How was the weekend? – Winter 2010

Towards the end of last year, via our ActionMap tool, we asked ‘how was your weekend?’ and then posted the results. We wondered last time around what the ActionMap would look like in six months. So we asked again, at the beginning of last week, to see if things had changed.

This Tribal Tool-Kit ActionMap survey “How was the weekend?” asked:

1.    On Friday, we look towards the next two days with certain expectations. How important were these aspects for you on Friday?
2.    Now the weekend is over, how satisfied are you with the level of achievement with these aspects?

Below are the aspects and the numbers for the ActionMap key:

1.    Socialising
2.    Exercise
3.    Catch up on home to-do list
4.    EOFY (End of Financial Year) preparation (Dec 2009 – Christmas preparations)
5.    Catch up on work to-do list
6.    Relaxing

Here is what our ActionMap was able to deduce:

This shows us that both ’socialising’ and ‘relaxing’ were pretty important for most people and that most people were pretty satisfied with each of them by the end of the weekend.

It also shows us that anything to do with work and the end of the financial year weren’t really given too much importance for the weekend and delivered very little satisfaction.

When it comes to ‘exercise’, it seems that this was of moderate importance yet delivered  low on satisfaction. Given that it was perceived as being important though, it could do with some attention (for those who participated in the survey at least). Catching up on work at home was also considered of moderate to high importance but also delivered little in terms of satisfaction. Again, it seems that those who completed the survey might want to give a little more focus to this aspect of their weekend.

So how does this compare to our December ActionMap?

What we did in December was almost identical except, where we asked this year about the End of Financial Year preparations, we asked about Christmas preparations.  Below are the results from December 2010:

The first thing of note is that the ’spectrum’ of importance this time around is greater than last time. In summer, it seemed that everything had a reasonable to high level of importance (ranging from a mean score of 3.3 to 5). This time around importance scores range from 1.6 through to 6.0. Satisfaction scores are almost identical to December 2009, ranging from both 3.4 and 3.5 to 5.6.

It seems that ‘work’ and ‘obligatory’ activities (such as preparing for the end of financial year or Christmas) continue to be low priorities. This time around, exercise has become more important but maintains a similar level of satisfaction.  This may suggest that most (if not all respondents) came from somewhere in wintery Australia and are less active as a result of the weather – but wish they weren’t.

Work around the house is slightly less important but still derives the same amount of satisfaction as December 2009.

Again ‘relaxing’ and ’socialising’ derive the most satisfaction for our participants. However, it seems that our current respondents were somehow privy to the December results.  Improvements have been made to the level of satisfaction gained from ‘relaxation’ and the benefits of ’socialising’ appear to have been imparted – bravo new participants!

Though this ActionMap is just a bit of fun, it does demonstrate how a short, simple survey administered amongst your tribe can help you get some answers about your brand’s successes. A short, smart survey can also give you some indications as to where you should focus your attention to help bring your brand into line with where you would like it to be.  If you would like to know more about how the ActionMap or any other part of Tribal Tool-Kit can help you and/or your business, please feel free to contact Tribe Research via email (ask@triberesearch.com.au) or by phone (+61 2 8096 2546).

…And with a new week freshly upon us and another weekend fast approaching, perhaps insights we have gained here will help to guide you towards a weekend where you get as much satisfaction as you can from doing all the important stuff (i.e. socialising and relaxing!)

Until next time…

Happy Exploring!

The annoying thing about localis(z)ed spelling

Scenario: You have done a survey and you want to get a quick understanding of the words participants used to answer an open response question.

Solution: A perfect way to do this is to make a word cloud – a visual way to understand the frequency of words; where words with a higher frequency are larger, and words with a lower frequency are smaller.

Problem: The English language has two main spelling systems – the British system and the American system. Read more about the differences at Wikipedia.

Implication: The two spelling systems result in a lower overall frequency for essentially the same word, as they are considered 2 words, and therefore a smaller size in a word cloud.

For example, localise and localize are the same word.  If each are used 5 times by participants, the two words would be smaller than if they were combined to have a frequency of 10 using the spelling of your preference.

To show the impact this has on a word cloud, I selected a group of words with different spelling and put them into a spreadsheet. To create a frequency, I used a formula to count the number of characters in the word [In Excel this is LEN(text)].

Word	Frequency	Word	Frequency
aluminium	9	aluminum	8
artefact	8	artifact	8
color	5	colour	6
disc	4	disk	4
flavor	6	flavour	7
honor	5	honour	6
labor	5	labour	6
neighbor	8	neighbour	9
organise	8	organize	8
program	7	programme	9
realise	7	realize	7
recognise	9	recognize	9
rumor	5	rumour	6
speciality	10	specialty	9

Most word cloud software only allows you to paste in a group of words or upload a file of words, before generating the cloud. You can sometimes automatically merge similar words (for example when there is the word, the plural, and end with ‘ing’ they will merge to be one word with the combined frequency). I haven’t found one, other than CloudMaker, that allows you to personally merge similar words, enabling you to handle the problem of British and American English.

Below, the first word cloud is all the words and to the second word cloud is the merged list.

Fewer words makes it easier to understand but also changes the priorities.

All the words

Merged words

Impact: When words with British and American spelling are mixed with words spelt the same in both systems, the first impression views could be inaccurate.

For example, if there was a single spelt word, such as: national, with the frequency of 10 and one of the dual spelt words, such as: localise with the frequency of 7, then also localize with a frequency of 5, merging localise and localize results in a frequency of 12, which is greater than the single spelt word, national, with a frequency of 10.

This could change your thinking about how the question was answered as localise is more frequent than national.

If the question was: What should our regional focus be? Then merging the British and American systems would result in a different first view, than looking at a word cloud without merging – because localise would be greater than national rather than the reverse when not merged.

The power of statistics in your PR

Last week I went to one of my favourite networking events, Last Thursday Club, and heard Valerie Khoo talk about getting a journalist’s attention in your media release. Valerie reinforced the value of doing your own research well. Here are three key quotes from the night:

“Statistics are your friend”

“Use quotes from your customers”

“Use your own database”

She provided an example for getting the press’ attention, where an accounting firm calculated the proportion of their clients that needed adjustments to their tax return – adjustments that the firm were able to make to maximise their client’s return. Because the media release included a statistic, the media were drawn to the release and able to create a news story from it. Even though the firm didn’t mention how many people they included in their research and didn’t hide that it was their database that they were reporting on.

Conducting a well designed survey on your own database can give you powerful statistics that you can then use in your own media release to gain exposure for your business.

Why not start now?!