Brand Communities’ Centrifuge 42 employs criminology methods to decipher big data

CATCHING criminals and flogging chocolate aren’t all that different, right? You won’t believe the ways these companies are trying to sell you more stuff.

Convicted backpacker murderer Ivan Milat, dressed in his orange overalls, handcuffed and manacled with his left hand bandaged...

CATCHING criminals and flogging chocolate aren’t all that different, right?

Right. Big businesses are turning to criminology methods to work out how to sell you more stuff.

How? Because of the mass amounts of data businesses have on you, which can include your purchasing behaviour, demographic information, internet history, media consumption, financial history and more. But the challenge facing many corporations is how to make sense of all the information.

It’s all very well and good if Kellogg’s knows you’re a vegetarian shiftworker whose last overseas trip was spent frolicking in the waves in Hawaii. But how can it use that information so you’ll buy its newest cereal?

This is where methods prevalent in criminology come in.

Professor John Galloway is considered a god in the world of data and analytics. He’s been recruited by top intelligence agencies around the world to catch bad guys with insights gleaned from reams and reams of raw information and data.

Professor John Galloway is considered a god in the world of data and analytics.

His understanding of numbers, data and the relationship between data has seen him help law enforcement agencies catch Ivan Milat and the Bali Bombers. For Professor Galloway, the relationship between sets of data is what reveals who we are as people.

He told the AdTech conference in Sydney this week: “It’s the associations between the pieces of data that provide a lot of insight and understanding, certainly in the criminology world of counterterrorism, drug dealing, the Bali Bombers and Ivan Milat.”

Professor Galloway takes pieces of data, finds the relationship between them, or between people, and manipulates the data in a way that makes sense. It’s how he helped NSW Police track down backpacker murderer Ivan Milat.

“We had all sorts of data. If you marry up different data, you’ll find strange things and patterns between them,” he said.

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The breakthrough in tracking down Milat was gym records after the police received a tip that referred to someone with a fitness affiliation. Using software and principles born out of Professor Galloway’s PHD thesis, his team analysed patterns and relationships in the data to whittle a suspect list down to 200 people.

Ivan Milat killed at least seven backpackers. He was eventually caught by information gleaned from data relationships.

Further narrowing of the list to 32 people was what really gave the murder investigation momentum because Milat was on that list.

Police were then able to dedicate stretched resources to focus on the individuals on the list. Professor Galloway said: “Just like in business, there are very limited resources to answer the important questions. It led the way on what decisions to make and where to apply the resources.”

And now he’s applying his smarts to help big corporations including Toyota and Nestle to solve business problems. Professor Galloway has teamed up with former advertising agency executive Nicholas Davie with company Brand Communities and its product Centrifuge 42, a patent-pending do-it-yourself data analytics platform.

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Mr Davie said: “I met John when he was talking about criminology and I thought if he can find Ivan Milat, why can’t he help me sell more Kit Kats?”

Companies such as Nestle and Toyota are now using Centrifuge 42 to sort through their reams of raw data.

Mr Davie and Professor Galloway, along with academics all over the world, rebuilt the program that had been used to track down criminals so it could be applied to business problems.

Businesses using the platform can import all the private raw data it has on its customers in addition to publicly available information such as census data. Companies can then use the program and the data to answer important business questions such as where to spend advertising dollars, what the next product innovation should be or why sales were down 15 per cent over the last quarter.

Asked if consumers might blanch at the level of sophisticated data companies possess that could be used in such a way, Mr Davie told news.com.au: “I think consumers are starting to think there is a lot of data out there. In terms of the ability of that data to work in a way that is to their benefit, rather than being invasive, is something they’ll be pleasantly surprised by.”

What Mr Davie means by that is the more information and insight a business has on you, the more relevant and targeted it can be in delivering what you as an individual or a group might want from a brand.