This week, I've been having a play with Nielsen BlogPulse, which is a handy little free tool where you can map the frequency of different terms appearing in blogs. For instance, if we try MP+expenses then you can see how the expenses scandal suddenly rocketed - and is still simmering away, despite things cooling off a bit.
Turning to brands, you can track the spike in chatter caused by the fuss over M&S charging more for larger bras - nearly over now, it seems.
It's also interesting to compare brands, brand endlines or creative territories. From the charts below, you can see that Nike not only tracks significantly above Adidas generally, but that "just do it" is a much bigger part of popular culture than "impossible is nothing" (at least where bloggers are concerned).
In terms of knowing what the public are saying or thinking, there's nothing scientific here, of course. Little pieces of evidence mount up, however, and this kind of thing definitely makes both interesting food for thought and good conversation fodder with clients. I'll certainly be experimenting with ways to apply this kind of tool to planning, creating and monitoring my campaigns in the future - and I think you should too.
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