My grandfather-in-law, who lives in England, recently turned 100. I was very excited for him, greatly anticipating the obligatory telegram from the Queen.

“No”, my father-in-law said. “We have to write to them to request one.”

WHAT?!

My local video store knows my date of birth, along with my local pharmacist, my local library, my hairdresser, my beautician and just about all the major retailers with whom I have a loyalty card. But the Queen’s Anniversaries Office, can’t find out when I turn 100? I thought digital technology was making it easier to find out such information!

OK. So we get over that hurdle and request a telegram.

“No”, my father-in-law said. “He got a birthday card.”

A BIRTHDAY CARD?!

I was disappointed. It’s not the quaint, old fashioned telegram that I was expecting and I’d never seen a real telegram before so I was looking forward to checking out this traditional form of communication. But neither was it a new and innovative way to send your wishes like a tweet or a Facebook message (don’t you just love it when your Facebook page gets filled with birthday messages? – but I digress). No, it’s somewhere in that grey area of being almost – dare I say it – common.

I wonder if when it’s my time to turn 100, I’ll be receiving a tweet from King William? Or perhaps that will be considered too “quaint”, “old fashioned”, “traditional” or “common” by then. I can just hear my daughter now…. “Oh Mum, tweeting is so yesterday!”

As community managers we surround ourselves with people of differing ages, genders, backgrounds, attitudes and opinions in our communities. It’s part of what makes communities so interesting. We get to understand the differences and similarities between members, draw an overall consensus and then provide valuable insights to our clients.

Dealing with members with such varying backgrounds, opinions and outlooks can therefore be a difficult process. We aim to get to know people throughout the period that the community runs, and it is true that as we go along, you get a better understanding of what you can talk to some members about; how much you can ask them and importantly what topic of conversations are taboo or not. In the first weeks though it is worth being cautious as something that you may say flippantly without even thinking may actually be offensive to a member.

Think about real life, the first time you meet someone, it is pretty unlikely that you’ll be asking them who they voted for in the last election or how much they earn each year in the first few minutes of conversation. Sure these may be relevant questions at some point but think about how you would feel being asked this in the first week of a community or the first time you meet someone.

A good example of mine was a discussion which took place around Easter which aimed to investigate how much the meaning of Easter had diminished over time and the reasons for this. Whilst  most of us have an opinion on the matter, it was early in a community and had the potential to create divisions between those with differing opinions of a religious nature. Whilst healthy argument can be a good way to really delve into the true thoughts of members, fractures in the membership surrounding issues of religion or other sensitive topics can be very damaging.

Trust must be built up with members in order to get the best from them. It is built over time and you can’t expect someone to provide you the most insightful responses without their trust.

A tip that I now have in the back of my mind when talking to members in the community is that if you are any way concerned or worried about what you are writing and how it could be understood by a member then it is safer to not ask the question at all.

Sometimes it’s not the questions that we ask which are important in getting the best out of members but the ones that we don’t.

Latitude prides itself on delivering insights not information but more recently we have been focussed on driving insights more than ever (pardon the pun!).  Last week, Latitude Insights took to the motor show to check out the latest in motoring.

Our first stop … the soon to be released Nissan LEAF – the first mass produced, purpose built electric vehicle to enter the Australian market.   Kerralie took to the stage to test drive a Nissan LEAF almost breaking the speedometer at 139km/hr.  This is the first time a car has been allowed to be driven inside the motor show – because the LEAF has no tail pipe emissions, it’s safe to drive inside or out.  Although with Kerralie at the wheel, I’m not sure how safe we really were ;-)

Latitude is proud to be working with Nissan in the lead up to the launch of the LEAF.

Researching the LEAF is a fascinating experience for us and we are excited to be part of the changing motoring landscape.

Look out for more driving insights in the future…

News.com.au has launched a visual map, Cabinet Confidential, which charts the political relationships within the Labor government. Interactive journalism at its best, this venture captures a wider audience – one that may not be partial to reading long political articles. Essentially, it’s a snapshot of major players, positions held, and powers of “Labor’s top ranks”.

Digital has made data visualisation progressively more interactive. In the NewMR’s ‘New approaches to presenting data’ webinar, Peter Harris introduced a range of data visualisation tools that allow researchers to take advantage of the digital sphere. Gradually, these tools will become commonplace for information industries, where the ‘entertainment factor’ in presenting data will deliver the highest impact.

News.com.au’s editor, Paul Colgan initiated the Cabinet Confidential project saying, “One of the things that the news media rightly gets accused of is not harnessing new technology enough to improve storytelling”. Are there lessons here for market research?

Intel’s ‘Museum of Me’ application creates a visual showcase of your Facebook life – exhibiting your friends, photos, status updates, likes and networks in your personal virtual museum. From a visual perspective it is a pretty nifty app, but fails to convey the narrative of a user. The app merely collects random data from the user’s profile, and maps it in no particular order.

I think there are some clear parallels here for market researchers, reminding me of Nick Palmer’s call to the industry – “how we move from being collectors of information to curators of insights”. We are living in a world abundant with information. Collecting data will no longer be the lifeblood of market research; instead, the industry will rely on making sense of the profuse amount of information available.

The role of the museum curator is to help stories be told. Through considered navigation, connections are made, leaving the viewer with a different perspective. ‘Museum of Me’ has shown that simply collecting data is meaningless. Without a narrative, information doesn’t turn into insight.

With the emergence of Web 2.0 and the ability of internet users to co-operate, collaborate and share information with one another there has been a steep learning curve for brands who have had to adapt their behaviour when it comes to delivering messages to consumers.

Most recently, Sony’s Playstation Network (PSN) was hacked into and the personal information and in many cases credit card details of its millions of users across the globe compromised. Hacking of information is not a new phenomenon but it is the response of Sony, one of the world’s largest tech companies that has drawn criticism.

With the breach occurring between April 17 – 19, Sony waited a full week to release the details of the breach and just this morning (April 29), as a PSN user myself, I finally received an email acknowledging the issues, a full 10 days later!

The slow response and lack of information offered to users considering the seriousness of the issue will have significant ramifications on the level of trust users have for the brand. With the ability to act and inform those affected, Sony has sat on its hands and waited before informing the world and more importantly the 70m affected users of the problem.

Brands have had to learn to adapt their messaging about themselves but also the importance of the timeliness in delivery. No longer can they take time to ponder over their correspondences or media releases but are required to be upfront and honest or face potential major backlash from consumers.

Responding to negative press featuring a company cannot be met with a slow or non-existent response anymore. Brands have the ability to deliver a fast response to an issue, consumers not only want this, but have come to expect it.

It is trust and openness which consumers expect. The lack of information which was provided in any form, not just delivered through social networks which has been a significant issue and one which undermines trust in Sony as a brand.

Sony has one of the highest reputations for a brand in the world, behind only Google in a survey conducted by the Reputation Institute in 2010. This was built on over 60 years of innovation and finding solutions to consumer needs. The question is how much will an issue like this cost the company in the future?

In a world where brand reputation takes years to build, and an instant to break down, this could be one issue that seriously tarnishes the solid and trusted brand that is Sony.

Since April Fool’s day has just gone, I wonder how many of you fell victim to a hoax in the online world? I know I did.

My friend, Donna, is on Facebook and has about 500 friends. She has been with her partner for about 23 years, so it was a bit of a surprise when she suddenly changed her status to “single”. I flicked her an email asking her if she was OK and what was going on….. not a thing as it turns out!

She did it as an April Fool’s joke. When she turned her mobile and computer back on about 24 hours later, she had about 20 text messages and 100 email messages, not to mention all the Facebook threads! Surprisingly, only about 1 or 2 people picked up that this could have been a hoax (admittedly I was not one of them!).

But it amazed me at how widespread her April Fool’s prank actually was. With 500 friends, that’s a lot of simultaneous pranking. Usually, you’re restricted to just one or two friends on whom you’re playing your joke. I guess social media has changed all that.

Of course, the BBC still goes down in history as pulling the greatest April Fool’s joke of all time. I wasn’t even born when this prank was pulled, but I still know about it (thanks once again to the web). The Spaghetti Tree Hoax was a 3 minute broadcast by the BBC on April Fool’s Day in 1957, on their popular current affairs program Panorama. Being a reputable program, many people fell for the story that spaghetti grows on trees and that this year was shaping up to be a bumper harvest. Many people called the BBC to ask where they could get a spaghetti tree from. If you want to watch the original broadcast, click here

Now that really was pranking on a mass scale (about 8 million households). But it took a major corporation to have the resources to do it. With social media, anyone can pull a hoax on a mass scale (people like my friend Donna). But with many of the pitfalls associated with social media the real question is, do you really want to?

And the best April Fool’s prank for 2011? It would have to be Ikea’s Hundstol Highchair. At $59, you can set a place for your dog at the table because “not only is the dog a part of the family, they are like a trial run for kids”.

Marketing is such a young profession and Australia is such a young country it’s easy to forget what history can teach us about these things.

When I think of the earliest examples of great branding I tend to think of  mass produced products such as Coca-Cola.  But the reality is branding was around long before the Industrial Revolution and mass production.

In fact the word brand is derived from the North Germanic language brandr meaning “to burn.” It refers to the practice of producers burning their mark (or brand) onto their products.  This type of branding we typically associate with branding livestock.  But branding has also been around in many formats for centuries.

In fact, an example I recently came across while travelling Europe was, Louis XIV – the Sun King.  His branding can be seen all over Versailles and Paris.  He left his mark on buildings and so forth, just so we remembered who was responsible for creating them.

I’m sure there are thousands of other examples of branding throughout history that we can learn from.