January 2013 | Vol. 5 Issue 1
In Collaboration with the Frost & Sullivan Institute CONNECT
SOCIAL MARKET INTELLIGENCE
An Introduction to “Future Ready CI”
By Luis Madureira Business Partner OgilvyRED
Starting at the End The biggest criticism I have received about S(ocial) M(arket) INT(elligence) (abbreviated as SMINT) is that it is nothing new. Well, though this might be true it is also wrong. Because SMINT, as I will explain, is an optimization of competitive intelligence (CI) as we know it, it is not a new way of doing CI. However, it is wrong to say SMINT is nothing new because it allows for greater efficiency and relevancy by speeding up the intelligence cycle and the data to process intelligence. If SMINT were business as usual, competitive intelligence professionals (CIPs) would already be using it. Are you The other criticism is that social media will only allow for tactical intelligence development, not strategic development. My point of view on this is twofold: Can you split strategy from tactics? And, if you are paying attention to the external environment, the industry, and the market — how can this not be strategic?
SCIPCIP™ Certification Courses EUROPEAN WORKSHOPS: March 1115,1819, 2013 Brussels
NORTH AMERICAN WORKSHOPS: June 1014, 1721, 2013 Boston, MA More SCIP Hosted Events More Frost & Sullivan Hosted Events
Putting SMINT Into Context Over the last few years, I have witnessed an everincreasing rate of change in the competitive environment both globally and locally. Meanwhile, key intelligence topics (KITs) for business decision making are changing accordingly. In parallel, the response time given to CIPs to develop intelligence on KITs is diminishing. A quick analysis leads us to three main reasons: First, more than ever before, the consumer and customer are amplifying social nature through the social media megaphone, out there in the open domain; Second (and partly as a consequence of the first), big data is today a fact of life, with quantity, velocity, and variety of data becoming unmanageable, specially if you are trying to make sense of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment; Third, due to advances in technology, and namely the Internet of Things, big data will only become bigger. Some additional notes need to be highlighted at this stage. Many businesses are already struggling to make sense of the data they already possess, either being their own data (e.g., for business intelligence), or customer service and consumer data (e.g., from consumer or market research), to give just a few examples. On the