Let’s Talk Data

You know, this whole “green” concept is filled with mystery, a touch of religion, and relativity.
Mystery, because its not a clear cut definition that can be applied broadly

Religion, because once you go green, you begin to develop a belief system that changes how you view the world and your place in it.

Relativity — because frankly, green is all about the context in which comparisons are made and sides are chosen.
Ah…the message is not clear, yet the mandate has been made.  Corporations have made sustainable business practices part of their Corporate Social Responsibility programs, the Government is moving rapidly (ok, I did say Government — they move as fast as they can) to implement new regulations, and manufacturers have been and are continuing to improve their processes as long as they see life in the market.  (Translation - market share.)

We’re moving fast towards a new way of living, but the crazy thing is that not everyone cares about the end goal and.  Why? I think it’s because the goal is so difficult to define. And if you can’t define it, as the saying goes, you can’t measure it, and therefore, you can’t improve it.

Consultant-speak aside — there’s more at stake than performance measurement.

The concept of green is one that we (Earthsense) have measured for products that are known to consumers: food, non-food consumables (think detergent, paper, etc.) as well as durables such as cars, washing machines, etc. We explain what the most common explanation of “green” is … another word for sustainability — which really boils down to a simple concept: use resources wisely as to maintain the quality, diversity, beauty, and functionality of our planet.

Borrowing from the World Changing Guide — we loosely define green as being the term for anything that is organic, minimally processed, made from renewable resources, incorporates fair trade practices, is energy efficient, etc. We also ask people to define in their own words what green means to them (by product category, like, dairy or cleaning fluids) and we’ve found that “green’ has come to represent a notion of social consciousness — laced with concepts that are often at odds with each other.  (Buying local — or organic which is better?)

I keep meeting people who are proud to tell me that they are just not down with the green concept. They say it without malice, they are not challenging me.  They just say that it isn’t really relevant to their lives.  Is it their fault for not getting on board the train?

I don’t think so.  While I don’t advocate sweeping socialism, I do believe that the power of changing the world lies in the hands of the commercial producers of products and services. Simply put, if you change your product to be more efficient, use renewable materials, use less packaging, etc. etc. the consumer has NO CHOICE but to buy your *new* and *improved* green product.  (OK, I can hear the protests in my inner ear…”but they can buy from competitors”…. But consumers can always choose to buy another product. If you have a great product, why not make it better in ways that improve your impact on the planet?  Why wait for the regulations? Why not be proactive?)

Green is a process, a journey, not a state of being. You can always find some product that is greener than another (or better yet, you can always just not use any product, live on a mountain, naked, and be one with the planet.)  What green means is really contextual.  As marketers, we should look at our products and imagine the comparison scenarios. Someone will always find fault with our spin, but truth be told, most people are comfortable with the legal concept of “reasonable doubt”.  If you tell them your story, and you put it in a truthful context –they’ll give you a chance.  And that’s what we’re all aiming for anyway, isn’t it?  A chance to strut our stuff, show our value, change their lives (making a little money along the way?)

Your thoughts?

OK, as much as I enjoy catching up on news and learning new things, a girl can only take so much of …well, reality, at one time.

When I need to climb out of the box I am in — and stretch my mind before it snaps, I reach for mysteries.
My friend, Marian recently sent me a book that I couldn’t put down.  It’s by Jeffrey Deaver and the title is “The Broken Window”.  It is a book about data mining used to commit the worst of crimes: murder.
Here’s a description from his web site:

Data mining is the industry of the 21st century. Commercial companies collect information about us from thousands of sources—credit cards, loyalty programs, hidden radio tags in products, medical histories, employment and banking records, government filings, and many more—then analyze and sell the data to anyone willing to pay the going rate. Some people approve, citing economic benefits; others worry about the erosion of privacy.
But no one has been prepared for a new twist: A psychotic killer with access to the country’s biggest data miner—Strategic Systems Datacorp—is using detailed information to work his way into the lives of victims, rape, rob and kill them and then blame unsuspecting innocents for the crimes. The killer’s voluminous knowledge of the victims and his ability to plant damning evidence mean that even the most vocal protests of innocence go ignored by the police and juries.

http://www.jefferydeaver.com/Novels_/Broken/broken.html

Read this book, it is well-written, suspenseful, realistic and just a great read.

———–
Other favorites of mine are not pure fiction, but they are so interesting that I didn’t really want to put them down.

They include:

Supercrunchers
http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/supercrunchers/

Freakonomics

http://freakonomicsbook.com/

The Long Tail

http://www.thelongtail.com/

Been dreaming about data, talking about it, just not writing it down this past year.  But with a new year comes a resolution to sit down weekly and capture some of the most interesting data trends that cross my path plus, I want to share the excitement that I feel from the work I’m doing.

Sometimes, I think when you set out to write (be it blog, letter, email), you have this image of the perfect post….and it’s difficult to let it go until you’ve polished yourself to a very dull point.  The same can be said for all projects, and data projects in particular.

Last year I formed a new company called Earthsense with my business partner and a group of crazy colleagues who like to take on really challenging marketing problems.  The idea started simply – to apply common sense to the explosive green movement.  As researchers, we wanted to use our skills at gathering and analyzing data to arm organizations with the information they need to produce products that are good for our earth while being good for the bottom line.  Since early last summer, our team at Earthsense has been immersed in sourcing, collecting, evaluating and standardizing lots of disparate data sources.  Our goal was to create a proprietary study – the Earthsense Eco-Insights Survey but to use our various skill sets to provide more than the traditional banners associated with syndicated market research.

This particular group of people have various backgrounds, but at our core we are all data geeks.  (Yeah, the truth comes out.)  We have expert researchers, marketers, analysts, statisticians, demographers, business folk, a microbiologist, a few with psychology backgrounds, city planners, geographers and ex-broadcasters and a few professors, too.  We have always had an interest in understanding consumers from a holistic sense — and so this survey has a special set of questions designed to understand consumer attitude, motivation and behavior when it comes to eco-friendly products.  For behavior, we had a theory that people express themselves by “voting” with their wallets (product purchases), voting with actions (conservation efforts, volunteering, donating) and also, traditionally and publically, by political affiliation and choice of candidate. 

Oh!  Wait until you see the patterns we are uncovering by examining the largest group of observations on the subject — 30,000 people answered our survey!  (Yes, count ‘em.  It is the largest survey of its kind in this area.)  We see strong relationships between political orientation (conservative, libertarian, moderate), Democrats, Republicans and Independents and attitudes about global warming and who is responsible for getting us out of this mess.  That is, some groups have higher concentrations of people who take personal responsibility and believe that we all need to do our share, while others believe more realistically, government and private industry are the only entities large enough to have measurable impact.

And to make it more challenging, we are actually going farther than just creating segments from survey responses — we’re looking deeper at “personal eco-systems” (mecosystems) where we examine all the influences that affect an individuals propensity to adopt eco-friendly/green/socially conscious behavior.

But it gets tricky.  When do you have to stop collecting and start analyzing?  So many theories and so little time!  It’s not demographics alone, nor lifestyle or lifestage, not the economy alone….is it media? Social networks? External factors like organizations, climate, resources (exographics?)  It’s tricky because there are varying levels of data (geographic based, vector based, point level, summarized, etc.) and they are not all updated at the same timeframe.  The possibilities are endless!

These are the types of data we’re crunching, examining, analyzing.  If you’ve read Super Crunchers — you’ll understand the fire that burns when you have lots of data to look at…its addictive as you move it around (kind of like a Rubiks cube) looking for the solution.  And it is an  new way of understanding the perfect storm needed to incite consumer behavior. 

So, we’re not waiting to release our results until we find the perfect answer.  We’re teaming up with information pros around the country (international has to wait until next year!) to digest our data, enhance it, analyze it, and provide measurable, actionable information for companies who are grappling with growing green.  The green train has left the station — only companies who have open minds and willingness to experiment and learn will wind up on the other side of Sustainabilty Mountain intact.

I’m spent.

It was more than I expected. I’m drained yet pumped.

As an alumna of SUNY Oswego, I offered to participate in their Education Based Experience program. I have a few ideas for Catosphere and while I’ve got a great network of professional consultants that I could engage, I wanted to try a new approach.

And what better place but on a pulsing, beating, living campus can you find some new ideas — some real fresh views, fresh blood? After thinking about the responsibility of being a dedicated guide to interns, I decided that I would try to tap into the college. I wanted to find passionate, eager, smart partners who could help me plan and execute an idea I’ve been mulling over for some time. (This is no “fetch my coffee” internship/project.) While I was hoping to get a few takers, I was honored that so many expressed interest in the business and the project.

I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Ian Cuthills’s Market Research class in the Business School. “Speaking” is probably not the right word. I felt like I spewed incoherent tidbits of information that I have gathered over the last seventeen years. How does one describe what market research is in 55 minutes?

Yeah, you are collecting data to make a decision, but it’s so much more than that when it’s done with an eye on the big prize, the big picture.

Each industry has its own history, its own jargon. It takes awhile to feel at home in your own skin when you are introduced to something new. I loved the whole one to one communication you get with real radio — my first love. But slowly over time, I’ve been steeped in the world of data and now it practically oozes from my pores. Each technique I discuss is intricately linked to others in my brain. Primary research, geocoding, segmentation, pattern-recognition, file scoring, thematic mapping… there’s so much to learn.

And that’s not even the half of it. Privacy laws, balancing out the needs of a corporation against the rights of the consumer, benefits of certain methodologies over others, and the increasingly difficult time market researches have getting busy people to stop and give them the answers they seek…. there’s so much to cover.

How will I pass on this information without overloading them? More importantly, how to you awaken a passion in someone for something you feel compelled to do? How can I explain that once you learn the basics, you can make anything you want. You don’t have to stay between the lines?

One day at a time, I guess. It took me a long time to learn this stuff, and yet, sometimes, I am surprised as how excited I am about the prospect of learning something new — I feel like I’m 19, still, with my whole life ahead of me, and a whole world to explore.

New cool tool of the day: Clusty — this is organization (and segmentation) of the web at its best. I remember seeing this site ages ago, and somehow or another I lost the bookmark and forgot about it. But type in anything in the search, and watch how quickly and consistently it groups together like sites/pages and how much more meaningful research becomes when you are using it.

Yawn…. no more for me tonight.

Listening to the interviews with “The Powers That Be” involved in responding to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, you can’t help but wonder why everyone seemed so caught off guard. Seems to me that everyone is too busy pointing fingers rather than focusing on the task of reinventing the damaged areas.

Local & state officials had plans, they had the numbers. The census is after all, a survey that is designed so that the government is adequately represented by the population that resides in an area. Those numbers are looked over, picked over, disputed and celebrated daily for Economic Development, Education Planning, Transportation Planning, Retail Expansion, and so on nearly EVERY day.

So, knowing that the data is there…I don’t quite understand how no one (locally) took responsibility to get people out before the waters hit.

And for those who stayed, despite the warnings, well — they had their reasons, I’m sure. But to blame the Federal Government for not forcing them out when even their local leaders failed to mobilize is pushing the blame too far. What about individual responsibility? In some cases people simply made poor decisions. While many try to help those in need — many of those in need reject the help they are offered. And, at some point, you have to concentrate on those that are willing to accept your helpl.

I can’t help but think of all the working people — the police, the firemen, the nurses, doctors, teachers, and others who sent their loved ones out of town but stayed to help manage the disaster. These people are the ones who should replace our career politicians — because they are close to people, close to the data — and can see the patterns clearly because they are firmly committed to doing their jobs — not getting re-elected. Census data isn’t abstract to these city guardians. They deal with the people behind the numbers every day.

Want to see the demographics yourself? We’ve posted some data that might help you understand just what the leaders in the area had access to for the past 4 years. These are 1990/2000 Census counts for population, age/sex/race, income, transportation, etc.

http://www.catosphere.com/CatosphereHurricaneKatrinaDemographics.htm