Databases / Analytics

Leverage Your Data With 1-to-1

Let’s take a magic carpet ride through the space-time continuum.

Fast-forward ten years from now. Will anyone be doing mass advertising? Will there be any value in Television advertising, unless it’s targeted to each household or individual. The future of marketing can only be as good as the technology available, and considering where it’s at now; we’re in for some hardcore one-to-one marketing.

Right now, personalization is where TV was 40 years ago. Everybody knows it’s there, but no one quite knows what to do with it yet.

Early response rates on personalization have been very promising – three times the industry average, with many running higher – but there’s not enough of a track record to make accurate predictions. Marketers like to go with what works, and having an X factor can be intimidating. That enchanting unknown territory of “potential ROI” is like the land of OZ.

It seems like a lot of people are getting into personalization, including companies as diverse as Xerox and Canada Post. These companies offer complete conception through production one-to-one services. There are other companies such as Lift Agency that specialize in personalization and have been pulling in impressive results for clients such as Telus and Mercedes.

Personalized mailings aren’t in any way new. Variable print technology has been around for many years. But advancements in client databases and increasing awareness with one-to-one marketing is starting to perk up some ears to the idea of leveraging available data to really speak to customers in a way that resonates and promotes stronger relationships.

So if you have the data, why not use it?!

The Lump Left Over

A little while back Paul Tyndall (See: Why don't the same rules apply) asked the question about ROI calculations/justifications for new media, and by extension, marketing investments in general.

I think another question needing to be asked is how do we go about measuring the ROI of goodwill. Accounts don't do a good job of measuring goodwill . Its usually the balancing figure reflecting the difference between assets and liabilities on a balance sheet - not something with actual metrics behind it.

Walter Schuetze (former SEC Chief Accountant and FASB member) derisively characterizes reported goodwill as "the lump left over", at least according to this accounting blogger.

FASB:Summary of Statement No. 142
Goodwill and Other Intangible Assets (Issued 6/01)
"Analysts and other users of financial statements, as well as company managements, noted that intangible assets are an increasingly important economic resource for many entities and are an increasing proportion of the assets acquired in many transactions. As a result, better information about intangible assets was needed. Financial statement users also indicated that they did not regard goodwill amortization expense as being useful information in analyzing investments."

Leaving the accountants alone for a minute, it seems to me that whenever there is a customer acquisition program - the enterprise is more willing/prepared to invest in what it hopes will be the start of a long-ish profit stream than it is in re-investing in its brand. I say hopes - because there are no guarantees the brand overtures will yield any results and I also exclude the activities the brand engages in to solicit a sale..

Most brands face their problems later in life - when retention efforts require investment to bolster the brand for self supportive brand evolution reasons, for customer win-backs, to offset the competition's acquisition drives etc...

There are many different ways to come to terms with this issue - as it mostly resides in the realm of executive definition making. Having a precise enterprise-wide definition of what constitutes a goodwill investment is not in the final analysis important. What is important is taking the time to understand the desired impact the goodwill will have on your brand - but measuring the status quo is like counting angels on the head of a pin..

To determine the value of your goodwill investment - look to the forgone profit stream, and any traditional win-back costs as an upper end of the investment it is willing to make, or look at your average customer tenure and then value those who exceed that threshold. The point is you need to make the effort - if you believe there is value in retaining "that lump left over".

The real challenge comes with acting on those convictions - of using that investment as part of your brand retention program. I'm not talking about upsell/cross sell - but rather at those programs that help your customers FEEL your thanks for their patronage.See Rule # 13

By way of example I point out how one of the Telco's launched a holiday season email program inviting customers to play a game - where everyone had a chance to win some sort of prize.
(I ran a similar type of program back in my Lysol days - as part of a clean and win sweepstakes
Customers had to clean a dirt spot on the instore ad pad - which in most cases revealed a coupon value (remember everyone likes to win)

While I naturally don't have the Telco's results - I know from my experience - these types of thank you events are exceptionally powerful business and goodwill generators.

But they went a step further and sought to measure their impact - as I was recently asked to participate in an online survey - probing me with all sorts of questions regarding my brand affinities, likes/dislikes etc... .

Seems to me that goodwill is much more than just "the lump left over". Come to think of it - doesn't that description also apply to profit?

"Profit is the applause of your customers." Ken Blanchard

Why Don’t the Same Rules Apply?

Whenever new marketing technologies arrive, marketers often seem willing to dispense with the traditional metrics and ROI calculations. As email marketing arrived on the scene, marketers were so enamoured with the speed and low cost (more on that later!) that they forgot to see if it actually had a positive impact on the customer behaviour. Throwing the direct marketing rule book out the window, most proponents seemed happy enough to look at “open rates” and “click throughs” regardless of how this translated into something more tangible like sales, value or even, perish the thought, ROI.

But isn’t that what makes direct marketing so interesting in the first place, the ability to accurately quantify the actual impact on client value? The last few years have seen a move to make email marketing campaigns as measurable and accountable as more traditional direct marketing. However, in my experience, many still forego the basics like “control cells” and assign all purchases to the success of the campaign, as though no one would have bought the latest Britney single without receiving the e-newsletter promoting it.

New and potentially interesting technologies arrive on a daily basis providing an ever increasing set of channels in which to communicate and interact with clients and potential clients. Podcasting, Facebook, Blogging, Neural Implants (oh wait, that one hasn’t happened yet). However, as each one enters the marketers’ toolbox, there seems to be little effort put into how exactly are we going to measure it. Again people fall back on somewhat less interesting metrics such as the number of “members”, “posts” or “tags” something achieves. While those are indeed measurable, without better linkage to behaviour, there is no way to determine whether these investments in time, money and brand are generating a positive return for the company.

Back to the low cost issue. Yes, many of these technologies are relatively inexpensive and the time to delivery can be fast, however, they are definitely not free. There are still some hard costs in terms of dollars. But there are also soft opportunity costs related to the time spent by marketers regularly managing and updating a Facebook page versus working on other marketing opportunities. And perhaps the larger cost is the potential opportunity cost of flooding clients / prospects with a non-stop barrage of contacts from you. This may ultimately translate into decreased receptivity of other marketing messages, which would then have a much higher cost to the company.

I’m no Luddite, but I think that we need to continue to strive to find ways to apply the same rules of measurability that made direct marketing so successful in the first place to these new technologies as they arrive. This will help marketers prioritise their efforts and investments and identify which new tools actually can provide marketing value.

Empowering Marketing Intelligence: It's Not Just About the Data

"If you're not going to make decisions, stop asking questions. If you're not going to take action, stop making decisions. If you're not measuring results, stop taking action.” (Rob Armstrong, Teradata)

On November 27th, the CMA's Marketing Technology and Database Intelligence Council held a highly informative session surrounding the challenges marketers are facing with the explosion of data analytics. If you couldn’t make it - here’s what you missed…

The key take-away from the morning was - Focus on the business, the process, the customer - technology is an enabler but the human element is critical to deriving intelligence and insights.

Each of the four speakers had their individual take on how to manage the ever-increasing explosion in data:

Greg Doufas of Rogers Cable is continuously testing the applicability of new analytical methods. As the analysis matures, it "grows up" and integrates into their business intelligence toolset. Each tool has its proper use and it's important to know where to draw the line. Knowing where to draw the line comes with experience. However, they don't focus on the data. They provide a continuous narrative about customers, working continuously to surface insights, not data.

Alioscha Leon of Microsoft Canada is part of a global analytics network striving to implement re-usable modules of analytics know-how, processes and technologies. They don't have one end-to-end solution that satisfies all countries. Instead, they have designed a business logic layer that facilitates the sharing of best practices and a data consumption portal with analytics and visualization tools.

Daymond Ling of CIBC stressed the importance of helping those who seek answers from analytics to ask really good questions, questions that the data can help answer. Business questions are often vague. Help the business re-phrase the question so that you can peel the answer back layer by layer. Don't fuss over tools or let tools be the focus - create something that may not be interesting but that is always useful.

Rob Armstrong of Teradata emphasized the need for integrated operational and strategic data management processes. Business users have to own data cleanliness, not IT. IT manages the process of moving the data around (they're plumbers, managing the pipes, the infrastructure) but business has to be the one who cares about data quality and cleanliness. The problems you are resolving should drive prioritization of analytics work, as well as what you're going to do with it.

A marketers charge is to draw from these insights quickly and with increased frequency. All the speakers highlighted the need to ask the right questions and prioritize the use of both human and technological resources. Technology is rapidly evolving but we need to be constantly vigilant about how a new piece of technology will address a given business need.

The Ultimate Decision

The Promise:
It came upon us as a promise, wrapped in the innocence of simplicity. The inner core of a brand captured miraculously in a simple question.

“How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague.”

The Net Promoter Score was born. The brainchild of Fred Reichheld, a Bain & Co. Fellow and Dr. Laura Brooks of Satmetrix Systems. The sort of material that Harvard Business Review writes their cases about. In fact HBR did publish an article in Dec 2003 with the eye catching title “The one number you need to grow”. The equivalent of a viral campaign unfolded, supplemented with a book… global speaking engagements.

Just as a black hole, the simplicity drew everyone to it. The promise, incubated by field studies at 400 businesses (turns out to have been 50+ in the end) which held that if we managed our customers properly – our business would grow. To do so only required our focus on customers who are either our promoters (scoring you a 9 or 10), passives (scoring you a 7 or 8) or detractors (scoring you 6 or less). Wait a minute – that’s all our customers. Exactly, but we’ll get to that again at the conclusion.

The Formula: % of Promoters - % of Detractors = Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Therefore if 50% of your respondents were promoters and 20% were detractors – you netted out at a score of 30. The higher the score the better.

NPS we were told would accurately predict a company’s ability to impress customers, turn customers into advocates, and -- in turn -- become an indicator of potential business growth. Scientific proof that this simple metric was ultimately more powerful and meaningful than any other management theory about customer satisfaction, customer retention, passion, loyalty or …well anything. So simple even a CEO could follow it ;-^)

And so the market embraced the theory. From all corners of the world. Heavyweights like GE (Real Estate division) Philips, HSBC, IBM (Enterprise Content Management), LEGO, Enterprise Car Rental, Intuit, Schwabb, American Express, Microsoft and others.

A simple approach, developed by respected accreditted professionals, endorsed by a world class university adopted by companies. What’s so bad about any of this?

The Questions:
Cracks in the foundation started to develop because of the lack of support to the contentions. Namely that the NPS was not a strong predictor, that there was evidense of research bias in the support used to substantiate the NPS and that the ACSI was not uncorrelated with firm growth..

“We find no support for the claim that Net Promoter is the ‘single most reliable indicator of a company’s ability to grow.’ The clear implication is that managers have adopted the Net Promoter metric for tracking growth on the basis of the belief that solid science underpins the findings and that it is superior to other metrics. However, our research suggests that such presumptions are erroneous. The consequences are the potential misallocation of resources as a function of erroneous strategies guided by Net Promoter on firm performance, company value, and shareholder wealth.”

Source: Timothy Keiningham et al. July 2007 A Longitudinal Examination of Net Promoter and Firm Revenue Growth

Other studies, other experts, opinion leaders, bloggers (see below) added their voices to the boisterous cacophony – worthy of the NYSE trading floor on a black bear day.

Undaunted, NPS supporters countered (see below) with their own assertions the NPS being as good as more complex measures and for the most part avoiding any direct discussions surrounding the statistical annomalies brought forward by Keiningham.

In this quote, Dr. Masden acknowledges being part of the team at the London School of Economics that vetted the NPS Score and asserts its ongoing validity as a reliable method of linking customer loyalty to growth.

"As far as the current debate goes, anyone who has read the information being disseminated from the “anti-Net Promoter” camp quickly comes to the realisation that the one Net Promoter question is, at the very least, just as good as more complex proprietary measures, that are tough to translate to the average executive and employee. But that leaves me questioning: why are we hung up on the measurement? The real conversation needs to be about how to get an organisation to be customer-centric and what that can mean for a company’s future”

Source: Clickadvisor.com on Sept 17 Net Promoter: the ultimate debate on customer loyalty

The Stalemate:

There is too much of an industry and ‘cult’ established around the NPS for it to dissapear on the basis of the allegations laid against them. In defence and defiance they point out that we are all ultimately pursuing the same path. True.

One can argue that the NPS may have accelerated the customer centricity movement, the other important benefit is that in its simplicity it has refocussed the dialogue on using metrics which can be widely disseminated and easily understood. Well in the words of Tim Keiningham

“ I too believe that loyalty consultants and researchers have over-complicated the message (and the analyses) with more advanced statistics than it took to get the Apollo space missions to the moon. It makes it impossible for management to understand, communicate, and rally support. This is ridiculous!”

The Ultimate Decision:
Believe it or not up to this point was the easy part. The hard part is deciding for yourself what happens next.

Will there ever be one metric to fit all needs? Highly improbable – and any contenders will not be allowed to make unsubstantiated claims. Instead of waiting for the new simple metric, we must continue to move forward with as simplified a system we can devise, implement and gain compliance with.

There are many competing schools of thought (Customer Experience Management, CRM, Loyalty/Continuity, Value Drivers, Image, WoM) reflecting the different successful business models/brands in the market.

To understand which approach will work best for your brand you must identify three things:

1. who your profitable customers are

2. what kind of relationship your profitable customers wish to have with your brand
a.Share of Wallet: the traditional CRM-centric make me a compelling (price/promotional) offer and I’ll buy it from you (or perhaps your competitors) – a brand relationship centered on the transaction.
b.Share of Mind: the traditional marketing promotions/communications approach – focussing on the key value proposition – a rational based brand relationship.
c.Share of Heart: Customer Experience Management – How people feel about the brand experience. Experience seen as a price mitigator and continuity reinforcer – an emotion based brand relationship.
d.Share of Life: How customers see the brand as a longer term partner for their category requirements, solutions and corporate/sustainability responsibility – an ‘adult/mature’ brand relationship.

3. within the relationship type identify the activities the enterprise must do to instill the longer-term repeat purchase pattern it seeks.

The key in my opinion is instead of defining your brand as an advocate of a particular ‘school of thought’ and then trying to mold your customers to fit within that model, we must instead look and manage this from the customer’s perspective. Therefore come to recognize the ALL of these relationship types exist simultaneously among different groups of your customers. What and how you communicate will be best served by understanding the type of customer they are first and from there make the ultimate decision as to how to relate and evolve with your customers.

Cheers
Miro

Suggested Reading:
NPS Adovcates:
The Ultimate Question. Driving Good Profits and True Growth. Fred Reicheld

www.satmetrix.com

www.netpromoter.com

Dr. Laura Brooks’s – VP Satmetrix latest blog posting

The Satmetrix white paper describing the research

Research conducted by the London School of Economics

Dr. Marsden from Clickadvisor.com on Sept 17 Net Promoter: the ultimate debate on customer loyalty

NPS Contrarians
Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business and Proven Tactics That Really Work, Tim Keiningham, Terry Varga, Lerzan Aksoy, Henri Wallard

A Longitudinal Examination of Net Promoter and Firm Revenue Growth

The Value of Different Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Metrics in Predicting Customer Retention, Recommendation, and Share-of-Wallet

January 2007 Maritz Research White Paper

COLLOQUY magazine article

Technology as the Great Enabler of CRM Analytics

With CRM becoming the paramount philosophy of marketing in the 21st century, organizations are striving to develop processes which are compliant with this philosophy. Specifically within the area of CRM analytics, one of the constants is the need for information. In looking at information within CRM analytics, one could use the analogy of the human body . The human body requires food for the effective functioning of all its processes which is similar to the need for information amongst CRM analytics practitioners. Yet, food by itself is not sufficient as exercise and eating the right foods are the real keys to successful health. It is no different with CRM analytics as the successful practices require not just information(food) but the ability to use this information in a meaningful manner(exercise).

The use of technology is the great enabler for CRM analytics by allowing organizations to more effectively derive meaningful information and knowledge from raw data. What does this mean? For the more advanced user, we now have more robust tools. Advanced statistical techniques can be more easily applied alongside tools that more effectively process the data.. A more advanced user can examine more complex techniques while examining them with much larger volumes of data. For these type of users, they can continue to look at their traditional ways of analyzing data which required a high level of technical expertise usually involving some type of programming as well as exploring other tools which may offer additional statistical techniques or increased data processing capabilities.

Yet, the real win for technology within the CRM analytics arena is the ability to empower more people beyond just the advanced users as discussed above. An empowered environment permits a much broader perspective of a given problem since more people are able to analyze the data. Certainly, this broader and indeed more collective perspective may produce better solutions. But what is the caveat? Yes, indeed more people can analyze data but how deep is the understanding of the information. At the heart of any analysis resides the source data. Most of these new empowering technologies deal with the source data in canned programming modules where the analyst does not need to have a solid understanding of the data environment and all its nuances. More importantly, the analyst does not need to have an understanding of how to manipulate the data into a form where it can be analyzed. This limitation represents a loss of potential knowledge and information because in many cases it is this detailed knowledge of the data environment that can truly lead to a superior data solution. As in many business scenarios, the devil is in the details.

These new user empowerment technologies are certainly here to stay. But organizations also need to understand that the role of advanced analytics and the need for more technical human resources is equally important. In fact, in being able to juggle these two priorities of user empowerment and advanced analytics, one must be able to evaluate projects by the degree of data intensity that is required. For example, certain exercises and projects such as simple cross-tab reports require a less data intensive discipline while projects such as predictive models require a much more rigorous discipline with the data. Both cases involve analytics and both are equally important to the organization , yet it is the successful organization that can both increase user empowerment while providing a more focused approach towards its advanced analytics. The key to this success, though, is effective use of technology.

CMA eMarketing Professional Certificate Course Starts In One Month.

Quick reminder that the fall semester of the Canadian Marketing Association's eMarketing Professional Certificate Course is just one month away.

I have taken on the responsibility of instructing the course from Ken Schafer of Tucows and have also revamped the course materials, updating the outstanding sessions originally crafted by Ken.

The course covers web site best practices, usability, social media, email, search, eCommerce, privacy, analytics and online advertising with practical examples, case studies and stimulating discussions over a 15 week period. Students will leave with a solid foundation of today's digital landscape and a superior marketing skill set in order to go forth and make their own mark in the growing medium.

It starts up September 26, 2007 and there are only a few spaces left. For those interested in taking a deep dive into the ever evolving world of digital marketing, don't delay.

Kick start your future with the CMA's eMarketing course. For more information, or to register for the course, please visit the CMA website. I hope to see you there.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the course is available in Toronto and Montreal. Mitch Joel, and Dave Haber of Twist Image will be the course instructors in Montreal.

Champagne Wishes & Binary Dreams

It’s an exciting time in marketing right now! Things are changing rapidly, and marketers of all stripes are trying to carve their niche into the new technology-enabled landscape. Increasingly, interactive and database marketers are being asked to provide strategic leadership for other marketing sectors.

On the other side of the brain, creative marketers are being forced to think in ways that they’ve never had to think before, and are facing the increasing challenge of having to position their campaigns around technology and prove ROI to clients. This has created a technology war zone.

The battlefields are filled with old and new pieces of technology strewn throughout the DM landscape. Some of them lay abandoned, some of them have moved up in rank and forced to do things that they weren’t designed to do. Patches, band-aids and temporary solutions are rampant in this technology war zone. IT teams are stressed by demanding marketers, and marketers are stressed by busy IT teams.

Let’s look at a typical scenario…

You have to call Bob over in Company B to get the reports for the telemarketing push, you have to get your loyalty point statistics from IT, then you have to login to X Site to select and download your analytics for your latest web promotion, and then get in touch with Company C who does your surveying to gather more stats. And let’s not forget your email campaign, you’ll need those stats too, better login and download those! Got them all?

Good. Now someone will spend the next 3 hours compiling the data into a separate client report. Total amount of time spent on this, 6-8 hours - if you’re fast and efficient.

Wait a minute… Isn’t technology supposed to make our lives easier? faster? better? more productive?

Let’s face it, we got caught with our pants down didn’t we? We thought, “We have a web team, we can do Flash, we can do email marketing, we can host contest sites…” Today, these things aren’t enough. These things are expected; basic marketing 101. Now it’s all about the data, the marketing intelligence, the campaign stats, determining LTV, proving ROI, knowing exactly WHEN a campaign isn’t working and being able to do something about it in real time. The things that make creative marketers wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat… Data & Statistics!

THIS is what’s going to drive the future of marketing. Not how pretty your design is, how cool and inviting your copy is, or how many impressive clients you’ve worked for. The marketing landscape continues to change and evolve at a rapid rate, and we as marketers, need to embrace this change, form new alliances, and be able to predict and forecast future changes.

You know those super-smart people… the ones that work among beige walls and grey cubicles, where the low hum of computers and the odd cough can be heard, the ones that you thought were catatonic?! You know the ones you thought you had nothing in common with because they told jokes in binary and went to Sci-Fi conventions.

Yeah, well, you need them. And you need them now!

Merging the Cultural Divide between Marketing and Analytics

I attended an excellent CMA breakfast Roundtable on Corporate Culture between Analytics and Marketing a few days ago. The theme was how to better integrate the areas of marketing and analytics such that more optimal and quicker solutions using database information could be produced. There were representatives on the panel from both Marketing and Analytics. One emerging concept was the notion that the marketing role itself is changing. It is no longer acceptable for marketing to view analytics as simply a group of 'techies and pocket calculators'. Marketers have always realized the importance of services coming from the analytics area but traditionally, there has been a lack of willingness by marketers to obtain a more detailed understanding of these solutions. This is changing as marketers become more immersed in the details of some of these solutions. New skill sets are required by the marketers; such as the ability to understand and interpret numbers.

Conversely, on the analytics front, we are beginning to see their roles evolving as they try to better understand the business area and its functions. Through this increased level of understanding, they are better able to communicate the efforts of their labor to the marketing person of that business unit. Communication improvement on the part of the analytics group can only lead to better actionable implementation of their solutions.

But how to do this? Simply stating the obvious does not achieve results. Rather it is through actions such as reward and compensation schemes that promote this type of integration, as well as establishing workplace environments that have the analysts and marketers physically sitting alongside each other.

The obvious and best way, albeit long-term, to bridge this cultural divide as expressed by the Roundtable panelists, is through organic growth where one hires the right skill sets for both marketers and analysts. The company can then harness this base skill sets through mentoring and on the job experience thereby allowing these individuals to grow into these desired roles.

One interesting point from one of the panelists was that this cultural divide could be better bridged by having more senior level representation at the executive level. To some extent, we are seeing this evolution through the creation of a new marketing role entitled the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer). However, I would argue that consideration should be also given to the analytics area at the executive level. In the U.S., many organizations have created executive roles within this area called the CDO (Chief Data Officer) in addition to the CMO. The CDO is responsible for all the data that is used for analytical solutions within the organization. It is different and very separate from the other technology executive roles such as CIO (Chief Information Officer or CTO (Chief Technology Officer). As we begin to see more evolution within the marketing and analytics areas, it will not be uncommon to observe both a CDO and CMO at the executive level for many organizations in the not too distant future. Cultural divide will then become an historical item of the past.

Product Innovation, Database Marketing Services

Over the past few years I've had the opportunity to work with many Canadian and American database marketing service and tool providers. Personally, I have found that the quality of services in Canada to be quite inconsistent and generally not as strong as those of our American counterparts in areas such as data hygiene, hosted marketing databases, multichannel campaign analytics, and others. The problem is that many of the U.S. services and tools are priced for use in a much larger market so the cost to a Canadian marketer may be unjustifiable. What do you folks think? What tools and services would you like to see available and tailored to the Canadian database marketing community? What would you like to be able to do? And of course, what pricing structure would make sense based on your P&L?

Bryan Eisenberg - Why are we so bad at the Online conversion game? Session 5

How do we get people to buy more online? How can we effectively persuade when 69% of people seek to block all attempts at marketing ?

Bryan asked why conversion rates are declining yet we have been at this game for a while now? If the web has changed behaviours and information via search is much simpler now then it has ever been, and we have analytics out the wazoo, then why are we still blind when it comes to increasing our conversion rates on the web?

Bryan used Godaddy.com as an example of a campaign gone wrong with money left on the table. Why? They failed to execute on the integration front and get the right people around the table to make a transition from the TV audience to the website experience. Marketers have to work harder to satisfy click to click , channel to channel and media to media experiences.

The rear view mirror look at the Godaddy campaign demonstrates the simplest changes could have raised conversion rates by double-digits.

I am about halfway through Waiting For Your Cat to Bark, the follow-up to Call to Action. Both these books are roadmaps to conversion success via persuasion.

Bryan knows his stuff, read his books. Please, read his books.

Marketers meet the 'grups'

This week’s CMA Weekly Watching Brief reports on a new demographic group being targeted by marketers: The grups.

Coined in a New York magazine article, the term comes from a "Star Trek" episode featuring a planet run by wild children trapped in perpetual youth. The children call Captain Kirk and his crew grups, short for grown-ups.

Rarely seen in pin-striped suits, grups of either sex can easily be spotted in discreetly branded battered jeans, T-shirts and old-school trainers, while blasting the latest music tracks through permanently attached iPods, notes a Reuters wire story.

They’ve been credited with killing off the generation gap as they redefine age, and as their ranks swell, marketers are zoning in.

An interesting comment on society.

Is There a Doctor in the House? CRM Analysts to the Rescue!

Blogging about the role of analytics may not be top of mind for many – but maybe its time to take a look at why this role can be like having a doctor in the house.

I’m often asked whether organizations should focus on technology or people in building up their CRM analytics capabilities. My answer is that one should obviously do both. But the priority should always be to have the right people in place. After all, having the right people will determine the right or appropriate level of technology for that particular organization. In fact, I would argue that an environment with sub optimal technology but with outstanding people will still deliver great solutions. Technology is simply an enabler. Organizations still need that superior level of people type thinking that can both use the technology as well as the vast amounts of data to derive meaningful business intelligence. Those organizations with this kind of culture are simply able to make better decisions than their competitors.

I like to think of the role of technology and people within CRM analytics as being somewhat similar to the role of technology and people within the field of medicine. Certainly technology has revolutionized medicine to the point that it has facilitated many tasks and functions of the doctor, yet will never replace the doctor. A body of knowledge exists by the human (doctor) and the ability to use this knowledge for the betterment of health within our society. Albeit CRM analysts are not saving lives but we are generating more profit that in the long run can be invested in other areas thereby creating more jobs and ultimately in a different way contributing to the betterment of society.