Ipsos Mind & Mood + emma take journey into the mindset of digital influencers – ‘social creatives’

emma’s newly-identified segment of the population, ‘Social Creatives’, are active on social media and are the most influential in society when it comes to shopping online, social media usage and sharing, product recommendations and using smartphones and tablets, a new report has revealed.

The Mind & Mood Report, Ipsos’s social trends hub, has delved deep into the mindset of members of the emma consumer segment ‘Social Creatives’ to discover what drives this hyper-social, hyper-opinionated and hyper-influential cohort.

Social Creatives are the heaviest users of social media in the population with a large network compared to the average user, with 44% liking, commenting or sharing social media content every day; 26% uploading photos and videos on to social media platforms at least once a week and 11% updating their status on Facebook, Twitter or via a blog every day.

Says Laura Demasi, Ipsos Mind and Mood research director: “Social Creatives are heavy users of mobile devices and are highly active on social media and the Internet. They are highly opinionated and extroverted. They enjoy sharing their views about anything and everything – amongst both their friends on social media and the wider community on blogs and forums. They see themselves as highly sophisticated members of the digital society and as content creators and aggregators. Their broader sense of self-identity is tightly bound to their online image.”

The most popular activity on the internet for Social Creatives is social media (91%), following by looking at or reading news, current affairs and sport (76%); listening to the radio or music (74%), shopping (65%), buying or selling on sites like eBay, Cudo, etc (51%), contributing to a chat room or online discussion forum (41%) and making travel arrangements (38%).

Clothing is the most popular item to buy online with an average spend of $109 (40%), followed by books (29%), music (26%), shoes (25%), home entertainment and electronics (22%).

Says Demasi: “Social Creatives are very influential when it comes to purchasing products online and their knowledge of brands, with 69% encouraging others to buy based on their own experience. They keep up to date with new products and services and are early adopters – but they will also post both negative and positive product reviews using social media.”

Almost one third strongly agree that nearly all television commercials annoy them, 40% will switch radio stations to avoid ads and 47% somewhat agree that ‘you cannot help seeing all those big billboards’.

Says Simon Wake, Ipsos MediaCT managing director: “emma contains the broadest and deepest single source behavioural and attitudinal data across social media, word of mouth and online shopping that can be viewed across broader media and consumption behaviour.

“To showcase the depth and breadth of new media usage and attitudinal data and to better inform communication strategy and consumer insights, emma has joined forces with Ipsos Mind and Mood to present the report in a series of national roadshows for media agencies, advertisers and publishers throughout November.”

The research findings are the result of qualitative discussion groups with Social Creatives in Sydney and Melbourne recruited from the emma panel and consolidated into a 52 page report.

The Ipsos Mind and Mood Report is Australia’s longest running qualitative social trends study. For 37 years, the country’s leading organisations have relied on The Ipsos Mind & Mood Report to transform social insights into opportunity, using a unique methodology to capture the values, attitudes and behaviours of Australians.

Six times a year Mind & Mood researchers travel across the country to everyday Australians of all ages. Research groups are held amongst affinity groups and discussion is undirected, encouraging spontaneous, natural conversation and allowing researchers to discover what is really, front of mind for Australians.

emma has been developed by independent research company Ipsos MediaCT, the global leaders in local audience measurement. Ipsos conducts national audience surveys and is the official measurement system in over 40 countries including the UK, Italy and France. The emma survey is a monthly release of a rolling 12 month database is independently audited and built in collaboration with the Media Federation of Australia and Magazine Publishers Australia.