1. Integrating Social Media: Earning Value Across Your Organization WOMMA Webinar 30 June 30 2010 Presented by: Joel R. Johnson SVP Integrated Planning, Porter Novelli
If you’re on this seminar then its clear you’ve faced the challenge of an organization, client or agency that talks a good game but still faces many challenges on delivery when it comes to social media.The problem is not the desire—marketers want the benefits of social media and view it as increasingly important but…They just haven’t realized yet that integration is the key—otherwise we’d have seen higher level of effort here.In the last 12 months at PN I personally have participated in half a dozen pitches for Global Social Media Policies—and my colleagues at other PR and digital advertisings say the same thing.Marketers are asking:Where do I start?Who’s going to do the work?Which agency should help? Is it PR, Digital, Ad agency, Direct, Social Media agency?What kind of ROI is there to help me build my case?
I believe you have to start, like with most things, with a sound strategy.For every organization—the particulars are the difference—but every media or business strategy is essentially the same. You plan, engage, manage and integrate.Where we differ and have found positive results—is in starting and ending with the consumer, the customer or the employeeWe ask “what’s in it for them?” and go from there.READ 4 PILLARSThe key is earning value for all parties. In fact—we don’t like Earned Media anymore, we like the term “Earned Value”. This positions us to think of social media not just as a marketing outcome, but as a business tool.
This as you can see is a dumb question.The little dog is frankly—all of us—every WOMMA member and believer in the power of social media.The big dog is really the status quo—the seemingly immovable forces of attrition and complacency.But look closely—the little dog isn’t pulling from the end of the rope—nope its right in there gaining leverage, and everytime he goes to battle with the big dog, he gets closer to convincing the big dog that he is persistent and determined.The big dog is realizing that social media is here to stay.
Its increasingly clear that at organizations—anyone and everyone who has conversations with consumers, customers and employees has a stake in Social Media.You’ve heard this before so I won’t belabor the point—but every agency has a stake in social media and nearly every campaign we do now somehow touchs social media.
What matters most is what you get out of the conversation and every stakeholder will get something slightly different from it.I believe the most valuable thing you can get out of the conversation however, is insights. Loyalty and advocacy are good things, transparency and increased customer satisfaction are good as well…but in order to create real buy-in…you have to drive value across the entire organization.That is the secret to success—don’t just make your marketing team happy, make everyone happy. To do that you will need to change your focus from thinking of social as a media strategy to thinking about it as a business strategy.Let me show you what I mean.
I recently returned from Cannes where my agency acted as the unofficial social media agency of the festival—providing real-time analysis of the conversation around the festival. We saw first-hand that the campaigns that won grand prix Lions had one thing in common—they created something new and interesting—that was worth advertising.Crispin Porter Bogusky created Twelpforce for Best Buy which won the Titanium Grand Prix for Integrated campaignBest Buy's Twelpforce launched an army of Best Buy tech pros to address consumer problems and inquiries via Twitter (directed to @twelpforce).Challenge: How does one of the leading electronics retailers in the world engage its audience, provide support, build advocacy, and provide recommendations across multiple channels, in a scalable and manageable way? Strategy: Expand communication channels to engage with consumers in a public, real-time and transparent approach. Program: In 2008, launched the Best Buy Community, which is partnered with Lithium Technologies, to offer a Web-based platform for customers to interact and engage with Best Buy’s advocates. In 2009, launched Twelpforce, which is a Best Buy Twitter feed that allows the Best Buy Community team to respond and engage with customers through Twitter. Results: “In an average quarter the team sees activity in the region of 600,000 customers visiting the community and posting 20,000 messages (over 77,000 messages and counting) and looking at over 22 million pages of content.”Source: http://lithium.com/pdfs/casestudies/Lithium-Best-Buy-Case-Study.pdfHere’s why they won:Top of mind in jurors' minds about Best Buy's Twelpforce was how it changed the client's business and reimagined the customer-service experience. "The phrase that came up with this piece was that it was a 'business-changing idea,'" said juror ReiInamoto, CCO of AKQA. Not only is it game-changing, but it changes the business of the client. [Also] one of the things I think about a lot when we do our work is that it should be useful, usable and delightful. This piece hit all those points, especially the last -- it put delight back into customer service." Source: http://adage.com/cannes2010/article?article_id=144695
Value is relative. Marmite—you either love it or hate it.Something valuable to me may not be valuable to you, but it doesn’t mean that it is irrelevant. In fact, finding all kinds of value from social media is a big driver of integration—and integration increases your chances of success.I encourage you to visit We Are Social’s Marmarati campaign on slideshare.Again—creating something WORTH advertising not the ads itself here.
Here’s where agencies and client organizations need to seriously think about how they organize for social media. If we’re talking business strategy here—then ultimately, we’re looking for value for the business and we’ve said that’s insights. Insights can come from every point along the purchase funnel. Here I’ve modified a common purchase funnel to show you that the social engagement purchase funnel should be doing two things:Earning Value…while reducing the barriers and obstacles that stand in the way of your customer, consumer or employee’s goals.
Challenge: Improve customer relations by talking directly to consumers about Dell products and servicesStrategy: Create IdeaStorm, a portal that facilitates an online “brainstorm” where customers can share ideas and collaborate with one another and Dell. “Our goal through IdeaStorm is to hear what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop. We hope this site fosters a candid and robust conversation about your ideas.”Program: Dell’s IdeaStorm allows customers to register for an account that then allows them to submit original ideas to Dell or vote up or down ideas already posted. Through this method, the most in demand ideas surface to the top.Results: Since 2007, IdeaStorm has surfaced 10,000 ideas from Dell consumers, 400 of which were implemented. Other BIC example: MyStarbucks.com
This social engagement path can be external or internal or a combination of both. Here a crisis started on YouTube and was DEALT with on YouTube.Challenge: Create a crisis management plan to deal with media criticism and a tarnished public reputation post a controversial Youtube video featuring employees spitting into Domino’s ordersStrategy: They apologized, corrected, and responded. First, they ordered a sanitation inspection of the store and ensured the health of the consumers. They they took responsibility for the incident and released a YouTube video response from Patrick Doyle, president of Domino’s. Afterwards they created a Twitter account (@dpzinfo) “to reassure consumers that this was an isolated incident.” Program: Domino’s established a crisis communication plan internally and then established a presence on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to communicate externally. Results: The controversial video was removed from YouTube. The two culprits were fired from Domino’s and currently face felony charges. Domino’s is now seen as a social, responsible brand.This effort may never be awarded with a Lions, but you can see immediately where the value of the media was apparent to solving a crisis.
Here is another way of looking at this purchase or conversion funnel.Ask your organization or your clients to spend more time in the bottom half of the funnel.In sustained engagement or “always-on” campaigns, you’ll generate insights that could inform NPD, Customer Support and Advocacy.
And just when you think…wow, this is REALLY hard. Ask yourself how hard it would be to create, plan, and implement a TWEET from outerspace.
What does “everyone’s contribution” look like?Show your organization that there’s gold in those insights that benefit the entire organization.
The other 2010 Cannes Lions Grand Prix Titanium winner was the Nike Livestrong campaign created by W & K. Now, W & K can not be described as a “social agency” but increasingly, they are creating campaigns that create high-levels of participation with the brand. The World Cup Write the Future campaign is good evidence that they get we should be creating things worth advertising (or worth talking about).But at the heart of the Chalkbot, a roving chalk road painter on the Tour de France, anyone could write a message of hope and have it painted on the roads along the tour for Lance, for loved ones afflicted with cancer, for the sheer fun of it.The key is that a social object was created that provided VALUE to all involved.
Here’s another example from SXSW that provided value to a community while creating new relationships with influencers. Porter Novelli worked with Microsoft, PayPal, SXSW and the Save the Children organization. Disclosure, Porter Novelli is the AOR of SXSW.Challenge: Raise money for the Haiti crisis at the 2010 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival Strategy: Utilize social media sites, such as Twitter and Foursquare, to drive audience participation, awareness and engagement. Program: For every Foursquare check-in at certain SXSW locations, a $0.25 donation was given to Haiti relief efforts, sponsored by Microsoft and PayPal. Users could also tweet using the hashtag #sxswhaiti. The goal was to accumulate $15K worth of check-ins.Results: The $15K goal was met after three days as a result of 315,845 check-ins and 2,667 tweets.
Pepsico recently built a “social media mission control” for Gatorade.Brilliantly, they took something as amorphous and indescribable as social media and made it physical to create a sense of importance and realness to the effort to monitor, engage, and join the SM conversation online.
In order to mine insights though on a continuous basis, you need to also have a “always-on” platform that supports customer segments, ladders back to the value propositions of your brands or initiatives, amplifies campaigns.You want to match your business area’s goals with a content platform that can help provide valuable insights.
I won’t spend much time on what is the right operating model for your business—but suffice it to say, there are social media consultancies out there actively studying and helping organizations to choose and define one.Each operating model will need to be tailored for your organization.Importantly—agencies will need to become aware of the pitfalls and opportunities in each. In our experience—agencies are often brought in AFTER the model has been chosen. It is important that agencies work with their clients as far upstream as possible. The consequences are that they will be stuck with an approach that may work well for the organization but poorly in execution.Case in point—Nestle had a operating model with little oversight that resulted in a PR crisis recently.
Here’s a more concrete example of building an always-on platform that will provide customer service insights, marketing insights, and e-commerce insightsChallenge: Without a consistent practice, social media can create confusing and misleading messages for the brand. Also, with the lack of leadership, individuals may face difficulties in learning about social media and other sites. Strategy: Multiple AT&T departments utilize social media, instead of just one person being the face of the brand. For example, AT&T has six categories of social media (Consumer, Small Business, Enterprise, Corporate, Community and Local Search). Within each category specific social media sites are included spanning from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Delicious. AT&T has 31 total social media sites. To implement this distributed strategy, social media training and policy is encouraged throughout the company. Programs: “Senior leadership that champions social media; training and internal communications around social-media policy is necessary.” Results: AT&T created a social media policy for all employees and published a social media disclosure on its website. With AT&T’s 31 social media sites, the company’s social media outreach connects with millions of people on a daily basis. Sources:http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=142221; http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=5000
Not only is AT&T taking customer care online—but they are using their fanpage to offer special deals as well, further moving prospects (when they’re ready of course) up the conversion path.
Recently, we worked with Gillette to launch the Gillette ProGlide Fusion. Because of the “razor wars”, we knew fatigue had set in and folks would be skeptical. So we put the product in the hands of the user and invited them to share their experience on YouTube. In this way—the insights provided value to the larger mass of skeptics—and valuable insights for us which we turned back into our social media. Porter Novelli runs the Gillette facebook, youtube and twitter media.We were able to mine the community for insights which now the entire organization can use to improve the overall customer experience.
We also worked with influential bloggers and gave value to their communities by offering them a widget which would give away razors. The giveaways served as a recruitment tool and generated a good deal of positive buzz for the brand AND increased value for the blogger.
Finally, its critical to build a repository (again to make real and physical) for your social media efforts. Make a playbook. In PR, we create what are called “Toolkits” for global campaigns that inform the regions on how to execute a particular campaign.For social media, you need not only a mandate from the C-suite, but a place where people can learn the rules, get tips and best practices, learn from each other, and get the guidance necessary to execute. It can also serve as a helpful tool when your team is young and small. The vast majority of inquries from within the organization can be answered here, creating scale, efficiency and automation (to handle 80% of requests and passalong 20% to Social Media Task Force)Dedicated comprehensive resource for Social Media engagements for all stakeholders to self-inform, covering all major topicsHow, where, when to engageProtocols and PoliciesCase Studies, examples and creative showcaseTraining MaterialsMeasurement and Monitoring Guidance
Challenge: Holding departments accountable to a research council and deciding who is responsible when a crisis occurs with a social media account.Strategy: Kodak combined centralized practices with a decentralized execution. In other words, Kodak created a social media committee to build the brand’s voice with their own individual accounts, which was then dispersed to the company as a whole. Then, each committee member is able to run their account as they see fit for the company. Programs: “[Kodak] employs Jenny Cisney, chief blogger, in marketing, but she's tasked with steering the company's social-media presence rather than own it entirely. Kodak has published online its social-media policy for employees within a guidebook for marketers looking for lessons in social media.”Results: Kodak runs four blogs, three Facebook pages, 10 national Twitter accounts , six international Twitter accounts, a Flickr account and YouTube account. Sources:http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=142221; http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/ourCompany/index.jhtml?pq-path=13552
