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OSMAN JUNAID: My name is Osman Junaid.I am the managing director of Human Digital.Human Digital is a boutique digital research agencyfocused on understanding how people engage with brands,products, and services on the social web.Hi, guys.Good morning.So we're going to have a quick rundown of the projects

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: that you were working on-- if there any kind of issues,any blocks, issues that we need to resolve.Let's get through those, and then we'll take [INAUDIBLE].So Simon, if you want to kick off?

SIMON: So Nuffield today, Ian is coming into take a presentation that we started.Fingers crossed he likes it all.

OSMAN JUNAID: Social web isn't limited to social media--social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.The social web includes forums, blog posts.It includes e-commerce sites with review sections.It includes every aspect of your digital lives.Market research used to be quite stale.What we would effectively go and do

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: is have a list of assumptions.We would then formulate questions.And then we'd go out and we'd ask peoplein the street what they thought.The problem with asking people questionsis that we're not able to see organicallywhat they would have come up with, had we notasked them the questions.So effectively, we are introducing biasinto the research.The great thing about new forms of research,

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: including digital analytics and conversational analysisin the way that we do it, is that we simplyrely on people talking about their experiences online.So it's a naturally occurring conversationin which we are not introducing bias.So if someone naturally talks about how much theylove Selfridge's is or Herrods or House of Fraser, that

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: is completely different to going and askinga person in the street, as would happen, you know, a decade ago.Listening is a fundamental part of social media research.It's a fundamental part of all kinds of media research.Previously, when we would measure the effectivenessof a newspaper campaign, we mighthave read through an article and seen

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: if there was a mention of my brand.The equivalent of that in the modern dayis to read through, let's say, a Facebook feed or a Twitter feedand listen for conversations-- relevant conversations--related to my brand.Consumer insights are any bit of information

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: that you take from people in their everyday liveswhere they interact with consumer products.So let's say that I go to a shop and I buy a watch.I might then talk about that watch online.I might talk about it with my friends.Or I might not talk about at all,and you might need a survey to get that information from me.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: So any information that you take from the consumerwould constitute consumer insights.In the first instance, what we'll dois we'll have kick-off meeting with the client.And we'll talk to them about their entire business strategy.We won't just talk to them about social or digital or marketingor anything which we would considertowards the end in the strategy piece.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: We talk to them about their business as a whole.What kind of challenges does the businessas a whole face-- as opposed to what challenges are youfacing on your Facebook page?After that process, we'll establish a list of questionsthat the client wants to answer.

OSMAN JUNAID: Harvey, P&D?

SPEAKER 3: OK, yeah, the meeting went reallywell with Adam the other day.So, yeah, I'm just continuing coding--

OSMAN JUNAID: And we'll go away and we'llbrainstorm what those questions really mean.And we'll come up with our own assumptions and hypotheses.Vincent, you were still working on Nuffield?We'll take those back to the client,and we'll talk them through our perceptionof their kind of business needs.And we'll reevaluate based on what they really need.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: Once we've established a clear brieffor what we're going to do and whatwe'll produce as a final output, we then get official sign-offfrom whoever is necessary and we begin the research process.Crack on today.Cheers.Research process is formed of four key areas.So it's called source, organize, analyze, and report.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: In the sourcing phase, what we'll do iswe'll find locations where communities of individualswill talk about a brand, a product, or a service.The organization phase-- basically, what we'll dois we'll make sure that all of our datais categorized according to the client's needs.That means that we will categorize according

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: to their key performance indicators, whateverthey may be.Following off of that, we'll then run a bit of analysis.So by this point, the data set willbe thousands of lines long.So we need to be very careful about the way wemanage that data set.An analyst will look through the data setand pick out key nuggets of informationthat they think would be interesting.From that, they will try and tell a story.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: And at the end, in the reporting phase,we will try and tell a coherent storyabout how the consumer perceives a brand-- what they talkabout, what they don't talk about, interestingly--and if there are any kind of advertisingcampaign-related issues that they might need to address.Some of the research services that we offer

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: includes market scoping.So we might be asked to figure outwhat it is people want in a new soft drink.So we will go out into the marketand we will find people talking about soft drinks in general,but not just those audiences that are alreadytalking about soft drinks.We'll try and find audiences thatcould be activated to then start talking about soft drinks.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: So these will be health-conscious individualsthat enjoy life.They want drink a sweet drink, but theydon't want it to be one that is unhealthy.So we'll go through our research processand we'll find those communities as well.So it's not just about your existing community,but it's about identifying potential communities as well.Another way in which we work with clients

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: is to monitor sentiment towards their brand, their products,or their services over time.So we'll effectively set up a tracker.And a tracker will collect information on a weekly basis.What we've got here is a visualizationwe did for one of our restaurant clients.And they wanted to know how their brand was perceived

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: compared to with their competitors.So what we did was we geolocated each of the restaurants.We plotted them on a nice little map here.And what this basically shows is commentary volumearound the country related to specific bars and restaurants.What we can actually do, using this tool,is I can zoom in to any one part of the country.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: And I go down to a street level and seewhich bars, pubs, and clubs are popular whereI am, which is something that actually is quitedifficult to do without some of the data visualizationand geolocation that we do.All of this visualization is created from workthat the research team does when it collects

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: user-generated content, organically,emerging content from the social web.So people will be posting about their experienceson websites like TripAdvisor or Time Out or any oneof these location-based services,such as Foursquare-- even Instagram, whichhas a large geolocation element to it-- Facebook as well.We're able to put together all of the information

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: that people post about themselves at those locations.We aggregate it and put it into a snazzy visualizationso that clients can go in and take a look at exactlywhat consumers are saying about their brands, products,and services-- in this case, restaurants, bars, and pubs.If a machine has collected this data,

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: the issue would be accuracy.So humans can understand text in a way that, obviously,machines can't.Machines can't understand sarcasm, idiom, or hyperbole--whereas humans obviously can.So the graph would look pretty drastically different,because words like-- if I was to say to you,

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: "Harvester is the bomb," to us thatmeans that Harvester is great.But "bomb" is classified as a danger wordon most machine-learning social media tools.So that is a really obvious exampleof where human element is vital to the research process.Part of the reason why Human Digital actually exists

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: is because we use human analysts to gothrough machine-collected information--to give our clients that cultural context, that insightinto the human being-- that a machine is simply notable to capture through very rudimentary forms of machinelearning.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: In the future, there will be technologythat can look at an image and understand it in the waythat a human can.We're probably about, let's say, 60 years awayfrom that realization.People interact with different social channelsin different ways.And we've noted-- particularly on Instagram,for example-- that people only take pictures

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: of parts of their lives that are particularly bling or flashor things that they are proud of.So you'll see a lot of people taking picturesof fancy holidays that they're on,and Lamborghinis that they've walked past.And these aren't necessarily indicativeof their day-to-day lives.A lot of what people do on social media is a facade.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: But we can get through that simplyby taking all of their social assets into consideration,rather than taking any one individual asset in isolation.There is much more data out there nowthan there has ever been.I think we're creating more data in a single daythan was created in the entire 20th century, whichis completely fascinating.

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: It means that businesses have this tremendous resourcein the form of transaction data, social media data,and all kinds of other data that we can thenoverlay against each other.So we can tell you, for example, if you have seasonal variationsin your sales, how that has translated or been causedby fluctuations in your social presence--

OSMAN JUNAID [continued]: so how people have spoken about you in an organic way online.