As the new guy on the team I get to introduce myself to you and spout off.  All in the same post!!  In any case, I recently joined Forrester from SPSS  and will be focusing on enterprise marketing technology platforms, customer analytics, and emerging market technologies.

The proliferation of Consumer Generated Media (CGM) presents organizations with a virtual treasure trove of unstructured data.  However, as witnessed by the debate on the Online Spin blog, measuring CGM is not a foregone conclusion.  Measurement aside, what purpose does CGM serve and how can the data be leveraged?  Text mining vendors like SAS, ClearForest, SPSS, and Inxight offer algorithms and techniques to identify and extract the key concepts from unstructured data.   These insights can drive innovation, product development, search, and brand monitoring.  Marketers should initially focus on blogs and service center transcripts as the primary sources for unstructured data. 

This is still an evolving medium with lots of open questions such as – Will CGM increase in relevance as a customer insight forum?  Who, within the organization, will own the process and tools of analyzing CGM? How will the learnings be integrated into the current enterprise analytic platforms?  How does this change the roles of creative, analytics and brand marketing?  What do you think?

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