The art of a story – SmithGeigerGroup

Compelling local coverage. Fresh perspectives. Innovative story telling. These principles serve as the core of our training strategies designed to build audiences and drive engagement across all screens and social networks.

Given that the majority of our research and training engagements are proprietary, it is not often we have the liberty of sharing any of our client’s views or success stories. Over the last several months, however, we have been fortunate to have taken part in several studies, the results of which have been made public.

The Knight-Cronkite News Lab details a compelling success story for local news channel KGO-TV. “…Has the station-wide effort made a difference? Cibrowski cites a small ratings uptick linked to the franchise, but the really encouraging news comes from the research firm SmithGeiger, which found in a January study that 40% of local news consumers were aware of Building a Better Bay Area. Of that group, nearly four out of 10 associated the project with KGO-TV — in just four months, one of the fastest spikes in brand awareness the firm has seen…” Read the article here.
The Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy published a piece on Reinventing Local News, an article built on our extensive audience research. “In this research report, we show how local broadcasters might rethink story segments to create a more engaging news product for younger audiences, particularly with regard to hard news stories.” Read the article here.
Our November study with Hearst TV details how local television remains the most trusted source of news and information, , “A national study by Smith-Geiger for Hearst Television finds that four out of five younger video consumers rely on local news from a TV station — across broadcast and digital platforms — each week.” Read the full story here.

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Mark Briggs

VP Digital Media Strategies and Innovation

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Mark Briggs has spent his career focused on digital strategy, business development, workplace transformation, audience and revenue building, teaching and collaboration. He has started two companies, worked in senior management for three others and written three books.

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Having served as SmithGeiger’s primary statistician for over 10 years, Tim is also responsible for conducting multivariate data analysis focusing on customer segmentations, key drivers, Principal Components Analysis among other analytical techniques to uncover deeper-level storylines within the data structures.

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Most recently Briggs has served as the director of digital media and innovation for KING 5 in Seattle from 2010-2017 and served as a Ford Fellow in Entrepreneurial Journalism at The Poynter Institute from 2010-2012. Previously, he co-founded Serra Media, a Seattle-based technology company, and spent nine years running newspaper websites in Everett and Tacoma, Wash.

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Briggs is the author of Entrepreneurial Journalism, a book about the rise of journalism startups and how to start your own journalism business. It was published by CQPress and released in October 2011.Briggs is also the author of Journalism 2.0: How to survive and thrive in the digital age which was published by J-Lab and the Knight Citizen News Network in 2007 and downloaded as a PDF more than 200,000 times in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

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That book lead to Journalism Next, which was published by CQPress in December 2009. A second edition was published in Nov. 2012 and a third edition hit the shelves (and Kindles) in 2015 and is available at Amazon.com. (A French translation was also released in late 2013.)

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As part of his mission to help journalists transform in the digital age and leverage the power of digital/social/mobile media, Mark has served as a speaker, trainer and consultant for various projects around the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. He spoke at SXSW Interactive in Austin in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. In May 2010 he was named one of 20 Journalists to Follow by Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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Depth Of Experience

We have conducted over 4000 proprietary studies and have had a seat at the table at every major transition from broadcast, to digital, to mobile, to today’s continuing evolution of multi-screen and multi-platform technology, including OTT and virtual reality. We set the benchmark for understanding, evaluating, and delivering actionable recommendations in this highly complex digital landscape. Our forward thinking provides roadmaps for our clients to choreograph their programs and messaging across all social networks, transform disruption into opportunity, and develop new and innovative revenue streams. We do not limit our services to research. We are instrumental in helping our clients apply the insights and learnings surfaced in the data. The media landscape continues to evolve at an exponential rate. In order to help our clients anticipate trends and adapt at the speed of digital, we offer ongoing consulting services. Our teams support both on-air and digital initiatives, and we choreograph efforts across all screens and social media platforms. We consult with over 100 stations in the US, a host of media companies and provide research based guidance for all aspects of brand, product, and program development.

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Deliverables:

We never leave our clients with an indecipherable data dump. While we do deliver comprehensive data and analyses, we decode that information and provide insights and actionable recommendations designed to meet our client’s core objectives. We interpret the date and provide clear roadmaps for success. Additionally, we deliver our raw data (in addition to any data formats requested) in the form of our proprietary Flash Reports. These reports enable our clients to access any cut of the data with a single click. We obviate the need for any additional time and expense that other firms require to process those additional data cuts.

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Timelines:

We have a reputation within the industry of delivering the fastest turn-around times on even the most complex segmentation studies.

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Methodology:

Unlike many more traditional research firms, we are not wed or limited to any specific methodology. We deliver a broad and innovative range of quantitative and qualitative services and will deploy whatever service or combination of services best meets our client’s marketing objectives. These include online and mobile surveys, digital panels, online and in-person dial tests, focus groups, affinity sessions, proprietary digital ethnographies, eye tracking, Emotient Analytics (facial Coding), on site and in-store interviews.

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Innovation:

We move at the speed of digital and are market leaders in innovating research technology and methodologies. Our Virtual Tag Along® sets the benchmark for digital ethnographies, and our current work with Stanford University, ShareRocket, and Vertical Knowledge enable us to deliver 1) Moment-to-Moment immersive digital monitoring, 2) real-time social equity scores, and 3) a digital monitoring system capturing sentiment, content, interactions, transactional behavior and trends with real time reporting and dashboards.

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Sampling Methods:

By design, we rely on a number of different sample sources in order to meet the needs of each project and offer a deeper sample base than most.

All members of our panels are recruited exclusively using double opt-in permission-based techniques and have expressed interest in participating in online market research.
We DO NOT use unsolicited email or spam in our recruiting.
Using multiple suppliers ensures that we minimize any bias that might occur when utilizing a single source for sample.
In the process of fielding the study, panel respondents are checked against each other, thus preventing the respondents from taking the survey more than once.

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Quality Control:

The emphasis we place on quality control is unmatched in the industry. We monitor and clean the data several different ways:

Look for patterns in the data (i.e. straightliner analysis and inconsistent answers)
Review the open-ended questions to verify that the respondents are giving cogent, valid responses
We also verify based on length (time spent) of interview (speed trap)
Scrub out by locality based on zip code and/or IP address coming from “out of the region”
Many of our surveys also include “attention” questions which ask the respondent to answer a particular way in order to make sure they are paying attention.