sameer iyengar

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Entries from May 28th, 2009

Beer and Analytics

May 28th, 2009 by sameer
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If you’ve been watching the (thrilling) NBA playoffs, you’ve probably seen this Heineken commercial featuring Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend.”

The song was stuck in my head, so I did what any reasonable person would do, I Googled it.  Judging from the Google Trends graph below, a lot of other people did too:

The first result was this music video and a gold mine of information.  Though the video was posted 10 months ago, most of the 3500+ comments are from the last month.  On top of that, somewhere along the line, someone started a comment chain: “Copy and paste if the Heineken commercial during the NBA Playoffs sent you here”.

Somehow, this got me thinking about data and user engagement.

Data is plenty, the value comes from figuring out what it means.  As a marketer, you can, at the very least, confirm that some people saw (and remembered!) your commercial (you even know their YouTube usernames).  It can only get more interesting from there.

YouTube gives the video uploader access to a variety of statistics about their viewers.  Perhaps some folks at Heineken would like to get their hands on that.  Perhaps they’d even be willing to pay.

The impact of brand advertising on TV has always been difficult to measure.  Aggregating things like YouTube comments and Twitter posts could be one way to make it easier to quantify.  However, turning such a vast set of unstructured data into useful insights is no trivial task.

Users want to engage, and they’ll find creative ways to do it.  I always think it’s cool when users find new ways to use a product.  But it also shows where there is opportunity for improvement.

In this case, it’s not really something missing from the product, but an opportunity to use the knowledge that TV ads drive online searches to create a more cohesive user experience.

At a very basic level, I’d imagine that Heineken might have benefited from advertising on the YouTube music video.  Taking it further, one could probably come up with all sorts of interesting way to combine Heineken, YouTube, Biz Markie and the NBA.

Lots of speculation here and very few conclusions.  Would love to hear your thoughts…

Category: advertising5 Comments

Resolution Debt

May 24th, 2009 by sameer
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Space Needle

Sometime in December, I hand-wrote a list of New Year’s resolutions and then promptly forgot about them.  Though they were in no order of importance, the first one was a seemingly-reasonable goal to “blog on sameeriyengar.com 1 post/wk”.

By my (completely non-scientific) count, I have posted exactly zero entries since that time (though, thanks to bots that can fill out forms, I have received hundreds of spam comments).  In fact, my most recent entry which contains greater than one complete sentence was over one year ago.

This being the end of May, I am now in debt twenty entries.  However, instead of breaking my own knee caps, I’ve graciously allowed myself to submit those entries a bit late and see if its still possible to reach an average of 1 post per week by the end of the year.

There’s no shortage of articles with tips for achieving your goals, which is no surprise considering its a common metric for measuring success.  One idea that has resonated with me is to think about two things:

  1. Why do you even care about doing this?
  2. How is the process of achieving this goal going to impact me?

My theory is that its easier to commit to a goal if the reason and the impact are something you actually care about.  It should probably be something slightly more compelling than “well, it would be kinda cool”.  For example, I like the idea of having a blog because it will force me to:

  • Practice writing.  Presenting ideas in a structured way and writing things that people might actually want to read are useful skills.
  • Read.  Writing something coherent requires that you’ve at least done a little research on the topic.
  • Have something more than a photo of half dome come up when you Google for my name.

Since most goals aren’t easy to achieve, it’s also important to consider (and accept!) the consequences of pursuing that goal.  For example, some of the things I am willing to accept are:

  • Public ridicule.  It’s actually a scary thought to post potentially ridiculous things for all to see but that’s part of having a blog.  I’m okay with the fact that I’m going to sound stupid sometimes (hopefully not all the time).
  • Less TV time.  I’m am (somewhat reluctantly) willing to miss some re-runs of Family Guy to spend time writing.

If you see more posts on this blog, you’ll know that, at the very least, these ideas seem to be working for me.  And, if not, at least I will have accomplished a respectable 1.9% of my goal.

If you’ve got other goal setting tips, leave a comment!  At least I’ll know the spam-bots aren’t the only ones reading this.

Category: productivity8 Comments