A Discussion with BrandsEye

On Wednesday, November 29, 2017, Corporate Council on Africa held a working group with Mr. Colin Habberton, Director of Global Partnerships at BrandsEye Data Mining Company. BrandsEye is a South African company that has worked with clients on issues ranging from customer reaction to brands, to experience audits and interventions, performance benchmarking, foreign and domestic policy, political campaigning messaging and more. The discussion with CCA and its members focused on how BrandsEye, the world’s largest opinion mining company, gathers online conversation data related to a particular theme, organization or person to accurately understand how people feel about policies, people and brands and how these insights then help clients make strategic decisions.Mr. Habberton provided a brief overview of their work and where the company fits into the landscape of all the institutions working in Africa and the rest of the world. He explained that BrandsEye is not a consulting firm, it does not design campaigns and neither is it a PR company. He likened the equivalency of what BrandsEye is to a gold mining company that mines and distribute gold to its clients. What the client does with the gold is completely up to that client.He stated that BrandsEye provides its clients with insights to the sentiments of people where they operate. He argued that in this age where the world is faced with the threat of the “weaponization” of information, BrandsEye offers education to their numerous clients ranging from governments (national, regional and municipal), corporations, and non- profit organizations on how to better engage their target population.When it comes to governments, BrandsEye has worked with cities in helping them understand how people feel about certain services and their delivery. He provided an example related to transit services and contended that what was crucial for such a project “was not just understanding how people are feeling about public transport in their cities but also the comparison between how the city is doing in relation to other cities.”Photo:From L to R -Emily Lauer-Bader, Project Hope, Jennifer Cheong, South African Embassy, Patricia Sheikh, CCA, Colin Habberton, BrandsEye, Akaego Okoye, CCA, Deborah Broke, South African Airways and Malose Letsoalo, South African Embassy