From celebrating Black voices to understanding regional conversation, this special installment of Crowd Tracks explores conversations of the Black Lives Matter movement...
Download the full copy of Black Lives Matter: Behind The Hashtaghere.
Crowd Tracks is our social data dispatch, highlighting emerging trends using our Culture At Scale method. As people in all 50 US states, and around the globe, march together, demanding equality for Black people, this special issue spotlights conversation around the Black Lives Matter movement.
The full report features:
– BLM growth – mapping the trajectory of conversation around Black Lives Matter
– Viral storiesfrom across the US– organizing protests, battling voter suppression, holding brands accountable
– Buying Black – uncovering how through the exposure of the racially unequal practices of big brands, emerges a celebration of Black businesses
– The role of brands – examining how brands are participating in discussion and what effective brand allyship looks like
– Amplifying Black voices – exploring how the internet is celebrating and making space for Black voices
– Deep dives– delving into how the movement is reviving community and shifting from cancel culture to accountability
Download the full copy of Black Lives Matter: Behind The Hashtaghere.
Listening to and amplifying the voices of the Black Lives Matter movement
Culture At Scale at Crowd DNA
At Crowd DNA, we’re constantly tracking conversations online across a range of categories. We deploy social media and other unstructured data sources in a number of ways; either as a stand-alone method (including producing one-off and periodical reports for our clients) or integrated alongside semiotic, ethnographic and quantitative approaches. If you’d like to find out more about how we can use Culture At Scale to meet your business challenges, get in touch.
More observations from our Crowd Numbers quant team as - in partnership with Norstat - they investigate some of the mid- and post-pandemic themes that are emerging...
We are now six weeks, or 43 days, into the UK’s coronavirus lockdown. Almost a month and a half of living under imposed conditions, causing us to change many things about the way we live. Some of our habits are no longer possible: socialising at the pub, going to the gym, commuting to work. Some of our habits have been compounded: watching TV, eating snack foods, ordering online. And then some of us will have formed new habits: working at home, video calling friends and relatives, cooking with new ingredients, helping others in our community.
In our Covid-19 study with Norstat, we have seen a notable uplift in the way the crisis is affecting spending habits. Between early April and mid-April, the number of people claiming that the crisis will have a long term effect on their spending habits jumped from 46% to 57%. Now into early May, this increased figure is holding. The longer the lockdown lasts, the less likely it is that life will return to an old ‘normal’ and the more likely it is that some of the habits we have picked up during corona will simply be the ‘new normal’.
For brands navigating through this crisis, knowing which habits will stick (because, of course, many will) and which will twist, is a difficult call to make. It’s a topic we’ve started exploring for clients across categories such as alcohol, water, media and home; reaching powerful outcomes that are having an immediate impact across comms, brand and innovation. Check in to find out more.
Our Crowd Numbers quant team have partnered with Norstat to start investigating some of the mid- and post-pandemic themes that are emerging...
With the picture changing so quickly, we are a little suspicious of anyone making particularly bold claims for what life post-pandemic will be like. Instead, we’ve focused on more channelled and specific work, focusing on the very real and particular challenges our clients are facing across different categories and markets.
But we do think there is now the potential to starting pinpointing and tracking some areas of sentiment. And hence we’ve partnered with Norstat to gather data across the next weeks, using a UK sample.
We will flesh this work out as the weeks go by; revisiting themes that we feel are worth tracking; and also introducing new themes as they become more pertinent.
DON’T GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT
With reports that advertising budgets are being slashed across the board, does this leave consumers in the dark as to where to spend their post crisis cash? 58% of UK consumers agree that brands should continue to advertise throughout lockdown and 34% agree that they are just waiting to get in store and treat themselves to some retail therapy. Now is not the time to go quiet on your customers.
ACTION POINTS: Don’t go quiet on consumers. Be vocal in both marketing and PR. Demonstrate your role in the community and be a destination for consumers when they return to the highstreet.
SAVE OUR STORES?
Consumers are rallying to save their favourite brands from the brink, as both big and small brands start to fall casualty to the crisis. 72% of consumers say they will be sad to see some brands disappear due to Covid-19 and 68% said they would be willing to help local independent shops navigate the crisis.
They are particularly willing to help those supporting the vulnerable, with 60% saying they will continue to align with those brands post-pandemic. But for now, attitudes appear ahead of behaviour, as only 45% agree that they are actively trying to spend more with the independents, and only 33% say they have been exposed to new brands during this spell.
ACTION POINTS: Demonstrate that even global brands can have community value, and promote local produce/products where possible. Consumers are willing to help but need to know how. With marketing down, consumers are missing out on opportunities to help brands in the way they wish.
LIGHT AT THE END
72% agree that Covid-19 will have a lasting effect on British culture, and hopefully a positive one. 41% say they will continue to give up time to help the vulnerable, and 42% said that they will make more time to help out in their community.
And what’s more British than the pub? If British culture does change, the average punter does not want to lose their watering hole. 72% said they feared for the future of their local bars and restaurants. But when we do emerge from our homes, it will be to commute back to the office. Only 31% agree that they will try to work from home more often post-pandemic. And with 69% agreeing Covid-19 will have had a positive effect on the environment, it should be a more pleasant commute at that.
ACTION POINTS: Consumers believe the new normal to be a brighter one, with more community care and more support for the vulnerable. Cafe culture and bars/restaurants may see a bounce back as consumers remember how good socialising can be. Don’t abandon office spaces as your staff want to get back in the office with their colleagues.
Check in with Crowd Numbers director Dave Power to learn more about this work – and about Crowd DNA’s quantitative capabilities more broadly.
* Crowd DNA’s Numbers team collaborated with Norstat on this work, surveying an 18+ nat rep UK sample on April 4.
Inspired by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec's Dear Data, Crowd DNA NYC had a go at charting their own week in transportation...
The ability to create and communicate stories is one of the evolutionary factors that has defined human development. By using stories to share ideas, humans have been able to build philosophies, belief systems and form entire communities around one collective goal.
Through creativity and invention we have been able to play with storytelling, using myriad ways to share our message and captivate our audience. In the cultural insights field, telling a story using data in a creative and engaging manner can be challenging.
It’s important to make the stories we tell with data as compelling and easy to understand as possible (just ask our Crowd Numbers team). In order to do this, we turn to different sources of inspiration. One creativity sparker is Dear Data, a TedTalk and book about two new friends who maintained a relationship via postcards charting a topic of the week.
Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec recorded 52 weeks in untraditional data charts – with topics ranging from compliments received to swearwords said. Inspired by these two penpals, our New York team decided to chart their own week of transportation. Without discussing how we’d interpret the task, we developed our own unique takes.
Here’s what we ended up with…
Eden spends much of her commute sandwiched between fellow 4/5 train riders, but uses books to transport herself away:
When commuting solo, you might find Hollie speeding over the Williamsburg Bridge on her bike. But when she’s joined by the fifth (and four-legged) member of the Crowd NYC team, Boboji, it’s a ride on the J train:
Tom commutes into the office from just across the water in Brooklyn. In summer, you’ll catch him zipping over the Manhattan Bridge on his Boosted Board, but with the cold of winter comes a return to the subway:
The office’s only Manhattan resident, Lizzy walks to work, making use of the time to catch up on podcasts and brush up on her speed-walking:
What did we learn from our experiment? The first standout is that there are clearly many different ways to represent the same data. Even what might seem like relatively boring data – travelling to and from work every day – can be shown in an interesting and dynamic way.
It also showed us the value in collecting additional data beyond the basics. For example, Lizzy’s chart shows how environmentally friendly each method of transport was; and Hollie maps when she was walking with her dog, versus with other people. These additional elements of context all come together to tell a more complete story in our week of transport.
So next time you’re going about a seemingly mundane task, exercise your creative muscles and think about the different factors surrounding a particular topic – and how this could be represented visually.
As so much of our work can’t be shared, it’s great when we do get the chance to. Here’s some exciting projects for Twitter and HSBC…
We’ve been working with Twitter in the US, merging machine learning, cultural exploration, semiotics and quant surveying, making sense of billions of tweets to identify trends (18 of them, within six core themes) that have a consistent upward trajectory. Check the work out (with downloadable PDFs aplenty) here.
And we’ve been working with HSBC on the Enrich List – aimed at their high net worth Jade customers – combining cultural analysis and interviews with our Kin network to understand motivational trends for those who have achieved a certain level of wealth; then finding 50 rewarding experiences for personal growth. You can find out more about the approach here. And you can check out the full Enrich List here.
Thirsty? The first in a series of Crowd DNA social listening reports, Crowd Tracks serves up the frothiest alcohol trends from the last four months...
Crowd Tracks is our regular social listening dispatch, examining trends taking place at the intersection of brands and culture. First up, we get the drinks in, focusing on alcohol and uncovering some of the viral stories and category shifts that have encouraged the most engagement over the last four months.
Using social data, we’ve dug deep into global conversations to track trends and measure their impact over time, including pinpointing the brands that are making the most noise.
Vodka from Chernobyl
Redemption, a sober bar in London
Listening Bar in NYC
Inside the first Crowd Tracks you’ll find:
– Viral stories from around the world, including the state sponsored Qingdao Beer Festival in China; the rise of craft beer in the Philippines; and a new vodka made with ingredients from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
– A brand leaderboard charting the organic conversation around Guinness, Heineken and Bud (who successfully tapped into the viral Area 51 story)
– We dive into the American summer phenomenon that was White Claw and the growth in hard seltzers (even for fraternity bros)
– We also track the worldwide growth in alcohol-free living through the newly dubbed ‘sober curious’ trend, as well as the shift towards sustainable drinking, in which the environment takes centre stage for both consumers and brands
We deploy social media data in various ways at Crowd DNA; either as a stand-alone method (including producing one-off and periodical reports for our clients) or integrated alongside, for instance, semiotic, ethnographic and quantitative approaches). If you’d like to find out more about how we can use social media data to meet your business challenges, get in touch.
Social media has changed the way we communicate. In fact, social media has changed almost everything. Our feeds are places for influence, inspiration, staying in touch and endless memes. For consumers, these ever-evolving platforms are increasingly – for good or bad – an extension of identity. For brands, the raw data they host presents a near-endless source of insights. But how do we make sense of it all?
In this session, our in-house social listening experts – associate director, Anna Stuart and consultant, Benji Long – will present the case for how social data can lead to powerful strategic learnings across culture, consumers and category, using (drumroll, please…) The Seven Deadly Skills Of Social Listening.
This killer toolkit puts multi-tentacled social data into action, highlighting the techniques used to dive into passionate communities; pinpoint the concepts which drive brand, trend and product perception; and recruit the perfect creator-collaborator from social users driving the highest engagement.
We’ll also bust the most common misconceptions around social listening and explore some more detailed case studies. From worldwide trends in beauty, to the functional tensions of car travel and the emotions running high in response to a new campaign, social listening offers a way to decode so much that’s vital to brands, and to their products and comms.
If you fancy coffee, croissants and smart learnings on social listening, please fill out this form, or contact events@crowdDNA.com. And feel free to pass this invite on to any colleagues it may interest, data-sceptics and fans alike.
We're pleased to present a new look to our quant and analytics offer. Oh yeah, and a new director to run things, too!
Bringing new dimensions to our mission of creating culturally charged commercial advantage, we’re rebranding our quant and analytics offer as Crowd Numbers. This is about giving data and quantitative work a louder voice in our business. Additionally, under the new banner, as well as continuing to provide online survey solutions, we will venture further into areas such as passive tracking, data synthesis, social listening and machine learning.
We already have a first-rate team and high quality case studies to build on with Crowd Numbers. And now we also have an exciting new addition to our line up of directors to run this part of the business. David Power, formerly a director at RDSi and client side at Hachette and Future Publishing, joins in November.
He’ll be leading Crowd Number, with teams in London and Leeds, and directing all services that they provide across the Crowd DNA’s global offices.
“As a long term admirer of Crowd DNA, I am thrilled to be joining an agency at the forefront of understanding people, culture and the implications for brands,” says David. “Quantitative research is evolving rapidly – you need to be open to incorporating alternative data sources, telling engaging stories and embracing cultural context to drive change.”
We’re excited by this news and hope you are too. To find out more about Crowd Numbers, do get in touch.
