Social analytics company Dachis Group is launching a new feature that CEO Jeff Dachis (who previously co-founded the agency Razorfish) described as “real-time marketing in a box.”
To illustrate the importance of this tool, he pointed to what has become the favorite example among social advertising types (or at least the ones I talk to) — Oreo’s “You can still dunk in the dark” ad that it tweeted when the power went out at the Super Bowl. Dachis Group’s new capabilities mean that other brands can have their own Oreo-style moments, where they can jump into relevant conversations in a timely fashion.
“Real-time is really the tip of the spear,” Dachis said. “Marketing is moving so much faster now. …[It] needs to be attuned to where people are and the trends and the activity that is actually happening, rather than hoping that you’re at home watching CSI.”
CTO Erik Huddleston gave me a demo of the new tool, saying that it’s not just looking for what’s hot among the general Twitter user base or obvious topics that a company wants to track. Instead, it looks at the relevant audience for a brand and figures out what they’re talking about, and it also examines the “velocity” of the conversation and the likely lifecycle — whether the conversation is going to keep building or die out in a few hours.
More broadly, Huddleston said Dachis Group’s new features accomplish three tasks — it helps customers identify trending conversations on which to “hitch [their] wagon,” helps them optimize their performance as they participate in the conversation, and gives them reports on how effective they were.
Dachis Group, which raised more funding earlier this year, says it updates its data every 15 minutes. That data is available as an integrated part of the company’s larger toolset, but customers can also integrate it into their own custom social media “war rooms.”