The social web plus big data plus psychographics – that’s BrandMixer’s formula for helping consumer packaged goods companies understand their brands and consumers.
BrandMixer, LLC takes what people are saying about brands on the web, or “the world’s largest focus group,” analyzes it to determine market trends and consumer personalities, and reports it to CPG companies looking to improve their marketing strategies and overall business operations.
“We call it consumer research through social science,” founder Dean Wright said.
The idea of BrandMixer had been marinating in the back of Wright’s mind for a while before he started it. He was working for a now defunct startup company, Tripware, which created business travel software and, as head of marketing, he regularly worked with social platforms.
While Tripware was struggling, Wright reflected on his CPG background and how those companies use syndicated data from the registers to analyze their businesses. He started considering how the companies could use social platforms to better understand their consumers.
His original idea was to offer social media monitoring for CPG brands, but when he started researching the idea in January 2011, he discovered hundreds of companies who already offered some kind of social media monitoring and/or management services. He shifted his focus to understanding CPG consumers through the gathering and analysis of social data.
Wright raised $50,000 from family and friends, formed his team, which includes developers based in Tunisia, Africa and Vice President of Technology based in Montreal, Canada, and launched BrandMixer in January 2012.
To translate the raw data from the social web into conclusions brands can use to improve their businesses, BrandMixer combines several open source technologies.
BrandMixer obtains the raw data from its web crawling partners and applies a text analytics API from an academic software to the data to produce 12 Social Science Metrics and Syndicated Socialytics.
The Social Science Metrics provide insight into the market trends and the consumers’ behaviors and personalities by presenting detailed information such as the time of day the brand is most often mentioned, the common words used to describe it and even the religions associated with it.
The Syndicated Socialytics are determined by combining the social metrics with the syndicated data to draw conclusions about how a brand can improve its marketing practices and overall business performance.
The company exports the results into Microsoft Excel using an open source reporting software and copies it into Microsoft PowerPoint so that CPG companies can easily present the data. The clients are also given the raw filtered data.
Wright said BrandMixer’s social science focus and Syndicated Socialytics solution is what sets it apart from the hundreds of social media monitoring and analytics companies available.
BrandMixer has also differentiated itself by serving a particular niche, the consumer packaged goods industry, which Wright and three of the other 10 employees have backgrounds in.
“If we’re going to be able to provide you with insights and really get behind the psychology of the actual social web, we have to be industry experts,” he said.
Wright said his goals for BrandMixer are to begin publishing groundbreaking consumer research within the next 18 months and reach $5 to $8 million in revenues within the next three years.
Wright doesn’t plan on pursuing venture capitalist funding because he doesn’t want to give away control.
“If the company doesn’t do well, it’s because I didn’t do well,” he said. “I’m fully responsible for the success or failure.”
More about BrandMixer
Founded: January 2012
# of employees: 11
Revenues: Not disclosed
Founder: Dean Wright
Website: www.BrandMixer.com
Twitter: @BrandMixer
Blog: Not available
Phone: 602-456-1718
Headquarters: 4340 E. Indian School Rd. Suite 21, Phoenix, AZ 85018