I appreciate your point of view, and having this conversation is exactly what social media is all about.

To clarify, our intent was not to judge one marketing strategy over the other, but to look imperially at the data in social media. Of course, trying to fit human conversations into data-points is not easy nor perfect, but that’s why we’ve spent the last three years building a process that helps brands understand what’s happening in the social space. With our clients, we go into even more detail – and to your point, we do link our results to the client’s ongoing marketing campaigns. Until recently, social media was a black box that was largely unaccountable, but now we can gain insight to see what’s working and what’s not.

I would like to clarify a few points, if I may:

Technorati
Technorati is a great tool for researching blogs, but is not very useful when looking at the larger social space. The results you pulled for Trek, as an example, could cover terms such as “Star Trek, trek Nepal, trekking the Himalayas” and Specialized, keyword such as “Specialized hardware, specialized content, etc”.
We use multiple tools that track across the entire social space; blogs, video sharing sites, forums, micro-blogs, and social networks; getting the data is not the hard part. We actually spent a lot of time creating our models to filter terms like “Star Trek” or “specialized software” from the results.

Cervelo as team sponsor
We are aware of this factor, but our goal was not to make any judgments on the merits of team sponsorship over other kinds marketing activity. All we looked at was the overall impact each brand had in social media. In our minds, Cervelo is first and foremost a bike manufacturer and the results show that team sponsorship DOES affect brand mentions in conversations. It’s up to the brand managers to decide whether or not the costs are worth the results.

Lance or Schleck brothers vs Cervelo
Yes, Lance is mentioned in social media more than anybody in cycling. One thing to note, however, is that Lance is his own brand, and the link between him and Trek may not be as strong as people think. We didn’t count mentions of Lance as a hit for Trek (unless they were talked about together). Plotting Lance on our chart would probably put him on top of all the brands, if we treated him in the same manner. Such is the power of “Mellow Johnny”.

I won’t argue the fact that you can’t make sweeping judgments on marketing success from a couple of charts. Our post was simply a peek under the hood of cycling and social media that we hoped people would find interesting, not an exhaustive study of the bike industry. With our clients, we spend time looking at the data as a bigger picture, then work with them to set strategies moving forward. The data is only useful when interpreted with the goals and positioning of the organization.

Anyway, I’m happy to “agree to disagree” – I just wanted to make sure you understood our position as well.

thanks,

- R

The data on both charts leads me to think Cervelo’s are occupying a very rational place. It is logical and performance driven, but the personal aspirational is falling flat — it’s where all the communication activities around “I am Specialized” truly support the Specialized campaign, both above the line, and in social media.

However, these are the boundaries to quantitative information — it leads to conjecture. To really fill in the blanks qualitative information would benefit. Cervelo may want to revisit their position, and build communication activities to support a place that better connects to people on an emotional level.