Social Media In BusinessOctober 2011

Social MediaTable Of Contents

Introduction

Y&R Group Expertise

The Australian Landscape

7 Social Strategies To Enable Business

Listening

Customer Service

Crisis Management

Content Distribution

Recruitment

Community Engagement

Internal

Y&R Group Global Case Studies

Gatorade Mission Control

Dell - Review, Respond, Record, Redirect

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Social MediaIntroduction

"I just got a new Dell laptop and paid a fortune for the four-year, in-home service. The machine is a melon and the service is a lie…. DELL SUCKS DELL LIES. Put that in your Google and smoke it, Dell."

It was 2005 when Jeff Jarvis posted this scathing comment online and, whilst nowadays we might call the ensuing publicity a Twitterstorm, back then they just called it ‘Dell Hell’. Yet if there is one lesson to be learnt from social media, it is that pain and gain often come together. Shocked into action by ‘Dell Hell’, within five years the company announced that they had made more than $6.5m in revenue from Twitter sales alone.

In this document we use case-studies and the combined wisdom of the Y&R Group to explore seven key uses of social media, and sketch out the associated risks and rewards.

Looking at other Australian service brands, we see that approaches vary massively from one to the other. Hardly any brands engage in all seven uses - some choose to employ social media as a branding mechanism only, while others use it as a core customer service channel. For you, the same will doubtless be true: sometimes the risk will outweigh the reward; sometimes the opposite will be true.

Yet, as our final Dell case-study shows, the key is to ‘grasp the nettle’ in the first place. All brands need a strategy on their approach to social media. This report is designed to be the first step towards writing yours

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Grasping the nettle.

This document includes work from the Australian Y&R Group, our global network and best practice examples from other sources.

Social MediaY&R Group Expertise

For over 5 years Y&R Group have been engaged in the practice of social media. As the media landscape has evolved into a democratic existence of brands and consumers so have the strategies and tactics of advertising agencies. No longer does a single TV ad sit by itself in the media stream, because now there are platforms and places for consumers to comment, critique and contribute to the rise and fall of a brand public image.

Brands now build communities, ask consumers for opinions and even allow the public to help create advertising campaigns which are seen by millions of Australians. Y&R have embraced this change in media and now employee specialist social media staff who work alongside the traditional disciplines of this agency.

Social Media Highlights• 2 x Cannes Lion Winner – Cadbury Picnic (Social Media

Campaign)• Canvas2Kickass – Crowdsourced Integrated Campaign• ActewAGL Social Media Strategy & Policy• Spring Valley Community Development (20,000 – Market

leader in juice category)• Just Car Insurance Community Development (20,000 –

Largest Insurance Page In Australia)• Cadbury Bar Portfolio Facebook Management • Australian Defence Force Social Media Policy Review (2011)• Defence Force Recruitment Facebook Chats (Navy, Army, Air

Force)

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Social MediaA 162 Collins Street Perspective On Social Media

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Luc WiesmanHead of Digital StrategyGeorge Patterson Y&R

“Change. The sooner brands put the right resources, practices and policies in place, the sooner they can realise its potential.“

Russel HowcroftChief Executive OfficerYoung & Rubicam Group

“Social is the new Media. It’s that simple. And that’s scary. “

What’s the single biggest implication of social media in business today?

Mark McCraithChief Operating OfficerMaxus

“How do clients use this medium effectively as a marketing/ media channel, and more importantly how the dialogue is constructed and how often.”

Social MediaThe Australian Landscape

Australian corporations are now investing in the key social platforms; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Whilst strategies in this space differ from company to company, the sentiment remains the same- have a plan, a presence and always be listening.

Key takeouts: • Facebook remains the most

dominant platform for businesses, due to its immense local user base.

• Energy and Insurance have least developed presence in this space. However, Just Car is a standout within the category.

• Travel has the largest audience, and offers multiple accounts for various business units. (i.e. Media, Brand, Customer Service.)

• Holden, a standout performer across Australian corporations.

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Energy Travel Financial Services TeleCommunications Automotive Insurance

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How does your brand stack up?

Brand vs. Social Media Followers (All Platforms)

Social Media7 Strategies To Enable Businesses

With social media, there’s no one size fits all strategy. To successfully utilise this channel, business must invest in understanding the different uses, risks and rewards.

As a method of simplifying this process, we divide social media into 7 key categories. These categories enable a business to ask; is this right for us? what’s the ROI? do we have enough resource to manage this? and what are the risks involved?

With this information, a business can implement the right partners, people and processes to successfully participate and leverage the benefits of social media.

As seen in the previous page, these strategies have been implemented and proven by a number of large Australian corporations across banking, finance, automotive and tourism.

Question: If you’re not already using social media, how might one of these strategies benefit your business?

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Social Media

Listening

Customer Service

Crisis Management

Content Distribution

Recruitment

Community Management

Internal

Proven social media strategies for Australian business.

Social Media1. Listening

What is Listening?Listening is defined as the monitoring and collection of social discussion to make informed decisions based on ‘real’ evidence and insight. Listening occurs across channels such as Facebook, Twitter, forums, blogs and other digital channels of open discussion. By engaging in “Listening”, a business can better understand the consumer sentiment toward its brands, products, people and services.

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Risks Benefits

• Listening enables businesses to better understand consumer sentiment of its brand, products and services

• Insight from social data can influence business strategy• Ability to gauge public interest of new products and services• Creates a system to alert staff of the need to address

customer service and crisis• A method of identifying influential people and websites that

can amplify positive discussion around a brand, product and service.

Listening empowers brands with real-time consumer sentiment.

Social Media1. Listening

Adidas In 2008, Adidas launched new soccer boot. After an impressive two months, the sales of the product began to halt. By monitoring its customers in online and social media forums, Adidas soon learned their new product had a fault in its construction, causing it to fall apart.

With this knowledge, Adidas went back to the factory, fixed the problem, relaunched the boot, and notified its vocal social media consumers.

Sales of the boot soon returned to their previous levels.

Microsoft xBoxXbox was due to launch its hotly anticipated 360 console. To assist the launch strategy, xBox monitored a number of gaming blogs to identify the most vocal and influential. These influential bloggers were flown to xBox HQ to be the first to play the new 360 console.

After 3 days of experiencing the next big thing, bloggers flew home and began telling their respective gaming communities.

When xBox went to market, Microsoft had gained a loyal group of advocates willing to promote its console (for free). This also helped give xBox a massive advantage over Sony’s PS3 console.

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Discussion becomes insight, insight creates action.

Social Media2. Customer Service

Today, customer service is more than just setting up a call centre and waiting for consumers to call you. The fragmentation of media has created an expectation that brands will exist across various platforms, to answer questions and provide support via various mediums. Consumers now want to ask questions at a time and on a channel that suits them. Brands that successfully do this, are rewarded with high customer satisfaction and customers sharing their stories about their service.

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Risks Benefits

• Negative comments and feedback are publicly visible. • Examples of poor customer service live on, well after the initial

incident. • Resourcing and staff who can respond to customers in a

timely manner (within 24 hours). • Ignoring disgruntled customers can escalate situations

unnecessarily. Often, a simple response can avoid potential disasters.

• Greater ability to deliver customer service quickly and efficiently

• Reduced load on calls centres and other forms of traditional customer service channels

• Increased levels of customer satisfaction (ability to receive service on a channel they prefer and without waiting on hold)

• Ability to personalise and humanise the impersonal channels of a business

• Good customer service can easily be shared and amplified amongst customer’s social networks

• An opportunity to be seen as an industry leader in accessibility, transparency and customer satisfaction

• A method of tracking successful outcomes• Cross promote customer and sales channels to improve

acquisition of new customers.

Transparent interactions with your customers online.

Social Media2. Customer Service

In September 2010, NAB made a decision to shift into the social media space, understanding it required a whole new approach to customer service.

Managed by NAB’s ‘social media team’, across both Facebook and Twitter, NAB responds to comments, questions and feedback from its customers.

NAB only responds during business hours, however, they have ways and means to ensure that questions are responded to within 12 hours.

At the same time NAB have managed to grow their social media community, becoming leaders in this space and putting a human face on what is a notoriously dry and often disliked industry.

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Dedicated social media team commissioned to respond

on behalf of the bank.

Social Media2. Customer Service

After launching the 2011 Ford Explorer, Ford realised the same questions kept appearing over and over from the community.

Rather than responding to each one by text, Ford created the ‘Explorer’ channel on YouTube where questions are answered with a short video.

Within this channel, questions such as, ‘How much does the Ford Explorer weigh?’ and ‘Will the console fit a handbag?’ could be asked and answered by different members of the Ford team.

Ford were able read and respond to questions within a day – publishing the video responses on their social media channels.

These videos were also used as content for the community, creating hours of video for potential buyers to watch and engage with.

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Social questions answered with video responses. Brilliant.

Social Media3. Crisis Management

On the internet, everything moves quickly. So fast in fact that people can read about an earthquake on Twitter from the other side of the country before they feel it. When a brand crisis happens, things move just as quickly and can often be just as damaging. Brands are increasingly developing practices and procedures to deal with such crises, whether it’s a natural disaster or an online scandal. Social media is playing a key role in the response and prevention of these crises, with the ability for brands to communicate with reach and in a timely manner.

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Risks Benefits

• Failure to respond will cause more problems• Failure to move quickly when a crisis takes place will often

have a negative impact on a brand• Lack of honesty and transparency with the issue at hand – can

amplify the situation and cause more issues.

• Ability to diffuse a situation before it becomes a mainstream crisis

• A platform to provide clear statements and information directly to consumers in times of need

• Ability to reach connected customers before mainstream media does.

• Creates positive brand image for brands with the ability to respond quickly.

A means for brands to respond directly to the public.

Social Media3. Crisis Management

It’s taken Qantas a while to find their feet in the social media space, but now they add value to their business through crisis management.

Qantas see both Twitter and Facebook as ways to communicate almost immediately to passengers during crisis such as industrial strikes or natural disasters.

For example during a recent natural disaster (Volcano Ash Cloud), passengers were confused, lacking information and unhappy.

Social media allowed Qantas to broadcast delays, flight information and updates immediately to thousands of travellers. These updates were accessible via customers mobile phones in locations where passengers were unable to access mainstream media.

Qantas followed this up with one-to-one communication with individuals if further information or help was required.

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Keeping customers informed.

Social Media3. Crisis Management

In early 2009, two Domino’s Pizza employees filmed themselves bathing in the restaurant kitchen. Within hours the video went viral and naturally the Domino’s brand was quickly tarnished over night.

Dominos took a best practice approach, and within 24 hours the CEO had filmed his response on YouTube.

The video detailed how Domino’s had already handled the issue, clarified statements and errors made by the media and detailed what they were doing to ensure Domino’s never had the same problem again.

Traditionally, a response like this might take weeks or even months by the time it gets signed off and goes through each stakeholder.

By moving quickly and directly, Domino’s were able to deal with the issue immediately before it grew out of control.

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Speed, sincerity and authenticity are paramount

in times of crisis.

Social Media4. Content Distribution

Across various channels, consumers are liking, following and subscribing to brands they feel represent their digital selves. In doing so, they opt-in to receive communications and content material, along with the rest of the community. The most popular form of social media distribution is via Twitter and Facebook pages – where consumers receive daily updates from their favourite brands.

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Risks Benefits

• Consumers expect brands to maintain regular communications and engagement with its followers

• Communities which created then neglected offer little or no value for a brand

• Content creation and management of these channels can become costly as communities grow in size and demand

• Users can sometimes ‘spoof’ or create parodies from branded content (i.e. Chevy Tahoe).

• Ability to build large ‘databases’ of engaged consumers with common interests

• A cost effective way to broadcast information and brand updates to a large group of consumers / customers.

• A simple method of message amplification – content, videos, images, are shared to personal networks.

• A method of distributing content to more places beyond your brand’s homepage, i.e. Embedded amongst blogs and forums.

More messages in more places.

Social Media4. Content Distribution

Holden have a quarter of a million loyal followers on Facebook.

They’re regularly able to share campaign material, information about new models, and talk to their most devoted and loyal fans.

Everything Holden does in marketing or communications is distributed via these 230,000 fans, giving Holden an incredible head start creating hype or interest around new products, events and its associated businesses (i.e. Holden Racing).

Holden has developed a content strategy around what’s published within the channels, ensuring the brand can maximise engagement and interest in their content.

Engagement and interest are then measured and tracked - offering insight into the ROI social media provides the brand.

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Holden have created one of the largest branded communities in Australia.

Social Media5. Recruitment

Social media offers businesses new opportunities to promote themselves as an employer of choice using social media via channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It enables businesses to showcase its employees, projects and internal culture to prospective candidates and industry peers.

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Risks Benefits

• Poor personal behaviour and social etiquette of company staff can tarnish a brand’s image, even if the employee is not acting on behalf of the business.

• Inappropriate use of blogs, social networks and even Twitter accounts can generate negative commentary in the media, however can be avoided with the development of an Employee Social Media Use policy.

• A means of searching for candidates who openly display their current employment and previous history.

• Use of social media by employees can demonstrate thought leadership within their industry. For example if an employee writes for an industry blog, this has positive associations for the business, generating a more positive image of the business for potential recruits.

• Social media, particularly through LinkedIn, can be used to generate networking opportunities, particularly useful for recruitment.

• Businesses can use social platforms to demonstrate who they are, their internal culture as well as distribute the work they create.

New opportunities in sourcing talent.

Social Media5. Recruitment

As a business, Rio Tinto value social media as a method of not only recruiting, but showcasing their business as an employer of choice via LinkedIn.

Whilst Rio Tinto may be a global company, it has amassed close to 16,000 followers on LinkedIn. Within their corporate profile they share news, announce hires as well as newly vacant positions and provide general information about the culture of the Rio Tinto business.

By maintaining an up-to-date presence on LinkedIn, Rio Tinto increase their visibility as an employer of choice, allow closer relationships with candidates and in-turn reduce the need for recruiters to find quality employees.

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Rio Tinto connect directly with staff and employment candidates.

Social Media6. Community Engagement

Brands build positive relationships with their customers by creating branded communities. Communities within the likes of Facebook, allow consumers to collectively discuss their interests in a brand. As these communities gain momentum, brands can leverage the collective opinion and insights they provide. Product development, service improvement and brand advocacy are just some of the ways brands leverage this strategy.

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Risks Benefits

• An open forum allows consumers to openly critique and criticise brands.

• Without a social media response and management policy, negative discussion within a branded community can turn toxic.

• Communities require regular moderation and monitoring of discussions and comments.

• A strong community of loyal brand advocates will manage itself. In most instances negative publicity / discussion is outweighed by the brand advocates positive voice.

• Real-time feedback on new products and services (asking the community questions)

• Ability to recruit brand champions / advocates to promote a product or talk on behalf of the brand (xBox)

• Quality content is amplified to consumers social networks - drawing new followers to a brand and increasing positive brand currency.

Digital brand advocates.

Social Media6. Community Engagement

Just Car insurance currently have the largest social media community of any insurance brand in Australia. Off the back of their successful Canvas2Kickass campaign, they have amassed over 37,000 followers. Within their community, they regularly engage their community with competitions, content, discussions and product information.

Members of the community provide Just Car with real-time feedback on new products and offer a place for Just Car to gain collective intelligence about their key target audience. Just Car also has staff on standby to answer any insurance questions within 24 hours.

The Just Car Facebook page continues to drive community growth and keep existing members interested and participating in discussion.

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Building a branded community around a common interest.

(Modified cars)

Social Media6. Community Engagement

Starbucks wanted to engage their thousands of customers in a way which could make a positive difference to the business. MyStarbucksIdea.com was created as a method to generate crowdsourced ideas. People from all over America joined this immensely popular website, to openly contribute and co-create with the Starbucks brand.

In its first year over 75,000 ideas were submitted, The website is now in its third year, and whilst the company has been slow implementing the ideas (only 25 in the first year), they have maintained its popularity and it continues to be contributed to by brand advocates.

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Empowering customers to shape the future of a brand.

Social Media7. Internal

Although not as commonly used, social media can also provide platforms for businesses to support internal culture and communication between employees. Initiatives to drive collaboration and sharing through internally-facing social media platforms can provide employees with access to tools and resources to increase effectiveness and innovation.

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Risks Benefits

• As the concept is quite broad and can vary dramatically, internal use of social media platforms (i.e. Yammer) requires help from within the business to drive the project, i.e a champion

• Take-up of internal social media platforms can be slow without a direct benefit to staff.

• Increased levels of communication, sharing and collaboration between staff members

• Ability to develop internal culture and promote sharing of information

• A method of introducing employees to one another• Co-creation and collaboration in otherwise segmented

business departments.

Co-creation and collaboration.

Social Media7. Internal

I Am FedEx is almost a social network for all 275,000 FedEx employees. Although it’s public, it’s as much an internal tool as it is an external one. Employees are encouraged to submit their own stories, share with one another, learn about the company and its culture and above all; bring FedEx employees together.

Employees submit their stories through the platform, and FedEx will send a camera crew to film the most interesting ones. Videos are uploaded to the website, with stories ranging from a delivery truck driver in India who dances in his spare time to a motorbike enthusiast who sorts packages in a factory in Texas.

I am FedEx has become a tool for FedEx to communicate and strengthen the culture to employees, and demonstrate their core values to key stakeholders both within and outside the business.

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Empowering employees to shape the future of

your brand.

Case StudiesGatorade & Dell

How the world’s most popular sports drink manages social media.

Social MediaA behind the scenes look at Gatorade

Gatorade has already netted a few notable trophies for its fantastic Replay work, including two Grand Prix at Cannes and the highly coveted Grandy at the Andy awards.

When you take a peek at the brand's 'social media command centre', it offers some clue as to why this brand is suddenly in the limelight.

Through our global partner VML, PepsiCo-owned gave us insight into their 'war room for monitoring the brand in real-time across social media'.

The company uses the Command Centre to track media performance, create an ongoing dialogue with consumers, and collect insights which will influence new product development and marketing strategies.

For instance, a track featured in a Gatorade ad was released in full following positive online feedback, while the multi-dashboard room also helps to steer online consumers in the right direction.

Gatorade's ultimate goal: 'To take the largest sports brand in the world and turn it into largest participatory brand in the world.'

'Wherever people are talking, clicking, typing about our brand, mission control is there to listen.’

This kind of 'control room' that facilitates agile reactions in real-time should be an investment under consideration for all brands right now.

See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InrOvEE2v38

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Gatorade is setting the stage for digital leadership.

Source: Contagious

Social Media ,

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Social Media

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Social MediaComplete Social Integration

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Social Media

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Social Media

A digital pioneer's approach to tracking, responding and managing social media discussion.

Social MediaDell - Review, Respond, Record & Redirect

Dell is largely recognised as one of the global leaders in both digital customer service management and in social media engagement.

Every day, there are 25,000 online conversations that mention Dell. That means 25,000 opportunities to try to resolve consumer problems, to amplify solutions, to make Dell products better.

A new Social Media Listening Command Centre now runs 24/7 to identify, code and distribute digital Dell references.

Where do they look for the positive effect of social media?

In digital shopping carts. Dell identify people who have participated in their social-media program, and almost always see a larger shopping cart. In Asia, it can be twice or three times as big.

The key to that continued growth is not just listening but what they do after they listen.

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Dell’s Four Point Approach

1. Review what is being said.

2. Respond appropriately.

3. Record compelling video.

4. Redirect your traffic.

Source:  Geoffrey Precourt, Warc Exclusive, April 2011

Social MediaDell - Review, Respond, Record & Redirect

1. Review what is being saidDell do more than just respond. They leverage data to change the company and business.

At Dell, that's embedded into the fabric of the company, with an action chain that starts with marketing and communications and moves on to customer service, human resources, product design, and development.

2. Respond appropriately One of the principal machines that drives Dell's social success is its IdeaStorm, a digital engagement/collaboration centre that began in 2007.

IdeaStorm has reviewed more than 10,000 consumer-driven "brainstorms” and "taken action” on 400 ideas about designing products differently-a process that has transformed the business and technical support.

People are talking about Dell on Twitter, Facebook, fan sites and tracker sites. Dell realised their home page was no longer dell.com, it was google.com and youtube.com and twitter.com and qq.com and renren.com and facebook.com and linkedin.com.

To tap into that burgeoning usage, Dell uses three different kinds of digital media:

34Source:  Geoffrey Precourt, Warc Exclusive, April 2011

Social MediaDell - Review, Respond, Record & Redirect

To that end, the company has invited all kinds of employees to talk with its customers in each of the three Dell digital venues. To date, 8,800 employees have graduated from a Social Media Certification program that gives them the basics on the workings of such offerings as Facebook and Twitter.

For different tiers of social-media engagement, Brown's group offers "three levels of access".

At its most basic level, the instruction essentially emphasises courtesy, comfort and the basic understanding not to give away any privileged information.

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In 2011 Dell says their approach is to “Go fish where the fish are.”

Dell has formalised its procedures with an ‘Our Social Media Principles' handbook that gives Dell employees pointers on how to:

• Protect information: What's confidential is confidential.

• Be transparent and disclose: There are 10 magic words that begin every online conversation: ‘Hi. My name is Adam and I work for Dell.’

• Follow the law, follow the code of conduct: Dell does have a page of legalese with such guidelines as, Speaking OnBehalf of Dell. Blogging and other online dialogue are far-reaching forms of communication; distribution is meant for a vast public audience. Information purported to be published by Dell contained within blogs and other websites could have a negative impact to Dell and our stakeholders, with potential legal implications. Unless you have successfully completed Dell's Social Media training courses and have been certified to speak on behalf of the company via Social Media, You shall never claim to be speaking on behalf of Dell or expressing an official company position in such communications.' The ‘Our Social Media Principles' handbook is much more reader-friendly.

• Be responsible.

• Be nice, have fun, connect.

Source:  Geoffrey Precourt, Warc Exclusive, April 2011

Social MediaDell - Review, Respond, Record & Redirect

3. Record and RedirectThe people who volunteer for consumer contact come from sectors across the fabric of the company. Each unit has a specific customer-facing engagement role:

Dell believe traditional marketing won't work for digital consumer engagement. These are conversations, they're relationships, If you have them, you don't need a slogan or a tagline.

Dell says campaigns based on earning sustainable relationships leverage the existing audience and grow it for future use.

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"We track ratings and reviews for all of our products. We listen to the communities and hear ourconsumers' stories.

They create; we benefit."

Source:  Geoffrey Precourt, Warc Exclusive, April 2011

Social MediaDell’s Social Media Milestones

37Source: Global Marketing

Social MediaTaking Action

Brands must have a clear position on social media. The decision to participate (or not) should be based on an educated understanding of costs, risks and ROI social media can offer.

We recommend businesses take these steps to evaluate and setup their social media practice.

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AuditIdentify opportunities

Plan of attack

Develop strategy

Rules of engagement for staff

Social media policy

Identify resourcesAssign responsibility

Knowledge and tools to participate

Training (Staff)

Always be listening / measuring

Review

With the correct planning, people and risk management, your brand can begin using social media.

Social MediaFurther Information

This document was compiled by the Y&R Group. For further information, please contact:

Russel HowcroftY&R GroupCEO

P 03 9287 1200E russel.howcroft@yrbrands.com

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