by Devin Gaffney & Ian Pearce

with Matt Morain and Alex Leavitt

Recently, two of our Web Ecologists (Ian Pearce and Devin Gaffney) followed up on an interesting data set that was uploaded by Sean McColgan, a digital strategist based out of London. The Web Eco team also extracted another data set from Twapper Keeper using an experimental-stage data set uploader, and came up with interesting results as to the efficacy of the ad campaign, which, in a few conversations between some Web Ecologists, clearly marked one of the first widely successful viral marketing campaigns conducted by any agency ever.

The full 20-page report covers a basic approach that 140kit employs in doing large-scale hands on research: First, a quick data-sheet or executive summary, and then some more in-depth research. The data is approached from the perspectives of general (basic, pre-established important points of interest), content (what is actually said), and network (the connections and relationships between users) analysis, which allows for a clear review of data that gives a sense of the dynamics of the data set instead of simple numbers and figures that only give glimpses of the information.

140kit’s analysis kit was expanded and optimized in order to learn about the user base: in particular, we were able to query True Knowledge’s incredible system to find out about the genders of the users:

Gender Breakdowns, Old Spice Dataset: 34.91% Male, 24.55% Female, 40.52% Inconclusive

One of the core basic histogram charts available in any 140kit data set is the accounts created over time:

Account creation dates for “Old Spice" Data Set, 23,924 Users

And one of the more interesting pieces of information is the network analysis that we conduct. One of the most basic problems with other internal reports Web Ecology has seen from marketing analysis firms is that they frequently omit network analysis in analyzing data that is of a fundamentally networked nature:

Re-Tweet Network Map, with small-node pruning enabled alongside logarithmic node sizing based on out-degrees

Finally, here’s a link to that Youtube video, just in case you were in a bunker all summer and didn’t see the genius of W+K’s creative department: