This is work that I did for my MKT 4620 Text Analytics class that I taught in Spring 2017 focusing on using Brandwatch and Picodash to examine McDonald's Green Tea Mcflurry. The purpose of this presentation was to illustrate how social media analytics could be best used for data storytelling - which is what the current crop of tools most analysts have to work with are good for. I made a point at the end that due to the nature of the queries used and how they are formed, along with the differences between tool platforms, most data uncovered in this manner will be "bespoke" and unreplicable. That doesn't mean the information isn't valuable, but usually, it can not be conclusive, nor should anyone go to the bank, so to speak, based on what they learn from these tools.

1. MCDONALDS GREEN TEA MCFLURRY
PROCESS NOTES FOR
DATA STORYTELLING
Marshall Sponder
Zicklin School of Business
For Spring 2017 MKT 4620 Class / Text Analytics

2. HISTORY

3. WHAT IS THE GREEN TEA
MCFLURRY?
• Back in 2013, McDonald’s Japan released
the Matcha Oreo McFlurry, which
blended rich vanilla ice cream with
powdered green tea and crunchy
chocolate biscuit pieces.
• The mix was so popular it returned for an
encore season in 2014, and while it was
missing from menus last year, the
Matcha McFlurry has finally returned with
a whole new look, featuring more
traditional Japanese flavors.
It Began
in Japan
….
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2016/03/23/mcdonalds-japan-releases-brand-new-matcha-mcflurry-for-a-
limited-time

4. FOR A LIMITED TIME THE GREEN TEA
MCFLURRY IS AVAILABLE IN MALAYSIA
http://www.mcdonalds.com.my/desserts/dessert-month-greentea/

5. MCDONALDS HAS
BEEN CREATING
THEME AND
CULTURAL FOOD
KNOCKOFFS ALL
OVER THE WORLD.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/spenceralthouse/17-bizarre-
mcdonalds-items-america-desperately-
needs?bffbfood&utm_term=.rjpjqRODo4#.jaXX23bQ57

6. LOCAL PROMOTIONS OF A PRODUCT
NEED TO BE LOOKED AT
REGIONALLY AND CULTURALLY, AS
THERE OFTEN ISN’T ENOUGH
VOLUME TO DO A WIDER ANALYSIS
#McDonalds: Green Tea McFlurry Is Finally Here In Malaysia!
After introducing the Milo McFlurry, Red Bean Ice Cream,
Pineapple Sundae Cone, and Hershey’s Sundae Cone to the
Malaysian public, the fast food chain has now launched another
dessert flavor – the Green Tea McFlurry.
This comes after a Facebook post introducing the “special
flavors from Japan” went viral last year. Many thought that the
flavors – Matcha Top (sundae cone), Matcha Oreo McFlurry, and
Matcha Ogura McFlurry – would be introduced in Malaysia, but
was hugely disappointed when they realized it was posted by
McDonald’s Indonesia.
Don’t worry though, we can confirm that the Green Tea McFlurry is
now in Malaysia, and it comes in 2 varieties!
https://hype.my/2017/134691/mcdonalds-green-tea-mcflurry-finally-malaysia/

7. ONLY A SAMPLE OF THE DATA IS GEOCODED THAT
BRANDWATCH CAPTURES, BUT IT IS ENOUGH TO GET AN
IDEA OF WHERE THE IMPACT OF THE CAMPAIGN IS, AND
WHERE IT IS

9. THE ORIGINAL
FACEBOOK POST
SHOWED MCDONALDS
CORPORATE THAT
THIS PRODUCT MIGHT
BE POPULAR IN
REGIONS OF ASIA
WHERE GREEN TEA IS
POPULAR (SUCH AS
SINGAPORE AND
MALAYSIA)
USING SOCIAL MEDIA
FOR TREND ANALYSIS
AND PRODUCT
IDEATION IS ONE OF
ITS BETTER USES
CASES
https://www.facebook.com/McDonaldsID/photos/a.273566402670094.85966.216380195055382/1550127101680678/?type=3&theater

10. IDEATION AND QUERY ADJUSTMENT
GET A FEEL FOR THE BEST QUERY TO
CONTAIN THE RELEVANT CONTENT,
KNOWING THAT THERE IS NO QUERY THAT
WILL EVER CAPTURE EVERYTHING BEING
POSTED IN SOCIAL MEDIA (AS COVERED IN
THE CLASS LECTURE.)
HOWEVER, WE SHOULD PLAY AROUND WITH
THE QUERY TILL WE HAVE SOMETHING TO
WORK WITH THAT WE FEEL COMFORTABLE
WITH, GOING FORWARD.

11. GOOGLE TRENDS
DOESN’ T SHOW US
MUCH BECAUSE THERE
IS
LOW VOLUME
https://trends.google.com/trends/explor
e?q=mcdonalds%20green%20tea%20m
cflurry,green%20tea%20mcflurry,mcdon
alds%20matcha,Pineapple%20matcha%
20mcdonalds

12. CHANGED THE
BRANDWATCH QUERY
WHICH GAVE ME 10
TIMES THE VERBATIM
VOLUME AS WHAT I HAD
BEFORE
QUERY DONE IN CLASS:
(McDonald's OR "McDonalds") AND
(McFlurry OR "Mc Flurry") AND
("Green Tea" OR Matcha)
Updated Query:
(McFlurry OR "Mc Flurry") AND
("Green Tea" OR Matcha)
Everyone knows that McFlurry is a
branded name – therefore, it will be
easier to isolate via Brandwatch.

13. CREATED SEVERAL
DASHBOARDS AND
KEPT LOOKING AT
THEM TILL AN
IDEA FORMED IN
MY MIND ABOUT
WHAT I WANTED
TO EXPLORE ON
THIS TOPIC.
ALSO, I GIVE
MYSELF THE
ROOM TO
AS I GO ALONG,
AND DISCOVER
NEW THINGS
ABOUT THE
PRODUCT IN MY
RESEARCH.

14. S E E M S T O B E W A Y M O R E F E M A L E S T H A T A R E I N T E R E S T E D I N T H I S T O P I C T H A N M A L E S .
I S T H A T I M P O R T A N T ?
W H Y D O Y O U T H I N K T H I S I S T H E C A S E ?
C O U L D B E A N I N T E R E S T I N G S U B T O P I C T O E X P L O R E
W O M A N A R E M O S T L Y S T U D E N T S ( A C C O R D I N G T O B R A N D W A T C H ) A N D L O C A L B A S E D - A N D P A Y I N G
A T T E N T I O N T O T H E M C D O N A L D S C A M P A I G N A S I T I S B E I N G R O L L E D O U T

15. BY HONING IN USING PICODASH I COULD PICK UP BETTER
HASHTAGS TO GO FURTHER WITH MY QUERY IDEATION IF I
WANTED TO, PERHAPS GIVING ME BETTER RESULTS.
https://www.picodash.com/explore/tags#mcflurry then filtered
on “green” and focused on Malasyia

16. THIS IS JUST
ANOTHER WAY OF
SAYING
“SEMENTATION”

17. GOING FURTHER …. I
DECIDED TO GET AN
EXTRACT OF THE DATA
FOR MALAYSIA AND
THIS IS WHAT I
FOUND…
MCDONALDS MUST
BE RUNNING SOME
TYPE OF REGIONAL
CAMPAIGNS ON
CONTINENT WITH
MCFLURRIES.

18. GET THIS FILE: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w431dpuq5obzj2u/picodash_instagram_explore_tags_mcflurry_2017-
03-26.xlsx?dl=0

19. WORD MAP OF
INSTAGRAM
VERBATIM IN
THE
SPREADSHEET
WE CAN USE
THESE BIG
WORDS AS
ADDITIONAL
FILTERS IN OUR
ANALYSIS IF WE
WANT

20. TOP LIKED INSTAGRAM POST AND WHERE IT WAS TAKEN –
GOOGLE CAN RESOLVE LAT/LONG CODES DIRECTLY IN THEIR
INTERFACE

22. USE THE DATA TO ITERATE, EXPLORE,
FIND THE STORY.

23. ONE THING THAT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO DO IS CREATE A
AUTHOR LIST OF THE FEMALES AND FIGURE OUT WHAT OTHER
THINGS THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
This might be a
good analysis
for cross selling
or up selling, or
even product
ideation.
What about the
Green Tea
McFlurry actually
appeals to the
females?
In the behavior
atypical of other
types of things
they search
about?

24. SENTIMENT AROUND THE GREEN TEA MCFLURRY IS
ANOTHER AREA TO EXPLORE. IF WE CAN ALSO TRY TO
USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO UNDERSTAND AND SUMMARIZE
WHY PEOPLE LIKE OR HATE THE MATCHA MCFLURRY, THE
ANALYSIS SHOULD BE MORE HELPFUL TO WHOM IT WILL
PRESENTED TO.

25. LETS LOOK AT YOUTUBE VIDEOS
(MAYBE WE CAN HAVE
BRANDWATCH DO THAT TOO)
(McDonald OR McDonald's) AND (“green tea” OR greentea
OR Matcha) AND (mcflurry OR sundae OR icecream OR "ice
cream")
https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=CAM%253D&q=%28Mcdonald+OR+McDonald%27s
%29+AND+%28%22green+tea%22+OR+greentea+OR+matcha%29+AND+%28mcflurry+O
R+sundae+OR+icecream+OR+%22ice+cream%22%29
In fact, why don’t we make another query in Brandwatch and
see what that brings up, vs, the first one? Plus, lets see if it
will also index YouTube videos (I think it should – lets try it.)
One of the biggest surprises is that YouTube seems to
accept our Boolean query!!
Turns out Brandwatch doesn’t really collect much
YouTube data – so we must do our research on YouTube
for YouTube, or another platform.

26. ANOTHER WAY WE COULD HAVE GONE – NETWORK ANALYSIS
OF THE YOUTUBE SEARCH RESULTS AROUND
GREEN TEA MCFLURRY
( M C D O N A L D O R M C D O N A L D ' S ) A N D ( “ G R E E N T E A ” O R G R E E N T E A O R
M A T C H A ) A N D ( M C F L U R R Y O R S U N D A E O R I C E C R E A M O R " I C E C R E A M " )
http://lexiurl.wlv.ac.uk/searcher/youtube.html

27. THIS IS WHAT
PROFESSOR GOHAR
F. KHAN DID WITH
A BUNCH OF
YOUTUBE VIDEOS
– I WILL PRESENT
ON THIS
SEPARATELY

28. CASE STUDY: HYPERLINKS AND VIRAL YOUTUBE
VIDEOS
Do hyperlinks play a role in the popularity of a video posted on YouTube?
• YouTube popularity was one of the questions that a research team at
Centre for Social Technologies (a research center dedicated to
understanding social technologies: http://centreforsocialtech.com/) set
out to explore. [Note: the url for the Centreforsocialtech.com no longer
works]
• The research team knew that the answer lied in extracting and visualizing
hyperlinks (particularly in links pointing to a video) network and was
looking for ways to get hands on YouTube videos data.

29. CASE STUDY: HYPERLINKS AND VIRAL YOUTUBE VIDEOS
• The research team identified 100 most viewed YouTube videos. Every video posted
on YouTube was automatically assigned a unique ID embedded within the URL of the
video.
• Use the Webometrics Analyst platform (http://lexiurl.wlv.ac.uk/) to examine the video
files IDs as text file as an input, examining the number of external links and Internet
domains pointing to a video.
• This data was used to construct a two-mode network diagram below for better
understanding using UCINET social networking tool (network analysis is examined in
a later chapter.)
Our view: The value of this type of Link Analysis depends on what the researcher is trying to test or prove. The analysis here
suggests that the system for the top most watched videos is largely gamed, because almost all the top 100 most watched
videos got their incoming links from the same domains (sources) – that could have been deliberate, not based as much on
the content on it’s own merits (or lack, there of).
Were the purpose of the analysis is to show that the top trending videos are largely controlled by a couple of players backed
by corporate interests (who own many of the sites via corporate entities – then the analysis confirms this.) If the purpose is
to show that incoming links from important domains impacts the viewability of the videos, the study also shows this is the
case.

30. CASE STUDY: HYPERLINKS AND VIRAL YOUTUBE VIDEOS
Here is the TWO-MODE network that the researches constructed:
Note: This image does not appear in the textbook, but is owned by Gohar. F. Khan.
Focus on the unique identifier (usually has VEVO in name) and the structure of a
TWO-MODE Network, which is covered in a following chapter.
Original Source: compiled from Khan, G. F., Sokha, V., (2014), Virality over YouTube, Internet Research, Vol. 24, Issue 5.
Results: Most of the top 100
most viewed videos received
URLs from a common set of
domains. However, some
videos received more links
from URLs than others, while
other domains sent more links,
etc.

31. TURNS OUT OUR NEW “MATCHA 2” QUERY BRINGS
UP LESS RESULTS BUT IS CLEANER, SO I THINK WE
SHOULD GO WITH THAT ONE – DEPENDING ON
WHAT WE WANT TO SHOW

32. MULTIPLE QUERIES AND TOOLS FOR VARIOUS ASPECTS OF YOUR
REPORTING
• As we’re learning – some queries work better for some aspects of this analysis than others. For example,
the narrower query is better for sentiment analysis because it’s much cleaner and more precise. Also, for Influencer
Analysis the narrower query might be better.
• But, for trend analysis, the narrow query might not have enough data, also for psychographics, not enough – so a
wider query (our first, corrected query) might be better for this.
• As a result, it may be necessary to have multiple lens, multiple queries, and ultimately, multiple tools to
create a decent analysis.
• Caveat – multiple tools means we are mixing apples and oranges – we are mixing up data sets that are
measuring different things, making our work much more qualitative and dependent on the analyst
conducting it, and therefore, not easily replicate able.
• We call this “Bespoke” analysis – we have to trust the analyst (much as we would trust a doctor, I suppose) – but if
another person takes the helm, we might come up with totally different findings. We should treat this then, as
EXPLORATORY RESEARCH, taken on it’s own merits. If it helps, we do more of it, if it’s faulty, then we can
take what might be useful and ignore the rest.

33. USING
CRIMSON
HEXAGON
WITH OUR
QUERIES
NOTE: STUDENTS DO NOT
HAVE ACCESS TO CH BUT I
CAN RUN SOME QUERIES IF
EMOTION ANALYSIS IS
DESIRED TO HELP A
STUDENT WITH A PROJECT.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei
d=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-
8#q=what+is+crimson+hexagon&*
Crimson Hexagon uses
assisted learning which is
different than Brandwatch,
which is manual and rules
based.

34. EMOTION ANALYSIS
WE WIDENED THE TIME SCOPE TO THE BEGINNING OF 2015 SO WE COULD S HOW ALL
FEATURES OF CRIMSON HEXAGON. WITH THAT SCOPE, ~20% OF THE VERBATIM HAD
ONE OR MORE OF THE 6 DETECTABLE EMOTIONS CH ANALYZES.

35. FOR THE PURPOSE OF THE EMOTION ANALYSIS, WE’LL JUST
LOOK AT THE LAST 45 DAYS AS THE CURRENT CAMPAIGN IN
MALAYSIA IS FAIRLY RECENT.
THE EMOTIONS ARE JUST NOT A GOOD ENOUGH MATCH - I
SPENT 90 MINUTES TRAINING, IT WOULD PROBABLY TAKE ME
A DAY OR TWO OF CONSTANT REVISIONS AND TESTING TO
MAKE IT MUCH BETTER.

36. OVERALL SENTIMENT (IF WE CAN TRUST
IT) IS MORE POSITIVE THAN NEGATIVE.

38. FOR THE LAST 5 WEEKS WE CAN NOT DO
ANY DEEP ANALYSIS (UNLESS WE WIDEN
THE SCOPE PAST THE CAMPAIGN)

39. THE TOPIC
WHEEL FOR THE
SHORT TIME
PERIOD LOOKS
RELEVANT, AND
MIGHT GIVE US
SOME IDEAS FOR
FURTHER
EXPLORATION.

40. TOPIC
CLOUD
BASED
ON 71
POSTS

42. TOPIC
WAVES IS
PART OF
CH’S AI, BUT
ONLY
WORKS
WHEN WE
WIDENED
THE TIME
PERIOOD

43. CRIMSON
DOES A
PRETTY NICE
INFLUENCER
BREAKDOWN,
BUT IT REALLY
DEPENDS ON
THE QUALITY
OF THE QUERY
AND THE
ANALYSIS
LEVEL PUT ON
TOP OF IT.

44. OBVIOUSLY, THE WAY THE MONITOR IS SET
UP IS GOING TO DETERMINE WHAT WE SEE
OUT OF CRIMSON HEXAGON

45. IF THIS WERE
A SUBJECT
WHERE THERE
WAS MORE
VOLUME AND
WE COULD
GET A CLEAN
QUERY, NOT
AN EASY
THING, BTW,
THEN OUR
READOUT
MIGHT BE
MORE USEFUL

46. When the monitors are set up
well and there is a lot of
verbatim, I think the readouts
can be pretty darn good.
But I have worked in a lot of
environments where people
simply do not have the time or
want to spend the money to
use these tools at the level
where it would provide
accurate enough results to
make the effort worth it.
It could be worth spending the
effort in some situations, but
that needs to be defined after
stakeholders have a realistic
concept of what these
platforms and social data can
deliver.

47. SUMMARY
• Social Media has a wealth of data that can be harnessed by marketers (and others) for a variety of
use cases.
• Unfortunately, social media analytics tools are just that, “tools” – not solutions. No tool actually
provides an actual solution. The solution needs to be delivered by a informed knowledge
worker(s) who are also business experts in the business operations they are using these tools to
better understand.
• Most tools that we have discussed should be looked at as an exploratory method, similar to the use
of a telescope or microscope. These tools allows us to peer into the heavens or into the
microscopic worlds – but they do not tell us what our view actually means. Today, only humans can
provide that – with a lot of effort and time. Businesses can get valuable insights from these tools,
but they must weigh the time investment against what they hope to learn, to decide if the effort is
actually worth the exploration.
• Most Social Media Analytics Tools are good for Data Storytelling. If you have a good idea of the
story you want to tell, the tools can help you find that story in the data, and tell it.
• Due to the plastic nature of the data and the variability of the analyst, most analysis produced
by this method/approach will be “bespoke” and almost impossible to replicate.
• The tools can’t tell that story by themselves (even though some vendors would like to tell you