by Angela Guess

According to a recent press release, “Monitor 360, the Narrative Analytics company, reemerges today under the new name Protagonist, a name shared with its Narrative Analytics platform, which also launched today. Right now, corporate marketers operate blindly — making major strategic decisions based primarily on instinct. Yet their success is rooted in correctly understanding and influencing the belief systems of their audience. These beliefs, or narratives, are profoundly impactful, but difficult to understand or measure. Breakthroughs in natural language processing and machine learning are changing that. A new field of innovation called Narrative Analytics takes these breakthroughs and combines them with human expertise to confidently assess the full range of beliefs that drive consumer behaviors.”

The release goes on, “According to the CMO Survey, spending on quantitative data about customer behavior will leap from 4.6 percent to 22 percent of marketing budgets in the next three years — a 376 percent increase. Yet few CMO’s are using data to drive decision-making. Most rely on one-dimensional, inherently biased input from surveys or traditional market research, or simply gut feelings. Narrative Analytics decisively defines brand perception and the context it exists in so that CMO’s can tap into the narratives that run deep.”

It continues, “Narratives are unseen forces that drive behavior — commonly held beliefs, cultural norms, generational perceptions and more. They often range across channels and are influenced by dozens of simultaneous factors, making them exceptionally difficult to isolate or understand. Narratives can also spell life or death for major businesses, depending on how effectively those brands interact with them.”

Read more at Marketwired.

Photo credit: Protagonist