Marko Hurst

First there was Microsoft. Then came Yahoo! to dominate. And then came along (and still is) Google to topple them both. Yes, all three have taken a shot at world domination and one looks like it might win,, but I digress. So, with world domination in mind who out there ever knew the “lighter side” of Google? Yes, Google has (and always did) have a kind side. It just isn’t widely known. In fact a show of hands… “Who knew that Google has a philanthropic division”? Not many of you, but it can be found at Google.org. Anyway, so what is this division up to these days, quite a bit, but since it’s winter out there I thought I would talk specifically about Google, the flu, and analytics. So what does Google, the flu, and analytics have in common you might ask? Well Google utilizes and tracks searches for the flu via queries in Google’s search engine to help track, predict, and ultimately prevent flu outbreaks before they happen, and quite possibly before health organizations such as the CDC )Center for Disease Control) become aware of it themselves. So, being winter time there is plenty of activity to check out and their data visualization isn’t too shabby either. In addition, they also have a video that demonstrates how it works.

Hot “off the press”! The book cover to my new book due out next year is designed and ready to go. To keep up with the book and ideas that my co-author, Lou Rosenfeld, and I are testing check out the book blog.

Today is a big day here in the United States with what is expected to be one of the biggest presidential elections in American history. Not the least of all the issues that have been in the press and on our minds: War, Economy, Energy, Health Care, Taxes, and many more you’d expect. But what also makes this significant is that whatever party wins will make history for having either the first black President, Barack Obama, or the first woman Vice President, Sara Palin. While it’s too early to predict the winner from the polls I thought I take a moment to introduce you to a couple of “superstitions”, yet based upon the data and percent of accuracy you just can’t ignore: the S&P and the Redskins Rule.

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) - In the upcoming month to a presidential election the state of how well or poor the S&P is doing has proven to run around the 80% accuracy. With the recent events on the economy the S&P is down 24%, which then states that the incumbent party (those already in charge) would be ousted, thus Mr. Obamma will win tonight. Superstitions aside, those of us who study statistics cannot fully support this guideline, since we tend to hold 85% as our bottom line for what has enough statistical difference, but it is a decent indicator none the less, but don’t bet the farm on it.

Redskins Rule - Back in 2000 a member of the Elias Sports Bureau coined the “Redskins Rule”. According to the rule, if the Redskins win their last home game before the presidential election the party who won the popular vote in the previous election will win the White House. If the Redskins lose, the popular vote challenger wins the race.

Therefore, if the home team wins, McCain wins. Obama, meanwhile, needs help from Pennsylvania on two fronts: a Steelers win and the state in his column on Election Day. The Redskins Rule has proved correct in the last 17 elections, in fact it’s been true since the first elections that were held in 1936 after the team was formed in 1932. Which means to date the Redskins Rule has held 100% accurate and that is something that any statistician could bet on.

As I started out saying these are superstitions, the S&P may have be a real indicator due to it’s correlation to the economy and possibly people’s midsets going into an election, but the Redskins outcomes of a game doesn’t really hold any weight. That being said the numbers from last night’s Monday night football game results were Pittsburgh Steelers beating the Washington Redskins 23 - 6. So, if superstitions hold true let me be the first to welcome Mr. Obamma as our next president.

I recently did an interview with Pek Pongpaet.

1. Who are you and what do you do?
2. Can you explain analytics to us in a way that my diverse group of readers can understand?
3.You’re also working on a book I hear, can you tell me more about that?
4. Tell us a bit about the Netflix contest you’re working on?
5. I hear you are also a avid muay thai fighter. Can you tell us about that? Do you think your martial arts training compliments your line of work and vice versa?

Full interview can be found at Pek’s blog.

I was talking with Lou Rosenfeld the other day about the book we are currently working on, “Search Analytics: Conversations With Your Customers“, and I proposed the the following…

A conversation is in most cases a two-way dialog that happens in real-time, i.e. someone is speaking, while at least one other is listening and that exchange might go back and forth. But this rarely happens with most websites, it’s mostly a one-way dialog with your users doing all the talking and the site owner just ignoring them. I can hardly call this a “conversation”. To me it seems more of a confession. And that’s not a bad thing if you consider what a confession really is… acknowledgment; avowal; admission; disclosure. Your users/customer/clients/etc. are telling you what they need, what they can’t find, what is frustrating, etc. And the best and juiciest part of every single confession is that it is in their own language! Short of using that all that wonderful info to take action on (hint hint), life on the Web doesn’t get much better than that.

So, is that book about conversations or confessions? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Today I signed a book deal with Rosenfeld Media to co-author a book with Lou Rosenfeld - Site Search Analytics: Conversations with Your Customers.

The book will attempt to bring together what both authors feels is missing from both the UX and Analytics practices, namely each other. UX could take a few lessons from analytics and vise versa. What we see, is a world where the ‘what and why’, i.e. quantitative and qualitative, collide, to not only bring together a much richer and more cohesive understanding of your customers/users, but also to effectively tie your strategy to execution, which in turn will help you create and design better experiences.

Due out in 2009.

Related:
Expansion on the above: Hello. My Name is…
Interview with Lou Rosenfeld: e-consultantcy

Your visitors have evolved, have you?

Introduction

Not since the emergence of television fifty years ago have we seen such a metamorphosis in consumer behavior. The good-’ol-days when all that was needed to reach your audience was a product, a strong message, and enough money to keep them both in front of as many eyeballs as possible is a thing of the past. For years, people “behaved” the way they were supposed to and everything was going along just fine. Then all of a sudden, people’s behavior began to change overnight. They stopped “wanting” to listen to you, they stopped “wanting” to read what you wrote, and stopped “wanting” to look at your ads, they simply stopped paying attention to you. I mean seriously, how rude! So, what happened?

Well, in the 1980’s came the first transition with the introduction of cable & satellite TV. The unforeseen result was the beginning of the end – the fragmentation of mass media. Then in the mid-90’s the Internet arrived on the scene and in a short time established itself as something more than just a fad. And just like that, almost overnight the traditional advertising & marketing model was shattered beyond repair. The Internet now competed for the same attention that the other media channels were vying for, but unlike any other media channel in history the Internet was the first channel that was “push & pull”, or a two-way medium that allowed consumer’s to interact directly with systems, companies, other consumers, etc. and the system would react back. To add to this, the low cost of content publishing technologies allowed anyone with an Internet connection and a voice to stand up and be heard around the world, effectively changing Mass Media, into Media of the Masses.

Here Boy! Sit. Good Dog

In 1904, the famous Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in physiology for his work on digestive glands. Prior to winning the Nobel, Pavlov discovered a physiological phenomenon that his legacy is probably more famous for and remembered by most for today, “conditioned reflexes”, a.k.a. Pavlov’s Dog.

The story goes a little something like this… One day a inside of Pavlov’s lab a colleague noticed that a dog would salivate as soon as it saw or heard the assistant that fed him, before ever seeing or smelling his food. At first Pavlov found this very frustrating, as it disrupted the results of his test. But after a while he be began to wonder why this was happening. So, Pavlov conducted an experiment to see if one could learn to associate a natural stimulus, such as a food, with an unrelated stimulus, this eliciting a response by the unrelated stimulus alone.

Fast forward a couple of decades to the early 1920’s when a man whose resume includes experimenting on infants, leaving the academia world under suspicious circumstances, and established the first psychological school of behavioralism unleashed his brilliance and knowledge of behavior upon the world of advertising. His name was John Watson, 1878 – 1958. And still today, nearly ninety years later, the world of marketing, advertising, and branding are still following his techniques of behavioralism –Brand Association.

Effectively what brand association attempts to do is manipulate the response to a stimulus, e.g. brand name or logo, which initially provides a neutral feeling or response with the objective to train people to make a “false” connection between the a positive emotion, e.g. happiness or feeling attractive, and the particular brand being advertised.

If one lesson was learned from the dot.com era, it is that it takes more than a brilliant mind and money to make your brainchild to come to life and survive. So, how did mass media evolve and survive for so many years? Like primordial stew, the right time, right place, and maybe a Ouija board under the pale moon light contributed, but some very specific criteria are essential to breathing the long lasting life cycle and impact of mass media.

1. Society: People lived in localized communities. The number of people in a certain area was relatively small this allowed them interact with each other more often since they went to the same church, shopped at the same stores, went to the same schools, and often worked together as well.
2. Technology: People had limited access to the same media channels. There were at best only a couple of newspapers, three major TV networks, and not many more radio stations.
3. Market: People had limited choices in brand options.

The result: people were “salivating” for the next greatest product. For nearly eighty years this model of mass media and brand association would thrive, but the Internet would change all of this almost overnight.

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