The political season, that is, and we here at NextStage have a long history (going back to 2004) of knowing more about the candidates than they want you to know we know about them. You can read some of the background on this in Reading Virtual Minds V1: Science and History or in this blog's Political archive.

This time out, we used our NextStage Political Analyzer tool to analyze several candidates, non-candidates, ... we're open to analyzing the presidential aspirations of anybody we're asked to evaluate.

Currently here's what you can find...

• President Obama continues his appeal to Youth
• Walker, The Daily Show, and the youth vote
• Michele Bachmann has at least two votes, hers and her speechwriter's
• Buddy Roemer needs some site design help to increase donations, we think.
• Bolton Bluntness
• Senator Grassley appears to be entrenched and, as such, is seems to have no concern about speaking his mind.
• Pity Senator Grassley's not running. Then again, he's too lucid, eloquent and precise. He wouldn't stand a chance.
• Newt heard Bowie's call, "Ch-ch-ch-changes"
• Mitch Daniel's Talking to today's leaders but without a hope of getting in
• John Bolton guards his words and likes to be in control during an interview
• Scott Walker going for the youth vote, paying attention and cleaned up
• Newt was being Centrist whether he knew it or not
• Rand Paul knows his audience, both in the Senate and out
• Does Tim Pawlenty's staff think he can win?
• Yep, Mitt Romney was bowing to his wife this time

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Upcoming Trainings:

• Know How Someone Is Thinking in Ten Seconds or Less

Upcoming Conferences:

• "Reading Customer's Minds" (presentation, booksigning, etc) at the 11-13 Apr 2011 Ad:Tech San Francisco
• "ANALYTICS SCHMANALYTICS: How Neuromarketing Will Change the Future of Marketing Analytics" at the 1-3 May 2011 IIR Chicago Conference
• "Case Study: Analyze The Mind Using Text" at the 17-18 May 2011 Text Analytics Conference, Boston, MA
• "Standardizing Emotional Response -- Attaching Dollars to Sentiment" at the 23 June 2011 CMA's Social Media Conference 2011, Toronto, ON

Sign up for the NextStage Irregular, our very irregular, definitely frequency-wise and probably topic-wise newsletter.

Have you read my latest book, Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History? It's a whoppin' good read.

And you can always follow me on Twitter. I don't twit often but when I do, it's with gusto!

Learn the latest regarding NextStage blog posts, conference sightings,
whitepapers, tools, presentations and more via The NextStage RSS feed .

NextStage Evolution

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What to write, what to write, what to write...

How about another update?

Things I or other NextStageologists have written elsewhere:

• President Obama’s 28 Mar 11 Libya Speech Analyzed Thursday, 31 Mar 11 9amET on Politics 2012
• Walker, The Daily Show, and the youth vote on Politics 2012
• Bolton Bluntness on Politics 2012
• Senator Grassley's Age Old Issues on Politics 2012
• "Aggression in its most elegant form"? on Stating the Obvious
• Unhealthy Comparisons on That Think You Do
• (Too Much) Information Can Be Dangerous, Period on An Economy of Meanings
• Elementary Linguistics in the Information Age (WE'RE LOSING!) on AllBusiness.com
• NextStage CRO interviewed about Sensory Marketing in How Stores Trick Your Eyes, Ears and Nose to Get You to Spend More
• NextStage CRO Joseph Carrabis interviewed in Profiles Magazine
• NextStage Tool Previews in the Members Area on TriQuatroTritecale
• Listen to PersonalLifeMedia CEO Susan Bratton and NextStage CRO Joseph Carrabis go Neuro! (part 1)
• Listen to PersonalLifeMedia CEO Susan Bratton and NextStage CRO Joseph Carrabis go Neuro! (part 2)
• Why Isn’t Marketing a Science, Part II on The Analytics Ecology

• "Reading Customer's Minds" (presentation, booksigning, etc) at the 11-13 Apr 2011 Ad:Tech San Francisco
• "ANALYTICS SCHMANALYTICS: How Neuromarketing Will Change the Future of Marketing Analytics" at the 1-3 May 2011 IIR Chicago Conference
• "Case Study: Analyze The Mind Using Text" at the 17-18 May 2011 Text Analytics Conference, Boston, MA
• "Standardizing Emotional Response -- Attaching Dollars to Sentiment" at the 23 June 2011 CMA's Social Media Conference 2011, Toronto, ON

And upcoming Trainings:

• Know How Someone Is Thinking in Ten Seconds or Less

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Sign up for the NextStage Irregular, our very irregular, definitely frequency-wise and probably topic-wise newsletter.

Have you read my latest book, Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History? It's a whoppin' good read.

And you can always follow me on Twitter. I don't twit often but when I do, it's with gusto!

Learn the latest regarding NextStage blog posts, conference sightings,
whitepapers, tools, presentations and more via The NextStage RSS feed .

NextStage Evolution

Friends of NextStage   LinkedIn Group

• PersonalLifeMedia CEO Susan Bratton interviewed me in a two part podcast on NextStageology, neuromarketing and more. Listen to Part 1 and Part 2
• Emer Kirrane did a biograph of me that I hope gives both chuckles and insights at Joseph Carrabis - Fear Álainn
• NextStage published a research paper, NSE Consumer Research Paper - The Selling Face: A Study of Face and Body Biases in Marketing Communications, Part 1, that deals with how cultural bias affects responses to marketing efforts. You can get a taste for the research at How Pretty Is Your Picture? (Koinophology)
• We've premiered three tools in the NextStage Members area, NextStage SampleMatch (determines what psychologic, behavioral and motivational drivers are best in different geographic locations), NextStage Predictive Echo (scans historical server log files and webpages to determine what will work and what won't work with audience) and NextStage Veritas Gauge (determines what percentage of visitors are filling out forms, blogs, etc., truthfully v fabricating). Members also get the results of the afore mentioned paper.
• We're finalizing plans for our Spring-Summer 2011 Training Schedule. Stay tuned.
• My current conference schedule includes:
  • I'll be part of a panel on new marketing paradigms and another panel on neuromarketing at the March 2011 AMA Boston
  • Reading Customer's Minds (presentation, booksigning, etc) at the 11-13 Apr 2011 Ad:Tech San Francisco
  • NeuroAnalytics and NeuroMarketing at the 1-3 May 2011 IIR Chicago Conference
  • NeuroAnalytics and NeuroMarketing as it applies to other analytics at the 17-18 May 2011 Text Analytics Conference, Boston, MA

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics. Sign up for the NextStage Irregular, our very irregular, definitely frequency-wise and probably topic-wise newsletter.

Have you read my latest book, Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History? It's a whoppin' good read.

And you can always follow me on Twitter. I don't twit often but when I do, it's with gusto!

Learn the latest regarding NextStage blog posts, conference sightings,
whitepapers, tools, presentations and more via The NextStage RSS feed .

The tool itself grew out of NextStage's desktop TargetTrack tool, which has been in use in NextStage's consulting practice since about 2003. The Age Persuasion gauge can also be seen in NextStage's Political Analyzer tool.

About NextStage Age Persuader Tool

Use: Pure and simple, you login, either upload a file or enter an URL, click on submit and get your result. Clean, quick, simple and neat because we like it that way.

NextStage Age Persuader Tool (NSAP) is a format recognizing text analysis tool based on Nextstage's patented and award winning Evolution Technology (ET). ET is the only patent (as far as we know) granted by the USPTO that "allows machines to understand and respond to human thought". Why format-recognizing? Because people respond to DOC files, web pages, emails, straight text, etc., differently even when the same information is contained in each item.

NSAP is designed to analyze material (blogs, Twitter streams, FaceBook pages, emails, DOC files, ...) and determines which age groups the material will appeal to and by what amount.

Please note that all values are in NextStage Standard Units. These values are internally consistent to the NSAP report. Successive runs of identical material should only vary a few SDVs unless the Language Engines are updated. Update times are posted on the NextStage Evolution site.

Note that NextStage Evolution can deny use of its offerings to individuals or groups at NextStage's discretion.

You can learn more about the NextStage Age Persuader Tool and purchase uses at the NextStage Age Persuader Tool site. The tool is available at a single run price of US$0.99 for a limited, introductory time.

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Sign up for the NextStage Irregular, our very irregular, definitely frequency-wise and probably topic-wise newsletter.

Have you read my latest book, Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History? It's a whoppin' good read.

And you can always follow me on Twitter. I don't twit often but when I do, it's with gusto!

Learn the latest regarding NextStage blog posts, conference sightings,
whitepapers, tools, presentations and more via The NextStage RSS feed .

Second, in case you haven't been following along, I'll be co-presenting Analytics Schmanalytics: How Neuromarketing Is Changing the Future of Marketing Analytics Forever with SymphoneticInsight's Frank Della Rosa at FutureM in Boston's Hult School on 6 Oct 2010.

I'm sure I could put more links in that paragraph if I worked at it.

Anyway, as preparation for our event, FutureM asked us to answer some questions, which Frank and I did. Reading our responses I thought they'd make good blog fodder and provide some insight (symphonetic or otherwise) into what we'll be presenting and our take on things. If nothing else, the questions we chose to answer and how we answered demonstrates this session is going to be killer!

Also, to save Frank any embarrassment, I've placed my responses in italics.

Enjoy!

• What role has technology played in shaping the transformation of the marketing industry?
  Frank: For better, technology has empowered the customer as an equal partner in the exchange of information. Voice of the customer (VOC) is louder and more influential than ever before.

   

• What new application/tool/platform has had the greatest impact on the world of marketing and media? How and why? Good or bad?
  Frank: Social media motivates (in some cases forces) businesses to be more transparent and open about their intentions. The wisdom of crowds is finally becoming apparent to business. Also, the potential to engage customers in co-creating products, service, campaigns, creates more loyal customers.

  Joseph: The "wisdom of crowds" doesn't apply globally, only regionally, and the wisdom is highly culture and language dependent. Henry Ford said, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse.". Marketing tool users must recognize their inherent desire to make any single tool or the "next" tool the foundation of their strategies puts their businesses at risk because, as Maslow said, when all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail (see "Learning to Use New Tools"). "Wisdom of the Crowds" is much like that. Any tool is excellent when used to do what it was designed to do. Any tool destroys the product and can maim the tool user when used to do something it was never intended to do.

   

• What are the three most interesting ways technology has changed the way companies and their customers converse, learn and engage? For the better or for the worse?
  Joseph: Better - The conversation is getting closer and closer to being a true conversation (in the social anthropology sense). Worse - everybody thinks their opinion matters in the conversation and companies, not understanding who to listen to, often listen to those who shouldn't have the microphone ("the squeaky wheel gets the most grease" syndrome).

   

• How has the customer experience changed in the past decade?
  Frank: The customer owns the brand.

  Joseph: I would go a step further, making use of the McLuhan reference used in our session description and based on some of my own writings - the customer is the brand. This deals with ego-identification and several other psycho- and neuro-marketing concepts. But this hasn't changed in the past decade, it's always been true and the best marketing has acted upon this concept. However, it's only been in the past ten+ years that this concept has had a name.

  In addition to this, the Fair-Exchange is becoming dominant because consumers/customers have metastasized (from a "marketing controls the message" model) from an exafferent (passive) culture to a reafferent (involved - not "engaged", but involved. Consumers/Customers expect to be treated as valued equals in marketing discussions (regardless of the validity of that expectation)). Fair-Exchange takes place when consumers/customers believe they are receiving as much as they're giving and giving as much as their receiving (these two vectors are distinctly different as they involve distinctly different cognitive rules and neural aspects with the product/service/etc provider. Fair-Exchange dominated barter economies and is once again becoming prevalent because people (consciously or otherwise) are recognizing their personhood/personal information has real market value in an information economy, so more and more often exchanges occur beyond the scope of symbolic representation (I give you a dollar and we agree upon the worth of that piece of paper) to a barter exchange (I give you a piece of my person and I decide what that's worth to you).

   

• How has design changed over the years? As a result of new technologies, new customer expectations/rules of engagement?
  Joseph: As I've written elsewhere, "The history of technology is the study of placing the most power in the most hands economically". Design - regardless of tool or platform or anything else - is driven to place power into hands. Consider the evolution and ubiquity of cellular phones/mobile devices, how other devices have merged into them, and (me thinks) this becomes obvious. Where "Design" goes astray is when form supercedes function as was demonstrated by the latest iPhone with an unworking antennae.

   

• What's the number one new rule of engagement for marketing today?
  Frank: Transparency. The days of anonymous research studies are finally coming to an end.

   

• How important is data and measurement today in terms of strategy, innovation and understanding the marketing discipline? Have we seen the development of new role in marketing - the creative analyst?
  Joseph: I had to laugh when I read this. Anybody who's been doing traditional web analytics has had to be creative (see The Unfulfilled Promise of Online Analytics series) in order to survive. Are you asking if marketing is becoming more and more accountable? Again, I point you to the above mentioned series and Matching Marketing and IT Mythologies.

  The real questions aren't data and measurement, but meaningful data and correct measurement forms. Strategy, innovation and understanding - regardless of who's doing it - are worthless when applied to meaningless data in useless measurements.

   

• What does it to take to be an innovator instead of a follower?
  Joseph: A willingness to lead and not follow.

   

• How does your company make a difference in today's market?
  Frank: By helping marketing decision makers recognize and capitalize on the strategic value of the Customer Insight function across the entire organization.

  Joseph: NextStage Evolution has an historically 83% accuracy in predicting how consumers/customers will respond to marketing, we've been documented as correctly predicting the outcomes of national and regional political contests since 2004 and a recent independent test determined we had a 98+% accuracy in determining site visitor age and gender with no information other than how they navigate a page (no polling other databases, no questionnaires, no visitor provided information, ...). This doesn't qualify us as Biblical prophets (100% accuracy 100% of the time), it does get us close.

  This level of accuracy comes from patented, disruptive technologies. What difference does this make in today's market? More and more individuals, companies and groups are approaching us daily to provide them with real, actionable information with a recognized, demonstrable possibility of favorable, desired outcomes. This is the crux. Our "accuracy" only has meaning because we regularly produce actionable outcomes from it.

  That's what it's all about in the end, getting the outcome that you want and being able to repeat the "getting the outcome that you want". Getting the desired outcome one time out of ten, via "To insure hitting the target, shoot your arrow and wherever it lands, call it the target" or "We Have Too Much Data to Analyze So We'll Just Close our Eyes, Shoot and Pray" philosophies was probably a best-practice with the emphasis on "was". Present and future best-practices - due to increasing customer/consumer reafference, decreasing market share due to increasing competition, microsegmentation (it's still occurring regardless if it's lost its mot de jour status), ... -- require being able to understand markets as the markets wish to be understood, not how companies choose to understand them.

   

• What is your number one piece of advice for a soon-to-be college graduate studying marketing?
  Frank: Use the vast amount of information that's available to really understand and align with customers. It's the best route to performance.

  Joseph: Study and learn theory, not applications. If you understand the theory every application of that theory becomes obvious and you'll be able to transfer that understanding to things uncountable. However, if you only learn applications you'll never understand why and how those applications work, nor how to deal with exigencies that negate those applications.

   

• Fill in the blank - Water is to a fish as [...] is to a marketer?
  Frank: Water is to a fish as Customer Insight is to a marketer.

  Joseph: Water is to a fish as the world is to a marketer.

  The greatest single similarity is that fish don't know they live in water and it seems marketers don't know they live in the world.

   

• What Boston based business has impressed you with their marketing?
  Frank: Communispace - small business with big plans

   

• What was your greatest marketing accomplishment? How would today's marketing world affect that accomplishment (make it easy, more difficult)?
  Joseph: Recognizing that any human-human interaction is marketing of the self, asking my wife, Susan, to marry me and her agreeing, when I had not much to offer except a headful of ideas and a recognition that all I could really offer was change (see "Change (which is constant) and managing the work-life balance").

   

• Has there been a moment in your career that you thought you weren't going to make it?  What was it?  Why did you succeed in spite of it?
  Joseph: That depended mostly on who was working with me ("Never allow yourself to be blinded by those who lack vision." This, of course, goes back to the previous question about being able to innovate or follow.

   

• What would be your dream job? If you could create a title for your current job that reflects all that you do, what it be?
  Frank: Running my insight business during the day, performing music in the evening. Chief Improviser

  Joseph: I was the first person I know to have "CRO" - Chief Research Officer - as a job title and I still believe it encompasses all that I do pretty well. Two job titles currently being offered to me are "Neuroscientist-in-Residence" and "Neuroscientist-at-Large".

   

• Look at your planner for Oct. 4...what are you doing?
  Frank: Future M kick-off

  Joseph: According to my calendar I'll be traveling. And shouldn't readers be more interested in 6 Oct? That's when this presentation is scheduled.

• Analysis of content before publishing ensures that it will appeal to the desired audience.
• Analysis of the users to a web site will help align content to the audience and their expectations.
• These products provide empirical data about user profiles and reactions -- which is difficult to obtain other ways -- while protecting anonymity.

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Upcoming Trainings:

• 22 Oct 2010 - Mastering Push and Pull Writing (Writing Headlines that Cause Action) in Bedford, NH

Upcoming Conferences:

• Analytics Schmanalytics: How Neuromarketing Will Change the Future of Marketing Analytics at FutureM in Boston, 6 Oct 10

Sign up for the NextStage Irregular, our very irregular, definitely frequency-wise and probably topic-wise newsletter.

Have you read my latest book, Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History? It's a whoppin' good read.

And you can always follow me on Twitter. I don't twit often but when I do, it's with gusto!

Learn the latest regarding NextStage blog posts, conference sightings,
whitepapers, tools, presentations and more via The NextStage RSS feed .
NextStage Evolution

  Friends of NextStage
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