A social intelligence architect is an individual who creates a synthesis of "intelligence" from the knowledge (once the "information" is initially mined) of a given market, segment, demographic, social network and psychographic from a company’s product or service antithesis, government's position or similar organizations "understanding" of an issue and develops a strategy of approach or engagement based on "intelligence" as opposed to just "information". Intelligence architecture is when "information" is gathered, compiled and packaged to find the knowledge; the knowledge is then analysed for "intelligence" from which a viable strategy or plan can be logically developed. In the advertising agencies of yesteryear, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists of various specialties were often employed to help decipher the “wants” and "needs" of consumer markets. In public policy researchers and analysts were employed to conduct public polling through focus groups and surveys (a practice still conducted, but somewhat limiting, similar to traditional marketing research methodologies.)

With respect to the fields of marketing, advertising and public relations, Social Intelligence can be defined as the study of how people process social information in order to understand and/or manage one's own and/or others' feelings and emotions and the ability to use this intelligence to guide one's own and/or others' thinking, feeling and actions in human relations and social situations. In public policy, the same approach is used but in terms of gaining an understanding of the publics perception of an issue with regards to domestic and foreign policy.

The future of marketing

This combined definition actually gives us a peek into the future of marketing and advertising because, from this description, we gain a new perspective on how important this aspect of social awareness is to the integrated success of businesses and society as a whole. This new definition also serves as a description of what could be seen as an eminently important role within society, as it relates to facilitating acceptance and awareness of ideas, products and services within the marketplace.

The Future of Public Policy Communcations

This definition also relates to how information is gathered and assessed in the development and subsequent communication, of domestic policy and foreign policy. Social awareness is a critical aspect of understanding how citizens relate to selective issues.

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Especially in today’s marketplace, where there are more ways than ever to disseminate messages – and it’s more difficult than at previous times to “get the message through” – it takes a broad knowledge of strategies and fair understanding of tactics to devise, plan and implement a successful messaging campaign.

While the basic tenets of reaching consumers hearts and minds has largely remained the same, the multitude of channels by which to reach them has mushroomed this last decade: where we now have print, radio, web, hand-held devices, video games and a myriad of other platforms by which to reach consumers of every imaginable demographic. With the explosion in media platforms and advertising/marketing channels comes the related growth in people who provide messaging in these fields. With such rapid growth, the barrier to entry to these avenues of messaging drops and a sort of “reverse-gentrification” occurs within the industry. The result is the prolific and duplicitous messaging seen now in the marketplace. Obviously, this is of little practical business value and even serves to build more consumer resistance and less confidence, thus increasing the length of any messaging campaign overall.

As we stand at the dawn of a new era in economics, social awareness and environmentalism, we must recognize the shifts within the hearts and minds of the public – and how the dynamics of the marketplace will change the face of the consumer from "I" to "We."

A linear messaging pathway

This shift from "I" to "We" is an important change for our society: It redefines the opinions, beliefs and actions of consumers. With evolutionary change like this, new, improved and/or different methods of messaging and communicating with the marketplace – with consumers – are born of necessity. This is why Social Intelligence Messaging is critical to the success of today’s marketing and advertising efforts.

A proper linear pathway must exist when developing a strategy for selling a product or service today. A syntax of thesis, antithesis and synthesis (the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in a balanced way) that ensures the efficacy of the creation and delivery of marketing, advertising and other communications services within the business and consumer marketplace.

This linear messaging pathway consists of 5 essential elements: Social Intelligence - Marketing - Advertising - Press - People/Consumers

This pathway instructs that a strategy begins with Social Intelligence and works its way toward the people. In starting the strategy here, a complete understanding at this level of public opinion/awareness and rooted desires is developed to facilitate a more precise understanding and subsequent packaging of “critical” elements to be used in the tactical dissemination of information down-the-line, so to speak. This tactical dissemination is subsequently achieved through various techniques subordinate to each of the marketing, advertising and press specialties.

The Syntax of Consumerism

Each advertising and marketing medium has its proper place in the messaging mix. There is a right time and a right place for print, social and mobile messaging. These media should be considered as tools to complete the job, but not considered as the job itself.

The sequence of words in a message, the sequence of media in which customers experience that messaging, and the order in which each message is experienced, makes all the difference in the success of any advertising and messaging efforts.

These sequences effect the overall processing in consumers’ minds. Since consumers are human beings, this is called a human process syntax – how the brain deciphers and decides how to react to incoming messages, like advertisements. Since this is indeed a human process, there are only three fundamental aspects to (and which effect) human process syntax:

Human Process Syntax (horizontal)

• Base Emotional Values
• Base Intellectual Values
• Base Integrated Values

These values are essentially the pathways that a message uses to appeal to a given audience – through emotions, through intellect, or through a combination of both.

Emotional appeals, intellectual propositions and their hybrids are what lay the foundation of how messages attract consumers. This is one element of syntax.

Another aspect to syntax is using valenced words within the emotional appeal or intellectual proposition. These kinds of words possess inherent attractiveness to us as human beings. Thus, word valence

Valence (psychology)

Valence, as used in psychology, especially in discussing emotions, means the intrinsic attractiveness or aversiveness of an event, object, or situation. However, the term is also used to characterize and categorize specific emotions. For example, the emotions popularly referred to as "negative",...

 and overall message valence hierarchy plays an important role in framing your appeal and/or proposition more favorably throughout the human process syntax.

The Taxonomy of Society

In order to properly disseminate a message, it is critical to have a clear understanding of the target market and how the product or service being advertised fits within the target demographic.

When engineering consensus, the market is categorized as follows;

Societal Taxonomy (vertical)

• Masses
• Groups
• Cliques
• Individuals

These are all classifications for varying quantities of individuals, from the largest (masses) to the smallest (individual). The messaging techniques that will be used for communicating to each of these classifications will vary in context, content, syntax and calls-to-action.

The messaging at one level is designed to move consumers to the next level. At each level, consumers build rapport with your brand, product or service based on the root messaging and related human process syntax.

Engineering Consensus

Depending on what is being sold and to whom, masses, by their nature are not typically logical. Therefore, using an emotional value as an entrée works better. As a message begins to attract groups from within the mass, the message will switch to incorporate a secondary, intellectual proposition that supports the original emotional appeal. As group members respond to this messaging, a smaller clique of consumers is attracted from the group and the clique-based message should employ either a hybrid value or, perhaps, stay with the primary emotional appeal. Finally, at the individual level, an intellectual proposition and an emotionally-based call-to-action would bring closure to the process resulting in a new customer.

In this manner, using human process syntax and valenced messaging within societal taxonomies helps ensure maximum uptake of messaging. This creates a fluid, engaging and “feel-good” experience for consumers which ultimately lead to sales.

The more this successful pattern repeats itself, the more of an overall consensus is built back up the taxonomy chain, where there is mass awareness and the resulting sales that are born of demand.

Here is a representation of this entire process in outline format:

Human Process Syntax (horizontal)

• Base Emotional Value
• Base Intellectual Value
• Base Integrated Value

Valence Messaging Hierarchy (horizontal)

• Emotional Appeal
• Intellectual Proposition
• Integrated Emo/Intel

Platform Distribution (integrated)

• Print
• Web
• Press
• Mobile
• Radio
• TV
• Etc…

Marketing, advertising and information campaigns based on fundamentally sound messaging practices help to create mutual value propositions for both the advertiser and the audience. Creating a socially intelligent human process syntax within societal taxonomies and across appropriate media, helps ensure effective message uptake and establishes an engaging customer experience throughout the pre-sales and sales cycle aspects of all efforts.

See also

• Marketing intelligence
  Marketing Intelligence
  Marketing Intelligence is the information relevant to a company’s markets, gathered and analyzed specifically for the purpose of accurate and confident decision-making in determining market opportunity, market penetration strategy, and market development metrics. Marketing intelligence is...
  
  
• Social intelligence
  Social intelligence
  Social intelligence describes the exclusively human capacity to use very large brains to effectively navigate and negotiate complex social relationships and environments....
  
  
• Social marketing intelligence
  Social marketing intelligence
  Social marketing intelligence is the method of extrapolating valuable information from social network interactions and large data flows that can enable companies for example; to launch new products and services into the market place at greater speed and at significantly lower cost...
  
  
• Social media
  Social media
  The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
  
  
• Viral marketing
  Viral marketing
  Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...