Student Name(s): Veronica Chernyavsky, Ahmad Issa, Robert Marinovic

Student Number(s): 500434191, 500450950, 500434791

Course Title: ITM 618 – Business Intelligence and Analytics

Please attach this cover page as the first page of your completed assignment before submitting it.

Assignment # 2Due Date March 30, 2015Group # (if applicable) 7

Return all assignments through the Blackboard Assignment Submission Page (Unless otherwise specified by the instructor).

I hereby certify that I am the author of this document and all sources used in the preparation of this assignment have been cited in accordance with Ryerson’s Code of Student Conduct (available at http://www.ryerson.ca/academicintegrity/graduate/plagiarism/index.html) directly or paraphrased in the document. Sources are properly credited according to accepted standards for professional publications. I also certify that this paper was prepared by me (all group members if it is a group paper) for this purpose.

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Summary

For this assignment, we decided to conduct an analysis on the #MyNorth campaign which

was created by Sport Chek, the largest Canadian retailer of sports equipment and sport clothing.

The campaign caught our attention because of the campaign’s hashtag being advertised in the

subway. It was evident that Sport Chek was trying to market the campaign through social media,

and through analysis of multiple social media outlets such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook,

we were able to determine which outlet had the strongest presence and other interesting

analytical information regarding the campaign.

As mentioned, we conducted our analysis using three different social media platforms on

the Netlytic website. This website allowed us to perform data and text mining, as well as

visualize our results in multiple ways to learn more about the #MyNorth campaign. Using

Twitter, we were able to obtain the most popular terms associated with campaign, understand

how users felt about the campaign, and see the relations the campaign has with other users

through a chain network analysis. Using Instagram, we collected the most popular search terms

associated with the #MyNorth campaign and saw how often certain terms were mentioned, and

analyzed the #MyNorth hashtag overtime. When analyzing data through Facebook, we

determined that there was too much unnecessary information and the campaign was not as

prominent through this outlet, most likely due to the fact that it was primarily advertised as a

hashtag, and not as a product or company, which Facebook prefers.

Veronica Chernyavsky - Wrote pages 2, 4, 9-10

Ahmad Issa - Prepared cover page, created PowerPoint, compiled data sets on Netlytic website to

use for analysis component of project, assisted in final editing and compiling of project

Robert Marinovic - Wrote pages 3, 5, 6-7

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Problem Statement and Dataset Selection

For our analysis we used data from three different datasets. Utilizing Netlytic we were

able to retrieve data from multiple social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and

Instagram. We collected data pertaining to the #MyNorth campaign. The data collected was all

relevant and ranges anywhere from January 2015 to March 2015, as the Netlytic tool collects

most recent data to determine current trends and data flow of the related searches. We decided to

conduct our analysis about the #MyNorth campaign as students who attend university

downtown, the campaign was tailored towards the support of Canadian basketball and the

Toronto Raptors. We felt this was a very interesting campaign since it was tied closely to

Toronto culture, which peaked our interests and would include multiple parties to collect data

from.

The main goal was to determine the success of the campaign by analyzing the responses

seen through social media outlets, such as Twitter and Instagram. Using these well-known and

commonly used outlets would allow us to determine the reactions and other trending hashtags

that are typically seen along with the #MyNorth campaign. This would allow us to determine the

overall success and awareness of the campaign within the general public. It would also allow us

to determine the popularity and success of similar programs and campaigns for other sports in

the future. In addition, by analyzing the different trends and terms that came up, we were able to

see who the campaign affected and what other unexpected third parties were related to this

campaign. There were no specific problems that we tried to assess, but rather, we focused on the

success of the campaign, and tried to determine how successful the campaign was with reaching

its target audience (basketball fans, Raptors fans, Toronto residents) and assuming that positive

reactions were regarded as successful.

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Previous Work / Literature Review

Since Sport Chek began the #MyNorth campaign recently, there was almost no previous

analytical work or any other types of literature which were able to be used to determine the

campaign’s success and other related factors. We decided to use the available literature to learn

more regarding the campaign, who its target market was, and other useful information.

On October 29, 2014, Sport Chek in partnership with MLSE, the owners of the Toronto

Raptors, launched an advertising and publicity campaign known as #MyNorth asking Toronto

residents to share stories about local basketball culture within various Toronto neighborhoods

(Romandel, 2014). The program collects real stories, videos and photos from the nine different

neighborhoods and amplifies them through a media campaign that uses out-of-home, in-arena at

Toronto Raptors games, social media, television, digital and public relations. Sport Chek’s new

10 year relationship with the Raptors is part of the larger strategic partnership between the

Canadian Tire Family of Companies and MLSE (“Sport Chek”, 2014). The deal marks the first

time the brand has partnered with the Toronto Raptors, a coalition the retailer was inspired to

sign after seeing the momentum of the team’s playoff run last season and the underlying

basketball culture that emerged in the GTA, says Shelley Girard, AVP of marketing at FGL

Sports (Maloney, 2014).

Along with the campaign launch, availability of the ‘We The North’ clothing line from

Adidas was also made available at Sport Check locations across the GTA. This shows that the

campaign’s mission was not only to spread awareness about the basketball culture in Toronto,

but also promote clothing, which was a raised issue; “The bigger issue for stakeholders is

whether turning Toronto’s homegrown basketball culture into retail items diminishes the very

authenticity Sport Chek hoped to capture in the My North series” (Campbell, 2015).

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Data Collection & Preprocessing

In order to collect our data, we first has to decide upon a topic which was popular enough

to provide sufficient data in order to analyze. We decided to collect information pertaining to the

#MyNorth campaign which was a designed to raise awareness and promote basketball in the

Canadian society. We used the Netlytic online application to retrieve data from multiple social

media sources such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Our primary data source was Twitter, as

it was the most commonly used application which featured the use of this hashtag. This would

allow us to collect the best and most amount of data though text analysis on Twitter. In order to

collect the data we had to use a specific search looking for any tweet or post which contained

#MyNorth. However, the Netlytic searches gave us a limited number of data, as it only collects

data from last 1000 entries which contain the given search parameters. On the other hand data

collected from Instagram allowed for collection from up to 2500 messages.

We did not need to manipulate the data in any way before heading into analysis. This is

because when analyzing the responses and reactions to the #MyNorth campaign, it was essential

to utilize any tweet that contained #MyNorth in order to determine whether the tweet was

negative, positive, or simply neutral. This is essential as we are trying to determine the number

of good or bad feelings and reactions to the campaign, in order to determine its success and

popularity.

It was hypothesized that the general reactions would be happy and excited for the

campaign. This was believed due to basketball in Toronto being popular and many youth today

would love to have an opportunity and be seen by “bigger leagues” though the promotion of the

#MyNorth Campaign.

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Analysis

Using the convenient Netlytic tool, we were able to gather data from multiple datasets, in

order to conduct analysis on the current trends. Our primary data was collected from Twitter as

that is where we felt we would see the #MyNorth most periodically. The campaign also

advertised the iconic Twitter hashtag symbol, so we felt that we could find most of the

information we needed from there, as well as leads to other platforms using the hashtag. After

data was collected from Twitter we conducted a text analysis. This allowed us to see what the

most common hashtags associated with #MyNorth were. This was done to determine what

organizations and companies may have had the greatest influence on the promotion of the

campaign and any new emerging trends because of the campaign. After the text analysis search

was performed we were able to conclude that the most commonly used hashtags associated with

#MyNorth were as follows:

term #messages #instances#MyNorth 408 408#wethenorth 333 334#toronto 216 219#raptors 211 213#nba 206 206#rtz 147 147raptors 142 174#416 137 137#ballislife 127 127

We were also able to see the reactions and what things people were saying about the campaign

events. By analyzing the twitter messages using the #mynorth through text analysis, we could see

that ‘Feeling’ was the most popular category:

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It was evident that all responses were positive and had good things to say in relation to

any of the #MyNorth events. This allows us to determine the happiness of each event where

#MyNorth was mentioned, and thus, we concluded that any such event where #MyNorth has had

some impact resulted in a positive outcome. We determined that the overwhelming amount of

positive emotions that were displayed through the text analysis showed that the campaign was

having a positive effect for the company.

Another analysis we conducted was a chain network analysis, with a LGL layout. This

was used to determine the chains and relations between each hashtag. This allowed us to see how

often certain hashtags were used in accordance with one another. With this data we can

determine possibly why each hashtag used in association with another and if they affect one

another in any way. Though the data collected in the network diagram we are also able to see the

involvement and popularity of Sport Chek and its brand during the course of the campaign. It

also allowed us to see who else was commonly associated with or mentioned when the

#MyNorth hashtag was mentioned. This is important to our analysis as we wanted to see what

other groups may have had an impact on the campaign. The diagram is displayed in the

Appendices as Figure 1, where Sport Chek tweets are represented in red, pink is Raptors, (the

Toronto basketball team), blue is #ballislife (a popular basketball website), and the indigo color

is for #toronto.

The final analysis that we performed utilized the #MyNorth hashtag on the Instagram

platform. As seen in Figure 2 in the appendices, we found that our results were very similar to

those that we found from the Twitter hashtag, and in fact, had more records as well. We chose to

use a text analysis since many users who use Instagram tend to include other hashtags when

uploading a picture. We assumed that we would be able to find other, less common hashtags, and

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analyze their potential relation to the #MyNorth hashtag as well. This is because many of the

popular hashtags associated with #MyNorth fit within common terms such as ‘toronto’,

‘basketball’ and ‘raptors’. The diagram, shown in Figure 3 of the Appendices, displays how

popular were certain topics over time that was collected from Instagram posts. Some interesting

trends which we noticed were that the #MyNorth hashtag was being used less often overtime,

compared to the #wethenorth hashtag which has been consistently mentioned overtime. The

#wethenorth hashtag was popularized with the Toronto Raptors team, and has since been

merchandised by many companies. It’s important to note the influence of the Toronto Raptors

team, because in our chain network they were in the center of the diagram. The term ‘416’, in

reference to the major area code number for the Greater Toronto Area, was used almost all of the

time according to the diagram. And finally, other companies such as ‘Modern Notoriety’ and

‘Ovo’ were mentioned, which have no affiliation with Sport Chek.

Conclusion

The results of our analysis can be implemented and used in various ways for decision

makers. Each result that was pulled, popular or less popular, had some importance when it came

to analyzing the success of the #mynorth campaign. It was evident that the campaign was trying

to reach out to the basketball community of Toronto, especially with the recent success of the

Toronto Raptors and their #wethenorth campaign. The success of the Raptor’s campaign most

likely influenced the Sport Chek campaign in many ways, the most obvious being the

resemblance of the hashtag, so that the Sport Chek campaign would easily appeal more to those

who were associated with using the #wethenorth hashtag.

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One interesting thing we found was that through the Instagram analysis, there were

mentions of certain terms which we were surprised would be there, but were also all related to

each other. Examples of these terms were ‘#ovo’, ‘#drake’, ‘#the6’, ‘#thesix’. To someone who

may not be familiar with current trends in Toronto culture, these terms would not mean much,

but in fact, are important, primarily, the #drake hashtag. Drake is a popular rap artist from

Toronto, who is part of the record and clothing label known as Ovo. One of the common terms

that Drake has popularized is nicknaming Toronto ‘the six’, presumably from Toronto’s area

codes 416 and 647. Thus, it can be assumed that those who live in Toronto and are fans of

basketball, specifically the Toronto Raptors, may know of or already enjoy Drake’s music. Sport

Chek and other similar companies should use this to their advantage when promoting basketball

related products, since it will increase their chance of raising brand awareness.

It is worth noting that within our analysis we chose to not use any data from Facebook or

Youtube. Since the campaign had no page dedicated to it on Facebook, and the company which

started it was promoting a new campaign by this point, we did not have much to use for our

analysis. In addition, when going to the Toronto Raptors Facebook page, we noticed their usage

of #wethenorth, compared to #mynorth. Youtube was not used because despite their being

multiple videos on Sport Chek’s Youtube channel associated with their campaign, there was a

lack of comments (about four per video), and videos were only around 5000-15000 in views.

While completing this analysis and research I have learned to greatly appreciate the value

and importance of any dataset. I feel that in the future I may decide to enter the analytics field of

work, or perhaps big data, as this work is very exciting and answer various problems if the

correct datasets are utilized. (Robert)

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This assignment gave me a lot of insight on the importance of the usage of hashtags in

modern day marketing and advertising. There are lot of possibilities with tools such as Netlytic,

and with more implementation of hashtags, hopefully there will be more platforms available to

help us analyze them. (Veronica)

Netlytic helps Sportchek and Toronto Raptors see how engaged their followers with the

campaign are as well as increase their brand awareness. Netlytics also helps company justify and

measure their return on investment when evaluating their social campaign, which is useful for us

to know as students in the Business IT Management program. (Ahmad)

As a group, we learned how to coordinate our work and interests together to make this

project a success. The great thing about Netlytic was its ease of use, accessibility, and how easy

it was to share the data amongst ourselves.

References

Campbell, M. (2015, March 22). Sport Chek's My North apparel line celebrates homegrown

hoops | Toronto Star. Retrieved March 31, 2015, from

http://www.thestar.com/business/sportonomics/2015/03/22/sport-cheks-my-north-

apparel-line-celebrates-homegrown-hoops.html

Maloney, V. (2014, October 30). Sport Chek’s community play. Retrieved March 31, 2015, from

http://strategyonline.ca/2014/10/30/sport-cheks-community-play/#ixzz3Vumtmg4s

Raza, A. (2015, February 25). Scarborough wheelchair basketballer Dini featured in Sport

Chek/Raptors #MyNorth campaign. Retrieved March 31, 2015, from

http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/5447297-scarborough-wheelchair-basketballer-

dini-featured-in-sport-chek-raptors-mynorth-campaign/

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Romandel, M. (2014, December 5). #MyNorth: Sportchek and the Raptors attempt to co-opt

Toronto’s basketball culture. Retrieved March 31, 2015, from

http://basicsnews.ca/mynorth-sportchek-and-the-raptors-attempt-to-co-opt-torontos-

basketball-culture/

Sport Chek and Toronto Raptors Celebrate GTA Basketball Culture through New #MyNorth

Campaign. (2014, October 29). Retrieved March 31, 2015, from

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sport-chek-and-toronto-raptors-celebrate-gta-

basketball-culture-through-new-mynorth-campaign-280761742.html

Appendices

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Figure 1. A chain network analysis with a LGL layout. Sport Chek tweets are represented in red

and all the other hashtags they are associated with as well; pink was Raptors, (the Toronto

basketball team), blue was #ballislife (a basketball website), and the indigo color was for

#toronto.

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Figure 2. This was a report compiled from the results of searching the #mynorth hashtag on the

Instagram platform. We noted that in the text analysis, the most common terms were similar with

the results of our Twitter search. This report also made us decide to use the feeling analysis in

our Twitter analysis.

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Figure 3. Text analysis diagram ranging from March 8 to March 22, showing 100 of the top

topics.