Today, brand marketers have access to more data than ever, but there is a new kind of data you might not be accessing yet. It’s called emotions analytics.
Tel Aviv, Israel-based Beyond Verbal has launched a patented voice recognition technology that can extract, decode, and measure an individual’s full set of emotions and character traits from that person’s raw voice in real-time (i.e., as they speak). Using this data, the technology can detect moods, attitudes, and decision-making characteristics, which the company refers to as emotions analytics.
A team of physicists and neuropsychologists spent 18 years researching voice data and studied more than 60,000 test subjects in 26 languages to develop the technology behind emotions analytics. The company leaders believe that the technology will change the way people communicate and interact with each other as well as how they interact with computers. Taking it a step further, you can imagine how useful this voice data could be to brand marketers.
Already, Beyond Verbal licenses its technology to companies for use in their consumer applications, products, devices, software, appliances, and more. The company is also building a web-based tool for individuals to use, and a third-party mobile app using the Beyond Verbal API is expected to be released within a few weeks.
In a press release, Beyond Verbal CEO and 25-year technology veteran Yuval Mor explains the far-reaching implications that his company’s emotional analytics technology could have:
Nearly two decades of research tells us that it’s not what someone says, but how they say it, that tells the full story. Beyond Verbal has the potential to impact numerous multi-billion dollar verticals and leverage a new market of emotionally-enhanced applications installed in any voice-enabled, voice-activated, or voice-controlled device. This opens up a new dimension of emotional understanding, called Emotions Analytics, giving humans and machines the ability to react in ways that were never before possible.
For brand marketers, tapping into consumer emotions is critical, and this type of technology, which extracts emotional data and interprets it, could be a gold mine. I’m excited to stay tuned to this story.
What do you think? Is this type of technology, which delivers emotions analytics, a brand marketing game-changer? Share your opinions on emotional analytics in the comments below.
Image: Artur Bieniek
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
