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Big Data and How it Creates Big Money- Niamh Burke

Every online purchase, hashtag used, and like of a page contributes to the idea of ‘big data’. Grace (2012) describes big data as “Global access to all possible information about human response and human innovation.” It allows companies to analyse and respond to data collected through social media platforms, especially Facebook and Instagram. Siegel (2013) explains that by gathering big data it “embodies a priceless collection of experience of which to learn”. If companies are to learn and increase their profit from big data, what are the effective ways in which to do so?

  A primary example of where big data is gathered from is Instragram. This social media platform allows users to post photos and videos accompanied by a caption. Instagram is the new ‘hip’ type of social media, which is a gold mine for companies. Popularity on Instagram is measured by how many people are ‘following’ your account as well as how many likes you get per photo. An effective way of how using big data has increased awareness and profit for companies is sponsoring a person who has a large amount of followers.

  A recent company that has harnessed this tool to create a whirlwind of talk about their company is Frank. Frank is an Australian company based in Melbourne that makes an exfoliating coffee scrub for your body. Now this may seem like quite a boring product that would struggle to make it a popular, Instagram success. However by targeting popular Instagram-ers to try their product this generated awareness from thousands of other followers. The popular way to post about Frank was to take a ‘selfie’, covered in the exfoliator, with the product positioned in the lower half of the photo.

  After viewing the Frank website I came across a blog post which was titled ‘How to take the perfect frank selfie.’ It explained that to perfect the selfie the hashtags #thefrankeffect and #letsbefrank were vital (Frank, 2014). I searched these hashtags on Instagram and #thefrankeffect generated 19,923 posts (see picture below) and #letsbefrank had 14,663 posts (Instagram, 2014).

(Instagram, 2014)

By using big data to understand the most effective way to promote their product on Instagram they have become increasingly successful from it. I have seen this product promoted all over my personal Instagram news feed. For $14.95 girls from all over Australia have purchased this product to not only use it but  more importantly post it on Instagram. Even my sister mentioned she has ordered a bag of Frank because it has been promoted so intensely over Instagram, so why not see if it really works? I however have been quite sceptical of how well this product works as I feel many people who post about it on Instagram are just trying to follow the ‘trend’ without actually caring about how well it exfoliates your skin.

  To conclude, big data is a powerful tool. It allows companies to understand their target market to a fuller extent and combine this data with marketing geniuses and voilà, a business increases profits and becomes more successful.

    Reference List

Frank. 2014. “How to take the perfect selfie”. Accessed May 11, 2014. http://au.frankbody.com/blogs/news/10565689-how-to-take-the-perfect-frank-selfie#.U29lKi-ID3o

Grace A. (The Economist). 2012. “What is Big Data?” YouTube Video, posted June 26. Accessed May 11, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahZGEusG13A

  Instagram. 2014. “#THEFRANKEFFECT.” Viewed May 11, 2014.

Siegel, Eric. 2013. “Introduction – The Prediction Effect.” In Predictive Analytics, 1-16. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Inc.