Initial campaign results from our MAX ad
July 14th, 2009 by Justin KistnerSocial media is changing the way businesses connect with markets. Conversations take place where the participants choose and are often spread across multiple sources. Pulling the conversation together in order to make informed, engagement decisions is at the heart of marketing’s challenge in this new media landscape. To demonstrate how Webtrends Social Measurement helps with a social media campaign, we advertised on the outside of Portland’s light rail, MAX, to monitor Twitter for responses to our ad. The idea is to publish the results on another MAX ad in October. We forecasted it would take 3 months to get a volume of results that would tell a compelling story, but a compelling story emerged in less than a week and spanned Twitter, blogs, and mainstream news. This is an update on that campaign.
Campaign results
The following are results from our measure of conversation on social media driven by our marketing campaign.
If a source had two or more posts, we combined the results. KATU had the most comments. BikePortland had the most commenters. Also worth noting, after we filtered for duplicates we discovered that the number of comments that KATU reports on their site are nearly double the actual amount. Unique commenters are considered unique usernames.
Sentiment is a hot aspect of social media. We recently wrote a post challenging the use of algorithms to determine sentiment, and this campaign is a great example of how NLP falls short. Sentiment is a complex tapestry of human emotions, not just positive, negative, or neutral. In this case our criteria was:
- Yes answers: People that only said yes.
- No answers: People that only said no.
- Same answers: People that said the amount paid now is fine.
- More answers: People that said pay more; including answers about licensing and registration.
- Less answers: People that said pay less; including answers about rebates or tax credits.
- Other answers: Comments that didn’t explicit state a position; including answers that were sarcastic or answered with a question as we can’t be sure of their inference.
As our results are human scored and could be interpreted differently by other people, we are providing our data so that it can be reinterpreted by anyone who is interested. We showed the top four sources broken out to show what impact sources had on the overall sentiment. Overall, the sentiment was that people favored either the same or less taxes than cyclists currently contribute. The strongest opposition came from Twitter, our original target source for monitoring conversation for this campaign.
Tag cloud for all conversation
Tag cloud for KATU
Tag cloud for BikePortland
Tag cloud for OregonLive
Tag cloud for all Twitter
Reflecting the salient points
In today’s media landscape, it’s challenging to track many viewpoints from many stakeholders. Making sense of a high volume of conversation from disparate sources isn’t easy for anyone. After tracking this conversation with our tools, here are some of the main points we learned:
1.) There is a lot of confusion on the facts about who pays for what currently
The most quoted source was the Federal Highway Administration (FWHA), which reported that 92% of the funds for local roads come from property, income, and sales taxes. It was the lack of general awareness of this fact that we believe causes a lack of empathy with cyclists as it pertains to taxation/registration. We did notice that the mainstream news sites that had the most “yes” answers to our question, many of which were accompanied by messages that indicated people didn’t think cyclists paid taxes currently. Others pointed out that cars, boats, motorcycles, airplanes and more have additional taxes including licensing, registration, and fuel taxes. Respondents pointed out that many cyclists are also motorists and therefore not only pay the unique motor vehicle taxes, but that it would be double taxation. To which people replied that the additional taxes are paid for per vehicle regardless of use, which therefore doesn’t constitute double taxation.
What is clear to us is that more conversation around this point could help clarify for everyone where contribution currently comes from, which is key to having a discussion about where obligations should be moving forward. While the information is out there, it doesn’t appear to be widely distributed, nor agreed upon. We see this as the greatest opportunity for constituents involved in public policy development around transportation.
2.) More taxes on cycling could be bad for everyone
There were two reasons for arguing this point. First is that people pointed out that less traffic, less damage to the environment, and more benefits were good for everyone. Participants reasoned that anything that discouraged cycling, such as taxes, prevents the community from reaping those rewards. As bikes do not use fuel, the only additional per vehicle costs that could apply would be licensing and registration. The only argument we saw against this point was the feeling of it being unfair that road faring cyclists didn’t have to pay these costs as well. Contenders pointed to the fact that state governments and municipalities who have adopted bike registration programs have later abandoned them due to the loss of the revenue to overhead.
3.) Some cyclists want more taxes, but under specific conditions
When people said they’d be willing to pay more taxes, they were only willing to pay more if the money went to bike specific infrastructure (we’ll include numbers in our final report). Nearly every answer for more taxes included the word “if”, often in all caps, and ended with extra exclamation points–indicating that people felt strongly that paying more was critically tied to the conditions that the money went to bike specific infrastructure. People expressed interest in better maintenance of existing bike lanes, more and better bike lanes, new bike-only paths, theft recovery, and more.
Other themes that came up were: Motorists are rude and sometimes dangerous about sharing the road; Road laws are not enforced equally on cyclists; Cyclists aren’t required to have liability insurance; Some people consider “cyclist” a loaded word.
Transparency
As part of our campaign, we are being transparent. That means we share openly about all details of the campaign. It also means our employees are free to discuss their thoughts publicly, even if they are critical. So, let’s talk about how we make money with this campaign. As I mentioned earlier, this campaign is part of a larger campaign called The Open Campaign. The Open Campaign will have it’s own microsite that will openly display the methods and results from various campaigns we’ve run using our tools. The concept is to provide a reference to businesses for what running campaigns with our tools looks like. It is that site that we’ll use to build leads for our sales team. While we do have a landing page for the MAX ad with a form on it, that form is to enter to win a free TriMet pass. Information from that form is *not* given to our sales team. It is strictly a promotional offer to encourage participation.
Want to see the results and make your own reports? Download our data »
Next Steps
Our question surfaced a diversity of viewpoints in much less time than we expected. As a result, we have an opportunity to progress the conversation by asking another question. If you have a suggestion for a follow up question, please share it as us a comment below.
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July 14th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Justin,
Great follow up post, and thanks for not making everyone wait three months for the results from this decidedly real-time medium. I have two questions for you about the campaign regarding sentiment:
1) One of the things that frankly shocked me was the negative response towards WebTrends in many, many Tweets, blog posts, and blog comments. I suspect those are the gray “Other” bars in your sentiment graph above but do you have any plans to analyze the data to address whether interjecting WebTrends into a heated debate with a controversial question was actually a good idea? I know “there is no such thing as bad press” but some of the comments about the company and campaign were pretty pointed and so I wondered if you had any plans (in an effort to be transparent) to address any of that?
2) You said that you would be providing the data used in this analysis. How can your readers get their hands on that?
I look forward to hearing more about the Open Campaign and seeing the data set you used for this analysis. Thanks for being transparent in this regard!
Sincerely,
Eric T. Peterson
Author, Portlander, Bike Rider
http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com
July 14th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Good questions, Eric.
1) Comments flagged “Others” were ones that didn’t explicitly state a position for the question. The majority were related to the topic, but yes that is also the category for critiques of the campaign.
This 24 week campaign is part of a larger campaign called “The Open Campaign”, which is the one we are using to generate leads. The premise of “The Open Campaign” is to share our results.
We are trying something different here and learning quite a bit. We’ll continue sharing what we learn through out the campaign. People have had reactions ranging from criticism to praise. Our plans are to stay in communication with people. To address some of the criticism we have been responding to comments; a few upset commenters came to Beer and Blog last Friday and we had a great discussion that ended with hugs; I’m having coffee with Jonathan Maus of BikePortland today as well.
2) There is a link to download the data at the end of the section called Transparency.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:30 am
You guys suck. Period. This was an irresponsible publicity stunt that should never have been perpetrated. There are now a lot of people in this community that ACTIVELY HATE YOUR COMPANY.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Hi Eric,
You’ll find the data in the “Transparency” section of the blog post:
http://www.webtrends.com/upload/discussion.zip
Robin
Multimedia Designer, Webtrends, occasional biker
July 14th, 2009 at 11:29 am
What’s not addressed here is that this campaign merely follows in the footsteps of local media who, over the last few summers, have trumped up “Cars vs. Bikes: It’s war!” stories that inflamed road passions and ushered in the season’s spate of injuries from car vs. bike road-rage incidents.
This summer, local media were quiet—but WebTrends ably filled the vacuum, as seen in all the rager comments on KATU and oregonlive.
Thanks, WebTrends, for keeping our summer commute lively. This summer’s blood is on *your* hands.
What price publicity?
July 14th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Serviceburo and WOBG I can see that you are both upset and I respect that. I’ve read the concerns that this could inflame tension on the road, but the reality is that it hasn’t. The results of our campaign have been very favorable to the cycling community.
July 14th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
So Justin—you’ve been out on the streets, on your bike? Otherwise, what’s your basis for making such a claim about the reality of road tensions?
However, it is encouraging that we’ve made it past the comment peak generated by your campaign with no mainstream-reported bloodshed. You guys may have squeaked by.
But how many unreported injuries—and close calls like the one that follows—could be attributable to your campaign, involving some rager emboldened by the swell of his commenting comrades on KATU? (Keep watch on such incidents here: http://bikeportland.org/closecall/view_reports.php? )
“Right-turn cut-off. The van passed me then slowed to turn and even hesitated as if they saw me but went ahead anyways.”
July 14th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
WOBG I think we can both agree that we have no evidence that our ad increased tension.
July 14th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Interesting, to say the least. I too, was angered by the underlying assumption in the question – that cyclist don’t pay their share. For us who choose to bike to get to places, motorist’s instances of road rage are not insignificant; while a car vs car instance may result in a few hundred dollars of damage, a car vs bike instance can mean death or serious injury.
Maybe you should take the opportunity to set the record straight on that advertising spot: that cyclists (most of us also own cars, houses, and are employed) already pay our share. The question you should ask (especially in PDX!) is “Should more of the transportation budget go to bike infrastructure?”
July 14th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Great suggestion Andres!
July 14th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Oh—and what the heck is “the cycling community”? I and most of the bike riders you see are quite mainstream: We’re your colleagues, neighbors, friends and relatives—and we drive cars, too.
[Removed by editor for violation of our Guidelines]
July 14th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
WOBG making fun of women being in a community isn’t necessary to make your point. Communities are associations between people. There are many types of communities:
- Community of action
- Community of circumstance
- Community of inquiry
- Community of interest
- Community of place
- Community of position
- Community of practice
- Community of purpose
Cycling is a community of interest. There are also cycling communities of practice, such as the BTA, and more. Being a member of one community doesn’t prevent one from being a part of another. I am in the niche Portland tech community, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a part of some mainstream communities as well.
July 14th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Future question: something to the effect of “do we need healthcare reform?” or “should the US have single payer health care”
July 14th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I’d like to see Portland’s opinion on requiring bicyclists to carry liability insurance equal to that of vehicle coverage. Almost every day I drive past cyclists and while most follow the rules of the road, others do not. One day, heaven forbid, one is going to cause an accident by blowing through that red light because they assume that no one is coming. If it’s a cyclist at fault they should provide insurance to cover damage to person/property. Does cyclist insurance exist? I have no idea, but it should.
And since I’m the only one here not bashing Webtrends and actually responding with a question like you asked, maybe I’ll see it out there on MAX one day! Portland cyclists, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind sharing the road with bikes, cars, pedistrians, etc…. I just like it when we all follow the rules and play nice.
July 14th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Thanks for the suggestion, Melanie!
July 14th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Thank you for the suggestions, lynnor!
July 14th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Point is, Justin, that bike riders, like women, are not an “other”; they are “us,” perhaps especially in Portland.
Sure, you can balkanize if you want to—and no doubt that helps supply the ethical anesthesia that empowers WebTrends to trade its neighbors’ commute safety for publicity.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
WOBG I agree that bike riders and women are not an other and that they are us.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Thanks for providing that spreadsheet … safe to assume that is ** all ** the responses?
One thing: I don’t think you can say “[WOBG] I think we can both agree that we have no evidence that our ad increased tension” since it is clear to everyone that the ad created a ton of tension within the local community based on the negative responses I asked about. The interesting thing is how focused some people’s tension is towards WebTrends … odd really, but clearly people are passionate about the topic so congrats on picking a good one.
I agree we don’t have any data yet that details an increase in bike-related injuries caused by the conversation (per some people’s commentary) but it would be interesting to look for that correlation as well, don’t you think? This is what I love about analytics!
Anyway, good luck managing the response.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Justin, I’ll agree to “no evidence that our ad increased tension” IF you will agree to either:
“no evidence that WebTrends considered its ad’s potential for increased road tensions based on related happenings during previous summers”
OR
“WebTrends considered its ad’s potential for increased road tensions based on related happenings during previous summers—and continued anyway.”
July 14th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Eric, yes that spreadsheet has all of the responses up to the point it was created. And, the negative responses you asked about were criticism directed at us, but that’s not the same as increasing tension between people in traffic.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
WOBG, I hear your critique on our question. What question would you like to see us ask?
July 14th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
How about this question? “Is it too much to ask jaywalkers in Portland to avoid disrupting oncoming traffic”?
July 14th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Thanks for the suggestion, Rick!
July 14th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Well Justin, it’s too late for WebTrends to ask the original question more honestly, thus:
“Should you have to pay extra to ride your bike?”
And our city is the worse for it.
So how about:
“If every bike rider in town were injured, how many colleagues, friends and relatives would you need to visit?”
That’s probably a bit too long, though.
July 14th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
The original question was obviously poorly worded with respects to being unbiased, but it certainly did spark some discussion.
Another thing it did was make me lose a lot of respect for some of the cyclists (or whatever you want to be called that doesn’t get you bent out of shape), who will seemingly get upset about anything, acting persecuted as if they were pre-Civil War slaves.
Grow up guys. Seriously.
July 14th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I agree with Andres above. I think that your next ad should be not yet be another controversial question, but some resolution to your first one (at least for the same period of time that you ran the question – say, another 3 weeks).
Get with ODOT and the City of Portland and publish the relevant numbers about where the funds for our roads & highways do come from here in this region.
You found that there’s a lot of confusion – that people don’t have the facts about road funding, or don’t understand it. Rather than move on, try to do something about it.
How about something like this multiple choice:
“How much of Portland’s roads are paid for by your Gas Tax dollars?
A) 100%
B) 50%
C) 8%
D) 0%”
followed by the correct answer…
Then, feel free to move on to your next publicity stunt.
July 14th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
R,
[Removed by editor for violation of our Guidelines]
Are you saying it’s too much to recognize bike riders as your colleagues, neighbors, friends, relatives instead of as an “other”? If so, R, the opportunity for growth may be yours.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
NewDadSW, love what you said. Really agree that the next question should be a resolution to the first one!
July 14th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
WOBG,
No, I’m saying that accidents happen in MANY activities like riding bikes, hunting, football, running, etc. Bikers need to understand and be willing to accept the inherent risks involved with their activity, which, unfortunately, can be careless drivers of cars. Similar to how it would be silly to hear an MMA fighter complain about being injured in the ring, it is silly to hear bikers say they are outraged because injuries occur. It just happens. Sorry. Try your best to avoid it, as will most drivers of cars.
Further, becoming defensive because you didn’t like the way you were referred to as “a community of cyclists” is just nit-picking. As I stated before, this ridiculous sensitivity is one of the reasons hearing some of these comments has reduced my respect for “individuals who ride bicycles” (was that politically correct or no?). To provide an example, I am part of a “residential community” and, to be honest with you, I feel like I’d *deserve* to be called hyper-sensitive if I complained that “residents are people too!”
More people die of drunk-driving related accidents than bicycle accidents each year as far as I know. If you want to fight for a cause fight for, I’d go for that one.
Kudos to Webtrends and Justin for (heaven forbid) trying to integrate community involvement with advertising as well as being way more patient than they should with trivial complaints.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
If you want some ideas, take one or two out of NPR’s playbook and expand on them:
“I believe…” (reader fills in the rest)
“My one wish is…”
“Something bigger than myself is…”
“Portland should be more…” (though on the heels of the last compaign, this one might be skewed in a narrow direction)
“I like Portland because…”
“The ideal city has/is/would…” (one could substitute anything for “city”)
“When I grow up…”
“I want to be remembered for/as…”
“1000 years from now, history will say about us that…”
“What IS the meaning of life?” (any bets on “42″ being the most popular answer?)
“If I could do anything, I would…”
“Together, we can…” (I’d like it even more if Obama hadn’t stolen it first)
“We should…”
I like these ideas, in part, because they’re all positive. It might reveal something interesting, and it plays much better for you in a sales situation where you want your (potential) customers thinking positive, not negative.
If you want to stick to controversial topics with yes/no questions though, maybe “Should Portland have another professional sports team?”
July 14th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
R,
Huh? No one footballs, fights or hunts to get around town, and few people run for that purpose. Like driving, riding a bike is not merely an activity; it’s transportation. And sorry to be a bore, but it’s free of most of the transportation-related ills that drag our world down–so it’s a responsible choice to make.
You don’t live here, do you? Let’s try this another way, using a car paradigm:
My company kicks off a publicity campaign thats asks whether small-car drivers should pay “road tax.” (Never mind that of course they already pay.) Lots of SUV owners will drop raging comments about how dare “they” zip around like that in those little things when their bumpers aren’t even at “our” height, and how it serves them right if they get smashed—and sorry, it just happens.
But my company rationalizes that despite such unseemliness, the campaign must be OK because its results will be very favorable to that pesky “small-car community” (even though a vast cross-section of our colleagues, neighbors, friends and families own small cars). Yet my company already knows the campaign-analysis-in-progress shows just about a tie between yes/more and no/less/same.
Now, in such a scenario, what if you or people you love drove a small car? What would you say to my company?
Are you seeing the growth opportunity?
Oh, and drunk drivers kill bike riders (and small-car drivers); those aren’t separate categories.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Agreed, Justin. WebTrends, take NewDadSW’s advice and at least partially redeem yourselves.
July 15th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
WOBG,
Based on your wild extrapolations, it is now even more obvious that you (and other bikers that share your mindset) are hyper-sensitive. I’ll address your points one more time and then I’ll stop hijacking Webtrends’ discussion area:
1. No one said biking wasn’t responsible (good for you), and it doesn’t matter whether it’s transportation or not; IT IS INHERENTLY DANGEROUS. Similar to when I get into my car every day, you need to accept the fact that you could get in an accident and be injured or killed. Can’t accept the facts? Then don’t ride your bike. Period. It CAN NOT and WILL NOT ever be 100% safe, just like any other form of transportation, as well as many other activities (including the ones mentioned previously).
2. I have no idea what you are trying to say with your “small car community” example. If I drive a small car, I have no problem being referred to as part of the “small car community”. Also, there are always going to be members of said “community” — colleagues, neighbors, loved ones, whoever — who don’t take part in the study or discussions. Oh well; you can’t reach (or please) everyone. Side note: as a member of the small car community (hi mom/loved ones!), you don’t see me complaining about SUVs and semi-trucks because they often contribute to accidents with small cars. It just happens. We all accept this fact before we turn the key. We hope it doesn’t happen to us. We move on with life.
3. Of course drunk drivers kill bikers. Nowhere did I say there wasn’t an intersection between drunk driving accidents and bike accidents; I was simply implying that the drunk driving issue is a MUCH larger issue based on deaths alone. If people could stop whining about being incorrectly referred to as a community and put some of that passion into an even bigger issue, it stands to reason that there are many more lives that could potentially be saved.
By the way, I am *CONSTANTLY* seeing bikers breaking the rules of the road, and am astonished that some of these people are still alive. It’s not just cars that contribute to the problem; it’s everyone. Get off your “awesomer-than-thou-because-a-bike-is-a-smart-choice” pedestal and do your best to stay safe out there. That’s all you can really do anyway.
Peace out,
R
“Bikers R Sensitive”
July 15th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Guys,
Awesome analysis, but you’re freakin’ killing me! Why in the world haven’t you posted pictures of the actual ads? Give a reader a break and let us see the ads that drove all this research, OK?
- Jeff
July 15th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Sorry about that Jeff, we have it on our landing page. The question was “Should cyclists pay a road tax?”
July 15th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
@Jeff – We’ve got 2 pictures of the train itself. You can see them at Webtrends Max Ad and Webtrends Max Ad – In Motion
July 15th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Again, brilliant work. This is super interesting and a testament to the creativity [and confidence] of the people at WebTrends. This is about 8 billion times more thought provoking than Nielsen’s “Twitter Qwitter” stunt from a few months ago.
I don’t know what would be another good question to ask locally in Portland, but I do think that open-sourcing the question is the right path to take. Perhaps you can run some kind of contest for local interests to pitch their own questions to you; they get $X of advertising for their cause, you get some more interesting conversation going, Portlanders hash out the conversation in an oh-so-futuristic vision of democracy.
I can imagine that school boards, or the police, or local politicians, would have some fabulous ideas.
Strike again before the copycats show up!
PS: just read the “there’s no such thing as scalable sentiment scoring” post, thank god someone finally wrote that. Has that meme gotten play anywhere else? Seems like it would be a fun hit piece to write (vis a vis naming names) and lob into the echo chamber
July 16th, 2009 at 8:08 am
[...] Initial campaign results from our MAX ad « Webtrends Social media is changing the way businesses connect with markets. Conversations take place where the participants choose and are often spread across multiple sources. ulling the conversation together in order to make informed, engagement decisions is at the heart of marketing’s challenge in this new media landscape. To demonstrate how Webtrends Social Measurement helps with a social media campaign, we advertised… (tags: Marketing socialmedia Strategie) [...]
July 16th, 2009 at 10:04 am
We’ve received complaints about hate speech in the comments. Thank you to those who reached out to us. We have removed the the offending material and apologize for the time the material was viewable. The offender has been banned from commenting further on our blog.
Due to this occurrence, we updated our Social Media Guidelines to explicitly state that we will not publish comments with hate speech and that offenders can be banned from commenting.
July 16th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Ethan, I think we’re onto something here as well. The learnings from this campaign are numerous and span everything from this topic to marketing ethics to our social media guidelines.
I’m working on a conversation map to show visually how all of the discussion points fit together. I’m seeing the conversation map looking a bit like a decision tree. The idea is that people should be able to trace the line of thought that they agree with and use that to understand the view points around them. Conversation maps could be a great tool for framing challenging conversations.
July 20th, 2009 at 9:29 am
I’ve stated earlier that I experienced road rage in which comments were exchanged regarding me “not paying taxes” because I was riding my bicycle.
This campaign has had a detrimental affect on bike/car relations, I can report that through my experience in the past few weeks.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
I realize I’m coming to this campaign very late in the game but I’ve just learned about it and I have feedback for you that I hope you’ll find valuable. I appreciate the analysis you posted on this page about how there is confusion about what taxes cyclists already DO pay for roads but I think you need to do a post-mortem on how you ask your questions. I have two points: (1) You did a push-poll and I hope you’re not proud of that. “Should cyclists pay a road tax” is a loaded question of the format, “have you stopped beating your wife yet?” Not only is it a push-poll trying to convince people that cyclists do not already pay for roads, a simple yes/no response does not answer the question. If you want to get some insight into how valid push-poll results are, run your next ad-campaign with the question, “Should Webtrends drop its Al-Quada contracts?” (2) Your poll stirred up anger that caused an increased threat to my life. I believe you didn’t mean to do that and I hope I’m right. Yesterday (Monday, Aug 7) when I was biking to work, somebody in a Toyota 4-runner “buzzed” me (drove past me very close and fast) and shouted, “pay up.” I didn’t understand this and spent a few minutes googling when I got to work, then I came up with this: http://www.portlandize.com/2009/07/should-cyclists-pay-road-tax.html . This blogger predicted exactly what happened to me and that’s how I learned about your campaign.
August 11th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Oops, actually yesterday was the 10th… That’ll teach me to pay attention. Sorry for the confusion
August 12th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Daniel, I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience here. It’s never good to hear someone has had a bad experience on the road. Who knows what that jerk was doing, what he meant, or what inspired him.
August 14th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Justin, I don’t think there’s any danger in anyone suing you over this and I regret even mentioning the “buzzing” incident because it distracts us from what I think is the more important point. The analysis in your “reflecting on the salient points” section is really impressive, innovative and valuable. It’s amazing what a nice job you all did aggregating complex sentiment from so many sources, I think you should be shouting from the rooftops about that. However, your own analysis also shows that you got back nuanced answers that did not directly address the question which is really solid evidence that you asked a leading question which, in turn, means that you can’t trust the data that pertains to that question directly.
In other words, you can’t say that you found that some people want cyclists to pay “more” road tax or “less” because you found that the population doesn’t really understand where the funding currently comes from and we don’t know what “more” or “less” actually means.
August 14th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Great points here, Daniel. I think it’s a smart observation to say that the opinions people have on this subject should be taken in consideration with the relative understanding they have of the topic. I think that reiterates that there is a ripe opportunity for the constituents involved on transportation policy to work on education campaigns. With a better distribution of knowledge, I think Portland can have more productive conversations that can improve policies for everyone.
It also bears repeating that our campaign was measuring a social conversation, which should also be taken into account when looking at the data. This wasn’t a scientifically executed survey. The conversation has valuable insights into current thinking that could be used to design scientific studies. It was extremely effective in starting discussion and exposed a wide range of thought. Hopefully people will use the insights to improve their future conversations.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Ok, now I think we’re getting somewhere. I agree with you that you learned some very valuable things from the discussion you started and, as I mentioned before, I’m hugely impressed with the way you did that. I want you to publish those findings and draw the kind of attention to yourselves that you rightly deserve. Also, I appreciate that you admitted that it wasn’t a scientifically executed survey but I’m worried that the admission will end here in the comments page. Specifically, I’m worried about the text of the MAX add when you publish your results. Since the study wasn’t scientifically executed, you didn’t find answers to the question you asked so trying tell us that answer is sloppy at best, possibly even dishonest. Maybe a better presentation would read like this:
Should cyclists pay road tax? We don’t know, the answers were nuanced. Here’s what we did learn (taken from your “Reflecting the salient points” page):
* There is a lot of confusion on the facts about who pays for what currently
* More taxes on cycling could be bad for everyone
* Some cyclists want more taxes, but under specific conditions
* … etc.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Again, great points, Daniel
Our campaign was a paid ad on the MAX with a question where the answers would be tracked in social media, which was all information available on the ad, so dishonest doesn’t feel like the right word. I don’t mind if people want to question the validity of the results. While I don’t think the opinions shared can be questioned, it is reasonable to question whether the percentages of sentiments we scored would be comparable to a scientific survey. Would make a great comparative study!
For reference, the reason we set up our campaign they way we did is because it mimics how our customers run their campaigns, which allowed us to show off our software in a relevant manner. When we run the results on the follow up ad, we’ll definitely include our methodology so people can draw their own conclusions about the data. Also, we won’t put language on the MAX that indicates we know the answer to our question. Instead we’ll focus on reporting the conversation data that resulted from the campaign much in the way you did in your example.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
(Continued in another comment to separate threads of conversation for clarity)
At this point the damage is done, but I would also like to see an apology for the WAY in which your study wasn’t scientifically executed.
Occasionally, someone I’ve had a disagreement with on the road will pull over their car, get out and start yelling. When they yell about what I did to wrong them, it’s almost always based on the assumption that I don’t have the right to use the road on my bicycle and that if I’m out there, it’s by the kindness and graciousness of drivers. The people who’ve yelled at me on the road feel like their patience and courtesy is abused when I take the lane for a left turn or to avoid being bashed by an opening car door. As I talk with more and more people on the topic (both on the road and off), I’m beginning to suspect that there are two public-awareness problems contributing to this attitude: One is that people don’t understand traffic law as it applies to bicycles and can’t tell the difference between a cyclist who does something reasonable and legal and one who does something rude. The second is that people don’t believe cyclists pay any of the taxes that keep roads up and they feel indignant that those who DO pay are not given preferential treatment.
The fact is, as you learned from numerous user comments in your study, that cyclists pay lots of road tax but asking people, as you did, if cyclists should pay reinforces a preconception that’s already making me less safe on the road. Questions can carry data, just ask Karl Rove: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/banks
August 17th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Daniel, we never pretended to be conducting anything other than a marketing campaign. Additionally, I’d be more persuaded by the “loaded question” argument if we had asked, “Should cyclists start paying road taxes?” or “Should cyclists also pay road taxes?” or something like that. But we didn’t ask those questions. However, even if we had asked one of those blatant questions, I still wouldn’t feel the need to apologize. The fact is that the only usage based taxes on the road are paid for by motor vehicles.
We all contribute to the sales, property, and income taxes that pay for the majority of our roads. We also pay for schools regardless of whether or not we send children to them. We also pay for police cars, but we can’t use those. So paying for public infrastructure out of regular public taxes is not the same as paying usage taxes. Since our question focused on cyclists, it could have also been “Should motorists pay a road tax?” *That* would have been problematic as motorists do pay additional per vehicle taxes that are usage based.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Ok, great point about usage tax vs the general tax. “Should cyclists pay usage-based taxes for roads” is a question worth asking. My objection is that but both usage-based taxes and general-fund taxes are “road taxes” when the money is applied to roads, and the combined funding from the two types is what you asked about. there’s nothing in the question about usage-based vs general taxation so I’m having trouble swallowing this post-hoc explanation.
I also agree that there are ways to word it that would have transmitted a STRONGER assumption than you did but I still think this one was loaded. If you really don’t think the question as you asked it transmits an assumption, I’ll go away satisfied that even though you and I disagree about the meaning of language, at least webtrends didn’t set out to make a name for yourselves at the expense of Portland’s cyclists. Can you at least reassure me on that score?
August 18th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Ultimately we saw a range of interpretations of our question and agree that it has broad interpretation. Since we had no real agenda for the data, like lobbying for an issue or evaluating market size, we don’t consider a broad interpretation undesirable. I’m cool with the opinion that are question could have been better, because it comes from constituents who really do have an agenda, which makes the conversation richer and that was our real agenda.
The majority of us do not arrive to work by car. I personally take the bus everyday and am in the process of selling my car. We have many, many people that bike to work. I can assure you, we have no interest in making a name for ourselves at the expense of Portland’s cyclists. We have and will sponsor more bike events.
August 21st, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Justin, you can “assure” all you want, but WebTrends’ actions speak louder than your words. You’ve done a lot of damage to yourselves in the local community, and standard-issue pablum-speak won’t nearly fix it.
But this might help: When will WebTrends live up to its word in the post above, and put a follow-up message on the MAX?
And _this_ time, maybe do something to support vulnerable road users rather than prompt loonies to aim deadly weapons at them, as Daniel Miles and others have reported.
I suggest “Cyclists DO pay for roads: cyclistsdopay.com” and of course set up that domain and populate it by working with the BTA, Bike Portland, etc.
Come on, WebTrends, you amped up the risk of injury and death for a lot of people. Own up, and clean up your mess–don’t just walk away from it like a toddler.
August 22nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Calliope, Daniel asked me for that assurance after a multi-day, thoughtful discussion and I was happy to reassure him.
We obviously don’t see eye to eye on our ad and I don’t want to fight with you. I respect your opinion and am glad you shared it here.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Justin, I don’t want to fight with you either. I and many others want WebTrends to repair the damage it caused, to the extent possible.
Please tell me when WebTrends will make good on its offer from nearly six weeks ago (in post above) to “progress the conversation” with a follow-up message on the wrapped MAX train, the same venue as the original message.
Unless and until that happens, your assurances mean nothing. WebTrends aimed loonies at vulnerable road users, recorded data, and ran.
August 24th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Calliope, this is the second time you’ve called people loonies. We don’t tolerate hate and your label is riddled with it. Please keep the conversation productive and I’ll continue discussing with you.
Obviously you and others are upset, so I respect that you feel like there was damage. It’s true that we were open to rewrapping the MAX at the beginning of August to progress the conversation, but we got so little interest that there was no point. If there was real, ongoing negative impact from our ad; the pain felt would have kept people focused and engaged to take us up on our offer to update the question. But, there has been almost no discussion and participation since the initial week of buzz passed. Had Vance and Bike Portland not labeled our ad as controversial, it would have gone as unnoticed as it has been for the last couple of months.
Hat tip to you for being the first to notice that we didn’t do the early rewrap! It’s one of the anecdotes that will be in our final report in October. We are rewrapping the MAX then, which was our original timing. It will progress the conversation for sure.
August 24th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Justin, your graphs above show three of the top four discussion sources as KATU, OregonLive and Twitter. Discussion clearly had a life apart from Bike Portland and Vance.
It’s ironic that you claim not to tolerate hate when many perceive that WebTrends fomented it here in our city, for however brief an interval.
Hate took the form of persons intentionally steering their motor vehicles toward cyclists and yelling, “Pay up,” as Daniel Miles reported. I experienced a similar incident in which a passenger door was quite intentionally thrown open in front of me as I approached a traffic light. It’s the reason I now carry mace and a phone that records video.
Fortunately for WebTrends, the perpetrators were not also yelling “WebTrends” as they peeled out and gunned their motors down the road, so corellation triumphed over causality.
Please realize that many similar accounts circulate in forms that WebTrends cannot measure. No doubt in some cases, it’s because victims chose not to support WebTrends’ stunt with discussion that would be appropriated by the stunt (and it’s why I and others have commented here and not elsewhere).
The point to rewrapping the MAX at the beginning of August would have been just for WebTrends to have lived up to its word and done the right thing regardless of the amount of interest expressed.
So that’s two outs and none on. WebTrends, you’re going to have to hit a heck of a home run in October to demonstrate that you’ve learned something about being a good citizen and a good neighbor, about not piling more risk of bodily harm on those who are already vulnerable and about simply not being evil (apologies to your competitor’s slogan). We’ll all be watching.
August 26th, 2009 at 1:08 am
Oh snap!
Justin, you there? Alleged perps of vehicular assault need you to defend them some more against besmirchment with the L-word.
August 26th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Sorry I haven’t had more time to respond here! These are all great comments and I appreciate you sharing your opinions. These points and more will be covered in our next update in October.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Looks like PPD has charged a driver with intentionally hitting a bike rider: ( http://bikeportland.org/2009/08/29/man-charged-with-intentionally-running-down-person-on-bike-friday/ )
Note to prosecuting attorney: To help establish a pattern of behavior, maybe look into how active the guy was—and how threatening his tone may have been—in the discussion instigated and measured by WebTrends. Maybe also get a read on how many times the guy may have been exposed to the WebTrends MAX wrap since its debut, and whether there’s any evidence of a cumulative effect on tone and behavior.
But please, no one call him a l–nie; we don’t tolerate that here.
August 30th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Let\’s get the torches and go after the loonies!! YaAAARRRR!!! That\’ll solve it!! HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE Get \’em!!! We know it was the Webtrends guys with the ad about the taxes!!!!!
Road rage has hurt a biker. It has nothing to do with the fact that road rage exists and by definition is targeted at other vehicles. Bikes are exempt from it damnit!!! Bike hating gods of luck are unfairly targeting the bikes with road rage!!! No fair, no fair!! We know it was because of Webtrends!! We\’ve been hating them lately so it\’s there fault! Yeah!!! BBbblagahhhhhahahahhh
And if you see anyone else talking about other dangers and responsibilities of the road like taxes, registration, licensing, or insurance; GET THEM TOO!!!!
Loonies, loonies, loonies….
August 31st, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Thanks Mob; that’s nearly a pitch-perfect example of the toxic froth fomented by WebTrends in the KATU and Oregonlive discussions–some of it quite specifically calling for open season on cyclists. And now someone has followed through.
And Mob, if you weren’t play-acting, for cripes sake stay out from behind both the wheel and the handlebar and get some help.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Mob, thank you for coming to my defense, but there is something to be said for remaining gracious in the face of scrutiny.
Karma and Calliope, spreading misinformation to bolster your struggling argument is disrespectful to the lives this incident has touched and complicates the community’s ability to get to the truth to effect positive change. It is my sincere hope that you both really do care about the fact that a person was injured here and another is living with the fact that they caused it intentionally. We don’t know the circumstances that surrounded this incident, but if we really care, we will seek to understand what really happened in order to prevent it in the future.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Justin, no need to be coy. What are you perceiving as misinformation?
(Aside from the “Have you quit beating your spouse yet” wording on the the MAX wrap, that is)
August 31st, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Speculating this incident was caused by our ad, as WOBG is touting on Bike Portland (who was banned for his misogynistic and racist comments over a month ago).
Hating the part of the community you wish to change is an illogical strategy. How can you aspire to change the minds of people you can’t stand long enough to understand them? As long as you reduce everyone down on KATU and the Oregonian as loonies spitting toxic froth, you’ll always be fighting a losing battle with no end. You won’t see society made up of unique people with opinions ranging from valid to fundamental. You won’t hear the nuance because your preference is to focus on the ones you don’t like. And as a result, you won’t influence anyone. You will successfully regale yourself to hang out with only people who think just like you and speculate on why you haven’t made a difference.
I am reminded of people deciding to cull sharks in Hawaii after several attacks occurred. People slaughtered sharks near the beaches where the attacks took place thinking they were making a difference. With research, they later found out that sharks traveled hundreds of miles for months after the culling never returning to the beach where the attacks occurred (with those researchers receiving heavy scrutiny the whole time from those calling for blood, mind you). All the while the dangerous sharks were long gone from the scene causing more damage as humans wasted their time killing the ones that were close. They only succeeded in damaging the ecosystem.
You can do better, right?
September 1st, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Having been assaulted with a motor vehicle, I can report that the experience is decidedly lacking in nuance.
So sure, studying sharks is fascinating—when someone else is your bait. That falls a little short of fulfilling “don’t be evil,” but you still have a few weeks til October.
However, if WebTrends is authentically concerned for the victim and even the accused, and the loved ones of both, an appropriate gesture might be to immediately replace the existing MAX wrap with a message of goodwill.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I’m sorry to hear that you were assaulted by a motor vehicle, Calliope. I’m sure the experience was far from subtle. The nuance I was referring to was that not all comments on KATU and OregonLive are negative, so lumping the commenters together prevents us from seeing individuals with different opinions.
There is no bait used in the story about the sharks, so I’m not following your line of thought. The story was about people doing the wrong things to solve a problem they didn’t understand.
In the case of this assault, the story appears to be that it was a fight in a parking lot that escalated into an assault with a car. I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to try and insert ourselves into this story. I invite you to join me in giving them space to heal and grieve.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
[...] Initial campaign results from our MAX ad – This was the second post with an update, which came two weeks after news broke. It has juicy charts and stats that breakdown the discussion that ensued. [...]
November 4th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
WebTrends, it appears you never surfaced the promised [http://blogs.webtrends.com/transparency/?p=697 , last paragraph; and at various points in the comment thread above], redemptive October report/white paper/whatever on this topic—and likely never intended to.
That’s the third out, WebTrends; inning’s over. You’ve convincingly portrayed yourselves as exploiters who heaped additional danger on the most vulnerable road users for your own gain. You’ve placed yourselves along the same nauseating gradient as local TV news and drive-time radio shock jocks in exploiting bike/car tensions during past Portland summers.
Perhaps you at least had the minimal decency to remove the initial, misleading MAX wrap; I haven’t seen it around. Then again, maybe its paid-for time simply ran out.
Don’t be evil, WebTrends. Eventually it will come back to you.