Apolo Ohno's speed on the ice may earn him a deal to be the new front man for Wheaties, but his buzz in the cloud could divine him a gig as the next easy, breezy, beautiful Cover Girl. At least that's what the findings from Networked Insights' listening platform, SocialSense, might lead you to believe.
Using artificial intelligence technologies such as Natural Language Processing and Sentiment Analysis to scan and interpret the content of "millions of blogs and tens of thousands of forums," Networked Insights discovered that Ohno shows high "online engagement" with women aged 25-44.
And Ohno isn't the only Olympian who might be launched from relative obscurity into a national ad campaign by these findings once the Vancouver Games come to an end. Networked Insights used such online engagement numbers combined with demographic data to algorithmically derive the brand potential of 15 other athletes.
Depending on how seriously companies take these results, marketing executives might be scrambling to sign hockey player Sidney Crosby to their next big campaign (he's by far the leader in overall engagement). Or figure skater Evan Lysacek might end up in glossy ads for Rolex and BMW (he's popular with the $100k+ income crowd).
Does this signal a new era where artificial intelligence-driven market research is the future of successful endorsement partnerships? Only time, and the tech tea leaves, will tell.
But almost certainly not for these guys.
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