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Big Data Analysis Invades Amazon TV

11/05/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Deutsch: Logo von Amazon.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Amazon continues to surprise. Its latest segue from online shopping and shipping megalopolis is a venture into streaming video via Amazon Studios. The team is attempting to predict the next hit TV series from pilots featured on Amazon’s website in April.

Rather than use internal creative professionals from studios and production houses to select TV pilots for long-term runs, Amazon put 13 pilots on its website and allowed visitors to vote.

Here’s what’s amazingly basic about this whole story. The metrics Amazon used to determine its pilot selection were:

Likes
Shares
Votes
Surveys
Comments

This fascinates me because of its simplicity. There is so much emphasis being placed on big data analysis and how data drive strategy. While Amazon is certainly using big data (in this case a lot of people placing votes, right?) to influence video streaming program selection, it didn’t indicate it used in-depth software and programming to analyze which show will become a hit.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Amazon Mines User Data in Search of TV Hits,” on Nov. 2-3, 2013, Amazon Studios has selected three of the top-ranked vote getters and put them into production. The pilots are slated to be made available to Amazon Prime members in November.

What does this imply for your own big data analysis? Could we perhaps be putting too much emphasis in data when the simpler metrics of likes, shares, votes, and comments are sufficient?

How are you using big data in your business? Is its analysis truly driving strategy, lead generation, and sales?

Coming from a public relations background where data used to be the bailiwick of marketing, the numbers were rarely my favorite. It’s hard to crack that barrier to entry, but it’s stupid not to. Numbers do tell stories especially when you’re smart enough to interpret them.

Innovate Or Die

08/14/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Credit: Jayme Soulati via iPhone 4S to Instagram

Every news article you read, there’s something about company innovation. You can scale that to the size of your operation, and that can be in the realm of a self-published book, for example.

The examples I love and which inspire are:

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos just purchased The Washington Post for $250 million.
Google Co-founder Sergey Brin just financed $323,000 for the first lab-created hamburger by Dutch scientists. Apparently, the frankenmeat needed seasoning, said tasters.
Target has decided to go mobile app crazy and social media heavy in quick time. Usually big-box retailers take a year to launch a new clothing line…now innovation and time to market is critical.

Why Is Innovation Important?

Innovation is about remaining relevant. Companies that produce the same product or service the same way every day are not being innovative.

Companies that remain the same with no change for consumers become surely irrelevant.

Small businesses that never painfully challenge the status quo get stagnant after awhile.

Solopreneurs who never push the envelope to try new things cannot rise to the next level.

What is Innovation?

In this day and age, innovation can be defined in a variety of ways:

New products or services
New authority for the CEO
Increased levels of engagement by a company team
New realization that consumers are king.

Consumer Is King; Content is Queen

I want to focus on that a moment; consumers are king. We’ve been hearing for awhile now that content is king. Nope. The throne is squarely in control of the consumer.

To innovate, companies need to understand consumer is king.

What does your consumer need to keep coming back to your business?

Where do you need to engage with consumers?

Where are they engaging with you?

The takeaway today is not really about defining innovation, because most of us know and understand what that means. Knowing what it takes based on market and consumer research, understanding the inside of your company, and knowing what business goals the company has set are all aspects of successful innovation.

This is such a broad subject, and I’ve only toplined a smidge of this topic. How do you break it down?

13 Social Business Tips To Be Like Amazon

08/12/2013 By Jayme Soulati

It was inevitable. The Apple has finally fallen from the tree. In its place is Amazon, the astonishingly innovative company with sales of $61 billion that continues to bulldoze through industries with acquisitions of consumer-products companies, online sites, e-stores, clothing and accessories, beauty products, and just about everything under the kitchen sink including The Washington Post.

Yes, Jeff Bezos last week announced his purchase of The Washington Post for$250 million for the purpose of ______ insert best guess.

As Fast Company states in its September, 2013 issue, “Amazon has done a lot more than become a stellar retailer. It has reinvented, disrupted, redefined, and renovated the global marketplace.”

Apple built its empire under a force to be reckoned with who is no longer of this plane. It focused on new technologies and really smart devices that spawned mobility for the technology savvy and millennials.

And then we learned last week that it’s a new day, Android has assumed control of the mobile phone market. Another previously secure realm wrested from Apple’s grip.
Back to Amazon. As the powerhouses in mobile cellular technology and tablet duked it out for an ever larger decreasing slice of the pie, Amazon steadily grew its empire as an answer to the every man.

Amazon realized the consumer is in control; the consumer has the power.

Consumer is King.

As you well know, we’re in the post-social media adoption era. Consumers are on board and have built mini-empires of their own on Facebook and blogs. There is mass consumption of content.

What’s more, consumers now have the simple ability to complain, and influence purchases. When the pocketbook is no longer free flowing for the latest novel gadget and gizmo by Apple, then consumers turn to online shopping for the best deals.

How did Amazon do it? Through blood, sweat and tears; through ample quarters of no gains, and by recognizing consumer is king.

13 Social Business Tips For Your Company

Scale these 13 tips from the Amazon playbook to your business:
1. Innovate or die.
2. Insulate against irrelevance.
3. Embrace change.
4. Be creative and be human.
5. Serve your customers everywhere.
6. Become a social business.
7. Engage leadership in social media and earned media.
8. Make your consumer king.
9. Breed loyal followers.
10. Always look into the future; carpe diem.
11. Track, analyze, test, learn, execute; repeat.
12. Be smart and thoughtfully smarter.
13. Build a solid and efficient infrastructure.

Amazon is ripping up retail like the roadrunner, and the big box retailers are shoring up their defenses. The shopping mall as we know it is dead. Get out while you still can.

Soulati-'TUDE!

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