Many people consider the National Football League’s choice of Madonna to headline the 2012 Super Bowl Halftime Show as, well, curious. It’s been more than 20 years since the artist released her landmark albums “Like A Virgin,” “True Blue” and “Like a Prayer.” Of course, a lot of music fans think artists from the 80s are timeless. Just the same, we thought we’d explore which acts sports fans talk about most in social media to see if there might have been a better fit.

Audience analysis is a key, unique aspect of Networked Insights social media analytics. In this case, we created an audience based on the people talking about the Super Bowl across all social channels. By analyzing their comments, we were able to uncover the musical acts they most discussed. We also looked at conversations around Madonna to see how well sports fans received the news of her appearance.

Using our proprietary real-time analytics and topic discovery engine, we learned that the most desired halftime acts are performers famous for rocking the stadium, especially bands with a front man. The Foo Fighters were the unanimous top choice, with Hank Williams Jr., Tom Petty and Peter Frampton also mentioned.

Super Bowl fans were less than kind toward the Material Girl, however. Many feel Madonna is past her prime, and showcasing her is a desperate attempt to appeal to an older female audience. Of the posts we uncovered, the measurable sentiment was 41 percent negative in nature, while only 3 percent positive.

To avoid such blowback, Networked Insights uses Content Sync to help networks, brands and agencies leverage real-time data to better understand their target audiences. Staying in sync with your audience allows you to uncover trends and insights that can improve marketing decisions. Content Sync helps eliminate guesswork or gut-based decisions on product placement and celebrity endorsement by allowing your audience to drive decision making.

Had the NFL tapped its audience for insight into who should perform at halftime, the result would have been a halftime show that increased social buzz and viewership – in other words, a can’t miss, must-watch Super Bowl experience aligned with the desires of its target audience.

Download our Media Optimization Guide >>
Make Every Ad Perform Like a Super Bowl Ad

Now that we have the most boring sports weekend of 2012 out of the way (come on, who could stay awake for the Australian Open, and the Pro Bowl – really?), it’s time to crank up the Super Bowl hype. Advertisers are certainly obliging. Some are already previewing the game spots that they’ll be spending $3 million to air.

Feeling left out of the action because you can’t spring for that kind of scratch? Not to worry. Just a couple of clicks will take you to Networked Insights’ Media Optimization Guide, Super Bowl XLVI Edition, a treasure chest of ideas that can help you make every ad perform like a Super Bowl ad

Topics the guide covers include using real-time social data to understand your audiences and deliver them relevant content. We reveal how you can reach NFL fans without an NFL budget, and how you can overcome a media lockout. The guide also has tips on leveraging social data to understand a TV show’s audience before it airs. And, it takes a look at how you can improve your TV marketing with real-time audience intelligence.

The guide has some entertaining information on two aspects of the big event – the halftime show and the program that NBC airs immediately after the game – that are stories unto themselves. All I’ll say is with what we’ve been hearing ahead of Madonna’s appearance, I can’t wait for the social chatter as her performance grows nearer and once she hits the stage (prediction: it isn’t going to be all bouquets). And, if you’re doubting that The Voice is going to keep football fans tuned in postgame, you might be surprised by who’ll be rooting for Team Adam, Team Blake, Team Cee Lo and Team Christina.

Finally, throughout the guide you’ll find examples of how Networked Insights tools make all these insights possible – Audience Sync, to discover who is talking about your product or service across the entire social web; Content Sync, which taps real-time data to better understand target audiences; and Media Sync, which enables networks, brands and agencies to leverage real-time data to uncover where their audience is consuming media. Together, they provide a playbook for you to unleash Super Bowl-power advertising.

Download our media optimization guide >>
Make Every Ad Perform Like a Super Bowl Ad

This is the time of year that producers and distributors congregate to buy and sell television programming globally. So representing Networked Insights, I traveled to South Florida this week to take the pulse of social TV at the annual NATPE conference. While syndicated programming and celebrities were stealing the headlines, I wanted to see firsthand how content creators are using social media.

In fairness, social TV is a developing concept. A variety of constituents are playing a role in transforming the viewing experience, and the term means different things depending on your vantage point.

Categorizing the participants in the social TV landscape can help in understanding how events and trends impact the larger path and the pace of change. The legacy players are the creators and distributors of TV programming such as broadcast and cable networks, producers. Some might also put the cable operators that deliver all this content in that category.

Then there are the many new kids in town. These include “over the top” content providers such as Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV and Google TV, and social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. The technology contingent also includes second-screen applications, data analytics companies and gaming platforms like Xbox and PlayStation. Taken together, this progression of technologies provides the bridge between audiences and the brands that want to reach them.

My exploration at NATPE focused on how social media is being used to: 1) heighten storytelling, 2) increase viewer engagement, and 3) develop and grow an audience. Given that the conference is more about conducting commerce than showcasing content, I was happily surprised to see that many TV producers are baking social media and social TV into their programs.  Here are some highlights:

Heightened story-telling

Electus International’s Fashion Star is a competition show hosted by Elle Macpherson, who is joined by participant mentors Jessica Simpson, Nicole Richie and John Varvatos. Designers will compete to get their collections launched at Macy’s, H&M and Saks Fifth Avenue. Social media is planned, archived and integrated into the show. Producers have captured participants’ emotional impulses during tapings and banked them for release as the show airs.

Audience engagement

Equally exciting was the news from Telemundo that its social media team will be managing 16 Twitter accounts for characters and sending live tweets on broadcasts. The network is also leveraging social media properties to increase audience engagement and allow new viewers to discover the program.

Social discovery and audience development

Revision3 has proven that large number of viewers are discovering video content on the Web through mobile devices, tablets, set-top boxes and personal computers. VentureBeat recently reported that the Internet TV network is attracting viewers on par with traditional cable networks. The network reported having more than 4.5 million YouTube subscribers across all shows at the end of 2011. Proving that the momentum continues to build in 2012, Revision3’s coverage of the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) delivered more than 9 million views in one week.

How social is changing television

Networked Insights’ work with networks and brands has revealed just how powerful the voice of the consumer expressed through social data can be. Fully leveraging the feedback loop that social media provides requires real-time audience analytics. Our analysis has helped content producers understand more quickly how audiences are interacting with and interpreting content. This information has led to modifications in postproduction techniques and accelerated marketing optimization.

Brands face a more competitive and fragmented environment than ever. Marketers need to stay in-sync with the behaviors of their target consumers to capitalize on trends and uncover insights that can make the difference in consumer adoption.

As social TV continues to develop, the use of metrics and analytics will play an expanding role throughout its value chain. It’s an exciting time. And the action will only accelerate as brands increasingly turn to content creators and technology providers to tap the evolving, often entertaining, and at times surprising online social behaviors of their target audiences.

This week on “#SocialTV goes to Washington” we’re finally seeing some reprieve from the nearly non-stop Republican debates and caucuses with some TV action from the Dems and Obama with this year’s State of the Union. They went big this year on social integrations with not only an official hashtag (#SOTU), but with some additional live tweeting from the official White House account, conversation-starter hashtags like (#40Dollars) and some more generic predefined “theme hashtags” (e.g. #education, #energy, etc.). While there weren’t any world records broken for the number of tweets-per-second, this ability to share and participate in a real-time global discussion is an amazing feat considering that our education system is still teaching kids the impact of broadcast media via the first televised debate between JFK and Nixon.

The ability to participate in events like these creates situations that allow viewers to project their natural behaviors into the social space. Behaviors such as negatively analyzing the appearance and actions of the individuals that appear (like when tweeters called Speaker of the House, John Boehner a member of the Jersey Shore because of his orange-looking tan), or admitting to being positively affected by emotional performances (like when Obama hugged Gabby Gilford), and debating the validity of the announced accomplishments (like pulling the troops out of Iraq). The concentrated format in which these conversations stem from (basically an hour long speech) also influences the ways in which these behaviors are expressed in social because each topic only lasts marginally longer than they are being talked about on screen as viewers attempt to keep up in real-time with the speech. Thus the top topics discovered tend to be ones that viewers had the highest emotional attachment to, or the longest on-screen exposure.

Overall Obama’s performance was well received by viewers [+28% positive and -10% negative sentiment], but for those interested in what our real-time analytical tools and top discovery engine identified as the top themes of this year’s State of the Union collected from conversations all across social (blogs, forums, Twitter, etc.) then make sure to check out the following chart and detailed data below:

• 2.7% – John Boehner (All the conversation related to Boehner was very negative [-25%], it ranged from discussing how bored he looked to how he appeared to have gotten a fake tan and subsequently belonged on Jersey Shore)
• 2.1% – Osama Bin Laden (While some people were hoping that Obama had more accomplishments in 2011 to talk about, they still felt very proud that Osama had been dealt with)
• 2.1% – Steve jobs (After Obama acknowledged Steve Jobs for his innovation the conversation moved around between how much people agreed with that sentiment to how attractive looking Steve Jobs’s widow was [+14% sentiment]. Others though felt like Obama was just name dropping [-6% sentiment].)
• 1.9% – Iraq (This topic was a very sore point with viewers, because while many were happy that there were no more troops in Iraq [+16%], others were still unhappy about the war and felt like we should have maintained a presence there [-11%])
• 1.3% – General Motors (The sentiment around this topic was very mixed [+11%, -9%], and this was mostly because many felt like it was a giant advertisement for GM)
• 1.1% – Hillary Clinton (The majority of viewers felt positively towards Clinton’s appearance and role, but a few did comment towards her appearance being a little haggard-looking [+11%, -5%])
• .86% – Eric Cantor (Similar to Boehner, conversation related to Cantor was about unhappy he looked to be listening to Obama [-14%], Mitch McConnell was another person that viewers felt negatively towards for similar reasons [-7%])
• .85% – Gabby Gilford (Sentiment  around Gilford and Obama giving her a hug was very positive [+22%], and a number of viewers noted how it made them tear up a little)
• .64% – “Spilled Milk” Joke (The majority of viewers considered this joke to be a success [+31%, -7%])

For years I have kept tabs on the Edelman Trust barometer report, which comes out every January in Davos.  And this year was no exception. After last year I figured this years report could make an excellent gauge of the economy worldwide!

Simply put the report states: Trust is down in every industry and every country across the board by an average of 6%. So what does this mean for marketers and for major brands in an era of social media?

Well 2 things …

Hidden in the data is the fact that CEOs and Government officials are at the very bottom of the totem pole when it comes to delivering a message that people trust. So welcome to the era where the average “Joe” employee is considered the most trustworthy corporate spokesperson. This is clearly a boon for the all of us who have been clamoring for our in house engineers to be out there blogging and tweeting with the public. Effectively they are now the only ones that the general public will trust to speak about your brand.

But to me that’s a quick fix on how you get information out of the company that the general public would believe. To really change the tide of this era of declining trust you need to consider what I’m calling “hyper-transparency.” For example look what Apple is going through with its overseas vendors. How can you company do the same or even take it to the next level. And be vigilant with those vendors that aren’t in compliance. You would need to say “here is where we are and are not compliant with our overseas vendors and here is what we are doing to fix it.” This would send a clear message that the corporate message can be trusted.

But where do you start?

There is obviously a clear need to understand what the general public perceives as your biggest issues and to have a feedback loop to measure your progress on these key issues. Which to me clearly underscores a need for trend analysis around your brand (think Google Trends for your Brand) to understand what to attack first to raise trust in your own company. This can’t be solved with typical social media software. You need to analyze trends of what’s being said across the issues that are important to your company. This doesn’t come from reading tweets everyday about your brand it comes from analytics of all forms of social media – blogs, microblogs, social networks and forums.

With the right technology and the right partner in place you can rebuild that trust that so few (if any) companies have these days.

The Asus Transformer surged in conversation over the past 30 days, increasing 69%, due in large part to Asus recently introducing the Transformer Prime tablet, equipped with the highly anticipated Tegra 3 quad-core processor. While considered a top device due its size and advanced specifications, many consumers were disappointed with the Transformer Prime missing its announced launch date prior to the holiday season. On top of its delay, when it finally arrived in stores Androidtablet fans were angered with its locked software, a perceived major flaw in a widely deemed “open” Android environment. This was clear as its positive sentiment dropped from 27% down to only 18%.

The Sony PlayStation Vita demonstrated considerablegrowth in conversation over the past 30 days at 54%, led by strong launch sales in Japan. While sales tapered off after the a quick start, new features like a Sega Genesis gaming emulator sparked a large growth in positive sentiment from 28% up to 45%. With a US and EU release approaching in February, the conversation continues to grow, as it has been for the last 90 days.

The Kobo eReader conversation had shown strong growth over the past 90 days, and the trend continued recently as the conversation grew 24% over the past 30. The Kobo eReader launched as a lower price option to the popular Kindle and Nook devices, and was initially reviewed very positively. As of late consumers have been discussing issues occurring with the device and that fueled a negative sentiment increase from 19% to 26%. Even with some recent negativity it was considered a solid eReader gift option for the holidays.

Following news of record activation numbers on multiple carriers, one would expect iPhone conversations to notice a sizable increase, but even with the good news iPhone noticed a 23% decrease in conversation over the past 30 days, and even more surprising, it lost over a 10% share of conversation amongst the top mobile brands. Samsung mobile phones noticed the largest growth at nearly 3% with the introduction of the Galaxy Nexus and various Galaxy S II models. The Galaxy devices are commonly considered two of the top competitors to the iPhone.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

Millions of people use keyword searches every day to find what they’re looking for online. New cars, Italian restaurants, definitions of unfamiliar words, competitors’ views on various issues. But when it comes to social media, keyword searches can send you off into the wilderness if you’re using traditional monitoring tools to discover conversations and trends.

By definition, the intent of search is to uncover the best responses to a query. A search engine retrieves hundreds of thousands of posts that match the word or phrase programmed into the query. It attempts to rank them in order of relevance. Its goal is to put the post most likely to be the one you’re looking for at the top of the list.

But what if the goal is to analyze millions of posts to identify trends that can inform marketing decisions or uncover insights that can reveal business opportunities? With social data analysis, more data points are sometimes much better than a few. In these cases, search will undermine your efforts as explored in the recently published Search vs Text Classification Report by Networked Insights. The first 20, or even 200, posts might be great matches. But the last 20 or 200 might not match at all.

Worse yet, search cannot contemplate the context of how words and phrases are used in relationship to one another. It simply identifies whether or not that word or phrase is present. In social media data analysis for marketing purposes, this is a huge limitation.

Text classification is an alternative to search that may be more appropriate for social media data analysis. Text classification is the task of assigning predefined categories to free-text documents. It can provide conceptual views of document collections and has important applications in the real world.

In contrast to search, text classification uses machine-learning algorithms to learn from a set of examples how to separate posts into topics. If an algorithm, or program, is presented with examples of how a human would separate posts based on topic, it can learn to mimic that person’s process on new, previously unseen posts. One major advantage of this approach is that the program can scale up to perform its process on millions of documents. As a result, classification offers the potential to produce a dataset in which all of the posts are relevant to the topics being analyzed. The last 20 are as valuable to the analysis as the first 20.

So stop searching. Instead, start asking how real-time data can support your existing decision-making processes and then use classification techniques to cut through the noise and sharpen your social analysis.

Interested in learning more? Download the Search vs Text Classification Report today!

Tampax was the most discussed feminine hygiene product, since early December, with 38.5% of the conversation. Positive sentiment for Tampax remained high, at 20%, and words such as convenient and amazing appeared in the social media chatter. Both the Tampax Pearl and the Tampax Pearl Compak were mentioned. Kotex and Summer’s Eve rounded out conversation for the top three feminine hygiene brands, with 30.8% and 15.4% of the chatter respectively.

Going Back to Work was the most discussed Career & Money Topic since early December, with 40% of the conversation. Going Back to Work conversations increased 35% during the past month and conversations were split between vacation and re-entering the workforce. Regardless of why moms were returning to work, chatter about pumping and breastfeeding were common. College Savings Plans and Life Insurance rounded out the top three Career & Money Topics, each with 14.2% of the conversation.

Pepsi was the second most talked about Soda Pop, with 17.1% of the conversation since the beginning of December. While Pepsi was an Insight on the Move, with conversations increasing 62% during the past month, it still trails behind industry leader Coke, who has 53.9% of the conversation. Pepsi chatter mentioned both Diet beverages as well as Coke products. Positive sentiment for Pepsi decreased from 27% to 22%, and the most frequently used sentiment word was love.

Since the beginning of December, Lowe’s conversations have increased 95%, making this brand the most notable Insight on the Move. Lowe’s was the most talked about retailer in the Home Stores category, with 30.8% of the conversation, and lead both Ikea (29.3%) and Home Depot (18.8%). During the past month, positive sentiment for Lowe’s decreased to 24%, and words such as good and great were common. Individuals who mentioned Lowe’s most frequently made comparisons to Home Depot and Wal-Mart.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

And, in fact, it may be one. That clever E*TRADE baby. Nike’s “Just do it.” “It’s Miller time.” True big ideas can spawn campaigns that tap the power of every marketing channel.

But what happens if it’s not the right idea? What if it’s so misaligned, so out of tune with the audiences you’re trying to reach that everything – advertising, PR, the digital campaign – falls on its face?

Marketers are increasingly using social media analysis to uncover the top-of-mind topics within their target audiences to optimize media spending. Why not gather the same types of insights when your campaign is still in the creative stage?

Insights gained through social media analysis can guide the development of your creative product. It can help you understand what tone to strike in your campaigns – playful, exciting, interactive? It can indicate whether to use pure storytelling, or be a bit more abstract. And, it can signal whether an idea will play across all the channels where your consumers are talking, and whether it makes sense.

Social media analysis can provide a 360-degree view of your audiences, what they like, feel, and want from your brand. It can provide insights into how your audiences view your competitors. And by continuously mining social data, you can identify trends you can ride to help propel your brand message.
If your campaign messaging is wrong out of the gate, it will diminish the potential value of all your media channels. Social data can help prevent a messaging gap between you and your consumers that you perhaps didn’t even know existed.

Some marketers may hesitate to suggest that social media data can contribute as much to the big idea as the gray matter between their creative director’s ears. I’d suggest getting over it. You can be sure your competitors are.

This post is the third installment of a three part blog series. Click to read the first and second post.

Many companies are increasing their focus on content creation and marketing, often funding such programs by shifting advertising dollars. But are they really getting maximum bang for their bucks? Is what they are creating going to get the attention and deliver what customers want?

A 2011 emarketer.com survey found that the use of dynamic content to increase the relevancy of a company’s products or services has become a top priority for U.S. marketers. Improving segmentation and targeting and better integrating social channels and data are other key objectives. In fact, consumers in the same emarketer.com survey noted that they are going to social channels expecting exclusive content.

The content development process typically starts by determining the audiences the company wants to reach and setting an editorial calendar for content creation. Content, both internally generated and from other sources, is then aggregated, curated and deployed. Next, the company listens to what’s being said about the content, and perhaps engages with its audience (although many companies are missing engagement opportunities, too, as we discussed in a recent blog). This feedback is then evaluated, and the lessons learned are applied to the next round of content creation. This seems simple, right?

Where this process can fall short is in failing to truly know what your audience cares about. What celebrities do they like? What entertainers have their ear? What TV shows do they like? If market research has determined your audiences, social media analysis can provide the foundation for discovering who really makes up those audiences and synchronizing content to their interests and tastes. Social intelligence guides investments in various forms of content. It can tell you the style of the content, whether it’s video or written words to use in videos. It can reveal whether an audience likes games. Social data can also tell you how the consumer wants to engage you on product releases, promotions and contests.

Social intelligence can help you decide on the optimal “canvases” or distribution channels for reaching your audience. It can tell you whether to paint your message as a blog, as a video or in another branded content form. If you listen to your audiences and know where they’re engaging on topics you want to have influence on, you can distribute content properly and cost-effectively instead of building it and hoping they will come. Think of it as an ongoing series of content masterpieces.

Your customers and prospects are talking about you more than you know. To understand what these audiences truly want, it’s important to continually evaluate what they’re saying – weekly, daily or even in near real time. This evaluation helps you identify trends, go deeper into the psychographic profile of your audiences and ensure your content dollars are going to the right investments.

This blog post is the second in a three part series. Click here to read the first post.

Imagine a company that has upscale retail locations around the United States receiving tens of thousands of customer visits. Now imagine not having anyone there to greet and interact with those customers. What’s the point of the storefront?

Facebook fan pages are much the same thing. But only 0.2 to 2 percent of fans go back to a page. Why? Because there is nothing going on that interests them.

Fan pages are a unique marketing canvas to connect with avid consumers. Yet some brands are terribly underutilizing these pages, making them basically brochureware repositories — essentially inviting customers in but not engaging them or giving them an incentive to return. More so, they don’t understand what their customers want from them. Fans may “like” the page, but what good is it really doing the company or its customers?

Other brands are working harder to tap their pages’ potential, inviting fans to post on the page, using brand-generated posts to ask them questions, and offering promotions that capitalize on the fan base’s affinity. The fan page becomes a focus group that can be mined for consumer insights, which can feed back to content creation, stage gate development and campaign tracking. It isn’t the “like” that matters; what matters is creating conversations to understand the consumer.

A two-prong approach of audience discovery and competitive analysis can help uncover what motivates and energizes your consumers.

Audience discovery is the use of social data to segment those who talk about your brand into their affinities. When you understand your audience, you can tailor the message and campaign to generate more fan attention. And if you understand what to do with your fan page, you can give it a new place in your owned media platforms. Rather than investing in media properties that become more expensive as they become successful, you’re now on your way to developing owned media that increases in value the more it’s used.

What do your consumers want from you – coupons, product updates, cutting-edge video, exclusive deals or contests? What are they interested in – sports, music, TV? Do they care about your brand affiliations or sponsorships? A “like” is a passive response to content, while a comment is engagement.

Brands need to mine competitors’ fan pages for insights. Competitive analysis provides insight into what your fans and their friends find engaging on other brands’ sites. What do your fans like on the competitor sites? Are your competitors treating your fans in ways that provide an edge over your company?

If you were running a bricks and mortar store, you’d expect your floor people to find out what customers want when they come in the door. In the same way, audience discovery and competitive analysis can help you be in sync with your Facebook fans. Knowing their interests can help you establish a road map to effective fan engagement. You can then repeat the analysis periodically to capture nuances and shifts in fan interests. Now that’s something you and your customers will really love.

I love the holidays, and not because of all the family, gifts, and home-cooked food, but because it’s one of the few times of the year you know that you’re going to get some exciting action-packed blockbuster films. This year we’ve got an exciting mix of original content, remakes, sequels, and scarily enough a “quad-quel”. For this post I’ve singled out The Adventures of Tintin, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, Sherlock Holmes 2, and Mission Impossible 4. So in the same vein as our annual TV predictions report we bring you our 2011 holiday blockbuster picks:

The chart below compares the social conversation of these films from Nov 6^th through Dec 14^th:

From a quick analysis it’s clear that Mission Impossible 4 and The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo quickly surpass the other two films in the number of conversations across social. This is really a testament to how amped film buffs are to see The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo because it managed to overcome the buzz that Mission Impossible 4 was generating by premiering a 6-minute prologue of The Dark Knight Rises before the film starts. In fact viewing that prologue was discussed in 6% of all Mission Impossible 4 conversations as one the main points of intent to see the film.

To provide a deeper context within these conversations, and to go beyond just the impressions in the chart that measured the approximate number of exposures a visitor had to a product or brand on blogs, forums, twitter, and other social channels, I also performed a full thematic and semantic analysis on these films using primarily our Topic Discovery Engine and other analytic tools. The semantic analysis is presented within this report as “net sentiment”, which is the sum of the positive and negative sentiment, and informs us of where consumers’ emotions lay.

In general these additional layers of context are what make social data a great predictor of blockbuster films, because through the measurement and contextualization of social conversations we are able to understand which films are driving the most interest, and what the intent is behind wanting to see these films. This data also exists before a film has premiered and allows brands, marketers, and content producers to use this pre-inform data to better direct their marketing, mitigate risk, and make more informed data-driven decisions.

Now on to the predictions:

One of the things I uncovered was that even though Sherlock Holmes 2 had the smallest volume of conversation out of the films analyzed, it looks like it’ll still have a relatively successful premiere since there were almost no negative conversations about it (+17% net sentiment). Online commenters also seemed to have genuinely enjoyed the last one. Film buffs also thought it was funny that Naomi Rapace, the love interest of Sherlock Holmes 2 who starred in the original version of The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, is competing in the box office against the remake of her own film.

The Adventures of Tintin however looks like it might have a rockier start. While this film appeals to the fans of the original comics, animation junkies, and is powered by an all-star production team, people approach it in social with more of a tentative viewpoint and worry that it’ll end up being kind of boring. Tintin ended up with the lowest amount of emotionally charged conversations at +8% net sentiment.

As far as sentiment goes Mission Impossible 4 really didn’t do much better than Tintin. While promising a big blockbuster weekend when measuring the number of impressions, there are a lot of fans that were still unimpressed by Mission Impossible 2 and 3. This resulted in Mission Impossible 4 having the highest percentage of negative conversations (-4%, but +10% net sentiment) out of all the analyzed films. Although there was still enough excitement in fan conversations to believe that Mission Impossible 4 will still receive really solid premiere weekend numbers. Some of the themes that indicated that it would be successful was the casting of fan-favorite actor Simon Pegg, the direction of the film looking to be better than its predecessors, and the opportunity to catch The Dark Knight Rises prologue.

Finally The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo looks to be the most anticipated of these four films. The enthusiasm in the voice of these fans is almost contagious. From the 8-minute trailer, to Trent Reznor of NIN producing most of the soundtrack, to how well liked Daniel Craig is as an actor at the moment. There were even rumors that a special trailer for The Hobbit will air beforehand, which would certainly seal the deal with fans if that was to become a reality.  At +15% net sentiment (there were a few naysayers questioning the need for an American remake of the film), and the highest volume of impressions, it looks like The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo will have the largest box office premiere of the four films.

In the day and age where producers of digital shorts like College Humor, Channel101, and Funny or Die have become known for imbedding recognizable celebrities and comedians into their productions, it is no longer a surprise to see your friends link you to new celebrity videos on occasion. The latest example of this was a series of ads Will Ferrell produced for the beer renowned with value conscious college students across North America, Old Milwaukee.

Old Milwaukee is having a bit of a resurgence now that its brand is part of the Pabst Brewing Company, whom have been busy filling their portfolio with previously defunct, but highly nostalgic, American lagers like PBR, Old Style, and Schlitz. Over the next few years I bet we’ll continue to see the conversation around these beers continue to grow even in the face of the expanding small batch micro-brew market.

The ads being measured here today were reported to have originally aired only in a small local market. They of course somehow managed to find themselves catching fire with the digerati thanks to Will Ferrell’s involvement. As a media analyst here at Networked Insights I of course enjoyed watching Will Ferrell channel his old character “Frank the Tank” from the film Old School into these videos, but I was really more interested to see which brand (Will or “Old Mil”) really benefited from this collaboration.

The chart below compares the social conversations of Old Milwaukee and Will Ferrell  from November 1^st through December 14^th:

Looking at the presented data there are two key takeaways. The first is that media exposure is the key to generating a lot of social conversations. That’s illustrated here when we compare the minor bump in conversation from where the ads first appeared to the major spike in conversation once AdWeek, and a few other sources, started blogging about the story and kicked off a flurry of tweets. The second takeaway from this data is the direct relationship between a celebrity and a brand. This of course is not the first time we’ve explored this topic, and I’d highly recommend checking out both our recent report on Kim Kardashian and our Lady Gaga Social Intelligence Report to see more examples of social Lift.

Social Lift can be considered online word-of-mouth and helps us measure and understand an object’s impact in media after it has been shared in social. In this particular case Social Lift is being measured in impressions which are the approximation of the number of exposures a visitor had to a product or brand on blogs, forums, twitter, and other social channels. We also use our Topical Discovery Engine, and other analytic tools, to provide the context and consumer sentiment behind the data.

All of this data helps our clients to understand who’s in sync with their brand, and with that knowledge they are able to make more informed data-driven decisions that help them mitigate risk and produce more direct marketing. To find out more on how Networked Insights can help you choose the perfect celebrity check out our Mountain Dew Audience Sync report.

Choosing the right celebrity for your brand shouldn’t be a challenge, because like what Frank the Tank said: “once it hits your lips, it’s so good!”

With a son about to go to college next year the answer is – I do! But as my close friends know I like to call myself “sports dyslexic” especially when it comes to classic American sports like basketball or even baseball (sailing is another story).

But lets face it – Sports is a form of entertainment that many brands look to connect themselves with. And the audiences that follow each sport or even each team could be looked at as a prime target for some marketers. But it’s often hard to know if that audience is right for your brand.

So how do you know if a certain sports audience is right for your brand? Often its gut feeling – I remember at BearingPoint the CEO telling me we needed to sponsor a golfer named Phil Mickelson. Did we ask around, did we do research, did we poll our clients – no. We saw an opportunity and let our gut drive the decision.

So I did a little experiment with my analyst team here at Networked Insights to determine what College Football team are the most popular by audience type and the results may surprise you! The results were so good we also produced a report called – The Most Social College Football Fans, I hope you enjoy it!

The folks at Chrysler Group have high hopes for the Fiat 500, the throwback small car they’ve tossed into the cute competition against the Beetle, the Mini and the Smart. The fortunes of the 500 ride in part on the celebrity shoulders of singer Jennifer Lopez, who’s featured driving one in the TV campaign for the car.

The campaign has generated a healthy amount of social media attention, earning a top 10 spot in a recent ranking of 2011 viral ad campaigns. As it turns out, though, much of that buzz is probably not making the automaker happy. Networked Insights’s analysis of the social conversation bubbling around the campaign found that much of it has nothing to do with the car. Instead, online bombers have delighted in pointing out production goofs, such as a change in camera angles that puts the singer in a different pair of shoes. The revelation that a body double, not JLO, tooled the car through her Bronx ‘hood has challenged the pop star’s street cred. And, some ask, why were the ads in heavy rotation on college and pro football broadcasts, where the typical viewer might want more muscle than 74 horsepower (and not be much of a JLO fan)?

How can you avoid such mistakes? Don’t assume you’re meeting your marketing objectives because social impressions indicate you’re attracting an audience. Audience Sync is essential to knowing who your audience really is, what they care about, and what they’re discussing. And, Media Sync can provide the other piece of the puzzle – where your target audience is consuming content. These tools can help you design or refine your campaign to reach the audience you want with the right message, and prevent a fusillade of flamer potshots.

Interested in reading more about how to find the right celebrity for your brand? Click here to see more blog post on celebrity endorsement.

The Belly Band, an ingenious device to help pregnant women with their pants, was the most talked about pregnancy brand since early November, commanding over half (50.7%) of the online chatter. The number of sites where Bell Band conversations occur has grown 20% during the same time period. Unfortunately, negative sentiment is slightly higher than positive sentiment, 19% and 17% respectively.

Canon is an Insight on the Move, as conversation increased 67% since early November. Currently, Canon is the second most discussed electronic brand, with 6.5% of the conversation, beating out industry giants such as LG (4.4%), Samsung (3.5%) and GE (3.4%). Positive sentiment for Canon was strong, and words such as love, good, great and nice were used frequently. During the last month, the Rebel line was most talked about, and the T2i was the most mentioned device.

With a 64% increase in conversation since early November, Kmart is an Insight on the Move. While Kmart was both the 4th most discussed department store and discount store retailer, it was most frequently compared to Target and Walmart. Positive sentiment for Kmart is high at 31%, and words such as good, great, happy, awesome, nice and love were frequent.

Within the Moms Category, Honda was the most discussed automotive brand since mid-November, with 27.5% of the overall car conversation. While Honda’s vehicle sales fell 6.4% in November, their online presence is beating Ford (19.3%), Jeep (14.6%), and Chevrolet (14.%). Positive sentiment for Honda dropped slightly, from 53% to 49%, and words such as good, love and loved were common.

Moms care about clean clothes. Amongst laundry detergent conversations, Tide was the clear leader in the social media realm, with 53.8% of the conversation during the past 30 days. Rounding out the top three places are Gain and Method, each with 10.9% of the chatter. Overall post volume for Tide has increased 8%. Positive sentiment is currently 22%, while negative sentiment has shrunk to 3% during the past month.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

The speed with which social media spreads ideas and information has led many marketers to place a premium on capturing data in real time. But should real-time data be such a priority?

Real time means different things to different people when the term is used as a proxy for recency. To an evolutionary biologist, real time could mean thousands of years of species development data. To a 911 dispatcher, real time is a few seconds worth of critical information from a telephone call.

What about marketing and advertising? This notion of “relative real time” extends there, too. To a marketing executive, real time may be data necessary to make annual, semi-annual and quarterly budget decisions. Real time to a media buyer may be several weeks of ratings data to understand what target consumers are viewing. To ad networks serving targeted banner ads to web visitors, real time is microseconds.

Ultimately, gathering the most data possible to inform a decision or solve a problem — in the window of time that best suits your need — is more important than having instantaneous data access. And to do that, you need to start with how you’re going to use the data. What do you want to accomplish? What business problem are you trying to solve?

While social data is exciting because it’s abundant and easily accessible, it’s still relatively new for corporations and how they’re integrating the voice of the consumer into business processes. Real-time social data is just another information source to be incorporated into your decision-making process, from problem definition, to research analysis and, ultimately, project execution. Data doesn’t need to come to you any faster than the time frame that process allows you to act on it.

At Networked Insights we help brands analyze social data for improved decision making — daily, weekly and monthly. While access to a rich data set sounds appealing, sometimes more is not better. Rather, understanding the behaviors of your target consumer is the quickest path to achieving marketing success.

Start by analyzing the decision cycles within your organization or department and how you want to engage data. The timeline of that process will determine what, relatively speaking, real time means to you.

Taco Bell

Taco Bell conversation among sports fans grew (+15%) and became significantly more positive (+12%) as fans reacted to the brand’s new television ad campaign. Taco Bell released commercials featuring the “decidedly colorful” and “blissfully aloof” closer for the San Francisco Giants, Brian Wilson. Fans viewed it as a curious decision given Wilson’s lack of star power and broad appeal, but the choice has resonated very well within this audience segment.

Boxing

Conversations about boxing spiked 77% fueled by the highly anticipated bout between Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez for the WBO Welterweight belt. The majority decision in favor of Pacquiao is considered by many as controversial, but fans believe the result sets up a long awaited bout against Floyd Mayweather. Many aggressively dismiss Pacquiao as being “pound for pound” the best fighter in the world, preferring MMA as the “proving ground” for such a distinction.

Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut has experienced some backlash over their decision to have Reggie Bush as a paid spokesperson in their recent ad campaign. Negative sentiment around the brand has increased 8x compared to the previous 30 day period. Many consumers dislike Bush due to his history of substandard behavior; citing his past involvement in USC recruiting violations, dating Kim Kardashian, his playboy lifestyle and his “all about the money” mentality.

Fantasy Football

The playoffs are on the horizon in coming weeks for hordes of fantasy football fanatics. Many aficionados look for an edge, seeking advice on last minute roster adjustments, “sleeper” pick-ups, verdicts on whether to “sit or start” players. While many play for money, several seek the sole prize of bragging rights. Look for volume of engagement around this topic to reach a fever pitch over the next few weeks.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

For most people, Black Friday kicks off the holiday shopping season. It’s a time of year to relish terrific savings and wonderful retail experiences. Others find all the activity too frenzied to participate, saving their dollars and time for Cyber Monday. No matter where you stand on the spectrum of holiday consumerism, it’s undeniably the most important time of year for most brands and retailers.

Download the Retail Brands Report and see how consumers speak about the five largest retail brands in social media and discover how and why brands relate to their customers. Networked Insights’s analysts examined real-time consumer data to reveal trending topics and brand conversations, as well as insights on consumer behavior/preference, all segmented by five different consumer types.

Safeway

Safeway rose to the top of grocery store conversations within the Moms category, capturing 25.9% of the chatter since mid-October. Safeway beat out Whole Foods (23.5%) to become the most talked about grocery store. When looking at Safeway conversations, the post volume, number of contributors and number of sites all increased during the past 30 days. Unfortunately, while overall activity increased, negative sentiment for Safeway also increased dramatically from 4% to 17%, correlating to a slight decrease in positive sentiment from 21% to 19% during the same period. Building up to the holiday season, price, was the most discussed topic.

Kohl’s

Kohl’s conversations among moms represented 28.4% of online department store chatter since mid-October. Kohl’s chatter slightly beat out number two retailer Target (27.1%) and had more than twice the volume of conversations as Macy’s (12.2%). Both post volume as well as the number of contributors increased, 26% and 28% respectively, while the number of websites where Kohl’s conversations were mentioned decreased 9%. Amongst the top three department store brands, Kohl’s had the lowest negative sentiment, of 6%, for the past thirty days. Coupons was one of the most talked about themes, and positive sentiment included words like love, great, good, cute and nice.

Disney

Disney conversations have increased 46% since early October, with online chatter appearing on 29% more websites over the past 30 days. Positive sentiment for Disney has dropped slightly from 41% to 35%. Words such as love, great, fun, awesome and fun were common. Disney World and princess conversations drove chatter for the past month.

Ford

Ford is an Insight on the Move, as conversation has increased 55% since early October, and Ford conversation within Moms accounted for 22.9% of online automotive chatter, followed by Honda (18.7%) and Toyota (13.7%). Positive sentiment for Ford has been over 50% for the past 30 days, and words such as love, good and great were common. Negative sentiment remained relatively low, at 12%. Gas conversations were frequent when talking about Ford products. Competitor mentions that appeared with Ford conversation included: Chevy, Hyundai, Jeep, Mazda and VW.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.