A few days ago, I had the opportunity
to speak with Shawn Conly, VP of Advertising and Consumer Insights
for Electronic Arts
about EA's use of blog analytics tools. This was the first
"interview" of this type that I've done for my blog and
Shawn was super gracious. We talked on the phone for about 30 minutes
or so and he provide me with some great new insight into how these
tools are really being used.
EA is unique in that they are the only
company that competing CGM analytics firms Intelliseek
and Umbria
Communications both publicly claim as a customer. I had hoped to
get a real world side-by-side comparison. On a personal note, I also
wanted to write a better article than the "professional"
journalist over at Business 2.0. Alas, it turns out that the
services of the two competitors are used differently at EA and Shawn
has no direct knowledge of EA's use of Intelliseek's services -
although he had nice things to say about Intelliseek's CMO, Pete
Blackshaw from his experiences in a former life.
A little over a year ago, Shawn was the
guy responsible for selecting Umbria over Intelliseek. He was pitched
by both companies and was left with definite opinions about
differences in the offerings, but he's quick to add that he hasn't
actually used the Intelliseek product. Since then, Shawn and his
folks have used Umbria's products for ongoing tracking of buzz about
EA and all of its games titles in the blogosphere. Shawn says EA has
used Intelliseek on a few small narrowly focused projects, but they
were outside of his purview.
Motivation
"Ours is a market driven by
trends." says Shawn. "Much like Hollywood's opening
weekend, video games are made or broken in the first two weeks of
sales." Understandably EA uses all kinds of traditional and
non-traditional MR. Their adoption of blog analytics was driven by
the opportunity to add another dimension of consumer insight. By
tracking sentiment trends, particularly by demographic, EA can better
focus their marketing efforts in those crucial weeks just before a
game's release.
Vendor Selection
EA only considered two vendors for the
job - Umbria and Intelliseek. Shawn was unaware of competitor
BuzzMetrics or any other vendor offering comparable services. I
should point out that Shawn is no technophobe - he came to EA from
Intel where he was responsible for all of Intel's
websites world-wide. He gets this stuff and has a deep appreciation
for the potential of the technology. That said, he only knew of the
two vendors - I think this is telling of where this young industry is
in the development cycle. It's still anyone's game. But I digress...
Shawn was impressed with the sales
presentations of both vendors and still has a strong recollection of
Intelliseek's pitch. When asked what tipped the decision, Shawn said
that there were two clear points in Umbria's favor...
1.) Demographic Profiling
Since the video game market skews young and male, it's easy to
understand why EA is interested in Umbria's ability to infer age and
gender in order to separate the insights of their traditional and
non-traditional customers. When I asked Shawn if he thought Umbria's
inferred demographics are reasonably accurately, he responded "Well
that's the million dollar question isn't it!" He went on to say
that when compared to EA's other traditional MR sources that Umbria's
data "seems to be pretty consistent with positive and negative
sentiment trends within demographics." He then quipped "It's
better than not having anything."
He mentioned that he thought Intelliseek may have developed
demographic profiling since EA's selection of Umbria, but that it
wasn't available at the time. It's my understanding that Intelliseek
is currently in beta with demographic profiling, but clearly Umbria
has an experiential lead of at least a year in this area.
2.) New & Hungry
Umbria is less than two years old. Intelliseek is over seven years
old. Shawn was impressed with the technological capabilities of both
firms but he characterized Umbria as "new and hungry".
"Umbria was able to offer a higher value proposition" Shawn
recalled, noting that Umbria's offering was less expensive than
Intelliseek's. He said that Umbria was able to provide solutions that
EA was able to add into their existing dashboards. Shawn often works
directly with Umbria founder and CEO, Howard Kaushansky and praises
their ability and willingness to be flexible to EA's evolving needs
on an ongoing basis.
Of course, not all of the "pros" were on Umbria's side
of the spreadsheet. Shawn's impression of Intelliseek is that they
have more "consultative experience" than does Umbria citing
both the presentation of Intelliseek's deliverables and their P&G
heritage. Shawn thinks that EA is only scraping the surface with blog
mined insights and says they are still trying to figure out the
"business implications" - the action part of
actionable. Shawn's impression is that currently, Intelliseek
is better equipped to help clients understand business implication
than is Umbria. Generalizing, Shawn said that Umbria seems more
technology focused while Intelliseek seems more consultative.
Umbria in Practice
EA has been using Umbria for a little
over a year. They have integrated Umbria data into existing
dashboards. Shawn says all of the deliverables from Umbria that they
use are web-based and dynamic. He's been impressed with the level of
detail and reporting available and specifically mentioned EA's use of
positive/negative sentiment, demographic profiling, timing, trending
and positive/negative trending features. The Umbria interface allows
EA to look at a quantitative summary of positive/negative sentiment
within demographics about particular title or concept and then drill
down into individual full-text posts if necessary.
EA's Umbria subscription only gives
access to data related to EA, one of it's titles, or other agreed
upon subjects - this is typical of CGM analytics products. Shawn
praises Umbria's ability and willingness to adjust the scope of their
subscription to meet changing needs or competitive analysis. "I
just call Howard and let him know what we need." says Shawn.
One interesting aspect of online CGM
analytics is coverage. Most vendors claim to cover not only blogs but
also forums, Internet newsgroups, etc. That said, blogs are the low
hanging fruit because of RSS feeds and ping servers. I often question
coverage of forums and such because of the relative difficulty of
reliably extracting speaker identity and text.
So, I asked Shawn about his perception
of Umbria's coverage. He said "I don't have a good sense of
coverage outside of the blogosphere, but I don't think Umbria has a
lot in forums." Shawn goes on to say that EA is in a unique
space in that they have a long history of being involved with several
large video game focused online forums and as such feels that they
have a good handle on this aspect of online CGM. Shawn views Umbria
primarily as a blog analytics tool.
Overall Shawn is very pleased with
Umbria's products and service, but feels that EA is not yet getting
"complete value of [the data from Umbria]" and wants to
"get more out of what is provided by [Umbria]". Shawn looks
at this as an EA issue and not a short-coming of Umbria but agrees
that Umbria would be well served by bolstering the consultative
aspect of their offering. Shawn is big on the potential of blog
analytics but emphasizes the need of the industry - both vendor and
client - to figure out the "business implications" riddle.
The Recommend Question
Finally, I asked Shawn the golden
question: "Would you recommend Umbria to peers who are
considering blog analytics vendors?"
Absolutely! Umbria has been a really
good partner. They are very willing to adjust to changing needs.
They've always been right there with me. I have no regrets.
Thanks to Mr. Conly for taking the time
to talk with me and to Ms.
Nagel for introducing us. Those kids over at Electronic Arts
really get it.
