SINGAPORE: How can data be used to address a real-life issue like road rage and its impact on the road safety conditions in one’s country?
That was the problem statement oil company Shell put forward to communications company Edelman in 2017, as it tried to tackle road rage in Malaysia where statistics showed that an average of 18 people die every day in road accidents, said Mr Yeelim Lee, general manager of Edelman Predictive Intelligence Centre, during a recent interview with Channel NewsAsia.
In order to understand some of the causes for road rage among drivers, wearable tracking devices were handed to 300 volunteer drivers during a two-week period last April. These emotion tracking wristbands measured biometric information such as heart and breath rate, mood, sleep and exercise, said Mr Lee.
“This was to understand their peak stress periods,” he explained, adding that such data was meshed with other data sets such as the weather, traffic conditions as well as driving behaviour like acceleration and braking via the Shell Motorist app.
In total, the study captured more than 150,000 data points from various sources, he added.
Having mined the insights, Shell was then informed enough to send its service staff in Malaysia to undergo hospitality training that could mitigate against road rage. The executive also said certain foods were also recommended to various service outlets at petrol kiosks as a result of the information collected.
For example, in the profile of a “smooth and steady driver”, Shell said such motorists have a daily coffee, stays hydrated and carries a bottle of water in the car and eats a portion of fruit and two portions of vegetables each day.
(Infographic: Shell)
The outlets would then be stocked with the relevant products to encourage such a driver profile among its visitors, Mr Lee explained.
“The aim of the campaign was to gain insights which could inform motorists of what factors affect them on the road,” he said. “Empowered with this knowledge, they would be better equipped to make positive behavioural choices to improve their journeys.”
Shell, in turn, also saw an increase in their social reach, brand preference and sales, said the executive, but was not able to disclose exact figures.
Yet, the communications agency was keen to stress that their methods of enhancing a brand’s public reach does not cross the threshold of alarming customers, who are the recipients of any possible campaign.
Its global COO Matt Harrington, who was at the same interview, shared that the data it analyses is always anonymised. The datasets are used to identify and understand how consumers are behaving, rather than targeting a specific user for any specific instance, he added.
“It is not micro-targeting,” he asserted.
The act of micro-targeting users has taken on a negative connotation in recent times, following news of how UK data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica reportedly harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebooks users and used it to profile individual users and targeted them with personalised political advertisements during the 2016 US presidential elections.
ALIGNED INTERESTS
This collaboration with the oil company is an example of how Edelman wants to unlock the inherent potential of data sitting in one’s business and use it for good, Mr Harrington said.
The Edelman Predictive Intelligence Centre (EPIC) in Singapore was launched last week, in partnership with the Singapore Economic Development Board. It is a three-year strategic collaboration to research and develop new approaches to communications marking planning using predictive and intelligent technologies, the company said then.
Assistant managing director at the Singapore Economic Development Board Kelvin Wong (left) and global COO of Edelman Matt Harrington at the launch of the Edelman Predictive Intelligence Centre. (Photo: Edelman)
This is the communications firm’s first such centre of excellence, and it is currently staffed with 13 people. There are plans to increase the headcount to 24 by 2021.
Mr Lee, who oversees the centre, said the planning and research work is done here even if the companies it is working with are based elsewhere.
Asked why Edelman decided to house its predictive intelligence centre here, Mr Harrington said there are “aligned interests” between both parties. For one, Singapore has expressed interest in being a safe data harbour for the region while Edelman is compliant with industry standards around data privacy such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which kicked in last month.
Singapore has also been strong proponents of data science and artificial intelligence, meaning there’s a pipeline of talent coming through here.
“With our centre of excellence, these graduates will have the platform to practice what they’ve learnt,” Mr Harrington said.
These sentiments were echoed by Mr Kelvin Wong, assistant managing director of EDB, who said the new centre is a boost to the country’s efforts to grow data-enabled marketing innovation capabilities.
“This is in line with the professional services industry transformation map launched in January this year, which seeks to equip the workforce with specialised skillsets in high-growth areas such as data science, analytics, and artificial intelligence,” Mr Wong added.
