In the last two years, the media landscape has changed dramatically and it’s changed forever. Companies are fast realising that what worked yesterday, simply doesn’t work today. Leading brands are changing the way they measure and for good reason. Gone are the days where a company’s reputation could be managed via a controllable set of key media channels. In today’s socially-networked world, reputations are exposed across hundreds or thousands of media outlets, including blogs, social media websites, broadcast and traditional media. Furthermore, the simultaneous fragmentation and democratisation of media means that media is frequently global. There is, therefore, an urgent need to watch and listen across very large volumes of information. Quickly getting a view on what’s happening is essential. The days of rear-view-mirror-reporting are gone because, no matter how good the report is, it’s of very limited decision-making value if it’s received after the event in the typical month-end or quarter-end format.

We began developing GlideIntelligence two years ago (after a year in planning and consultation) and were fortunate enough to attract Keith Woods-Holder to lead the project. Ex Research Director at Saatchis, Keith spent over ten years developing automated sentiment analysis models for the likes of Dell (working directly with Michael Dell himself), Sony, IBM, Kodak and Barclays. The plan was simple – take Keith’s twenty years experience in the sector, give him a highly-talented development team and all the latest technologies, and create a software-as-a-service  semantic measurement platform, GlideIntelligence. The results have surpassed even our greatest expectations and we now have a powerful, fourth generation model which overcomes many of the criticisms that have been levelled at past attempts at automated sentiment analysis while creating real competitive advantage.

GlideIntelligence is a contextual measurement solution. Unlike previous generations of analyser, it does not use dictionaries but, instead, uses grammar and context. This means that it can learn new language quickly (including slang and non-English phraseology common in social media) and will not be constantly out-of-date with language nuance. This also allows us to overcome many of the legacy criticisms of automated sentiment, for example allowing it to handle sarcasm and irony.

GlideIntelligence was developed in conjunction with a select number of Glide’s large global brands. This ensured we did not develop in a vacuum, while keeping us close to the issues and priorities of business. A nine month beta programme has helped iron out any creases, while readying the product for commercial launch.

We felt it was essential to deliver complete transparency within our product. There are a lot of automated measurement tools on the market and a common complaint is not just that they don’t do what it says on the tin, but that there is a great deal of opacity about the methodologies used. We call this the ‘black box’ factor. Namely, data is fed in one end and charts out the other, but it is difficult or impossible to know how the sentiment was deduced nor the charts constructed. GlideIntelligence overcomes this restriction with in-built transparency. The way sentiment has been deduced is completely visible. We’re confident enough in our accuracy rates to let customers see this for themselves.

In today’s highly-competitive, connected world, it’s never been more important to be able to see the whole landscape, including competitor and industry movements. This is why we built in multi-perspective analysis. This gives the corporation the ability to benchmark effectively and quickly spot competitor strengths and weaknesses. GlideIntelligence creates the ability to see what an article means not just for you or your product, but for any number of companies, brands or products.

Another common complaint from the industry is the amount of time and expertise required to work with modern measurement platforms. Common to our founding value of making software easy to use, with GlideIntelligence we made sure that insightful charts and reports could be built with a few clicks of the button. Furthermore, a MyReports feature allows favourite charts to be saved for one-click access. A powerful alerting feature makes it easy to push important news stories to users based upon their needs. For example, it is possible to receive an instant alert about all negative coverage concerning the CEO.

Real-time analysis will fast become the norm and organisations without it will not be able to manage and respond in time to important market developments. Media will continue to diversify, fragment and overlap and organisations will increasingly need to think of media as global and not local because the internet does not discriminate based upon location. These changes create new challenges, in turn forcing us all to look for new, more effective ways to measure the corporate reputation. GlideIntelligence is part of that exploration.

Sam Phillips, Glide’s Founder and CEO

Take the below as an example of just how quickly things can change.

During the recent UK election, the Labour party released this campaign poster depicting David Cameron as the Ashes to Ashes character DCI Jean Hunt with the following tagline.

Less than 24hrs later, the Conservatives had turned it round with the following alternative tagline.

Note the quip “idea kindly donated by the Labour Party”.

Organisations which spot things early and have the ability to respond quickly and effectively will gain significant competitive advantage.

The days of rear view mirror reporting are gone.  Receiving a quarterly evaluation report, no matter how pretty and intelligently assembled it is, has limited value in today’s connected world because it will be too late to do anything about the information contained in the report by the time you receive it.

There are some really good examples of how some companies have lost out due to the speed of their response.  Earlier this year, a freelance Paperchase illustrator who created the Hidden Eloise character, noticed that some of her work was being used without her permission.  Having attempted, without success, to contact Paperchase, to ask for royalties or to issue a desist notice, she began tweeting about the incident.  This resulted in coverage in The Independent and the Channel 4 News.  This done untold damage to the image of Paperchase right before one of the busiest times of the year, Valentine’s day.Read the article in The Independent here.

Consider on the other hand, Sony Playstation’s agility in handling its console woes earlier this year.  Some consumers were left unable to use their Playstation 3 consoles after their systems mistakenly calculated that 2010 was a leap year.  Bloggers were the first to identify this issue and while Tokyo investigated it, they put up holding statements as well as the eventual solution to the problem on Twitter.  Although they certainly experienced reputational damage, it could have been much worse than it was, all but for the speed and methodology of Sony’s reaction.

Real time ‘v’ right time analytics

The ability to have good digital listening posts that allow us to see true meaning when it most empowers good decision making, means we need to be able to analyse information in real time but we need to get the full picture at the right time.  If we don’t, we run a real risk of knee jerk reaction tactics.  You wouldn’t want to alter the corporate strategy in reaction to a Twitter storm which was later to prove inconsequential.

Staying with the games console industry as an example, if say Nintendo were to spot some negative comments around the pricing of one of its systems, it may be inclined to reduce its pricing.  However, if it notices that there is an overall pressure on pricing throughout the industry, including its competitors, its reaction is likely to be very different.  Hundreds of millions of pounds are likely to be at stake on these kinds of business decisions.

The measurement industry is therefore evolving from a ‘what has happened’ industry to a ‘why it has happened’ industry, but there remain some real challenges.  In part three in my Engaged Web series, I outline just what these challenges are.

Sam