Case Study: Social Media Strategy @ Mercedes Benz – Targeting young Customers through Social Media

Mercedes Benz has been actively engaging with customers and prospective customers particularly younger generation customers as part of its marketing and sales strategy "Mercedes-Benz 2020 - Best Customer Experience". Worldwide, Mercedes Benz has around 23.5 million fans on the national and international Mercedes-Benz Facebook pages and the company has successfully set up a benchmark in the automotive sector in terms of engaging with fans and customers. Mercedes Benz has two million likes, shares and comments monthly at the international Facebook page highlights the aggressive fan engagement who discusses the brand and its products. To attract younger generation customers like 21- to 29-year-old potential consumers who felt Mercedes Benz cars as “stuffy” and more suited to their parents’ generation, the company launched the new CLA-Class cars that feature a compact design and a relatively low price — models start at less than $30,000.

Mercedes put its main marketing focus on social networking and first established a partnership with famous filmmaker Case Neistat who in exchange for a CLA car, made four videos showing his personal experience with Mercedes’ vehicles. Mercedes also invited Instagram’s five most popular photographers to drive CLA vehicles and post photos to the site. The photographer whose post garnered the most attention won a car. Mercedes-Benz’s Nathan Tan, a supervisor of advertising said that the social media marketing effort paid off as the average age for CLA buyers fell by 11 years which is younger compared to Mercedes buyers in general. “Mercedes ended up with an 82 percent conquest rate, or percentage of new buyers who had previously chosen another brand. Seventy percent of new buyers had never previously bought a luxury car. “It was the greatest advertising in Mercedes’ history,” said Nathan Tan.

Mercedes uses Instagram along with Facebook and Twitter successfully in a powerful way and has the most active fans among all car brands. Mercedes plans on increasing these social networking platforms in 2014 to further tap into a younger generation of buyers. Instagram Shootout is where car photographers can post images on the Mercedes-Benz channel which can be rated by users to determine the winner. Since 2009 the company has been using social networking when it launched a professional journalistic network to maintain close contact with a large number of international online opinion leaders from a range of different areas, from cars and technology to fashion, design and lifestyle. Mercedes-Benz marketing strategy for the all-new 2014 CLA-Class is working well and the company believes social media as a critical platform to attract a new generation of younger buyers who have never purchased a Mercedes vehicle before. Luxury car manufacturers are aggressively engaging with fans, customers and potential customers on various social networking sites as they have to constantly engage with above set of people, build brand reputation and increase the aspiration to own the brand’s products.  

Case Study: Social Media @ Wells Fargo – Listening to Customers through Social Media Command Center

Wells Fargo made significant investments to set up its Social Media Marketing unit over the past 5 years for listening and evaluating the voice of their customers on various social networking sites and platforms effectively and respond to their grievances and queries. In an interview with Portada,  Wells Fargo's CMO Jamie Moldafsky  said, "In the past 18 months we established new policies and processes, engaged partners and people, and launched new platforms to move from social test/learn to having a robust social business. We have a hub and spoke model where an enterprise team develops the capabilities, accelerants and guardrails for the company to follow." Wells Fargo established "social media command center" in San Francisco and a backup location in Charlotte — where employees keep an eye on  eight large screens that display Tweets, Facebook posts and other social media content published about the brand, engage with consumers on topics that are trending and quickly respond to specific customer queries.

Both the command centers are constantly monitored by dedicated staff five days a week, 12 hours a day and the bank deployed technology of Salesforce.com that monitors the mentions of its name around the clock so that the bank keep watch on customer’s response to various products and services, or initiatives such as establishing more computerized smaller branches. "It's a fundamental change to consumer behavior," says Renee Brown, the head of the enterprise social media team at Wells Fargo. "[Social media] is the new water cooler and street corner where people are gathering to talk.” The monitoring is also helps in better handling of complaints and negative comments as large banks regularly face complaints related to everything from poor branch service to questionable fees to their handling of foreclosures, and in the social media world it is very important for banks to quickly acknowledge the complaints and make an effort to resolve them. As part of its social media outreach, Wells Fargo has a "social care" unit to which it refers many of its customer complaints.

In the year 2013, Wells Fargo was mentioned more than one million times on social media sites and comments included a mix of positive and negative comments. In an interview with Portada, Wells Fargo's CMO Jamie Moldafsky said, "in 2013, we significantly increased engagement, fans and followers and have seen improvements in sentiment by integrating and moving toward a socially engaged business. We’re excited about the engagement we’ve experienced so far."  We have a terrific team of more than 75 social practitioners that meet regularly across all of our businesses to build and support our social media content and programs. Social media also allows us to spread our marketing messages very quickly and effectively, particularly when integrated into our marketing campaigns. When our millions of fans tell their friends that they like our products and services which helps change perception more than anything else." Wells Fargo have always been an early adopters of technology and Wells Fargo executives were the first in banking industry to adopt the new social, mobile technologies to help deepen customer relationships.

Social Media Marketing Strategy @ Coca-Cola – Coke Facebook Strategy

Coca-Cola has built an active presence on various social media platforms without much effort by the company as the brand is hugely popular and integral part of the daily lives of the people across the world. Moreover Coca-Cola’s customers themselves have been active on various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Google+, etc.  A key step forward was made I the year 2012 when the company announced Content marketing Strategy 2020 where in the company moved from moving from “Creative Excellence” to “Content Excellence” Creative excellence has always been at the heart of Coca Cola’s advertising particularly the 30 second Television Ads and they have decided that content is now the key to marketing in the 21st century on a social web. Consumer engagement and collaboration model was adopted where in Consumers ideas, creativity and conversations on various social networks are tracked and use them to increase brand visibility and market the products. The purpose of content excellence is to create “Ideas” that are viral and uncontrolled which is called “liquid content”. Coca-Cola adopted 70/20/10 Investment principle to creating “Liquid content“, 70% of content should be low risk that pays the rent and is bread and butter marketing (also easy to do and consumes 50% of time), 20% of content creation should innovate off what works and 10% of content marketing is high risk ideas that may be tomorrows 70% or 20% or will fail.

The Coca-Cola Facebook Page is a collection of customer stories showing how people from around the world have helped make Coke into what it is today. Most of the content on the page is consumer created and the company’s focus is on maintaining the brand image and raising awareness of its ad campaigns. Coca-Cola, which joined Facebook in 2008, has garnered close to 75 million likes by engaging customers and fans actively and less focus on product promotion and more on its fans. Coca-Cola's success has been achieved through statuses, updates, videos and photos that increase customer engagement and interaction, supporting various social causes and integrating other forms of social media. Apart from promoting the widely popular Polar Bears campaigns, Olympics and Euro 2012 ad campaigns, Coke’s social team post questions and run polls often, but pictures and photos that are shared generate significant response from fans in terms of comments and ‘likes’. Coca-Cola also has a number of Facebook apps, including one called ‘When will happiness strike’ that is basically a video real of its ads and another called ‘Ahh Giver’ that allows users to send a personalised message and a free Coke to a Facebook friend. Coca-Cola also has Facebook pages for its other products such as Diet Coke and Coke Zero, however these have far fewer fans. But interesting fact is that Coca Cola did not start the Facebook page first, it was started by the company fans, and it is created by its loyal consumers. It all changed when Facebook introduced new rules which mandated that brand pages must be administered by the brands themselves and Coke decided to keep the existing page but manage it themselves rather that they starting a new page. Coca-Cola realized the fact that only traditional advertising is no longer relevant it has to be supported by active social media presence where customers actively engage by sharing opinions, videos, stories and photos and this highlights the fact that the company cares. 

Social Media Marketing Strategy@ IBM LinkedIn Strategy

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking site also one of the major social media platforms that companies across the world use to engage with customers, industry experts and others and also utilize LinkedIn to share brand marketing, company values, and product updates, with potential partners, investors, and customers. Initially most of the companies utilized LinkedIn for recruiting purposes like posting job opportunities, identifying talent and verifying the backgrounds. In a study carried by data analytics firm, Simply Measured, IBM has emerged as the top brand with maximum – 6,052 – number of engagements. IBM shares relevant industry articles to engage computing professionals.

IBM LinkedIn page has close to 1.5 million followers and millions of interactions every year. The company uses LinkedIn to let audience know happenings within the organization, and it also posts articles from around the Web on IBM-relevant topics. Topics like Big Data, Cloud Computing, Research, Innovation, latest product launches, etc. are all covered on the LinkedIn page. Followers comment on the updates and posts, like them and even start their own discussion threads that leads to the millions of interactions that makes IBM the most active company on LinkedIn. IBM promotes its services under the products and services tab, where various products like IBM Training and IBM Software are recommended by LinkedIn users.

For IBM LinkedIn is a crucial social media platform, both as a content channel and a discussion forum for IBM employees to actively engage with customers. “We are finding LinkedIn to be a promising content platform as opposed to just a recruiting platform,” said Ethan McCarty is the Director, Enterprise Social Strategy and Programs for IBM. “Usage of the site is trending a lot more toward professional content consumption – it’s not videos of cats. The fact is, people behave differently on different networks,” says McCarty. “On Twitter we try to structure content around an impactful headline. In [the Facebook] context, people want to talk about less technical topics and more societal impact kind of work. When it comes to LinkedIn, we tend to get deeper into the professional details. If you’re going into a community that’s all about smarter water management, we feel pretty confident about putting more technical water management content in there.”” he says in an interview with Lauren McKay, eMarketer.

LinkedIn Groups play a crucial role in pushing IBM content towards an important and informed expert audience with an advantage of pushing IBM employees to the forefront in engaging with customers and generating opportunities directly. “What’s nice and distinctive about LinkedIn is we can really emphasize interactions with IBM experts and the content they create,” says McCarty. LinkedIn is a perfect ecosystem for IBM as it includes discussion groups, recommendation ads, thousands of job postings, updates, comments, shares  and other forms of social display advertising that is generating significant return on investment for IBM and it also meets the fundamentals of IBM social media strategy of reach, engagement, amplification and conversion.

Social Media Marketing Strategy @ IBM – Active Listening & Employee driven

IBM had restructured its Marketing Teams with a focus of increased presence and engagement with customers on various social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google hangouts, etc. Social Media will supplement traditional marketing channels in improving further its product, brand and channel marketing strategy in future, according to Ed Abrams, IBM Midmarket Business Vice President. Marketing Teams were retrained to use social media channels, understand the company guidelines that need to follow while on various social media platforms and drive demand for IBM’s products and services along with actively listening and engaging with customers and prospective customers. The success of the IBM social media marketing strategy can be attributed to the training that was given to the marketing teams as it is very essential for the marketing managers to have right skills to actively engage with customers on various social media platforms and any mistakes or wrong moves will out rightly affect the brand image of IBM. IBM employees are trained and validated before allowing them to engage with customers on social media platforms.

IBM social media training for employees includes how to get started on various social media platforms and improve their skills blogging, tweeting and using other social media to share their expertise and connect with IBM customers. IBM’s social media marketing strategy is based on fundamental of   “active listening” on social media channels, understand the customer concerns, gather details, in case of prospective customers initiate the fist contact and providing content that is relevant. “In that context, we’ll deliver proof points, access to experts and expertise to solve IT problems of our audience,” Abrams said. “IBM wants to be responsive to our customers,” Abrams said. “We’re out there with our own tools listening to conversations going on in social stratosphere. We’re building a library of influencers who in real time can get involved in those conversations to provide content.” With social media, IBM’s positioning and market direction can be altered quickly: “You have options for the 8-minute, 8-hour or 8-day reaction,” Abrams said in an interview with The VAR Guy.

IBM has decentralized its social media and content marketing by relying on the employees particularly the specialists and subject matter experts related to various technologies and products from across the company and including their personal blogs, tweets and posts into the company’s marketing mix, crucial success factor. Employee engagement is at the heart of how IBM creates great experiences for its customers, explained Ethan McCarty, IBM’s director of enterprise social programs. “We want to create the most innovative, leading-edge experiences” for customers with employees actively engaged in the process. IBM’s social team that includes the HR and legal teams too have been working develop a program to encourage employees to actively participate and proactively manage their digital footprint. It all started in 2005 when the company internally crowd sourced “blogging guidelines” which were necessitated by the fact that employees then were actively engaged on both internal and external blogs and over period of time these guidelines ultimately became the social media policy of IBM that included various other platforms along with blogs and wikis. IBM is having positive returns by allowing the employees discuss and link to IBM products on their blogs and social media posts. 

Social Media Marketing Strategy @ Kentucky Fried Chicken- Customer Service & Engagement

Kentucky Fried Chicken has been actively and aggressively using the various social media platforms to promote their menu offerings, promotions, contests, new product launches and most importantly focusing on the freshness and juiciness of their chicken compared to its competitors “It’s really about connecting with fans and making sure the brand remains relevant,” said Rick Maynard, manager of public relations at KFC. KFC is active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. and all of these channels play a crucial role in connecting with consumers all over the world. KFC has a highly loyal customer base who loves their food as they go to their restaurants across the world and also engage actively on various social media platforms. This prompted the company to actively build and maintain social media presence and engage with customers on day to day basis. Most of the fans, followers and likes that KFC garnered on various social media platforms are due to their loyal customer base and they did not spend much on building this except for occasional promotional offers and discounts to enhance customer engagement.

The KFC Facebook page has millions of likes, thousands of people talking about the company and thousands of them are checking in and updating their Facebook status. KFC has restaurants in more than 100 countries and KFC’s Facebook pages of specific countries highlight their international audience and customers actively post KFC-themed photos of their KFC restaurant visits from around the world. KFC only posts about 15-20% of promotional content and most of the posts are customer generated content uploaded and shared by customers mostly their experience in the KFC restaurants. The KFC Twitter feed has a good following and the focus is not on pushing sales but most of the tweets are related to genuine fun which most of the company fans appreciate and the two-way communication is working well for the company. Twitter campaign presented a high school senior with a $20,000 Colonel’s scholarship based on a 140-character Twitter application which also highlighted the Colonel Sanders’ dedication to kids and education. The company received nearly 3,000 tweet applications, national news coverage for the program that awards 75 $20,000 college scholarships each year.

KFC manages its corporate social media tools internally, with a cross-functional team and the strategy: to connect and engage with KFC followers, cultivate relationships and respond to any inquiries. Customers are actively contacting through social media platforms both positively and negatively which forced KFC to use social media for customer service purposes. The company does not remove negative posts and if any customer posts a negative comment/post via social media instead of a phone, company ask for details, handle it and thank them for bringing it to our attention. Since customers are looking for quick response on social media platforms the company has exclusive people online for customers’ service during all normal business hours. KFC sees the social media scene as more of an opportunity to interact and engage their customers, not much focus is placed on the return on investment the activity generates. We don’t get a lot of pressure to justify [the return on investment]. It’s a very important customer-service element, and that’s enough for us. It’s about cultivating relationships, and that has a real business output,” Maynard said.

Social Media Marketing – Ford Fiesta: A Social Remix, Revival of 2009 Fiesta Movement

Ford Motor Company had redesigned the Fiesta car in 2009 with a target of reaching the young customers and first time car buyers and company launched the Fiesta Movement, the campaign that sparked chatter on social media, and user-generated content became the basis for the company’s TV and print ads. Ford gave 100 digitally-connected people a Fiesta for six months with one mission create a themed video every month, documenting their time with the car on social media. Ford then put the content up in real-time, unedited and unfiltered, essentially turning over the brand to its consumers. The Fiesta Movement that started in April 2009 "was entirely driven by social media" without any traditional media set against it, and, Scott Monty, Head Social Media, Ford Motors  said by April 2010 the conversion rate from reservations to orders was 10 times higher than this process for any other vehicle. Ford began accepting reservations for Fiestas on Dec. 1, 2009. The Fiesta Movement does show sales figures resulting from just social media efforts. Aside from the 7 million video impressions on YouTube, 750,000 photo impressions and more than 40 million Twitter impressions, Scott Monty says more than 130,000 consumers registered at FiestaMovement.com to receive more information about the vehicle when it came on the market. About 82 % of those registered hadn't owned a Ford before. And for the ultimate metric, conversions, Monty says 10 times more reservations become orders than did so for any other Ford vehicle.

In February 2013, Ford announced a new social media campaign named Fiesta Movement: A Social Remix that was a revival of 2009 Fiesta Movement. Like the 2009 original, which was Ford’s first social media marketing endeavor, the new Social Remix campaign will revolve around 100 people with large social audiences online, whom Ford is calling “agents.” Each will be lent a 2014 Ford Fiesta for six months in exchange for a commitment to produce one video about the car each month, and every video will have to conform to a new “mission” or theme generated by Ford, but the automaker will not edit any video at all. These six themes are travel, adventure, style and design, entertainment, technology, gaming, social activism (focused on local causes) and healthy lifestyle. All the videos will be showcased at the campaign’s Fiesta Movement website, and partnerships with prominent TV, entertainment and sports events — including American Idol, the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and the Summer X Games — will generate “the elements that help amplify” what all of the participants produce. the videos will form the basis for all 2014 Fiesta advertisements, including TV spots and print and online ads. The 100 participants in the new campaign will include some celebrities and alumni of the 2009 program as well as people recruited by Ford for the first time. Ford is aggressively using the social media platforms for promoting its brands and engaging with customers and this has proved to be a huge success for the company since 2009 and Ford customers too have actively engaged with the company on different social media platforms. This is very important as most of the companies across the globe have social media presence but they fail to engage customers and social network users increase their participation and ultimately drive revenues for the company which only Ford Motors is doing successfully. 

Social Media Marketing Budgets & Marketing Strategy by Indian Companies 2013

According to Ernst & Young's 'Social Media Marketing - India Trends Study, 2013', a 40-question survey of 48 people responsible for the online or digital marketing strategy of some of India's largest companies, including Bharti Airtel, Ford India, Bajaj, Cafe Coffee Day, Honda Cars India, Pepsi India, MTV India, P&G India, Microsoft India, etc. Most of the companies in the survey highlighted that the annual social media budget is a small in lakhs of rupees mostly around Rs 11-25 lakh which is a smaller proportion of the total marketing spends by most of the companies that have marketing budgets in hundreds of crores of rupees. 

The E&Y study highlights that 95.7% of the surveyed social media-savvy organizations in India use the medium to build communities and promote usage of their brands while 76.1% use social media as a platform to highlight brand news. Around 16% of organizations use social media for both the above reasons and most of the Indian organizations utilize it for customer service, lead generation, and research indicate the increasing levels of  social maturity of Indian social media users and businesses successfully engaging with their customers and audience effectively. Facebook is the most important platform for marketers in India for engaging customers followed by Twitter, YouTube and blogging had been used by most Indian companies for the past few years and employ bloggers or online influencers who have authority and strong following for this. Even the usage of emerging platforms such as Pinterest, Google Plus, and Foursquare are also on the rise by Indian corporates. 83% of the social media-savvy organizations surveyed said that they have used social media ads, with majority of the ads being used to promote a contest/promotion or for brand awareness. 88.6% said they find social media ads to be beneficial in achieving those objectives. 76.7% of social media-savvy organizations said they have their marketing department handling social media with the rest being handled by a cross functional team/across functions or by the PR/communications team. Other than marketing, 34.6% said they use social media for thought leadership and 26.9% said they use social media for CSR. 73.8% of surveyed social media-savvy organizations have chosen standalone digital agencies as compared to PR, ad agencies, or freelancers. 

% of Market Budget Spent on Social Media          

Social Media Budget Size per Year 

Source: E&Y Study

Social Media @ Honda Motors - Honda Loves you back & #Hondainnovator series

Honda Motor Company had been using social networking sites since past five years and had been present on all the major social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, etc.  Honda social media strategy is based around supporting business and corporate goals such as new product launches, corporate communications, public relations messages, tackling rumors, engaging with customers and communities like  fans/ racing community and more. Honda is effectively using the social networking sites to humanize the brand, keeping track of the conversations about the company, deliver key messages about their corporate social responsibility efforts on topics related to the environment and innovating new technologies, and also build relationships with journalists and bloggers. Another advantage of social media is to share customer stories around Honda products And Services, events or happenings that Honda fans might like to know about and also engage the customers, fans and others in such events.

Honda was recently given the first-ever "Driver Engagement" award at the Chicago Auto Show for the Japanese automaker's campaign, “Honda Loves You Back”. The Honda campaign showcased a music video from the band “Monsters Calling Home”, as the video was filmed inside one of the band member's Honda. The car company got the band booked on" Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in a symbolic gesture of giving back to fans of the brand. Social media campaigns like this help drivers connect more personally with a brand, as they can interact with a company by uploading their stories and photos.Since social media has become an integral part of marketing for most major car companies, the Chicago Automobile Trade Association decided to introduce a new award at the 2013 Chicago Auto Show to showcase the effectiveness of marketing through sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Recently Honda launched a social media program, the #HondaInnovator Series, in support of a TV ad for its 2013 Civic that emphasizes on inventors and innovation in various fields. The series also includes social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube to initaite conversations about innovation and the car itself, as well as the idea that progress never stops. In a series of six one-hour tweet chats, users will be able to submit questions to inventors featured in the Civic TV spot, like baby product company 4moms co-founder Henry Thorne, Waterfall Swing inventors Ian Charnas and Drew Ratcliff and 2013 Civic Senior Product Planner Jay Guzowski. Additional content will include: Facebook posts to introduce fans to the Innovator Series; behind-the-scenes photos from the commercial and an assortment of Civic images on Instagram; and a "Things Can Be Better" board on Pinterest. In addition, on YouTube, Honda has created a so-called Innovation Playlist featuring additional content tied to the inventors featured in the Civic TV spot. Honda says its Civic TV campaign ties Honda's philosophy of innovative thinking and continuous improvement to other inventors working to develop better solutions. Promotion will include sponsored posts on the social news site Buzzfeed, promoted tweets, promoted posts on Facebook, YouTube ads and search.

Early 2012 Honda Motors launched a unique promotional campaign on Pinterest, a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users can browse other pinboards for images, ‘re-pin' images to their own pinboards, or 'like' photos.  Honda’s "Pintermission" campaign identifies top "pinners" and offers each one $500 to take a 24-hour break from Pinterest to explore some of the places or buy some of the products they've pinned about. Initially two women had been handed checks by Honda and are putting the money toward travel. The goal of the Pintermission campaign was to uniquely establish Honda’s new CR-V and promoted the vehicle’s “get out and live life” personality. Marketing the vehicle on Pinterest was a suitable choice, as target customers for this vehicle are young people on the edge of adulthood’s big milestones like marriage, children, etc. and young people plan those milestones on Pinterest. More than 4.6 million people were exposed to the #Pintermission boards, which produced more than 5,000 repins and almost 2,000 likes. Additionally, more than 16 million media impressions were garnered from the campaign.

Honda Motors social media presence include Facebook with close to 2.7 million likes, Twitter with close to 91,000 followers and more than 3,400 tweets, YouTube with close to 106,000 subscribers and more than 32 million video views and Pinterest with close to 6,600 followers. The company has also framed a Social Media policy and guidelines for its associates and employees that provide the rules and regulations they need to follow on social networking sites. Automobile industry is aggressively using the various social networking sites for marketing, customer service and customer engagement and they are allocating significant financial resources, appointing the relevant agencies that specialize in the social media and even recruiting exclusive managers as Social Media Managers within the company. Honda Motor Company has been using the social media effectively in its marketing, brand promotion, engaging customers and new product launches.

Social Media adoption @ Fortune 500 companies – Exxon Mobil Perspective Blog, etc.

Exxon Mobil is the largest refiner and marketer of petroleum products in the world and was formed by the merger of Exxon and Mobil in 1999. The company is also the world's largest company by revenue and largest publicly traded international Oil and Gas Company according to Fortune 500 2012. Exxon Mobil adopted various social media channels to be in touch with its customers and various other stakeholders. Since April 2006, Exxon Mobil has been active on YouTube and the channel has more than 1200 subscribers and close to 700,000 views. The official channel of the company has videos highlighting the real time updates of the company, employee videos, advertisement campaigns, and videos from the top management and leadership discussing various issues regarding the company and its products, environment issues, challenges and the company efforts.

Another major effort of Exxon Mobil is its Perspectives blog which is run by Ken Cohen, ExxonMobil's vice president of public and government affairs. The blog talks about company's views on the issues, policies, technologies and trends that are shaping the energy industry and Ken Cohen talks about ideas and actions from industry, governments, researchers and many others that affect the world of energy. The blog was started in November 2011 and it is widely followed and read by many people online. Exxon Mobil also has an official twitter account with close to 26,000 followers and more than 1000 tweets and the company only provides news about the company and various activities of the company in different locations. For further discussions, people are directed to Perspectives blog.

Exxon Mobil does not have an official Facebook page but there are many pages on Facebook that is filled with lot of negative criticism. The company does not seem to be interested in a Facebook page but is very active with a blog, Twitter account and YouTube channel. Exxon Mobil uses Facebook to aggressively market its flagship brand Mobil 1 — the world's leading synthetic motor oil. Mobil 1 Facebook page was launched in March 2008 and has close to 60,000 likes. With a focus on making new friends and market its brand along with a Facebook page, a dedicated channel on YouTube and an online game was launched enabling players to take part in a virtual race against Lewis Hamilton, awareness of the brand is going from strength to strength – the game alone has been played over five million times worldwide.

Exxon Mobil has also launched Apple iPad, iPhone and Android applications for their customers. The ExxonMobil application for iPad provides immediate access to ExxonMobil’s Perspectives Blog, a vital source of energy news and analysis, continually refreshed and relevant, and includes access to ExxonMobil’s library of publications, stock information, news, videos and more. Exxon and Esso Mobile Fuel Finder apps provide real-time maps, driving directions and station information for nearly 10,000 Exxon and Mobil retail locations across the continental United States and Europe. Overall Exxon Mobil is active on those social media platforms which it feels relevant for its engagement strategy with customers and other stakeholders. 

Case Study - General Motors Facebook Ads – Temporarily stops Paid ads, free pages to continue

General Motors (GM), the third-largest U.S. advertiser will continue to spend roughly US$30 million (includes spend on multiple ad agencies that create and manage content) on maintaining its “free” presence on Facebook through pages and content but GM announced pull back of US$10 million spend in paid ads from Facebook. GM’s Facebook spend is minuscule compared to its $1.1 billion spend on U.S. ads in 2011 and it’s spend of about $271 million (25% -30% of total ad spend) on online display and search ads excluding Facebook advertising. The reason for stopping paid ads on Facebook is due to the little impact that paid ads are having on consumer’s purchase of cars but GM said it will continue to promote its products on Facebook, but without paying Facebook. GM’s decision will also not have major affect on Facebook ad revenues as Facebook's 2011 advertising sales revenue was around US$3.15 billion and revenue from GM was tiny. Another reason for GM cutting down its Facebook paid ads spend is because of the restructuring of GM’s marketing operations for reducing billions of dollars in marketing costs and targeting to save US$2bn over the next five years. Some people believe GM did not believe in the effectiveness of advertising on social networking sites and it is using traditional measurement tools to measure the effectiveness of social media ads which is not convincing as GM being a top ad spender knows how to measure effectiveness.

According to some sources Facebook has to blame itself for GM pull back of paid ads on its site as Facebook officials' failed to convince top marketing executives at GM of the benefits of  paid ads at a meeting that was held couple of weeks before GM’s paid ads pull back announcement. Moreover Facebook officials emphasized the advantages and impact of free posted content on their website which made paid ads spend unnecessary and also suggested GM cut down its number of ad agencies it engaged to manage its ad spend and content on Facebook. Facebook's "click-through rate", also known as "clicks per page view," is half the average for ads on the Internet and the average targeted ad on the Internet is "clicked" on by a consumer once every 1,000 times it is viewed while Google's is 4 in 1,000 according to Larry Kim, founder & CTO of Internet ad consultant Wordstream. Google AdSense ads are more effectively targeted than Facebook ads and GM preferred to stick with them. GM spent more money on creating and managing content rather than advertising and the ratio of spend is $3 on brand pages for every $1 on paid ads. Also Facebook is expected to increase its ad rates after the IPO. Facebook sells ads for brand pages, sponsored posts that appear on user’s news feeds, and other formats like called "sponsored stories," that allows advertisers to pay to republish positive Facebook messages that people had posted about their brand.

But the fact is Facebook is struggling to develop a scalable revenue generator like Google AdSense and in the past few years Facebook attempts for successful ad model for marketers and businesses included charging marketers to host brand pages, featured banners ads on pages from MSN ad networks and Facebook Beacon system, that sent data from external websites to Facebook, for the purpose of allowing targeted advertisements and allowing users to share their activities with their friends. In March 2012, Facebook announced Premium, a new suite of products for marketers designed to leverage the social network’s access to friends and friends of friends. Facebook has been gradually increasing its ad revenues and recommends to marketers that unpaid content like brand pages and building a base of online fans who like a brand is successful and users will know about the unpaid content easily only when paired with paid advertisements like display ads and its "sponsored stories." Facebook said in March, for example, that only 16% of a brand's fans will see a post about the brand without paying. Facebook will use technology to ensure that the Paid ad is seen by 75% of those who click a company's "like" button on its website. Another problem area for Facebook is the mobile platform as most of its users are logging in to the site through their mobiles and the company doesn’t have a viable business model to generate revenues on the mobile devices. Facebook need to convince the marketers and businesses about paid ads, their effectiveness and also need to develop a measurement tool for measuring the effectiveness and reach of the ads that is as simple to use as TV ratings.

Facebook has more than 900 million users as of March 2012 and businesses cannot ignore such a huge platform for promoting their products and services. Realizing this fact many businesses across the globe spent millions of dollars and hired digital ad firms for creating content for their Facebook pages in order to stimulate buzz, which advertisers liken to word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. GM decision of cutting its Facebook paid ads spend is not a permanent decision and the company plans to revive it’s spend once it feels the Facebook ads are effective and reach the targeted customer who will spend in buying cars. GM is not alone in this regards as some of the companies too are apprehensive as quoted by Forrester analysts in their blog post. Businesses, Marketers and Analysts are all demanding Facebook to improve its paid advertising model, make its platform more attractive and post IPO the shareholders are also looking for significant improvement in the company revenues and business model which will increase the profitability. According to Facebook most of the businesses and marketers are still learning and experimenting with the best ways to leverage Facebook to create more social and valuable ads. Some of the GM competitors like Ford are supporting Facebook as they are effectively using the site for various promotional activities but Facebook needs to focus on improving its business model and ad platforms to attract more businesses and make sure that more businesses follow General Motors suit calling it an ineffective platform.  

Few private Indian Banks have presence on Social Media

Some of the Indian Banks are effectively using social networking sites to listen and engage with customers that will help them in improving their marketing focus & target customers effectively, capturing consumer perceptions, brand building & increased product research. According to Facebook, its India user base has more than doubled in a year to 51 million at the end of March 2012 and Twitter has around 15 million users in India. Most of the social media users in India are younger generation in the age group of 18-34 years, predominantly male and are mostly inclined to use social media for doing banking transactions. Private Banks are the most active in using the social media with IDBI Bank (637K Likes), Axis Bank (545K likes), ICICI Bank (475K Likes) and HDFC Bank (109K Likes) as of May 2012. Public sector banks like SBI, etc are yet to start actively using the social media platforms but they still have presence.

In January 2012, ICICI Bank, India's largest private bank, launched its Your Bank Account Facebook application, which allows users to check their account balances, apply for debit cards, and other tasks like request statements and cheque books without leaving Facebook. ICICI assures its Facebook users that the app is hosted on separate ICICI bank servers and no data is transferred to Facebook as many of the social network users are concerned about privacy and data security which is hindering the active usage of banking applications on the social networking sites. HDFC Bank, one of the early adopter and with an active presence on social media space, runs the Money Matters section on its Facebook page. The bank through its Facebook page engages visitors by putting up interesting news articles, small puzzles and games to educate users about various banking tools and even posting latest offers on cards and loans at the bank. HDFC Bank even lets its customers voice their grievances on the bank’s Facebook page and responds to them within 24 hours.

Axis Bank has an active presence with highest number of likes, has interactive apps & promotional offers that allow the bank to communicate with its target audience. Brand campaign apps like Meri Zindagi ka Safar and Meri Zindagi ki Picture both have seen more than 20,000 monthly active users and bank is promoting its platinum credit cards on Facebook by integrating a movie ticket-booking transaction engine. IDBI Bank is the largest socially networked bank in the country in terms of official presence on four platforms namely Google+, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with the largest number of fans/followers/subscribers/circles across these platforms as compared to any other peer bank in India. IDBI social media success formula is because of their approach which is an interesting mix of informative content, product awareness and grievance redressal. Social Media Platforms are an active part of IDBI marketing strategy.

Despite the fact that many Global banks are still apprehensive about offering their services and allowing customers do banking transactions using social networking applications due to data security and privacy concerns, Indian Banks majorly private banks are actively using the social media platforms to engage with customers and allow transactions through the applications. Apart from offering a low cost, effective customer engagement & marketing platform, Social Media usage through the mobile devices is also on tremendous rise as more people use their phones or mobile devices to make payments or other banking transactions through social networking sites. 

Why CEO’s are apprehensive about Social Media usage for Customer interaction

Business leaders across the world believe that advances in alternative energy, biotechnology, nanotechnology and other fields far beyond Information Technology are transforming products, operations and business models and has created new industries, fundamentally disrupted some of the existing industries. 71% of 1,700 CEOs surveyed by IBM expect technology will be the number one factor to impact their organization's future in the next three years. Social networking sites have drastically changed the way people communicate and collaborate with friends, family, businesses and businesses are realizing its role in reaching their existing & new customers. According to IBM Global CEO 2012 Study in which 1700 CEOs from 64 countries and 18 different industries were interviewed, currently only 16% of the CEOs are actively using social media channels in engaging business and customers but 57% of CEOs will actively engage with their customers through social networking websites and social media will rank number two in most utilized channels to engage audience in the next five years as it is presently the least utilized of all customer interaction methods.

Traditional methods of customer interaction that are most preferred by CEOs are face-to-face interactions, followed by websites, channel partners, call centers, traditional media, advisory groups, and social media. Presently CEOs believe that Social Media is a platform to obtain information about customers, collaborating with customers and a two way communication platform. Most of the CEOs particularly in the traditional industries like industrial goods are very apprehensive about the Social media hype and are not comfortable with the fact that their brands are in the hands of customers and employees. Control is shifting from institutions to individuals according to IBM Global CEO Study. Another critical factor highlighted by some CEOs is that Social media has seen tremendous growth in the past few years but industry knowledge on how to use it in the various industries has not evolved and most of the industries are struggling to find success stories and case studies within their industries that have profited from social media adoption and engagement. Very few CEOs are actively engaged on the social media platforms as they still believe that social media as marketing platform and most of the other CEOs are judging social media and its relevance without having firsthand knowledge of using it in their businesses.

Most of the CEOs are more than 50 years old and look at technology as a way of collaborating and communicating with employees and other stake holders, connecting with friends and socializing but the young generation people in their 20s work and think about social media in a totally different way as they look at it as a way of life. Young people use social media in all aspects of their personal lives and also looking for ways to use it in their professional live in terms of using it in performing their jobs within the organizations they work and are demanding for social media like platforms. They are well versed at using social media but not the CEOs and other senior managers who are still not totally comfortable with social media and need more evidence that it is one of the highly successful medium for engaging with the customers. As highlighted in the IBM Global CEO study, CEOs will shift their focus to using social networks as a way for direct engagement with customers from the existing modes of using e-mail and the phone as primary communication modes. Social media will help CEOs build closer connections with customers, partners and a new generation of employees in the future. 

Social Media & Business Adoption 2011 – Big US Companies hold back adoption

According to a report by Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Forbes magazine Fortune 500 companies (Top 500 companies in United States) are using social media for their employee communications, but public-facing social media presence is lacking the attention of the company managements. The report says the adoption of blogs has slowed down as evident form data that 23% (114) have corporate public-facing blogs compared to 23% (116) in 2010. There has been a slight increase in both Twitter use (60% in 2010, 62% in 2011) and use of Facebook (56% in 2010, 58% in 2011). Moreover in the past 4 years, the F500 has lagged behind the Inc. 500 (fastest growing private companies), charities, and higher education in social media adoption. The bottom 200 companies are slowing down the adoption and highlight the fact that those ranked higher in the Fortune 500 are more likely to adopt social media aggressively. The Fortune 500 companies are known to adopt new technologies, innovate and provide their consumers the best products and services and are often called as Titans of the business world.

Some of the companies in the Fortune 500 companies are the Business to Business companies who do not deal with the consumers directly and the Business to consumer companies directly interacts with the consumers. B2C companies have already adopted social media as it is one of the critical ways to communicate with the consumers and understand their needs and opinions. B2C companies are forced into adoption as their consumers are voicing their opinions on various social media platforms and they can’t ignore them as it will affect their brand and organizational reputations.B2B companies on the other hand are more regulated and they have been slow in adopting social media. They are slowly realizing the utility of social media interaction but they are not expected to invest significant amounts of resources like the B2C companies. Fortune 500 companies are huge hierarchical organizations, are bureaucratic in nature and adoption of new technologies have to go through lot of approvals and time consuming as decision making involves multiple departments. These organizations look for more proof of utility of the technology and wait to see the results of adoption in other large organizations before they adopt unlike the smaller and medium organizations that easily adopt the social media and are more willing to experiment with new technologies.    

Fortune 500 companies are also not sure about how to integrate the social media technologies into their organizational IT infrastructure, what are the inherent risks involved in using such technologies, how to effectively control and monitor their social presence, which of the tools that are available are the best tools. Another major issue is that of the content in social media like who should develop and maintain the content, intellectual property rights of the content and how to share the content, etc. Encouraging participating and engaging the consumers is also critical and when consumers voice negative opinions or highlight the issues, companies have to tackle it in appropriate manner as it has significant impact on the organization reputation. These companies have thousands of employees spread across the world in various countries and they have to be trained about the social media policy and how to use the social media platforms according to the rules and policy. Setting up a monitoring mechanism is also costly. Employees have to be motivated to participate in the social media and also maintain their engagement and do not stop suddenly.

Some of the companies are of the opinion that the traditional media presence and communication is better than social media. These companies have already invested heavily on the traditional media channels like, TV, Print, etc. Adoption of Social media needs the companies listen to their customer’s voice in various social media and then develop an appropriate social media engagement strategy.  Policy development and implementation involves monetary resources and time which some companies are not ready to invest in. Some of the companies that adopted social media since the past five years are evaluating the social media engagement impact and the ROI from social media presence and are using various social media analytics to assess. The social media analytics has seen significant improvements in terms of the technologies in 2011and many large technology players are acquiring smaller players to integrate these technologies into their core offerings. It seems the initial euphoria of social media adoption has died down and the companies are becoming more pragmatic in terms of returns and impact.

Some of the Fortune 500 companies do not see social media as an effective means and they do not have any social media presence or strategy particularly the B2B companies. Some 156 companies (31%) in the Fortune 500 have neither a Twitter account nor a Facebook presence and there has been little or no change in the number of companies using corporate blogs, Facebook (2%) and Twitter (2%) in the last year, according to University of Massachusetts Dartmouth report. But the fact remains that the social media adoption in the small and medium companies is increasing and this maintain the rate of social media adoption in US businesses to normal levels as the large business organizations slowdown their adoption. With the tightening of the budgets for 2012 due to the Euro Debt crisis and US economic slowdown, the social media business adoption may stagnate or decline. Social and mobile are going dominate in future and consumers are more aggressively voicing their opinions both positive and negative and are looking to engage more with the business organizations and social media tools and platforms provide the best platform for the two way communication process.

Source: The 2011 Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption- Center for Marketing Research, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Social Media 2011 and Future Growth – Summary of Gartner Research

Worldwide social media revenue is on track to reach $10.3 billion in 2011, a 41.4 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $7.3 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. and social media revenue is forecast for consistent growth with 2012 revenue totaling $14.9 billion, and the market is projected to reach $29.1 billion in 2015. Social media advertising revenue is forecast to total $5.5 billion in 2011, and grow to $8.2 billion in 2012. Advertising revenue includes display advertising and digital video commercials on any device including PCs, mobile and media tablets. Social gaming revenue is on pace to reach $3.2 billion in 2011 and grow to $4.5 billion in 2012. Social gaming includes revenue that social networking sites earn directly from users who play games that are developed in-house, and the revenue earned by allowing game developers/publishers to use their sites as a platform to let users play with friends on the network. It includes revenue earned from "virtual wallets" within games (such as when users spend virtual money on in-game items like swords or tanks, or to create virtual armies).

Social media subscription revenue is forecast to reach $236 million in 2011 and total $313 million in 2012. Few social sites charge subscription revenue, mostly for premium services. Some professional sites such as LinkedIn, Xing in Germany and Vladeo in France, charge a subscription fee from their users for enhanced services, such as an expanded profile view. The worldwide social customer relationship management (CRM) market is forecast to reach over $1 billion in revenue by year-end 2012, up from approximately $625 million in 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide social CRM is projected to total $820 million in 2011.

By 2015, companies will generate 50 percent of Web sales via their social presence and mobile applications, according to Gartner, Inc. Vendors in the e-commerce market will begin to offer new context-aware, mobile-based application capabilities that can be accessed via a browser or installed as an application on a phone. Gartner predicts that by 2013, 80 percent of North American and European online sellers will expand into Brazil, Russia, India, Africa, Japan or China. Organizations based in North America and Western Europe is already launching website-based sales operations in new countries, in the hope of expanding to new markets.

There are signs of maturity in the social media market, as some users in certain segments are showing “social media fatigue”, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Gartner surveyed 6,295 respondents, between the ages of 13 and 74, in 11 developed and developing markets in December 2010 and January 2011. Of the respondents, 24 percent said they use their favorite social media site less than when they first signed up. These respondents tended to be in segments that have a more practical view of technology. But 37 percent of respondents, particularly those in younger age groups and more tech-savvy segments, said they were using their favorite site more. 33 percent said they were concerned about online privacy. Attitudes to privacy were also age-related; with teenagers citing privacy concerns significantly less often than older respondents (22 percent of teenagers agreed or strongly agreed that privacy concerns were decreasing their enthusiasm, against an average of 33 percent).

From a geographical point of view, some of the more mature social media markets — Japan, the UK and the US — corresponded to the global average trend — with roughly 40 percent of respondents using the site more than when they first started, 40 percent using it the same amount, and 20 percent using it less. Markets where enthusiasm was higher included South Korea and Italy, where nearly 50 percent of respondents said they used their social media sites more. At the other end of the spectrum, countries with the most respondents saying they used the site less included Brazil and Russia — both with between 30 and 40 percent of respondents exhibiting less enthusiasm.

During the next two years, 30 percent of leading companies will extend the goals of their online community activities to the design of enhanced service processes, such as social CRM, according to Gartner, Inc. Social CRM for customer service has only recently entered into the realm of contact center infrastructure and customer service software components, where it has been met with significant hype despite a limited number of field deployments," said Drew Kraus, research vice president at Gartner. "In 2010, only 5 percent of organizations took advantage of social/collaborative customer action to improve service processes; however, customer demand and heightened business awareness is making this a top issue among customer service managers," Mr. Kraus said. "At current trajectories, within five years we expect that community peer-to-peer support projects will supplement or replace Tier 1 contact center support in more than 40 percent of top 1,000 companies with a contact center."

Many social media efforts are failing, because some enterprises just don't understand how to employ social media to facilitate collective behaviors, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner conducted a 10 month effort collecting data and analyzing 200 successful social media implementations to identify how enabling collective human behaviors can lead to enterprise value. Enterprises that understand the importance of harnessing the power of collective behaviors to drive positive business change will be the ultimate winners with social media," concluded Anthony Bradley, group vice president at Gartner. Gartner believes that examining key selected behaviors provides critical insight into how social media can deliver significant enterprise value. The six collective behaviors include: Enable Collective Intelligence for Operational Effectiveness, Employ Expertise Location for Sales Effectiveness, Unearth Emergent Structures for Operational Effectiveness, Increase Sales through Interest Cultivation, and Engage in Mass Coordination for Rapid Response, Build Relationship Leverage for Brand Awareness.

Source: Gartner 2011 Press releases