This blog is written by Claire Emes and Gabriela Mancero, Ipsos MORI
It seems like a long time since President Obama was re-elected. The Republicans still control the House of Representatives, the Democrats still control the Senate and President Obama is still President. While it seems like we are back to business as usual, some things have changed! Politics has shown us that the era of big data has now permeated through all industries, even politics. Read more »
This blog is written by Claire Emes and Gabriela Mancero, Ipsos MORI
Felix Baumgartner, stepping into the void from 71,580 feet during a test jump in March. Photo: Jay Nemeth/Red Bull Content Pool
Ten days ago, Red Bull Stratos’s five year mission culminated in a successful launch. Felix Baumgartner jumped 24 miles to Earth breaking the speed of sound in free fall before parachuting to the ground. He broke three world records with that one amazing jump.
From a social media perspective, Red Bull broke all known records too: 8 million concurrent people watching the live stream around the globe, 900,000 interactions on October 14th alone on the Red Bull Stratos Facebook Page and over 20,000 mentions of @redbullstratos on Sunday and Monday (Source: Socialbakers). Read more »
Now that the Olympic and Paralympic extravaganza has drawn to a close we’re all desperately searching for something to fill the void. Fortunately for me, my broadband provider has recently given me a free one year subscription to LOVEFiLM, in return for upgrading with them. I have plenty of films to catch up on; as I have been to the cinema just once or twice in the last few years (babysitting more than doubles the cost)! But which films should I choose and how should I get the best value from the service?
At the 2008 Beijing OIympics GB exceeded expectations by finishing 4th in the medal table, just ahead of Germany. According to Ipsos MORI research conducted for UK Sport ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games the majority of the general public felt that Team GB would do at least as well as in Beijing – with 2 in 5 expecting Great Britain to actually finish higher in the medal table. Given the top 3 nations in 2008 (China, US and Russia) all have populations more than twice the size of ours and GB finished a long way behind 3rd placed Russia (with 47 medals to their 73), this is a tall order – even taking into account the much talked about ‘home advantage’. Read more »
O2’s service outage this time last week – which led to almost 8 million customers experiencing a 24-hour blackout across the UK and Ireland – may have damaged its reputation as a reliable provider, but its social media team gave us all a lesson in how to handle an avalanche of Twitter abuse.
They were receiving “customer feedback” at a rate of one tweet every six seconds and there was an almost 5000% uplift in mentions of O2 on Twitter. Huge numbers, especially given many customers would have frustratingly been unable to tweet as their phone was not working! Rather than following the traditional corporate crisis rulebook, O2’s social media team responded to its customers (many of whom had hurled expletive-filled abuse at them) in the way you would a good friend that you had let down. They used the right tone of voice, an element of humour (as well as humility) and a personal touch. See this article in the New Statesman for some interesting examples. O2 have provided a great case study on how an organisation can turn a customer-relations and PR nightmare into a positive customer story.
As I return to work from a pretty wet week in Cornwall, I discover that our latest research* shows that I’m not alone in tightening the holiday purse strings!
Only half of Brits plan to take a holiday at all this summer (down from two-thirds in 2008), with it being the main thing we plan to cut back on. In fact, twice as many of us plan to make savings on holidays than cut the amount we spend on food or even games/technology products! With two in five British adults having at least one of the latest generation games consoles (Wii, Xbox or PS3) in their household and almost half now owning a Smartphone, I guess the money has got to come from somewhere!
© Haymarket Media Group Ltd.
