Visible Intelligence Successes in Research

Consumer Insights

You have your champions, customers who love your products, and love to tell people about them. Unfortunately, some brands also have their detractors, people who want to trash their products—sometimes for reasons that are only remotely related to the product itself. For example activists sometimes attempt to promote their cause by focusing attention on a particular company or organization.

One company in this situation was able to work with Visible® to keep tabs on what was being said, who was saying it, and on what platforms. They could track the commentary and understand which influencers had the most clout—and on which platform. They could see where the postings were happening, which enabled them to predict the velocity of a story and plan their PR accordingly.

You can’t control what others say about you, but you can understand what they’re saying—and where they’re saying it. By using Visible to understand how these trends evolve, you can make sure your response is effective.

Social Media Focus Groups

Focus groups are good. You find people with certain characteristics and you ask them a defined set of questions. But at the end of the day, you’ve talked a limited number of people, and you’ve only asked them about a few things.

With Visible’s tools, you can listen to lots and lots of people. And you might find out some things that you wouldn’t think to ask. For example, one company thought that its customer base was limited to a certain group of people—let’s say, women over the age of 40. In reviewing online chatter, however, they realized that there was also a market in a totally different demographic—maybe men under the age of 30.

Working with Visible, this company found out it had a totally untapped market. If they’d run a focus group with the customers they knew about, they never would have discovered this great opportunity. And they didn’t even have to pay people to sit in a room and answer questions.

Product Development

What do you like? Dislike? What do you need? What do you want? Who is fulfilling those wants and needs? It might sound kind of personal, but really you can ask these questions about most any product. And when you’re looking to develop something new, it makes all the sense in the world to ask the questions—and listen closely to what you hear.

Working with Visible, you don’t have to go out and pose the questions to your customers, or potential customers. But formulating the questions informs the way you filter and organize the vast amount of information coming from social media sites.

That’s what a large beverage company did when they wanted to develop a new product for a crowded category: juice blends. They knew they needed to get it right, so they worked with Visible to listen—over a period of months—to what customers wanted, needed, liked, didn’t like. They looked at what the competition was doing, and what people were saying about those products. Then the company used that knowledge to develop—and market—their new product. Once it was launched, they monitored how the drink was received in comparison to competitors’ products.

Listening to the social media conversations provides this beverage-maker with a sense for the competitive landscape: what customers want, how the competition is faring, and how the company and its products stack up.

Product Innovation

When you’re extending your product line, there’s always the challenge of designing something that fits the brand and appeals to the new demographic. How can you make sure that the new gizmo really appeals?

A major financial services company faced just this problem. Their cards were well established with older customers, but younger people saw them as “my dad’s credit card.” If the company wanted to grow their business with people under the age of 25, they needed a new product—one that was hip and appealed to the younger crowd. But how could the product designers know whether they had it right?

Enter Visible. The financial services company had developed a credit-card concept for this younger demographic. They did a small-scale test of the new product and then listened to what was said in social media. Working with Visible, the company was able to understand reactions from people in their target market. They made adjustments to the product before its release, improving the way it was received by younger people.

By partnering with Visible, this financial services company was able to improve its product design before product rollout. Without these changes, the card wouldn’t have been as well-received in the market—and the company would have risked its credibility with the very people that it was trying to attract.

Social Conversations

Sometimes you’ll listen to any kind of music, but other times you just want to listen to one thing, and anything else is just noise.

A major software company has a large product line that sells to both the home and business markets—and is used pretty much everywhere.

There are times when the company wants to get a sense for what people—all people—are saying about its products. That can be good, and useful. But other times they want something more precise. For example, they wanted to understand what people in business were saying about a couple of their products. But it was even more specific than that: they wanted to know what technical decision makers and IT pros were saying in social media. Anything else was noise. So, not only did they want to filter out comments from people who use the products at home or at school, they also wanted to filter out posts from business end users, or folks at the help desk.

Visible—uniquely—was able to accurately filter out irrelevant posts and get the company the information it wanted: comments only from people with specific decision-making roles. Using Visible, the software company was able to find out what the IT pros had to say about a couple of specific products. Visible removed the noise, leaving only the information relevant to the question at hand.

Staying Current

New games! New media! Massive multiplayer online role-playing games!

Parents and teachers know they need to pay attention to this stuff. If you play in these places yourself, you understand the risks, but you might not know what tools you can use. And if you like to steer clear of the online world—well, maybe it’s even tougher to figure out. Either way, how do you find trustworthy information on how to handle online safety for kids?

A large high-tech company understands the importance of these questions, and they want to help parents and teachers who are teaching kids how to navigate safely in the ever-changing online world. So the company provides resources to parents and teachers. But to be really effective, they need to know what people are concerned about right now, and where they’re looking for information. But it’s a moving target: the conversation shifts over time, and so does its location. The company understands that, to make a difference, it needs to stay engaged over the long haul. And they want to provide a human touch by reaching out to help people who have questions.

Working with Visible, the company can stay engaged and make sure it’s addressing parents’ and teachers’ current concerns. They help parents and teachers find the answers they need by optimizing resources for key word searches, tweeting, and responding to comments on social media sites. And that helps provide a human touch in a high-tech world.