MostContagious2012.pdf - Contagious Magazine

divine data /
insight by
nuMbers
Predicting Presidents /
When asked by a reporter what lesson would-be 2016 US Presidential
candidates should glean from the 2012 election, David Axelrod, chief
strategist for the re-elected Barack Obama, replied: ‘I would invest in people…
who understand where the technology is going and what the potential
will be by 2016 for communications, for targeting, for mining data, to
make precision possible in terms of both persuasion and mobilisation.’ His
words will no doubt also be ringing in the ears of CMOs the world over.
With an analytics team five times larger than in 2008 and on the back of
a promise from campaign manager Joe Messina ‘to measure every single
thing in this election’, the sophisticated Democrat data machine (known as
Narwhal) crunched its way to helping raise over $1bn in campaign funds,
bagging Obama 1.25 million more votes from 18 to 24-year-olds than in his
previous outing. Its influence on the final result was emphatic.
But data-crunching wasn’t solely the preserve of backroom pollsters:
many regular voters seeking smart analysis turned their attention from traditional
political commentators towards stats junkie Nate Silver. Silver’s
predictive modelling, hosted on blog FiveThirtyEight at the New York Times
website, correctly predicted the race’s outcome in all 50 states, often in the
face of staunch scepticism from the old guard. At one point in the election
run-in, a fifth of traffic to the New York Times website visited Silver’s blog.
fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com
The Wearable Watchmen /
The Quantified Self movement has gathered momentum over the past few
years, but for most wannabe self-analysts there has been something missing:
simple, affordable (and cool) technology to make personal analytics
accessible. All that changed this year when Nike’s Digital Sport unit, working
with R/GA and AKQA, launched Fuel, a new metric for measuring
physical activity, and a piece of kit to collect the required input data, Fuel-
Band. Nike effectively now sees itself as a tech company.
The sleek black wristband measures steps taken, calories and time spent
exercising via a three axis accelerometer to work out a Nike Fuel score
against a daily target. The effect? Throughout the day, Nike – mimicking the
relationship between the brand’s founders, coach Bill Bowerman and his
college athlete Bill Knight – offers the wearer encouragement to be more
active.
A double Cannes Lions Grand Prix success, Stefan Olander, Nike’s VP
of digital sport, told us in Contagious 32 that the thinking behind FuelBand
was a customer centric sense of purpose: ‘We don’t start with technology
or the potential profit, we always start with the athlete. I think that’s an
important distinction, because when you do that the other things follow.’
www.nike.com/FuelBand
Adidas / miCoach Elite System
Not to be left behind, adidas has been making progress with its own personal
fitness tracking tool, miCoach. Football could be on the brink of its very
own Moneyball moment, after the German sportswear brand announced in
July a deal with Major League Soccer (MLS) in the US, whereby every
player in the league next season will be equipped with a miCoach Elite
System data cell. The data transmitted from the devices during games
(including metrics such as heart rate, speed, acceleration, distance, field
position and, power) will help coaches on the touchline make better selection
decisions based on performance levels. The MLS is also promising to
MOVEMENTs purpose sErVicE data technology design social biz sharing amplified screens augmented retail personalise new loyalty payment sbpf
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