR; we have been using images in both qual and quant research since the dawn of the industry, and in recent years have also seen the rapid growth of a variety of behavioral science-based approaches to use images as a means of identifying consumer decision drivers. But this is different in a few fundamental ways:

1. With the rise of Instagram, Pinterest, memes, Vine, etc.. the visual web as a means of self expression has grown to immense proportions. Image sharing in all it’s permutations is now almost as ubiquitous as text-based communications, and although certainly not true in all cases, often the images shared are indicative of people’s interests, behavior and intrinsic motivators like attitudes/feelings/values.  SocialGlimpz leverages this new image-based communication channel to allow consumers to respond to questions via self-selected imagery.
2. This isn’t implicit research (yet!), but rather a “visual verbatim” combined with structured text and quant to make the user experience more natural and engaging.
3. Although automated image analysis is not embedded yet, the inclusion of those tools into SocialGlimpz to offer the same type of scale and efficiency of text analytics into the solution is a likely next step, ushering in “visual big data” to the mix.
4. SocialGlimpz is very focused on experiential research. It’s ideal for collecting feedback during events, in-store, or any in-situ scenario, although it’s certainly not limited to that.
5. It’s short and intuitive, but lends itself to ongoing campaigns based on easy iterative interactions.

Is SocialGlimpz a replacement for traditional research? Maybe some, but certainly not all. It is however a new and unique way to engage, understand & activate consumers that works well as a stand-alone approach for many types of projects, or as a supplement to communities, qual, trackers, etc…  Most importantly is showcases how folks without a research background can dissect  the research process and come up with something that certainly is cheaper and faster, and based upon the use case, likely better as well.

As a winner of the Insight Innovation Competition SocialGlimpz will be presenting at IIeX North America in Atlanta next month. Come and find out for yourself whether a glimpz is worth a thousands words there!