As the UK Parliament prepares to publish to the world 1.2 million receipts, invoices and bills from MPs' expenses claims, the media awaits to rummage through the detritus. After all, it’s the tiny details about each others lives that fascinate us, right? I sniggered along with everyone else about the viewing habits of Mr Jacqui Smith. But it was the Home Secretary’s eighty-eight pence claim for a bath plug that caught my attention. And I'm not alone it seems. It’s this natural interest in sharing and comparing the details of our lives (intended or not) that makes the social web tick over. For a long time, such titbits were left online only by geeks and the technorati. However, now that forty-three per cent of the UK’s online population are members of Facebook, these trails of digital breadcrumbs are becoming more common. It's easy to see these digital trails as banal. Individual instances about breakfast habits, for instance, can appear quite pointless. However, when viewed as ongoing narratives, they become rich representations of peoples' lives. Narratives to which we can all relate. For the marketing industry these breadcrumb trails should be viewed with delight, particularly during economically difficult times. With a few simple tools, and a curious individual or two, it quickly becomes possible for a brand to...
...map out its customers' trails. Be it as direct mentions, desires, intentions or concerns. However, remember they may at first seem like faint signals. In the networked universe, as Johnnie Moore once noted big brands, ‘affect millions of people's lives - but in very small ways’.
And as UK consumers (aka people) spend more time online their breadcrumbs trails will become more wholesome. But only for those brands and organisations who can read the runes. For instance, a trail left by one customer is very likely to lead to similar buyers. Today, this bigger picture can be quite murky. However, as our social circles become more visible online, relational information will begin to emerge in structured, accessible ways. For business, today’s trail could be tomorrow’s lead.
Or as James Governor once memorably commented on this blog, ‘I like to call it Declarative Living and Tag Gardening. We skip along our path through the garden strewing tags behind us. These digital petals can be picked up and acted upon.’
As ever, there's nothing new here. The market research industry has been following peoples' lives and trails forever. However, while the job is the same, the landscape is changing dramatically. And that means a different approach. The aim was once to observe the consumer and find insights about their lives, upon which a relevant brand proposition could be based. Today, however, people are too busy observing one another to pay much attention to a questionnaire. And the only insights they trust come from their own social networks.
Of course, the problem for MPs is that they thought their breadcrumbs were going to be hidden from the public gaze for quite sometime to come. Which meant their finances needed only to observe antiquated Parliamentary rules. However, the web has changed the rules of public life. Only the MPs who weren't paying attention have anything to worry about.
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