Numiko, an award winning Leeds based digital creative agency

I’m dying to find out what my Diagonal Thinking score is. I’m definitely going to do this tonight, I’ve promised myself and everything. This is a test developed by the IPA to measure your ability to think laterally and logically, the combination of which characterises successful people in the advertising industry.

I’ll post my score up here when I’ve done the test- presuming it’s better than my Brain Age on the DS

Also of interest is Imagini, which aims to build a profile of the user without putting them through a long winded series of drop down/check box type preference process. It poses simple questions, and the user simply selects an image from a matrix, that best fit’s their answer to the question.

It’s been used on mydeco.com to create a ‘visual DNA’ which is then used to suggest items of home furnishings etc. that would suit your visual style preferences. It’s also forming the centre of a social network called Youniverse, which matches people together based on how they think, how the love and what type of movies they like… absolutely superb!

It does presume to an extent however that you get on better with people who are the most similar to you, which I’m sure you’d agree is not always the case. Just because you are ambitious, good looking and successful doesn’t mean you’re going to get on

But, that small, social psychological point aside, there’s some very interesting things happening in this area of personalisation based on how people think. Comparing this, Richard’s earlier post about technology that automatically tries to determine your cognitive style by how you interact with the content of a website, provide two clear vectors for where this kind of thing is heading.

And for us, it’s very interesting because if we are seeking maximum engagement with consumers, it has to be on their terms, ideally on a one to one basis. Imagine [NAME], being able to personalise communions and touch points not only on the crude CRM-esque methods available today, but increasingly on past interactions, moods, cognitive styles and visual preferences.

Humans throughout time, or at least of recent years, have known the value of engagement;

1: You get to have a party
2: You might get some presents
3: It sets off a chain of events towards a day when you get another party and more presents …

But now, brands and marketers are looking to engagement of a different sort and trying to apply some value measurements to better understand it.

Playing devils advocate, it would be easy to suggest that the reasons for doing this have been forced upon us. In the interactive space, direct response metrics have been falling for years. And, despite the age-old sentiments of ‘...digital being the most accountable and transparent of all media…‘ it becomes harder to sell a solution based on these cold figures alone. This in turn leaves us with no choice but to develop other ways to measure the impact of spend. Right?

Well, kind of yes and no. Yes the industry does need a new way of measuring the obvious (at least to us) value of people chosing to be actively involved with a brand or product; but no, I don’t think it’s a knee-jerk scramble to cover our backs.

We could, as TV does, blithely point to spikes in sales and make claims about how that must be related to TVRs of the latest 30s spot. Or, we could be a bit more prfessional and, as Mark Ghuneim has begun to investigate on his blog post ‘Measuring the Active Consumer’, start to develop a logical system for grading and rating all of the ‘web 2.0′ types of user participation, interaction and collaboration and allow us to ’score’ levels of user participation and their value to any company, brand or product.

It look’s like Mark and his company Wireset are in for the long-term on this, with a program of next-steps including…

* Top-20 engagement activities
* Further definition of engagement types
* Produce algorithm (compose related activity weights)
* Incorporate feedback/comments

It certainly makes for a ‘blog thread to watch’, or, parhaps more pertinantly, participate in!

No really, Musinaut are the developers behind the MXP4 player “available on all platforms” and the Brainwaves headgea which “allows users to control their MXP4 musical selections on the basis of their thoughts and frame of mind.”

What the this for more.