The message is personalized and served by Analytica, after which the response is analyzed and leads to an automatic follow-up script. More of the same or appealing to another personality aspect. A next step is the automatic creation of fake videos on YouTube to support the message. Scout
For the Trump campaign, Analytica measured which topic and approach resonated best with Trump voters in which location, and then planned a live Trump rally at that location with that theme and approach. Potential Clinton voters were discouraged from voting with Facebook dark posts, especially voters of color. By targeting American voters on an individual level, it was impossible for election watchdogs to control Trump’s ads: they were invisible to third parties.
The rise of Cruz, but especially of Trump and Brexit show that the approach is effective. According to research by founder Kosinski, this kind of microtargeting in Facebook campaigns based on OCEAN personalities can score 63 percent more clicks and 1400 extra conversions.
Marketing with empathy
Despite the success of big data marketing, there is an hosptial ceos mailing list alternative marketing movement that finds this type of marketing far too limited. In her new book Marketing with strategic empathy (aff.), Claire Brooks gives the example of Ron Johnson. He nearly ruined JC Penney because of his fetish for big data marketing. According to Brooks, big data can tell us a lot about who our customers are and show us aspects of how they behave. It can help us make predictions about the future, but it does not tell us why our customers behave the way they do and in what context their behavior takes place. Brooks believes that big data only shows half the picture. To see the other half of the picture, we need to use empathy.
Empathy, according to Brooks, is “a cognitive capacity to take the subjective perspective of another person” and “an affective (emotional) response to another person, which may involve sharing that person’s emotional state.” Brooks assures the reader that this is not a soft skill , it is a powerful driver of an organization’s success. What is important is to step outside the perspective of your own organization and take the perspective of the customer. Only then can you find out how customers experience products and what role these products play in these customers’ lives.
The process
In her book, Brooks meticulously outlines the way in which empathy should be used, at the level of instruments and the process in which it is embedded. The first step in the process is for a research team to immerse itself in the client's world of experience. This can be done using ethnographic research, keeping diaries, but also by conducting in-depth interviews and organizing online communities.