What your choice of smartphone brand says about you (maybe)
Digital advertising intelligence firm Exponential Interactive analyzed the anonymous online behavior of 1.7 million Britons researching mobile phones in May 2014, and used this data to work out what the key interests of the different groups was.
For each of the brands -- Apple, Sony, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, HTC, LG and BlackBerry -- it noted the top interests in categories such as Celebrity, Movies, Cars, Travel, Home, Shopping and Sport. And what did it find? Those interested in Apple phones are 16x more likely to be interested in Brad Pitt than the average person online, apparently, while Samsung devotees are 12x more likely to be into Rafael Nadal, and Motorola fans are 89x more in love with Emma Watson. And that's just for starters.
It’s all nonsense of course but the findings are fun nonetheless. So what other entertaining nuggets does the data reveal?
LG owners are into zombie films but iPhone owners prefer the crime genre, Motorola fans love dance music, while Christian & gospel is the music of choice for the BlackBerry set. iPhone owners are into BMWs, specifically the 530 model, while BlackBerry owners are looking into the Mini Cooper.
The full findings appear in infographic form below.
"A broad brush shows HTC identifies strongly with families, Nokia for the less tech savvy, perhaps, Samsung for older ages and BlackBerry with business people, so it throws up interesting reinforcements and challenges to stereotypes about who has what phone," says Francesca Baker, Exponential’s Insights manager, EMEA. "For instance, iPhone owners were seen as young trendsetters but they’re the most likely to book cruises -- a type of holiday most associated with a much older demographic".
So do these findings serve any real purpose? Baker thinks so.
"More practically, this type of data is very useful to help companies advertise more effectively. For instance, it shows Motorola would do well to sign-up Emma Watson or do a marketing push around her latest film release. Meanwhile sponsoring Mini Cooper-related events could pay dividends for BlackBerry. Lionel Messi advertises Samsung phones but he’d have a much bigger impact for Nokia -- people interested in Messi are four times more likely to be researching Nokia than Samsung”.
Wondering about the methodology Exponential Interactive used? Well according to the company:
The data is based on the analysis of the actual online content viewed by 1.67 million Britons during May 2014. Every site/page visited is assigned to one of 50,000 attributes or interest groups (e.g. skiing content) which are then cross-referenced against the other groups (e.g. iPhone content) to see what behavior a particular target audience is more likely to be doing compared to the general internet population. The data is anonymous and aggregated at the server level, so no one individual can ever be identified. The data is not based upon people filling in surveys.
Do you agree with the findings for your choice of smartphone brand?
Image Credit: Javier Brosch/Shutterstock
