OriginsInfocus

ISSUE 3: May 2012

OriginsInsight

In the latest edition of OriginsInsight we profile the Vietnamese community in Australia. After 35 years of settlement and adaptation, we identify signs of change in this close-knit community. We expect the new census data (to be released in June) to confirm these trends.

Using the Origins database, Origins mapping and census data from 2006, we provide information on the demographic and cultural context of Vietnamese-Australians and highlight the scale and scope of marketing opportunity of this distinct market segment.

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Events and News

2012 Data Day

May sees one of ADMA’s key annual events take to the road with a Data Day in Brisbane (10th May), Sydney (15th May) and Melbourne (17th May).

With three international presentations and twelve further sessions arranged in two streams, there will be something for everybody. Presenters include representatives from Telstra, NAB, TRUenergy, Suncorp and Deloitte Analytics.

This is one of the few events to focus on data as the essential resource to drive creative communications and underpin marketing strategy.

Further information and registration details here

Social Marketing in a Multicultural Society - Workshop

Interested in social marketing in a multicultural society?

The Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health (CEH) presents a range of professional development workshops for health, government and community sector employees.

OriginsInfo attended a CEH workshop on Social Marketing in a Multicultural Society on 2nd May 2012. Using a variety of case studies, the workshop focused on marketing concepts and techniques to change people’s behaviour and improve health outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse clients.

Other topics in the CEH workshop program include Sustainable Engagement with CALD Communities, Cultural Competence for Managers, Cross Cultural Communication, and Conducting Focus Groups with CALD Communities, plus a range of specialist health-related topics.

More information about CEH workshops here

Updates on the Product

We are excited to announce that our first user of the Origins Scripting facility has now been installed and has passed User Acceptance Testing. One of Australia’s leading banks is now enjoying this facility and can now be assured that their customers are coded with the latest and most accurate Origins codes in their monthly processing.

Origins Scripting is for users who want to schedule and automate the batch coding of customer data. This removes the necessity for an analyst to do regular processing using the standard desktop software package – although Origins Desktop is still convenient for most ad hoc processing to meet specific analytical needs. The scripting solution uses the Microsoft PowerShell utility that ships as a standard component of Windows 7 set of operating systems.

OriginsInfo supplies clients with a specific Origins Framework package together with a script that is customised to client requirements. All that is required is some simple internal IT support to ensure that the script can run in the user environment and can be automated.

Watch this space for news about the forthcoming real-time data appending version of Origins.

Find out more about how to access Origins or

Ways of Using Origins

This regular newsletter item for users and potential users puts a spotlight on different ways of using Origins to help you make the most of your insight into the cultural characteristics of customers and to maximise value from your investment. In this edition, we describe how, once you have coded your customers, you can make selections and target relevant offers and messages to the right targets for cross-sell and up-sell.

There are three considerations in defining the selection criteria for a campaign target group:

1.   Level of aggregation
2.   Use of family name
3.   Use of the confidence score

Level of Aggregation

The Origins software currently assigns one of 253 codes to a customer record. In the majority of contexts, this level of detail may be too great for campaign selections. Exceptions include cases where organisations are seeking to communicate with specific communities such as Vietnamese, Sikh Indians, Koreans or Armenians.

In most cases, some degree of aggregation will be sufficient. It may be sufficient to use the standard aggregations recommended by OriginsInfo, or an aggregation that has been designed for a particular organisational or campaign context. Such an aggregation may group together, for example, the 24 Indian Codes into a single “India” code, or the two Irish codes into “Irish”, or the eight codes for East Asian communities into “East Asian”.

Use of Family Name

In general, the family name is more diagnostic of a person’s likely cultural background and, as discussed in the previous edition, the Origins software places more emphasis on the family name than the personal name. So, if the business and campaign context suggests some latitude in the targeting, then it may be sufficient just to use the Origins code for the family name to select the target group.

For example, if the campaign is aimed at people with any apparent affinity with Italian culture, then it may be sufficient to make selections based using just the family names that are coded to one of the seven Italian codes.

Use of Confidence Score

The Confidence Score may be used to screen out those prospects where there is an increased risk of inconsistency with campaign objectives or content.

High confidence scores are produced when there is a similarity between the allocations for both the first and family names. Low confidence scores are produced when there is a conflict between the allocations for first and family names.

This may occur for a variety of reasons; it may be indicate second or third generation migrant status, western-influenced Asian migrants, or other groups who for a variety of reasons have adopted names that vary from their original cultural background

The Confidence Score cut-off should be set at a level that varies according to the nature of the campaign. As a guide, a threshold level should be set somewhere between 0.5 and 0.8, although this should be somewhat higher if the proposed campaign is designed for a very specific cultural segment – eg people who have recently migrated from India, or those people of Indian background who seem to retain strongest links with their cultural background.

Follow the Hints and Tips section for further information about the Confidence Score and its interpretation.

Of course, whichever of the three methods is used to define the selection criteria, it may be necessary to adjust the rules to meet other operational considerations, such as budget or minimum required volumes.

For further guidance, please feel free to .

Hints & Tips for Users – Making the Most of Origins

What do the Confidence Score and the Confidence Category mean? How are they derived and how do I interpret them?

In the last edition of OriginsInfocus we introduced the concept of the Confidence Score in the context of a discussion about Accuracy and Coverage.

As well as the ability to append an overall Origins code to a name, the Origins software identifies the Origins code for each name element. Two outputs generated in the Origins processing are the Confidence Category and the Confidence Score.

Confidence Category

The Confidence Category indicates whether the first name and the family name belong to the same, or to broadly similar Origins codes. There are four possible values of the Confidence Category – ORIGIN, SUBGROUP, GROUP, and VOID.

If the two names are assigned to the same three-character Origins CEL code then the value ‘ORIGIN’ is assigned. If they do not have the same Origins CEL but share the first two characters of the three-character CEL code, the value ‘SUBGROUP’ is assigned. To illustrate the idea, if the first name is Russian and the family name is Ukrainian, the first two characters of the CEL code are “DP”.

Where the Origins CEL of the first name and family names only match on the first character of the CEL code, then the value ‘GROUP’ is assigned. An example is where both names share the first character of the CEL code “I” (Islamic) as the first character.

If the personal and family names are assigned to quite different Origins groups then the category ‘VOID’ is assigned. The only exception to this rule is with Origins Groups A (Anglo-Saxon) and B (Celtic). These are treated as synonymous. So, for example, a person with an English first name and a Scottish family name would generally be assigned to a ‘SUBGROUP’ category.

The Confidence Category plays a role in the calculation of the Confidence Score.

Confidence Score

There is no definitive or simple way to decode or scale the confidence score. This is because of the large number of names in the system and the very large number of permutations of name combinations. Each score is a function of the individual confidence scores for each first name and each family name.

The higher the score, the greater the confidence can be placed in the allocation of the overall name combination to the particular CEL. In general, values greater than 0.5 are good for all purposes. The highest score is around 15 and the lowest scores are below 0.1. Analysts would do well to report on the distribution of confidence scores within a particular group of customers to understand the overall distribution and to assess the Origins coding characteristics of records belonging to different confidence score bands. This may assist the business to optimise performance in any campaign deployment.

For further guidance please feel free to .