You Tube and Google

For my blog, I decided to do some sort of YouTube sensation since YouTube has had a lot of videos shut down due to copyright infringement. I wonder if there is a correlation between the Old Gregg video (initially shown in BBC’s The Mighty Boosh) popularity and its availability on You Tube. Unfortunately, I do not remember the exact date that the video was taken off of You Tube. I can narrow it down to after May 2008. Today when I searched, I noted that the video has been put back up. Will there be a lull on Google’s Zeitgeist for when the video was unavailable and a rise when it was put back up?

According to You Tube, the video that is available today was officially added November 17, 2007. The original air date for the skit was August 23, 2005 on The Mighty Boosh. The entire video is twenty seven minutes, but the You Tube portion is only seven minutes. According to the Zeitgeist chart of Google trends over time, there is a spike in early 2006. Afterward, there is a huge lull in popularity until 2007. The trend steadily increases with a peak in late 2007 and another in late 2008. Afterward, there is a dramatic decline with two more substantial peaks in 2009. In addition to the graph, Zeitgeist Google Trends also has the search’s popularity ranked by country (Australia, then UK, then USA) and city (St. Louis, Edinburgh, and Atlanta). Interestingly Austin, TX is ranked fifth and Richardson, TX is tenth. English is appropriately the only language ranked.

When I searched Trends for Websites, I noted that USA is the largest user of Google. UK is fourth and Australia is not in the top ten. This does have a large impact on my research findings because it is a source of error when trying to rank the Old Gregg Video search by region. Not every country uses Google as its primary search engine.

Under the insights for search tab, I got a more detailed map of interest over time. It also shows the top search items. Old Gregg is officially spelled with two G’s, but if the search was narrowed to Greg with one G, the results will be skewed toward American regions since that is how Americans typically spell Greg. Also, “Boosh” was the number two related search. Most Americans know of Old Gregg through its You Tube sensation and do not relate it to The Mighty Boosh. This could also skew results. I can narrow the results per region and find research that is confined to Australia. South Australia’s search volume is high while the Northern Territory and Tasmania have low search volumes. I can relate this back to population density and the number of people who own computers for my research. It then gives the top searches in Australia. I could then narrow the search to a given sub region. In New South Wales, I found there was a spike in views in March of 2007 and a further spike in November of 2007. Since there was never a lull in Google searches, I am questioning whether the video was taken down in the first place, or if Old Gregg fans were visiting another sight to get their fix.

This type of information is very valuable for companies. A company can easily tell what is highly searched on Google. With the use of AdWords, the company can piggy-back on recent trends. Maybe Greg’s Car Parts can pay to advertise every time someone searches for Old Gregg. Another company could pay to have their commercial shown on Hulu before the Old Gregg content is played. This way a customer will associate the silly sketch with a certain type of hair product. This will subconsciously create good feelings every time the consumer hears about the product. This increases their customer experience with the product.

Showing the search pattern for each region can help explain regional patterns and yield customer insights. A popular You Tube video among a certain age segment can reveal the personality of the segment. Knowing the target’s sense of humor will help companies make suitable advertisements. Austin is a college-town, so it is safe to assume some of the students like the Old Gregg video. When marketing a certain beer to these students, it is safe to use dry humor and a silly theme since it is evident that these things go over well. Smirnoff tapped into the You Tube sensation when it created a skit revolving around its product. They probably saw that parody music videos are highly viewed by its target audience. The company generated its own parody video, which circulated through college towns. According to Google Trends on Zeitgeist, the searches for Smirnoff Raw Tea spike in late 2007, when the You Tube video was released.

There is a high correlation between You Tube and Google searches. What people are searching for gives insight to what people like. Marketers can use this insight to find the personality of a potential customer. They can also use the trends to target their advertisements to certain segments. Google Zeitgeist gives marketers a peak into the consumer’s mind free of charge.

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart’s enormous database gives them a competitive advantage over other large grocery or supply stores. Wal-Mart has the ability to see correlations between seasons and purchases and items that are regularly purchased together. In doing so, they often tailor product locations, exhibits, and sales to maximize profit and minimize cost. This information also allows the store to maximize efficiency by only having the required number of employees working and keeping inventory at the desired rate. Customers come to Wal-Mart because of their inexpensive prices and their selection of in-stock items. This database of information serves as a competitive advantage. Wal-Mart’s efficiency fulfills these two basic needs of the customer. This keeps the customer returning. The database allows the store to go a step deeper than cheap in-stock items. It can suggest which items should be placed together or far apart in the store. Items that are always purchased together can be placed far apart so the customer has to look at and possibly purchase other items. Goods that have a correlation of being purchased together can be placed together. If a customer wants to purchase one of these items, the proximity placement will “suggest” the other item. “Knowing collectively what goes into one shopping cart” can tell managers a lot about the correlation of items and where they should be placed on the floor. This does give Wal-Mart a competitive advantage because their competitors simply do not have the resources or knowledge to place items as effectively. Customers entering Wal-Mart get the basic experience they are looking for, but the holistic experience is not quite there. Wal-Mart shoppers still have a bad connotation (as seen from sites such as http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/). People frequent Wal-Mart out of necessity and due to their prices, but it still has the reputation of being a less-than-classy establishment. If Wal-Mart’s mission statement is really “to help people save money so they can live better” then they are fulfilling the statement. The experience of entering a store and finding what you want and things you did not know you wanted is given to the patrons of Wal-Mart. Knowing exactly the items needed at what time does give Wal-Mart a competitive advantage.

The amount of information that Wal-Mart collects is scary but scarier is what the information has the capacity to reveal about a customer. Although they compile the information and safeguard it, they should not be able to take further steps in identifying individual customers. The article made is sound as if Wal-Mart has the capacity to find a customer’s credit rating but has no interest in doing so because it would not be profitable. The information they have about individuals can be easily obtained from elsewhere. The information they have about purchasing is invaluable because it can be used to predict trends. If Wal-Mart is doing an individual profile, they could get the information about that person through other avenues. I am not as worried about Wal-Mart compiling customer data, I am worried about it falling into the wrong hands. I know Wal-Mart has an intense system for protecting data, but hackers have gotten into more secure locations in the past. Getting that amount of information about countless individuals is scary. I trust Wal-Mart with the data because it is largely data that an internet search could find about an individual. Every employer has to have employees’ social security numbers on file. I have access to my entire sorority’s social security numbers as the Vice President of Finance. Securing individual data is a risk even if Wal-Mart does not compile it.

Wal-Mart is having a huge impact on their suppliers. I believe it is driving suppliers to increase their efficiency. If they do not supply Wal-Mart with the goods, someone else will. It forces suppliers to be competitive because they do not “run the show”. Wal-Mart works under a “supply and command” system that forces suppliers to do Wal-Mart’s bidding. Mistakes that suppliers make are no longer Wal-Mart’s liability. This will make the supplier feel the full force of their mistake and reduce the likelihood of it reoccurring. Wal-Mart is on the cutting edge of supplier-store relations. Wal-Mart demands efficiency for its business model. This trickles down to suppliers, which trickles down to producers, making the market more efficient as a whole. Without Wal-Mart pushing this, change would come about much more slowly. If one company cannot keep up with the change, another will be ready to take its place.