Arizona’s Problem – It Isn’t Going Away

We’ve been watching Arizona closely. Initially, it looked like the backlash to SB 1070 was dissippating. In fact, we even said so. However, just as Arizona’s sentiment was starting to recover, HB 2281 was passed making several changes to the state’s educational system that detractors say, are prejudicial and ban ethnic studies. The effect? A double dip. Sure enough, Arizona’s perception reversed its comeback and dropped into negative territory.

However, that’s not what is most concerning. What is most concerning that Arizona is still persistently in negative territory and it we are now entering the 6th week since the passage of SB 1070 and the 4th week after HB 2281. We even have the biggest ongoing environmental crisis in a generation going on in the Gulf and nothing beats a backlash than another crisis taking the spotlight. Given all of that, the backlash is still present. To such an extent that I wouldn’t call it a backlash anymore. It is more of a persistent PR crisis for Arizona and something that might turn into a stigma. Internally at Alchemy our stance was that they needed to go into the Memorial Day weekend in positive territory. Didn’t happen. Even more worrisome is that the negative chatter volumes haven’t dissipated that much.

Note the two humps. Each correspond with polls showing that the majority of American’s support Arizona’s recent laws. However, in both instances, the bounce only lasted for two days.

Again, look at the chatter levels last week – the intro week to a 3 day weekend. While lower than the previous week they aren’t dissipating as America’s attention is turned to the Gulf Coast. This is an ominous sign for Arizona. I can’t imagine the folks at the Arizona Department of Tourism can be pleased.

American Idol – What Went Wrong?

We were riding an unbeaten streak here at Alchemy. Based on a request that came in from a prospect we decided to take a look at the American Idol match-up. Rarely, do we ever see a model that was so strongly in favor of one party – in this case Bowersox. From that model we felt very confident that barring a mistake in the next to final episode, Bowersox would be crowned the victor. Judging from media coverage, Bowersox had a strong performance the night before the final. In fact, the SoV measure in between the last performance and the finale didn’t change – she still had commanding lead in share – even for that night.

So what happened? We could try to cast dispersions on Idol’s methodology as some have done. But in reality, I don’t think you have to look very far back to learn one thing – the underdog often wins on Idol. Idol voting is not the same thing as voting in an election. You can vote early and often. There is no one viewer – one vote restriction. Thus, fans of the perceived underdog have the ability to outvote fans of the favorite. Going into the final vote, underdog fans know this and are more motivated to place multiple votes for their performer while fans of the favorite are less likely to vote multiple times.  Or so the theory goes…

In the end, SoV measures for Idol (and shows like Idol) might be contra-predictive. In fact, using the same SoV measure, Adam Lambert should have won last season. Perhaps, the model going forward is to pick the underdog. Or, perhaps, buzz (SoV) doesn’t equate to votes on American Idol.

Either way, we’ll now turn our attention back to predicting politics.

Alchemy’s American Idol Prediction

Using our Share of Voice model that has proven itself in the past, we are predicting that Crystal Bowersox will be crowned the victor of this season’s American Idol finals. The following is a 7 day Share of Voice that show’s Crystal taking a decisive 61% share. Things don’t change  much on a 14 Day Share of Voice with Crystal only dropping to 60%. Either way you look at it, she maintains a commanding 20+ point lead over Lee DeWyze. We will update again tomorrow before the winner is announced but based our model, Crystal will have to stumble badly to lose.

Arizona Backlash Dissipating

The other week we showed you how visual the backlash against the state of Arizona has been over AZ 1070 – Immigration Reform. We’ve been keeping an eye on Arizona and not only has the volume of the backlash declined in recent days, but so has the level of average negative sentiment directed at Arizona. The following is the average sentiment expressed about Arizona in both Media and User Generated Content from April 1 through yesterday (May 11th). This chart shows the weekly average:

Arizona - Weekly Composite Sentiment

The rebound is visible with last week being the bottom of the trough. However, this is only part of the story. If you take a closer look using a 3 day moving average of sentiment, you can see that Arizona has actually crossed into positive territory yesterday.

Arizona Composite Sentiment - 3 Day Moving Average

It should be noted that this sentiment derived from all things Arizona – travel, schools, weather, sports teams, economy, immigration, politics – you name it. Any discussion about Arizona. As you can see prior to the passage of 1070, Arizona usually trends in the +1 to +2 range in Composite Sentiment (and the +0.2 – +0.4 range in raw sentiment). Thus, Arizona is not out of the woods yet and the 1070 issue is still effecting perception – but not as much as it was.

Arizona Backlash Visualized

Over the course of the past two weeks I am sure you have been reading about the recently passed (and signed) state legislation in Arizona compelling law enforcement personnel to validate the citizenship of people suspected of being in the state illegally. I am sure you also heard about the backlash coming from various communities to this legislation. Is it real? Here’s what that backlash looks like.

Below is a 2 month time series for the sentiment being expressed for Arizona. It should be noted that this is not strictly political sentiment, but rather the sum total of sentiment being expressed for the state of Arizona in all contexts. It should also be noted that this data is derived from both media and User Generated Content/Social Media sources.

Duke on Top by a Hair… Sorta

Last Friday we told you that Butler and Duke were the #1 and #2 teams in terms of chatter share. Sure enough, both Butler and Duke won. We’ve had a lot of questions around how we measure Share of Voice and I thought I would take some time and explain it. What we do is look for all Final Four team specific chatter in the Media and User Generated Content channels. The sum of the team specific observations constitutes the Final Four “voice” and each team’s contribution constitute its share. So in this case, the wisdom of fans was spot on with both Butler and Duke advancing to the finals tonight.

That begs another question – so what does the wisdom of fans say about tonight’s match-up? According to our partner Rasmussen Reports, fans think Duke will win but would rather see Butler cutting down the net.

As for the chatter, over the course of the last 7 days it is Duke, by 1%.

However, if we just look at just today’s chatter we see that Butler is surging ahead as of 2:15pm EDT.

Butler appears to have the fan momentum – let’s see if it translates to a NCAA Finals victory.

*** UPDATE 7:30PM EDT ***

Here’s the last bit of data from today on tonight’s NCAA Finals. Butler has increased its share and has almost a 4% point lead on Duke going into the game.

Butler is the Belle of the Ball

Well, as they say, this weekend is the Big Dance over in Indianapolis, Indiana. That’s right, it is the 2010 NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four. In conjunction with Rasmussen Reports we’ve been tracking the various schools’ Share of Voice coverage and the numbers show that Butler is the crowd favorite.

2010 NCAA Final Four Share of Voice

Very little love for Michigan State but as someone who has watched these numbers come in, Michigan State has surged a good 1.5% share in the last couple of days. These numbers correspond nicely with Rasmussen’s outbound polling that show 33% rooting for Butler. What interesting is though 33% are rooting for Butler and the team is garnering a 31% share of coverage and chatter, only 13% believe that the 2010 Cinderella team will end up winning the tournament. This disbelief obviously isn’t keeping people from rooting or talking about Butler. However, a similar disbelief may be affecting share for another Midwest school. In our numbers, Michigan State comes in last at a 20% share. This enthusiasm gap also translates to doubts about the team’s ability to win – only 15% of people Rasmussen polled think Michigan State will win the tournament.

For more information, please see Rasmussen’s Final Four coverage.

Rasmussen Reports and Maroon Alchemy Unveil Partnership

March 23, 2010 – Asbury Park, NJ – Rasmussen Reports, a media organization specializing in public opinion polling information, and Maroon Alchemy, LLC, a Colorado digital firm, announce the launch of an innovative new online feature, the Media Meter on www.rasmussenreports.com, America’s most trafficked public opinion polling site. The Media Meter enables site visitors to track public sentiment expressed in both media and user-generated Internet outlets.  Readers will be able to follow the ups and downs of press coverage for political candidates and other high-profile public figures along with special interest groups, even sports teams, in conjunction with Rasmussen’s polling.
“We are always looking for new ways to inform and engage our readers,” said Scott Rasmussen, President of Rasmussen Reports.  “The Media Meter initiative with Maroon Alchemy provides a unique perspective on how the media is covering the people and institutions in the public eye and adds another dimension to the polling information we provide.”

“Maroon Alchemy acts as a massive listening platform to measure how the public feels about people, products and brands, as expressed in media and user-generated content,” adds Christopher Tippie, founder of Maroon Alchemy, LLC. “The Media Meter, coupled with Rasmussen’s extensive polling, delivers unparalleled insight into the opinions of the public about a full gamut of topics, from politics to sports.  It’s exciting to watch the data become part of Rasmussen’s news cycle.” Read more »

How to dominate perception, without spending a single dollar on hype

The world is abuzz with chatter regarding the soon to be announced Apple Tablet. The raw numbers in Alchemy are amazing. It reminds me of a recent article I ran across recently – “How Apple gets it all wrong, and still is on top“. Basically, the gist of the article is that Apple does nothing that we’ve learned you should do in the Social Media/Marketing 2.0 world and still dominates. Think about it.  Apple doesn’t blog. Steve Jobs doesn’t tweet. There are no promotional messages coming out of Facebook. Apple doesn’t buy SEM. In fact, the only advertising Apple freely spends on is print display, billboards (gasp!), online display and television – all 4 decidedly 1.0 in the marketing world. Yet, despite not using anything 2.0, Apple and Apple products still control the social media conversation. Now, as the article correctly concludes, it doesn’t hurt to have one of the greatest brands and a seemingly never ending supply of hit zeitgeist products.

So that leads me to the tablet.  Let’s look at the numbers shall we? At Maroon Alchemy we routinely compile the top 25 positive and negative drivers around Apple’s perception we actually do it for everyone as well. Over the course of the last 30 days (remember, that includes a bit of post holiday euphoria), 12 of out of Apple’s Top 25 positive perception drivers are all tablet related. As someone who has recently closely watched several major product launches that is astounding. Verizon didn’t get there with the Droid. Microsoft didn’t get even come close with Windows 7 and Google fell short with Nexus One.

What makes this more impressive is that Apple accomplished this without spending a single dollar on hype. Heck, the company still won’t confirm it is announcing a tablet tomorrow… which is, of course, part of the hype. Granted, once the annoucement is made we’ll see the Apple advertising engine shift into action but again, you’re going to see it via those Marketing 1.0 platforms.

To put this all into context, the first time we saw the “tablet” appear in the the Apple Top 25 was back in August when it debuted at #18. Now, it accounts for just shy of 50% of its positive drivers. To top it off, it isn’t like Apple isn’t already swimming in really good positive news. Also, it should be noted that no tablet related perception drivers appears in Apple’s Top 25 Negative list at this point.

Stay tuned…

Even Reporters Vacations…

One of the things we watch closely here at Maroon Alchemy is the flow of information through our systems. You have your average news days, your strong User Generated Content chatter days with associated memes branching out and your HOLY COW days! What we normally see for is a sine wave. Fairly constant volume Monday – Friday and a sharp decrease over the weekend.

This is our volume coming from traditional media outlets per day through the first few weeks of December.

Here is our volume starting on 12/21 (Monday) through 8:00pm EST Monday (12/28).

Note this marked drop off during the Christmas holidays. What makes this interesting is that there were two (really 1.5) significant events during this period. The first was reaction to the Senate vote on the Health Care bill. Granted, since the actual vote occurred on 12/24 this is really a half an event. But what is really interesting is the fact that on 12/25 we had a failed attempt to blow up an airliner over American soil. That’s a pretty big HOLY COW story with all sorts of ramifications in terms of traditional media. Yet, you see that the daily volume, particularly on the day of the attempted attack and the following day (Friday – Christmas & Saturday) being well below their normal averages.

If it is any consolation, the rest of us took a vacation as well as the User Generated Content and blogosphere showed the same decrease despite the news events. Looking at the Monday numbers, some of us seem to still be on vacation. Heh!

Sarah on the Rise

What would MaroonAlchemy.com be without another take on Sarah Palin and her new book, Going Rogue? Actually, let’s just look at the cold hard facts and see how Gov. Palin’s numbers have fared over the course of the last 7 months.

As you can see, it was a difficult summer for Gov. Palin’s sentiment numbers – resignation from her Governorship, disputes with David Letterman and a relatively public  disagreement with GOP leadership regarding speaking roles. That being said, everything changed for her with the announcement of her book deal and subsequent book release, tour, and media blitz. She hasn’t dropped below 0 for any significant length of time since September 13th. Lock into 9/13/09 (blue arrow) and look at the number of  observations above 0 pre 9/13 and the number of observations below 0 post 9/13. I’ve included a polynomial trend line (order 5) to illustrate my point. Her sentiment numbers are certainly on the rise and her velocity (volume) numbers over the last week and a half are on par with President Obama. She is still very much relevant (understatement) in the public eye and appears to be gaining momentum.

I’m working on a polarity measurement. To be honest, I am not sure what the results are going to be. You would think that her polarity score would be on the rise but remember, most of the controversial disclosures in Going Rogue is directed a McCain campaign staff, most notably Steve Schmidt. I wouldn’t be surprised to see polarity scores indicate that she is less polarizing now than she was four months ago. Stay tuned.

Support Levels and Interceptions

In short, this is a story about public/fan support. But really it is more than that. It is a story about expectations, performance, and in the end, whether performance meets expectations. Rarely in professional sports to you see a straight up trade – this guy for that guy in the same position. That’s what we have with the Jay Cutler for Kyle Orton trade between the Chicago Bears and the Denver Broncos in the off season.

Rewind back to the start of the season, the conventional wisdom was that Jay Cutler turned the Chicago Bears into an immediate Super Bowl contender while the knock on the Broncos is that they would be lucky to win 4 games this year. The preseason head to head match-up between the Bears and the Broncos only reinforced those views. Cutler entered the 2009 NFL campaign as the golden boy with lofty expectations and even loftier support levels. Orton on the other hand entered the 2009 campaign with the lowest of expectations. Below is a time study on sentiment between the two starting just after the preseason head to head matchup through last night (11/12/09). I’ve used weekly trending to reduce the noise level in the graph to see the overall trends.

Orton is in yellow while Cutler is in green. Read more »

Collateral Damage or Product Placement?

So the other day I was diving into luxury cars in the Alchemy database and a few anecdotal  but interesting things came up. When looking at the themes for Mercedes-Benz, I saw a few drug related themes. Mainly, they were in conjunction with Mercedes-Benz autos being driven by drug kingpins. Product companies can’t always choose who buys their products and who doesn’t. This is sort of like collateral damage – the image of the product is impacted by some people who buy the product. Think Ryder Truck for an extreme example. However, not all of these sorts of collateral damage events are so high profile as the Oklahoma City bombing. Some are more subtle and keeping an ear to the ground is critical to a) spot these trends and b) conduct  counter messaging to mitigate the collateral damage.

That being said, such events do not always have to be negatives, or better yet, can be spun into a positive. For instance, I also looked at Audi. We saw some similar crime oriented themes bubble to the surface – mainly that it appears that Audi is the chosen getaway car used in some recent bank heists. Unlike the Mercedes-Benz example, this doesn’t have to be a negative. The fact that bank robbers chose the Audi as a getaway car speaks volumes about its high performance and premium sports car handling. This could easily be spun into a edgy web video… Read more »

NJ Gov – Why Jon Corzine Lost

The real title to this post should be:  Why Jon Corzine Will Lose Lost

See, we actually made that prediction on October 27th. As evidenced by:

Want to know why? Let’s take a look at the sentiment number shall we?

That’s Jon Corzine in yellow and Chris Cristie in green. As you can see, Corzine actually does quite well with sentiment.

But wait you say, how can you call a race on the 27th for the guy who just took a big hit on sentiment???

Read more »

Why Historical Data is So Critical

One of my favorite all time quotes is, “perspective is worth 20 IQ points, either direction“. When it comes to sentiment and velocity measurement, this concept reigns supreme.

At Maroon Alchemy we track 3 million different entities. By entities I mean: people, products, companies, brands, characters, etc.  Think – proper noun. We do this day in and day out and keep all the historical data. Historical data is critical to gaining perspective. Without it, you are simply only seeing a part of the picture.

Some of the entities we track are more interesting than others. One of my personal favorite categories  is to track controversial artists and celebrities. To demonstrate this point, let’s use Lady GaGa. A controversial figure for sure. However, our data is telling us she jumped from “controversial recording artist” status to “polarizing figure” recently. Whether that continues remains to be seen but this shift couldn’t be spotted unless we were looking at historical data.

Lady GaGa - 10/2 through 11/5

The above is a volume or velocity chart for Lady Gaga starting on 10/2. This looks pretty normal for a controversial recording artist. You have a 1:1 or 1.5:1 ratio between positive to negative observations. So, what’s the big deal right? That’s what the person without perspective (in this case historical data) says.  And now, for the rest of the story…

Lady GaGa 8/30 through 10/26

Looking at this from a longer term view you can see that a very significant event (or series of) occurred on 10/2 that has continued to resonate through today that literally was a game changer. It leaps off the page. This event thrust Lady GaGa to the forefront of conversation on the web. Looking at the themes from that period it seems she had a busy week. She canceled the Fame Kills tour with Kanye West, appeared in some controversial skits on SNL (complete with a cat fight with Madonna – I actually liked it but the general consensus was BAD) and started to catch significant heat from gay-rights opponents, particularly associated with the Maine ballot initiative. What is interesting to note is that some of this heat coming from the more conservative part of the sprectrum has continued through the election.

So there you have it – the story of a recording artist going from second gear to fourth in the blink of an eye. But you would have missed it unless you had historical data. What is also interesting to note, and we’ve seen this in the past (hello Apple Computer?) is that often these seismic changes in public perception of an entity aren’t always caused by a single event, but rather several events all hitting at once. There is a lesson there and one that handlers of bad news know well (hence the Friday news dump).

Lastly, I would like to call your attention to the time frame from 10/9 to today on the first chart. That’s sustained velocity folks but what is also interesting to note is the gradual but consistent reduction in negative observations. Somewhere an agent or PR person is smiling…