New Media Strategies' 'Online Analysts' Scour the Web for Mentions of Opinion-Sensitive Clients
By Kim Hart Washington Post Staff Writer
Moira Curran starts her day at the office by skimming several dozen blogs, occasionally firing off instant messages to her co-workers with links to juicy bits of celebrity gossip.
Then she listens to podcasters chatting about the latest episodes of "Grey's Anatomy" or "Lost." In the afternoon, she keeps an eye on soap operas on the television set that hangs above her desk.
About 70 colleagues, scattered across two floors of an Arlington high-rise, spend eight hours a day doing much of the same. Some of them are also playing video games, watching movies and cruising around MySpace.
That's exactly what the clients of New Media Strategies, an online marketing company, pay the employees to do. Companies ranging from movie studios and television networks to automakers and burger chains hire these professional Web surfers to scour the Internet for any mention of their brands. Over the past few years, the "online analysts" have helped the companies track their reputations, found ways to get their products noticed and joined online conversations to help steer them the way clients want them to go.
More recently, as the explosion of blogs, social networks and video-sharing sites has driven big companies to recognize the role of Internet image in protecting their bottom lines, traditional media companies and private investors are seeking to buy Web-savvy start-ups that have a toehold in cyberspace.
That's what happened to New Media Strategies this month, when it was acquired -- with two Los Angeles-based online marketing firms -- by Meredith Corp., a Des Moines-based media company known for its sturdy lineup of traditional magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies' Home Journal.
"I see the Internet as the world's largest focus group," said Pete Snyder, a former media consultant and political pollster who started the company out of his Capitol Hill apartment eight years ago. He had received a few casual offers to buy the company, but interest spiked in the past year. "So many companies have been so deeply entrenched in old media ... Now they're looking to plow into the Web 2.0 world."
Evidence of that world abounds in the Arlington office, brightly painted in red, orange and yellow. A podcast studio occupies a corner office, and conference rooms are named ".com," ".net," ".gov" and ".org."
Posters from the movies the company has helped promote line the walls -- so many that passersby sometimes ask if the office doubles as a theater. Framed albums from Black Sabbath and several seasons of "American Idol" hang next to a flat-screen television reserved for "product viewing."
Many of the online analysts wear headphones all day and chat with bloggers via instant messages. Their job is to be the clients' eyes and ears online, said Clay Dunn, 28, a brand manager who monitors what is said about video games and movies.
He watches for rumors and alerts his Hollywood clients if online coverage goes awry. Once, for example, backstage photos from a movie set surfaced and spoiled a sneak preview already in the works.
Curran, another brand manager who trolls the Web on behalf of television clients, corrects errors published in blogs. If rumors spread that someone's been fired from the cast of HBO's "Entourage," for example, she's there to set the record straight. If an angry viewer bashes a network for a violent scene in a prime-time show, she's there to post a rebuttal. She watches soap operas so she'll be able to chat knowledgably with the rest of the online audience.
"Every day, I'm an absolute sponge," said Curran, 25.
Curran said she is careful to acknowledge her connection to clients when it's required. All online marketers have to walk a fine line when they work the blogosphere. Federal Trade Commission rules require them to identify their roles when they're making a point on behalf of a client, but if they're gossiping about the latest episode of "Desperate Housewives" they can legally be as anonymous as anyone else.
The New Media Strategies employees are young, self-identified tech geeks whose goal is to know the Internet inside and out -- an increasingly daunting task as hundreds of new blogs and Web sites crop up every day. They try to stay a few strides ahead of online developments -- or at least only a step or two behind.
"The Internet used to be our oyster," Curran said of the days just a few years ago when there were only chat rooms and message boards to monitor. "It still is, but we have to reassess the things we pay the most attention to."
New Media Strategies' entertainment practice was the first to take off; Hollywood has long been willing to spend money to influence the online world. Over the past few years, Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford joined the client roster. Most recently, public affairs has become the fastest-growing area for the company.
"Before, we could barely get a politician to spend money on a Web site, let alone a massive Web campaign," Snyder said from his Arlington office. "The world across the river is waking up to this."
So are buyers and investors. Media companies are starting to show strong interest in adding interactive firms to their portfolios, said Seth R. Alpert, managing director of AdMedia Partners, a New York investment bank that facilitates deals between advertising and marketing companies. AdMedia represented New Media Strategies in its recent acquisition.
"Serving advertisers is now seen as being more broad than putting ink on paper or building Web sites," Alpert said.
British marketing giant WPP Group, which includes established advertising firms Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam, has acquired several interactive-media firms. Nielsen Media Research combined three online-research companies to create Nielsen BuzzMetrics, which analyzes online markets.
In the Washington area, private investors recently put money into another start-up -- Clarabridge, a Reston company whose software crawls Web sites, recording what people say about specific products or brands and tabulating the occurrence of positive or negative words to help clients assess their cyberspace images. For example, it tracks recommendations and criticisms about certain airlines on travel sites.
The company calls the process "online intelligence." It is currently working for pharmaceutical companies to get a sense of how consumers feel about the drugs the clients make.
"This can shape how they spend that million dollars to launch a product," said Sid Banerjee, co-founder and chief executive of Clarabridge. "There are enough mainstream consumers making decisions on the Internet that they represent a meaningful sample of the market."
Last week, the company took in $7.2 million in venture capital funding from Intersouth Partners, based in Durham, N.C., and Reston, bringing its total financing to $10 million since it started in 2005.
Cymfony, a Boston interactive-media firm and a competitor of New Media Strategies and Clarabridge, has received $24 million in venture capital cash in the past seven years.
Cymfony got its start doing research for intelligence agencies but decided to use its text-mining software to monitor the consumer-generated Web. Its business has doubled as advertisers take to the Internet, said chief executive Andrew Bernstein.
"There's too much media online and no one knows where to turn," he said. "So they turn to us."
Copyright 2007 The Washington Post Company
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