Let’s Talk Data

Hypnotic — the only way to describe it. It gets in your brain and it’s almost impossible to shift thoughts without a radical distraction.

So tonight, I was scanning the news, just catching up, and I don’t know what triggered it, but I thought about Tetris. In particular, that Nintendo 64 game. (Doesn’t that seem like lightyears ago when it came out?) Ever since Tetris was released, I’ve been addicted to the simplicity and incredibly challenging nature of that game. Worse, I’m addicted — to the music.

So, I was trying to wrap up a project tonight and I was listening to some internet techno station (Green Lounge, great for writing) and I started thinking about that music. And, I was afraid to get up and plug the game in. Sure, that would stop my Tetris jonesing — but I wouldn’t get any work done.

Yeah, right. As if I’d get work done sitting at this pc with that music in my brain.

So, I sat here, and searched, and searched, and searched.

And it is facinating. I found several interesting threads by programmers/hacks trying to break the code. Apparently, the soundtrack is built into the game — some midi specially encoded data stream. Not easy to “decode”. (This is way beyond me. Demographics, mapping, I know. Even a little Basic I can handle.) I have learned that there are lots of people (which is scrary in itself) who have taken Neil Voss’s soundtrack and reworked it…painstakingly.

To their defense, once you hear that soundtrack, none other will do.

Anyway…if like me, you have some game that you spent too many hours playing and have an urge to get the soundtrack — here’s a great resource. http://gh.ffshrine.org

I’m always on the lookout for new tools to help my clients characterize and segment their customers into easily marketable target groups.

For years, it seemed like Claritas was the only game in town. And when I worked for them, I liked it that way. I must admit, they did they have an incredible marketing engine. Plus, they hired top notch people, and let them apply their tools in novel applications. They were aggressive and knowledgeable — a killer combination.

When I first started selling for Claritas, I used to make this analogy. Remember high school — and all those cliques that formed? You had the jocks, the geeks, the cool kids, and even the invisibles. Despite the fact that “school spirit” is all about one for all and all for one — it’s human nature for like to attract like. Now not all the popular girls, jocks, etc. were exactly alike — however, they had certain things in common that made them stick together under certain circumstances.

Marketers know that its human nature for people to bond and gather with other people that share common characteristics. And they seize on that — using data and computers — to get messages out to prospects that are similar to their best customers. Now, there’s no way that everyone in a neighborhood, much less a street is exactly the same. However, if you look around your own town, you can easily see that there is a wealthy section, an ethnic section, a college dweller section, even the “poor side of the tracks”.

Back to Claritas. Sure, there were other companies, other systems out there (MicroVision, ClusterPlus, Acorn, etc.) but no other company seemed to focus on getting links to syndicated data souces like Claritas.

The crazy thing is that this is one of the EASIEST things in the world to do. If you are not familiar with commercially available marketing tools like PRIZM, Tapestry, MOSAIC, Cohorts, Personix — here’s how it works.

99% of all the commercially available systems (likely 100% but I’m not positive!) start with a “base” of data from the good old US Census. Through the magic of powerful computing strength under the watch of a team of demographers and statisticians, a data soup base is started. Each company adds its own data to the mix — usually list counts, behavioral data (from surveys, warranty cards), magazine subscription data, auto ownership — even aggregated credit data — for a unique flavor.

There are a variety of techniques that are used, but suffice it to say, at the end of the day, a number of groupings (aka clusters, types, segments) are formulated. Each group has a great deal of similarity on a number of characteristics (such as home value, presence of children, degree of urbanicity, etc.)

It’s easy to apply commercial segmentation systems because most of them create assignments for neighborhoods at a variety of levels — ZIP+4, Block Group, etc. and can assign types by geocode. (A geocode is series of numbers that tells you the State, County, Tract and block group an address or location is coordinated with. Latitude/Longitude codes let you put an address on a map. “Point coding” is the term most commonly used.)

So, anything that has an address on it can be geocoded and likely point coded, and therefore can be crossreferenced by the commercial segmentation system.

What does that mean? Well, all surveys that contain an address can be type coded, all transactional records can be coded, etc. etc. And that is pretty powerful stuff.

So, back to IRI and Acxiom. This is a brilliant move. IRI has great household level panel data, and now, their Personix tool will be able to link segments (types, clusters, “cliques”) by the household products they purchase — using REAL transactional data. How incredibly cool is that?
Here’s the announcement.

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from: IRI and Acxiom(R) Introduce More Efficient and Actionable Approach To Consumer Segmentation and Targeted Marketing.

source: Business Wire, January 25, 2006.

via: HighBeam™ Research

COPYRIGHT 2006 Business Wire

@import “from:%20%20IRI and Acxiom(R) Introduce More Efficient and Actionable Approach To Consumer Segmentation and Targeted Marketing.
source: Business Wire, January 25, 2006.
via: http://www.highbeam.com?refid=blogger”> src=”http://www.highbeam.com/img/h-icon-small.gif” alt=”HighBeam Research Logo” border=”0″ align=”baseline”/> HighBeam™ Research
COPYRIGHT 2006 Business Wire