For those of you who have not had your Thomas initiation, either because you’re not British, or because you don’t have children under 5, Thomas the Tank Engine is a British children’s programme, featuring a range of anthropomorphised steam train engines, who generally get into trouble, realise they’ve done something stupid, then get themselves out of it through teamwork or support from their (engine) friends.  Humans play a very much secondary role, and the only one who actually matters is the boss of the railway line, called The Fat Controller.  It’s based on a series of children’s books written in the middle of the twentieth century, just as diesel power was entering the real railway landscape, and so, on the face of it, Thomas the Tank Engine is a paean to an outdated, but romantic mode of transport.

However, children’s programmes are never as simple as that; they always have some level of education underpinning them, either scholastic or moral or physical.  In this regard, Thomas the Tank Engine borders on the rabidly didactic.  The engines vie to be “Really Useful” (particularly in the eyes of their boss, the Fat Controller), either in making sure the right goods get to the right place, or that they rescue each other, or whatever; their ultimate worth is only really seen in terms of units of production or efficiency.  It is as if the books were written by Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill – Thomas the Tank Engine is almost a children’s primer for the philosophy of utilitarianism; in other words, it’s overriding message is the individual only has worth and can only derive happiness through social or economic output – the results of their actions, or effort.

So, I’ve always found watching Thomas the Tank Engine the most philosophically engaging, if, at times, annoyingly blunt, of all children’s TV.  So, what cultural or organisational teachings did this particular programme The Day of the Diesels – a feature length episode, no less – have in store?  I found myself realising that there were many similarities between the storyline and our current experiences with clients’ multichannel operations and organisations, and how best to improve performance.

The story followed the two teams of engines – the “good” steam engines, featuring Thomas, his best friend Percy, Gordon, Edward and a whole range of others, and the “bad” diesel engines, who are often so derided they don’t even have names, other than, well, Diesel.  The diesel trains are naughty, dirty, deceitful and cunning.  They don’t care about doing their jobs, are characterised as a bit stupid and solely interested in empire-building, although they do want to look good in front of their boss (the same Fat Controller).  The plot revolves around the Diesels’ coveting of the “beautiful” clean, well-kept shed that the Steam trains have, with all its turntables and other fun tools.  They hatch a dastardly scheme to tempt Percy away from Thomas, by convincing him he was no longer his best friend, and the Diesel leader would become his best friend, and so Percy would decide to move across to stay in the Diesel shed.

Percy then realises that actually, the Diesels were just trains, working in cramped, dirty conditions, and weren’t so bad, and perhaps his prejudices about Diesels were wrong.  They needed help from some of the other Steam engines, whose skills would benefit them, and allow them to tidy up their own shed.  Percy then starts to bring other engines across, including a crane engine, which is the particular skill the Diesels miss – they need to be able to move stock around their yard from one high place to another, which seemingly no-one had thought of.  At this point, the Diesels show their true colours, revert to (stereo)type and imprison both Percy and the crane engine, wait until all the Steam engines come to find them, and then steal into the Steam shed, and take it over, playing with all their new toys.  Percy manages to convince a couple of small Diesel engines left to guard them that kidnap and imprisonment isn’t really the right thing to do, and they find Thomas and friends, who come to their rescue, confront the Diesels in their Steam shed, and the standoff is resolved by the Fat Controller, who finally realises he has a turf war within his organisation.  The Diesels are sent packing, but not before everyone helps to tidy up and rebuild the Diesel shed into a new spick-and-span warehouse, so everyone is happy, and Percy is returned to the Steam shed and he and Thomas are best friends again and the Steams and the Diesels get back to doing their own thing again in peace.

All of which plot detailing means you don’t need to watch the programme now (with apologies for those of you who didn’t want the ending spoiled!), but it also struck me how much this mirrors how many companies have attempted to manage multichannel so far; you may well recognise some of these elements in your own multichannel operations, although please forgive any inevitable generalisations.

Until fairly recently, Multichannel Operations – which really meant Digital, including Web or Ecommerce, together with some email, mobile and social – were often run as separate businesses within an organisation.  This meant they were often at odds with the traditional business, which either didn’t understand the new business model, or saw it as a threat to their existing way of working.  So, Multichannel was set up as a different business silo, who had to build their own infrastructure, often with little engagement from other areas of the business, who often were looking for ways to sabotage or get round this new innovation, even if it was clear that this was how customers behaved now, and so this is how customers wanted to consume these products or services.

This explains how suspicious the traditional business – the Steam engines – is of the new innovative start-up (Diesel engines, or Multichannel/Digital business), and what goes on in that “other building”.  The very fact that they are housed separately means they have to work out solutions to problems that the traditional business may well have answers to, but are not prepared to share, but also means there are two senses of identity within the business; it’s all about what the Steam or Diesel teams are doing, not actually about serving the customer, which in Thomas’ case is providing an efficient railway service.

So, the customer was second to their internal corporate battle for internal perception of performance and resulting investment.  The CEO – the Fat Controller in this case – was quite happy having the two businesses operating differently, because he knows it would require significant cultural change and massive investment to reorganise the business to have both Steams and Diesels working seamlessly next to each other.  But both silos look to him for acknowledgement and rewards – for the trains, this is about being praised as “Really Useful”, for organisations, it is obviously about bonuses but also greater investment levels in their area of the business.

Then, a couple of years ago, CEOs and other board members realised this was not efficient to have different silos fighting over services to the same customers.  But it also became obvious that digital had changed customer behaviour, and so meant organisations had to change and be “multichannel” to serve them more effectively.  This was often led by retailers, for whom the need to respond to customer behavioural trends, like different ways of shopping, is particularly acute, but is also taking place in financial services, travel and media and entertainment.  But by this stage, the two silos had their own infrastructures, so the best way of organising this was getting the two silos working better together.

There are initially two parts to this process.  One is to realise that some skills in different areas would benefit other areas of the business and to move people accordingly, so that they understand and learn about the whole business.

This often started with a placement or secondment from one silo to another.  In that sense, therefore, Percy represents the traditional business evangelist placed inside the Multichannel silo; this was often to ensure that the trading skills that traditional business managers understood could be applied to Multichannel.  Their methods may well have been crude and dirty to him, but they’d had to learn for themselves, with no outside help so far.  So, these early evangelists often realised their new colleagues were skilled and determined, and not the threatening monsters they had previously thought.  This was a vital step in breaking down these internal barriers and convincing colleagues to collaborate, and bring in the right resources from elsewhere.  That’s how Percy can bring in the crane engine to help out; he realises that the business already has these skills, and he can facilitate this assistance.

The second part is to remove the politics or jealousy between channels, so the business can start to respond seamlessly to customers’ needs through whichever channel is necessary – to become Multichannel, rather than just Digital.  There are different elements of this, but one important first step on this path is setting up a channel-agnostic incentive structure – a way in which it doesn’t matter how the customer buys or consumes products, but as long as they buy them.  This was often the barrier that led traditional silos to not engage with Digital or Multichannel, but when you remove that barrier, and say it’s all about focusing on the customer, that’s when the business can start to work.

Of course, that doesn’t happen in the Thomas story, and the two silos still jealously guard their ways of working, rather than truly trying to integrate.  After Percy’s secondment and his subsequent rescue by his original friends, the Diesels do indeed get their investment in their own infrastructure which he had recognised was needed, but then Percy returns to the Steam team, and the two business silos continue in the same way they always had, albeit after a period of peace.  It would be the responsibility of the Fat Controller to change the way the teams work so that they could work alongside each other to provide the best quality service possible; in this story, he doesn’t.

In that sense, therefore, Day of the Diesels represents a cautionary tale for those working in Multichannel Operations and strategy.  Despite the clear utilitarian message – a happy organisation is one that focuses on the end goal and the true business value – this can be missed and indeed actively subverted if you don’t build the right environment.

The economic superpower of the late 12^th century was France, and the Silicon Valley of the time was Paris and the surrounding area.  The innovations of the time focused on architecture, and this is led to the great concentration of great 12^th century cathedrals in this area all featuring these new technologies – most famously Notre Dame de Paris, but also Bourges, Chartres, Noyon, Tours, Beauvais, Laon, Amiens and Reims, all of which are within 250km of Paris.

The Ile de France, as it is known, and the surrounding areas were where many of the leading building innovators were based and where the most highly prized technologists came from – architects, sculptors and masons.   This became a virtuous circle – success leads success – and the local presence of such skills drove the local market.  After a time, these sorts of skills were exported internationally; many of construction projects of the great cathedrals of the time – particularly Lincoln, Cologne, Peterborough and Salisbury – were led by French master masons, because they represented the most skilled workforce that could be assembled.

In the same way, the hotspots of hi-tech development now have attracted more and more businesses.  Today, Silicon Valley in California has led the way, but there are other international hotspots that have grown up as particular centres of excellence; London and New York are famous for experience and interface design, Tokyo and Seoul are particularly strong for mobile development and the two Cambridges (Massachusetts, US and Cambridgeshire, UK) have – quite separately – developed reputations for algorithmic design and computer programming.

In the twelfth century, as well as the infrastructural innovators, there were massively important “software” developments that revolutionised how these new buildings felt and provide lessons we can use today.  Obviously, these changes went hand-in-hand with the growth in construction knowledge, and the Ile de France was the place for the writers of this new code – and before you think I’m forcing a modern metaphor on medieval Paris, I mean that last phrase literally; it was the birthplace of the modern “code” of writing musical notation.

In these cathedrals, a new, previously unheard-of language and experience grew up, designed to fill the spaces created by the new architecture.  Paris was the centre of the development of choral harmonic music, which was a significant step forward from the earlier style of Gregorian chanting by monks.

Gregorian chanting was not harmonic – everyone tried to chant at the same note.  As a result, it had no place in the new buildings which were literally built with Harmony in mind.  The concept of Harmony was that there were ideal mathematical relationships between elements that led to the perfect, or divine, construction of that form, be it heavenly bodies, architecture or music.  This idea wasn’t new – in fact, it was inspired by the ancient Greek idea of Harmony as recorded by Plato and Aristotle.  But these ancient Greek authors had just been rediscovered and translated for the first time in Europe, so this represented the “new” progressive thinking and was crucial to the philosophy that underpinned these cathedral buildings.

The growth of architectural Harmony led to a desire to match it with musical Harmony – choral music.  This led to the need to describe – literally, to write down – what the note was, and what words to sing with it.  Previously, there had been no need; you just chanted the words out.  This led to the 5 bar musical notation that we still recognise today; it’s much faster to compute as a language, and without this coding development, it is unlikely choral music could have developed.

I find this particular aspect especially fascinating in the field of understanding customer behaviour in the digital world.  In my experience, we know that we can use mathematical algorithms and processes to understand how people behave and buy products.  This is not new – it is the principle behind database marketing, which has been around for 40 years or so.  It is true that the number of different possible interactions that customers can make has grown exponentially since the development of the internet, but very often people are trying to reinvent the wheel.  I understand data can be complex – it is, after all, what we do – but I think the principles that we are following are based on tried, tested and proven methods.  It’s not a question of looking for some new discovery or new branch of mathematics to understand customer behaviour; many of the answers can be found by re-reading our old Statistics text books, and apply what we learnt at school to the data we are seeing now. That is not to say that this is not a flourishing area; clearly, with so much customer data, using such data processes to understand customers will be vital in the future and this is very much a growth area. But the cult of the new can make us forget that we have a lot of experience already in what appears to be only just emerging.

Back in the twelfth century, these written-down choral tunes – and they were tunes, for the first time – could be literally exported, without having to take the original composer or set of singers with you.  Any singer in any well-built cathedral could get hold of the “soft” copy of your music – normally written on cowhide, so it actually was soft – and perform it in exactly the way you meant it, without ever having met you.  And as this could be copied many times, this was the 12^th century version of popular music distribution.

The development of the stunning buildings (and their acoustics) and the new style of musical harmony led to some truly mind-blowing performances and experiences.  We forget that such things as choral music were once cutting-edge and radical, and there are many contemporary accounts of just how new this experience was.  Many wrote about how fantastic it was. However others did not share this view, and for those it was a new-fangled innovation too far, and what was wrong with the good old-fashioned music anyway.

Similarly in “modern times” some companies are embracing the way that the Web can revolutionise their selling paradigms, while others are clinging to the more traditional way of doing things, or giving a passing nod to a web experience of their brand – it’s interesting to know that our relationships with progress and innovation have a history as well!

I think the parallels with the first decade of the 21^st century in digital technologies and the latter half of the twelfth century are numerous, and stand up to scrunity.  Both eras have seen an explosion in the number and quality of popular, immersive experiences, enabled and enhanced through major technological revolutions.  Both have seen a flourishing of infrastructural technology, which in turn has led to developments in “software” programming – from the writing of the first musical notation, to the development of algorithm marketing through Google, or Facebook’s Edgerank.  Given how pervasive the coding of music became, I think we can look forward to an age of developing algorithms to understand how customers behave.

(with thanks for the inspiration to BBC4′s excellent Sacred Music documentary).

It’s often forgotten now, but the latter half of the 12^th century was a time of massive technological development and innovation, particularly in the areas of what we would now call infrastructure and hardware.

Twelfth century infrastructure was particularly (but not exclusively) focused on architecture; the greatest expression of this was the development of massive cathedrals with huge stoneworks and innovative methods to allow what were the largest and highest buildings ever built.  We often assume that innovation is the sole preserve of the here-and-now, but these buildings featured very up-to-date technologies.  Flying buttresses, which could support the main walls to take greater weight, and allow higher walls to be supported more effectively; Gothic arches, which allowed load-bearing weights to be greater, allowing higher and more spectacular ceilings; these more effective architectural elements in turn enabled huge stained glass windows which allowed light to flood in, totally transforming the “user experience” of the individuals inside.

In turn, this allowed new design disciplines to flourish.  Glassworkers, who had previously only had space for small, relatively functional windows, suddenly could work on stunning images with multi-coloured glass to tell some of the most inspirational narratives contemporaries could imagine; they worked in conjunction with leadbetters (or lead-beaters) who created the framework for the windows.  And the colourful experience didn’t stop there; painters and carpenters painted amazing scenes on roofs, embosses and frescos, because not only were there new opportunities for creativity, but there was more light to play with, so worshippers could see these images.

It is therefore not surprising that many twelfth century accounts talk about how people were left awestruck – sometimes literally dumbfounded – by the majesty of these new experiences in these magnificent buildings built on amazing new architecture.

Our own era has similarly been defined by new technological advancement, both in terms of architecture and infrastructure – what we might now call hardware or technical architecture – and the creative industries that can generate mind-blowing experiences for people – what we might now call either software or user experience.

Sometimes, we forget just how rapid and revolutionary these developments have been.  Think of iPods, and tablet PCs, all of which have only emerged in the last ten years, although we now think of them as so intrinsic to everyday life that they are ubiquitous.  Other “architectural” developments could include laptops, wifi, ecommerce platforms and the mother of them all, the World Wide Web and the browser, which, lest we forget, is in its early twenties.  The incredible technological efficiency of these developments are the modern-day equivalents of flying buttresses and soaring cathedral roofs.

In turn, this has led to a veritable explosion of software or user experiences, from the deceptively simple – Flash, infographics and tag clouds and even Google, to the social – Twitter and Facebook, of course, but also flash mobs (remember them!) and the previously impossible – the new “touch” language that has emerged through iPhones, iPads and Surface devices, a language so intuitive, 2-year-old children immediately understand how to use it.

The second post will be published next week, which will draw some ideas on what we can learn.  Although this article was first written well before his death, it seems appropriate to mark the untimely passing of Steve Jobs, who died today.  He came up with many of the revolutionary, and stunningly beautiful architectures and experiences of the recent period; the development of the iPad category can be assigned to him.  The outpourings of grief that have met his passing – from the leader of the free world right down to the post-it notes put up at the reception of Apple’s HQ – indicate the almost religious way in which he was regarded, pretty much universally.  In the context of this article, it is worth highlighting that some of the dynamic and inspirational cathedral builders of the Gothic period – Hugh of Lincoln and Richard of Chichester, for example – were canonised after their death.  In its own secular way, Steve Jobs could be the Internet Age’s first equivalent of those builder saints.

It was also the inspiration for us calling ourselves station10, as we provide customer analysis and insight out of otherwise indecipherable data.

However, Google have been photographing the Bletchley Park site as part of the Street View images, so that the site is recorded; this is despite there is no road around it, so a special trike had to be used.  It is therefore one of only a few historic sites that have been recorded in that way.

As reported in the Telegraph, this is part of a campaign to restore C block (where much of the original codebreaking work took place) and to prevent it falling into disrepair, and to support the Bletchley Park Trust restore the buildings and build a visitor centre.

We think this is an excellent enterprise to maintain such a cornerstone of intelligence history not just for the nation, but for the world. We thoroughly support this initiative.

Are we Moving Forwards in the Right Direction?

To gain the most value from multichannel strategies, it is crucial that any measures or multichannel activities are correctly aligned to the overall business objectives for the relevant organisations.

Q: Do you have a company-wide strategy that ties data collection and analysis to business objectives?

More organisations are currently defining a data collection framework, but this begs a more important question.  The proportion of organisations that feel an overall strategy is in place across the business for measurement has actually fallen slightly from 25% to 22%.  Most of this fall is due to respondents thinking that this is now a work-in-progress.   Put another way, more people actually think they have gone backwards in the last year.  This is a significant challenge, suggesting that any previous strategy has failed and is now under review.

This is a vital step on the road to establishing the right metrics and value for multichannel strategies, and yet fewer organisations have a satisfactory method, implementation or understanding in place to make this work.  There is much work to be done.  So, why then is this strategy failing?  Again, the survey provides an interesting and tantalising answer.

The survey explicitly asks the question as to why a measurement strategy is not in place, and the main reason remains “lack of budget and resources”, although this has fallen significantly to 48% of organisations.  So, funding is not a problem, but the next stage of a successful strategy is – people, process and technology.  The main reasons for this question that have increased this year are about:

• people (finding staff – up from 8% to 13%),
• process (difficulty reconciling data and understanding it – up from 12% to 17%) and
• technology (somewhat prosaically “Poor technology” – 6% to 16%).

Q: What are the barriers that prevent you from having an effective online measurement strategy?

So How Can We Move Forwards?

This means we have the “classic” People/Process/Technology conundrum and this is where we now need to focus; companies now have the money to spend, but are discovering that organisational structure and talent is now the real challenge.

However, we have also simultaneously seen a drop in value/usage of web analytics data, and this is probably the greatest long-term challenge.  We have been helping some of our clients understand what they should be paying for data collection and insight, at a time when clients have been looking to capture more data across their organisation (so increasing their overall costs) but when there is a wider macroeconomic pressure to keep costs down.  This means clients are looking to spend more wisely or to understand how this data really impacts their business and so allows them to make money.

As a result, the following graph is concerning, with more companies saying their web analytics data is actionable and influencing their business.

Q: Approximately, what percentage of the web analytics data you collect is useful to your organisation for driving decision-making?

In a similar way, it is not surprising, but potentially worrying, that fewer organisations see a definite ROI from web analytics.  From a positive point of view, most people now “don’t know” whether they get a return, as opposed to actively finding it a negative investment.

Q: Do you get return on investment from your paid-for analytics tool?

(Base: Companies also using Google Analytics)

This should act as a wake-up call for companies, who should recognise that they will be more effective through their use of data, but equally organisations need the leadership, vision and, frankly, skills to make this investment work for them.  Insight teams and analytics professionals alike need to take heed and ensure they are recording the most valuable areas and that they focus on insight and business impact, rather than simply data management.

This article focuses on the Econsultancy Online Measurement and Strategy Report, released late in June (all data in this article is taken from that source).  This is an annual state of the nation survey, focused on web analytics, and predominantly on the UK.  As such, it is designed to pick up overall trends on web analytics, rather than specific details.  This is fine as far as it goes, but in our view it glosses over some key trends, particularly around multichannel analytics and the value of data.

Firstly, looking at the data, it also seems to focus quite heavily on SME companies, rather than Enterprise level organisations, meaning the survey is less likely to pick up data analytics trends for Tier 1 organisations; generally speaking, we are more likely to see multichannel and data usage trends in these larger organisations.  This clearly shows up in the data; less than a third of respondents were from companies with turnover of more than £150m, for example.  Moreover, one question almost explicitly picks up this trend.  When asked about the annual expenditure for web analytics, over 42% said less than £5,000 a year, and just under two-thirds of all companies surveyed said they spent less than £25,000 a year.

Q: In total, how much do you spend on web analytics each year?

At that level of expenditure, most enterprise level analytics tools are already ruled out, which in turn starts to explain the very strong emphasis in the survey on Google Analytics and how people use it, rather than any other (paid-for) tool.  This is a slightly unusual skew of the survey data – why focus so much on one (free) tool, but not analyse the other main players in the marketplace to a comparable depth?

Moreover, this skew also anchors the results in the web analytics arena (single channel data), and not on multichannel data (building up an entire picture of all customer interactions) – Google Analytics does not record visitor level data, so cannot be linked to specific customer behaviour in other channels.

However, despite these limitations, the results from the survey do pick up some of the trends that we are seeing in our work, and in the conversations we have with our clients.

It is our belief at station10 that the most successful companies are data-driven and that multichannel is the most important emerging customer trend for organisations at the moment. In 5 years’ time, the most successful companies, whether in the B2B or B2C space, will be using multichannel data to drive their business forward, and so will derive a competitive advantage from the quality of the data they on multichannel behaviour.

Therefore, it is interesting, although not very surprising, that multichannel data is one of the least popular data types to be analysed by organisations.

Q: What types of data does your organisation analyse?

The survey also found that very few companies have a cross-channel customer analytics framework.  To gain competitive advantage, organisations will need to change this.

Q: Does your organisation have a framework for analysing customer journeys that cross online and offline?

There is clearly a long way to go and a lot of work to be done in this space.  It is our belief, and indeed our purpose, that this will change and we are currently helping companies to be at the forefront of multichannel insight.

And then, suddenly, the word “like” seems to have hybridised with all kinds of meanings to mean just about anything.

“Like” became a shorthand version of a comparative in conversations, often used with facial expressions: “and he was like [accompanying facial expression]…and then I was like [another facial expression, often of increasing horror or annoyance]”.

By extension from this, “like” also became a verb meaning the same as “to say”: “and I was like “No Way!””

And then, “like” is increasingly used simply as a method of breaking up a sentence, in the middle of normal clauses as a hurdle or barrier to the flow of the sentence – “and so, like, he came, like, over…”

So, the meanings associated with the word “like” have proliferated in recent years.  However, I am beginning to feel sorry for the word “like”, because social media is beginning to undermine its original meaning as a verb meaning “to feel affection or positively towards someone or something”.

Specifically, social media such as Facebook, uses a “Like” button for visitors to use to indicate whether they “like” someone, or a particular post, or a service, or a picture, or, indeed, just about anything.  But “like” is a particularly emotive word, suggesting strong positive sentiment.  Given the origins of Facebook, this is clearly a good word to use.

But the problem is now that the functionality of the “like” button, which is now one year old, is being used in a purely business-like or transactional way, in which the end user is not being asked whether they like anything or not, and this is now being used as a measure of success for social media campaigns.

To give you an example, John Lewis, the British department store that defines middle-class aspiration in the UK, has had a Facebook presence for around a year now, where you can get early alerts, offers and promotions if you sign up and become a Facebook friend.  In order to get the full content, you must “like” John Lewis on Facebook.  In essence, therefore, the “like” functionality is being used as a subscriber sign-up mechanism for John Lewis; the end user doesn’t have to like the company at all – all it indicates is that you are interested enough to get the equivalent of a newsletter.

Furthermore, I have subscribed to news feeds from well-known social media agencies, no less – who really should know the difference between a subscription and positive sentiment metrics – where you have to “like” the news feed to get more content.

As a result, the “like” button has lost its emotive power, and is increasingly just a “sign-up” function within Facebook.  This is a shame, as it could be a useful tool to understand consumer interaction and engagement, but the data will simply be muddied by this process.

But, of course, the capture of the machine was just the easy bit, as far as the analysis process was concerned.  Actually, it’s unfair to say it was easy.  Quite apart from the bravery of the flotilla led by HMS Bulldog, and the knowledge of the boarding party in recognising the machine and the books for what they were – knowing what you are looking for is crucial in the insight process, the dawning realisation the following day that the British had just captured the Enigma machine immediately influenced HMS Bulldog’s orders.  Recognising correctly that German High Command would understand a captured U-Boat would compromise the Enigma cypher, and that therefore it would be changed immediately, U-Boat 110 was allowed to sink whilst on tow back to Scapa Flow.

This action was successful, but also vital; any future analysis could have been rendered futile right at the very moment of capturing the data.

However, in terms of the analysis and insight process, the capture was still the simple part.  When the first codebooks reached the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park this week 70 years ago, they could get to work on understanding it and providing actionable information.  Bletchley Park was the headquarters of GC&CS, and was codenamed “Station 10”, which is incidentally where we take our name from.  On the anniversary of the capture of U-110, Bletchley Park opened an exhibition charting the exploits there during the war; which will be worth visiting.

So, this week 70 years ago, at Station 10, the hard work really started.  Just as it does for us, right now, in turning reams of our clients’ data from baffling, unintelligible numbers into actionable insight.

Today, we are very excited that Broadcast magazine, the trade journal for the Television industry in the UK, has published an article featuring our research about the value of the Twitter account for the Alan Carr:Chatty Man programme, a British comedy chat show.

In conjunction with our Social Media partner, Liberty842, who manage the Twitter account for the programme, we demonstrated that the @chattyman account “found the show had attracted a greater proportion of its viewers to interact with it on Twitter than The X Factor, Million Pound Drop or I’m A Celebrity”.

You can read the full article here (although you will need a subscription to access it fully).

There is clearly a long way to go to prove the value of social media and how audiences engage with these channels, and what these interactions really mean from a consumer insight and ROI point of view, and this is an important step on this path.  We hope to continue an ongoing programme of research this year on the subject.  We are preparing a more in-depth article about the topic, which we will publish shortly but we are very excited that our research is helping to drive insight in this area.

If you are interested in discussing the benefits of this type of research and some of the ramifications in more detail, please contact us.

It’s an interesting premise, and no doubt may act as a boon at the moment to retailers looking to increase trade during difficult times. It may be that that’s why the story made such interesting copy, as it was picked up by newspapers (like The Telegraph) news web sites (BBC News), radio (Latina Network) and television (Scottish TV). And that, of course, is just in the UK; this story has been picked up around the world.

I have no doubt that the research stands up to peer review in a technical sense, and that the specific methodology behind it is valid. But I think the conclusion, as widely reported, does not actually stand up to scrunity, and ultimately, to logic.

The logic of the conclusion is that if you change your behaviour – by becoming a regular shopper – you increase your chances of living longer. In other words, regular shopping is a leading indicator of longevity.

The study says that other factors, such as health, having been considered, and even then, regular shopping is still a strong indicator of longevity. This is interesting, although we must at this point clearly highlight the clear cultural limitations of the data set; it was a Taiwanese study, focused entirely on the over 65s, based on the idea that shopping is a valid socio-economic activity. So, there is no evidence that this correlation occurs outside Taiwan, let alone in Western cultures. Even so, I still think this misses the point even within the context of the research.

Firstly, and most fundamentally in terms of the research and its conclusion, consider the logic of the argument again. People who regularly shop live longer. However, it also follows that people who regularly shop have more disposable income; they must do, otherwise, they wouldn’t be shopping; if you haven’t got enough money, you won’t spend any more than you absolutely have to.

So far, so logical. The logic also follows that those who have enough money to spend in shops also have enough to spend on healthcare, so generally, these people are likely to be healthier. Which in turn, of course, allows them to go shopping more.

Therefore, from this same research and the logic from it, we can reasonably conclude that people who have more disposable income live longer; put simply, people who are richer live longer. Now, there is a vast body of evidence that this is the case; we already know that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to live longer.

So, all this study is doing, arguably, is highlighting this point from another angle; the wealthier you are, the more shopping you do, the longer you live. But the problem here is the causation. At best, regular shopping is a (beneficial) side-effect of being generally wealthier. Being wealthier is the main and acknowledged leading indicator of health and longevity, but this does not make the side-effect one as well. Regular shopping is therefore a lagging indicator of wealth, and not the other way around. The conclusion of the study does not, therefore, stand up to logic, and whilst it might make good copy, it does not make good science.

Secondly, and as a consequence of this point, I struggle to see what one could actually do with this research. It is presumably most useful for, and tailored towards, retailers or FMCG companies, but it seems most useful in highlighting the potential value either of older people (they are likely to shop more, because they are older!). But this group is already highly desirable as a segment for certain retailers because they have high disposable income – they are often “SKIing”; Spending the Kids’ Inheritance. So, that is already known (and indeed, this phenomenon could be a skewing factor on the research results themselves).

Alternatively, this research demonstrates that people with high disposable income are very useful to target for retailers (or, indeed, any organisation trying to sell to end customers), because they might spend more in the long run. But isn’t this point already patently obvious?!? “Companies should target people with more money”, says report, is not the sort of headline that newspaper editors would allow, but it is clearly one element of the conclusion made in this study.

Finally, of course, there is an additional challenge to the research, which may be more methodological than anything else. What do we mean by “shopping” now, in 2011? The concept is that we all head to the shopping centre/mall/hypermarket/etc each week, and so spend our disposable income that way. That is still most people’s concept of what shopping means, and there is therefore a potential argument that shopping aids long-term health by acting as some sort of exercise regime; because you are enjoying yourself shopping, you don’t actually realise that you’ve just walked the equivalent of two miles, and so hit your daily exercise quota.

But, in 2011, that’s not how many of us actually shop any more. Particularly in Europe and the US (but frankly, just as much in Asia and so in the context of the study itself), Internet shopping is an increasingly important part of a retailer’s revenue model, so much so that this is often part of the offering; “Click and Collect”, and “Reserve and Collect” are core propositions now that will be actively advertised to drive footfall. And, of course, this is not to mention the home delivery retailers, particularly the supermarkets, that do all the leg work (for which, read “exercise”) for you and deliver to your door, and indeed carry your shopping in, so you scarcely have to move from your kitchen to do the weekly shop.

This is, in fact, just as likely an average person’s shopping experience these days, which requires very little actual exercise. So, the suggestion that shopping is physically good for you because it burns calories does not stand up. It’s quite possible for us to simply not leave the house and complete all shopping requirements week on week. But it’s also true to say that the segment of customers likely to use home shopping is not elderly, but of a younger demographic. This of course means that they wouldn’t show up in any longevity studies, and were quite explicitly not studied in this Taiwanese study – thirtysomething mums with toddlers may well be stressed, but are unlikely to keel over and die with the pressure of life , and will still regard the weekly Sainsbury or Ocado delivery as a godsend.

Which means, overall, that the credibility of the conclusions, if not the quality of the methodology or research itself, has to be drawn into question on several fronts. It seems that the researchers have fallen into the trap of researching something that doesn’t actually tell its audience anything new, and concluding something from painstaking research that frankly one could have reasonably guessed anyway. It hasn’t, in short, answered the “So What?” question. And that should be the fundamental criteria for any piece of research, and is our byword at Station10.