See how an IBM VP combines social media with traditional tactics for product development, event promotion, and demand generation. Includes lessons learned and highlights from three campaigns.
Sandy Carter, VP Service Oriented Architecture and WebSphere, IBM, has been incorporating social media into IBM’s marketing since 2006. She and her team started slowly with corporate blogs, and lately have pushed into hosting forums and using third-party social networks.
A key lesson learned is that is that using social media channels is not a strategy unto itself.
"All of our campaigns involve a combination of traditional marketing, plus social media," Carter says. "We actually don’t believe in a solid social media campaign. We always combine it."
We spoke with Carter to discuss three IBM marketing campaigns that featured prominent roles for social media and online communities. Read on to learn how social media fit into the context of these larger strategies, and how the team combined social media with traditional tactics.
Campaign #1. Harnessing group knowledge for product development
In 2007, Carter and her team were building an IBM platform for Web-based applications called WebSphere sMash. At the time, IBM’s website had a robust set of online forums where developers discussed technical topics. That community represented a large skill and knowledge base.
To make sMash as strong as possible, the team listened to developers’ needs through traditional methods, including focus groups and analyst reports. Then, Carter’s team supplemented that information by going to the Web to ask developers for their opinions.
Channels included:
o IBM-hosted forum
o IBM-hosted blog
o Twitter feed
The team explained their vision for the product, and asked developers:
o "Is this something you want?"
o "What sort of features do you need?"
Information came pouring in, with about 4,500 postings to the IBM forum alone, Carter says. The team gathered this information, mined it for insights, and incorporated some of the advice into subsequent beta releases.
- On-going updates
Traditionally, the team’s development process followed this basic schedule:
o Issue a beta release
o Accept feedback for about six weeks
o Make updates to the product
o Release the final version to the public
The process for sMash’s release was more on-going, Carter says.
"We actually did beta releases on the blog, websites and forums we had. And almost every night we would take some of that feedback, post a new build, and people would download it and provide us feedback. And we did this continuous loop on the information that came in."
The community helped design everything from the user interface to the product’s name.
- Successful launch
Since its 2008 launch, WebSphere sMash has been regularly growing in usage, Carter says.
"We’ve already had 81 subscribers on Amazon EC2, which is more than any other product placed there." Amazon EC2 is a service used by developers to access resizable computing capacity.
The number of people downloading the platform from IBM’s website has increased 20% over the last four months.
Campaign #2. Building a community, promoting an event, generating leads
The team ran a 100-city road show on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) during the first two weeks of October, 2008. The goals were to bring together the SOA community in-person, further the community’s knowledge, and help IBM generate leads for its tools and solutions.
Furthermore, Carter’s team wanted the SOA community to stay connected online before and after the event. The team used social media and interactive elements to not only promote the event, but to hold the community together afterward.
-> Step #1. Promotion
In addition to traditional marketing -- including direct mail, display advertising, and one-to-one invitations -- the team used the following social and interactive elements to promote the event:
- Bot
On arrival to IBM’s SOA website, visitors saw an animated, 3-D person walk around the page with an offer for the event in her hand. When clicked, the person brought visitors to the event registration page. The "bot," as Carter calls it, increased clickthrough rates to the registration page a whopping six-fold.
- Twitter
The team sent messages on the micro-blogging service that included a promotion code. When customers signed up for the event with the code, they were allotted 30-minutes to talk with one of IBM’s Chief Technical officers at the conference.
Within three days, 40 people registered to speak with the CTO in Amsterdam alone, Carter says.
- Blogs
The team also blogged about the conference on several of their developer-oriented blogs. These posts, combined with the efforts on Twitter, encouraged some developers to mention the event in their personal blogs, feeds, and social networking pages. Some customers created groups on Facebook, and at least one created a LinkedIn group, Carter says.
"With all these social media add-ons, we got an incremental 10% lift in our registrations for virtually no cost."
-> Step #2. Connect customers
The team worked with a third-party provider to build an online community website called SOAsocial. Having a third-party host the community was important to avoid the appearance of an IBM-dominated and -based community. The team wanted the community to grow on its own.
-> Step #3. Encourage engagement and user-generated content
The team encouraged customers to take pictures at the events and post them to the photo-sharing website Flickr. This helped spur the community into action, and also helped Carter’s team save money.
"We usually have a photographer take pictures of the events. We had 100 events, and it would have cost us about $100,000 to have a photographer at each and every one of those cities, taking pictures and recording that for us," Carter says.
-> Step #4. Follow-up widget
After the event, the attendees stayed connected through the SOAsocial network. Carter’s team wanted to stay connected with them too, since the attendees were potential customers for IBM’s SOA tools.
The team built a widget that supplied the often-requested event presentations. The widget could be placed on a blog or website, or downloaded onto a computer.
"The cool thing about that for us is that the widget is driven by RSS feeds. So now that they have that widget, when we have news, we push that information out to those customers," Carter says. "If there is a new product, we can push a demo out to them."
Best of all, about 67% of the conferences’ attendees downloaded the widget, Carter says.
- Additional sales promotion
The widget also linked to and encouraged users to visit IBM’s SOA website to check out products.
Campaign #3. Energizing the market with interactive game
To help stimulate, build and further educate the market about SOA technology, in 2006 Carter’s team created a free 3-D game called INNOV8.
The game featured all the elements you’d expect from a computer game: interactivity, a hero, a villain, and a plot. The game also included SOA lessons throughout the experience.
During 2007, over 1,000 universities downloaded and played INNOV8.
- New educational content
Although not a socially-oriented game, INNOV8 served as an accessible way for people to learn about SOA and eventually become contributing members of the community that IBM was building.
"INNOV8 helps customers learn SOA concepts in a much more consumable way," Carter says.
Through research done in 2008, the team found that students taught through the game had an 80% higher recall on SOA topics than other students. They also found that graduates who had used the game in school were taking it with them into the business world to teach their coworkers.
- More accessible
INNOV8’s second version was Web-based, meaning it could be played on any computer with an Internet connection. That platform made it easier for people to share the game.
- Social promotion
For the second version, the team also created leader boards that listed the players with the highest scores.
They promoted the game through a separate Twitter feed, and through IBM’s blogs and forums. Promoting in social forums made it easier for people to connect with like-minded friends and coworkers after learning about the game.
A key lesson learned is that is that using social media channels is not a strategy unto itself.
"All of our campaigns involve a combination of traditional marketing, plus social media," Carter says. "We actually don’t believe in a solid social media campaign. We always combine it."
We spoke with Carter to discuss three IBM marketing campaigns that featured prominent roles for social media and online communities. Read on to learn how social media fit into the context of these larger strategies, and how the team combined social media with traditional tactics.
Campaign #1. Harnessing group knowledge for product development
In 2007, Carter and her team were building an IBM platform for Web-based applications called WebSphere sMash. At the time, IBM’s website had a robust set of online forums where developers discussed technical topics. That community represented a large skill and knowledge base.
To make sMash as strong as possible, the team listened to developers’ needs through traditional methods, including focus groups and analyst reports. Then, Carter’s team supplemented that information by going to the Web to ask developers for their opinions.
Channels included:
o IBM-hosted forum
o IBM-hosted blog
o Twitter feed
The team explained their vision for the product, and asked developers:
o "Is this something you want?"
o "What sort of features do you need?"
Information came pouring in, with about 4,500 postings to the IBM forum alone, Carter says. The team gathered this information, mined it for insights, and incorporated some of the advice into subsequent beta releases.
- On-going updates
Traditionally, the team’s development process followed this basic schedule:
o Issue a beta release
o Accept feedback for about six weeks
o Make updates to the product
o Release the final version to the public
The process for sMash’s release was more on-going, Carter says.
"We actually did beta releases on the blog, websites and forums we had. And almost every night we would take some of that feedback, post a new build, and people would download it and provide us feedback. And we did this continuous loop on the information that came in."
The community helped design everything from the user interface to the product’s name.
- Successful launch
Since its 2008 launch, WebSphere sMash has been regularly growing in usage, Carter says.
"We’ve already had 81 subscribers on Amazon EC2, which is more than any other product placed there." Amazon EC2 is a service used by developers to access resizable computing capacity.
The number of people downloading the platform from IBM’s website has increased 20% over the last four months.
Campaign #2. Building a community, promoting an event, generating leads
The team ran a 100-city road show on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) during the first two weeks of October, 2008. The goals were to bring together the SOA community in-person, further the community’s knowledge, and help IBM generate leads for its tools and solutions.
Furthermore, Carter’s team wanted the SOA community to stay connected online before and after the event. The team used social media and interactive elements to not only promote the event, but to hold the community together afterward.
-> Step #1. Promotion
In addition to traditional marketing -- including direct mail, display advertising, and one-to-one invitations -- the team used the following social and interactive elements to promote the event:
- Bot
On arrival to IBM’s SOA website, visitors saw an animated, 3-D person walk around the page with an offer for the event in her hand. When clicked, the person brought visitors to the event registration page. The "bot," as Carter calls it, increased clickthrough rates to the registration page a whopping six-fold.
The team sent messages on the micro-blogging service that included a promotion code. When customers signed up for the event with the code, they were allotted 30-minutes to talk with one of IBM’s Chief Technical officers at the conference.
Within three days, 40 people registered to speak with the CTO in Amsterdam alone, Carter says.
- Blogs
The team also blogged about the conference on several of their developer-oriented blogs. These posts, combined with the efforts on Twitter, encouraged some developers to mention the event in their personal blogs, feeds, and social networking pages. Some customers created groups on Facebook, and at least one created a LinkedIn group, Carter says.
"With all these social media add-ons, we got an incremental 10% lift in our registrations for virtually no cost."
-> Step #2. Connect customers
The team worked with a third-party provider to build an online community website called SOAsocial. Having a third-party host the community was important to avoid the appearance of an IBM-dominated and -based community. The team wanted the community to grow on its own.
-> Step #3. Encourage engagement and user-generated content
The team encouraged customers to take pictures at the events and post them to the photo-sharing website Flickr. This helped spur the community into action, and also helped Carter’s team save money.
"We usually have a photographer take pictures of the events. We had 100 events, and it would have cost us about $100,000 to have a photographer at each and every one of those cities, taking pictures and recording that for us," Carter says.
-> Step #4. Follow-up widget
After the event, the attendees stayed connected through the SOAsocial network. Carter’s team wanted to stay connected with them too, since the attendees were potential customers for IBM’s SOA tools.
The team built a widget that supplied the often-requested event presentations. The widget could be placed on a blog or website, or downloaded onto a computer.
"The cool thing about that for us is that the widget is driven by RSS feeds. So now that they have that widget, when we have news, we push that information out to those customers," Carter says. "If there is a new product, we can push a demo out to them."
Best of all, about 67% of the conferences’ attendees downloaded the widget, Carter says.
- Additional sales promotion
The widget also linked to and encouraged users to visit IBM’s SOA website to check out products.
Campaign #3. Energizing the market with interactive game
To help stimulate, build and further educate the market about SOA technology, in 2006 Carter’s team created a free 3-D game called INNOV8.
The game featured all the elements you’d expect from a computer game: interactivity, a hero, a villain, and a plot. The game also included SOA lessons throughout the experience.
During 2007, over 1,000 universities downloaded and played INNOV8.
- New educational content
Although not a socially-oriented game, INNOV8 served as an accessible way for people to learn about SOA and eventually become contributing members of the community that IBM was building.
"INNOV8 helps customers learn SOA concepts in a much more consumable way," Carter says.
Through research done in 2008, the team found that students taught through the game had an 80% higher recall on SOA topics than other students. They also found that graduates who had used the game in school were taking it with them into the business world to teach their coworkers.
- More accessible
INNOV8’s second version was Web-based, meaning it could be played on any computer with an Internet connection. That platform made it easier for people to share the game.
- Social promotion
For the second version, the team also created leader boards that listed the players with the highest scores.
They promoted the game through a separate Twitter feed, and through IBM’s blogs and forums. Promoting in social forums made it easier for people to connect with like-minded friends and coworkers after learning about the game.
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If you have not seen this video, it details the process by which consumers' use of Twitter can benefit a brand: http://bit.ly/szW0U
I see Twitter as a lunch date or cocktail party with individuals of my choosing, some friends, some interesting strangers. So I'm more interested in what @eveon (one of our employees) or Craig Newmark (@craignewmark) or John Perry Barlow (Grateful Dead Lyricist: @johnperrybarlow) have to say than what a corporate site for General Foods or JWT might reveal.
Take a look at a Honda saleswoman in Charleston, South Carolina is doing to influence car fans and shoppers for instance: twitter.com/brunroxy09. No Honda Twitter account needed there.
Stephen Byrne
www.diffusion.com.au
www.diffusionblog.blogspot.com
twitter @spbyrne
We have been bloggers, twitterers, facebook group owners for more than 5 years. Not sure your assessment of agencies by their coporate IDs is that telling an analysis. Take a look at the thought leaders and people across the agencies who are very active throughout social media. I doubt you will find a group as involved and participating as Ogilvy.
I can speak for my corner of the universe - Ogilvy's 360 Digital Influence team and you will see a very active social media culture via our hub here including cross links to our brothers and sisters across the globe and across all of the disciplines:
www.360digitalinfluence.com
Of those, how many are regularly active?
Of that percentage, how many are "real" people and not marketers, hookers and get-rich-quick schemers?
And of those, how many have an income that is not best described as an allowance?
That's the number that matters, please and thank you.
http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/twitter_101.
Erica Ehm
twitter.com/yummymummyclub.ca
Agencies need to treat their own Twittering, email newsletters and websites with the same TLC and structure that they do for their clients, if they want to get the same level of results. Sometimes its not easy without a client to establish solid expectations, but you just have to bear down and commit to doing it the right way no matter what.
- Jeff Greenhouse
President, Singularity Design
http://www.SingularityDesign.com
http://Twitter.com/SingularityDsgn
What matters are the interactions with individuals from companies, not a nameless, faceless brand or logo. Since you mention Zappos, I think it's disingenuous to simply focus on Tony (although he leads by example). There are over 400 more Zappos employees on Twitter, having interactions with customers all day. That's a much more scalable - and human - approach than a single company-specific account.
Scott Monty
Global Digital Communications
Ford Motor Company
www.thefordstory.com
If as an agency you are not aware, or active in these social networks, how can you use them for your brands?
We are, Runway Interactive agency, a rather young, dynamic team here in Istanbul.
The most interesting, innovative brief just landed on our lap.
THY (Turkish Airlines), last week invited us to their Mobile pitch. AND this is where they did a genious job. Instead of sending us the brief itself, they sent us a document with only clues to get to the brief. We had to use several Iphone apps, as well as visit social networks, etc to get to the brief.
Another genious idea that is in the brief, is to seed information during the preparation of the pitch (2 weeks), about THY Mobile brief, our agency, and most importantly document this for the pitch.
They want to see that we can actually use, as well as our expertise on this medium. How smart of them.
I believe all brands should employ this strategy from now on while they are choosing their agencies.
You can follow our adventures on twitter @ thymobile or @thylounge, as well as on thymobile.mobi
Dilara Z. Moran
Runway Interactive
Strategic Planning Advisor
twitter @dilaram
>> as a gathering place for individuals to share ideas
>> and experiences. It's probably inappropriate for
>> a company or brand to have a Twitter account.
Try YAMMER. Registration (and viewing) is locked down to people who have your company's @address. It has a Twitter-like interface that allows spontaneity while maintaining the security of an Intranet.
As for Twitter, maintaining your marketing presence is a full-time job. If a company isn't willing to dedicate a person to that position, they're better off not having a Twitter presense. On Twitter, bad is globally bad. But good has terrific ROI: ask Starbucks, Wendys, Discovery, Dell, CNN, NPR, TMZ, etc.
Which Ad Agency is going to be the first to develop a Twitter Dept and sell 24/7 marketing for small companies that can't have a dedicated Twitter-position?
Our four day vacation continues! We aren't even working but we're sort of famous- @adage article about Twitter. http://tinyurl.com/ol4rku26 minutes ago from web
From this tweet, the Grey NY interns come off as sort of egotistical and somewhat ignorant. Did they even read this article? It doesn't exactly sing their praises...
Paul S. Gumbinner
President
The Gumbinner Company
New York, NY
www.thegumbinnercompany.com
It doesn't take long on Twitter to understand who in the agency kingdom and who in the business/corporate world "gets it." And thanks to the transparency of the public timeline, a business can easily discern the quality and influence of an agency's Twitter insight. If it's a litany of media releases and self-promotion, the followers and influence dry up. If it's an anticipated flow of marketing wisdom and business expertise, the followers listen and the influence expands.
At the Deeter Gallaher Group LLC, we tweet from our personal profiles (@AnneDGallaher, @MarisaCorser, @JoshMGallaher), and our clients and colleagues appreciate our transparency. We are able to convince our clients/CEOs to engage in social media, because they can see our own efforts. We listen, learn, and share. Social media engagement has produced impressive results for us and our clients and provides an additional messaging platform for traditional communications pieces.
During a Social Media panel for tourism in central Pennsylvania, I told the business audience that before they partner with any agency for social media strategies, ask the agency for their profile names. For Tweeting CEOs and brand humanizers, I have learned volumes from Peter Aceto at @CEO_INGDIRECT Canada and Ford's @ScottMonty. We look forward to more listening, learning, and leading.
Anne Deeter Gallaher,CEO/Owner
Deeter Gallaher Group LLC
www.deetergallahergroup.com
The majority of the content is aggregated from the Ogilvy employee blogs that John mentions above and focuses on the impact that technology is having on the relationships between brands and their audiences.
These posts come from all countries, companies, disciplines and levels and are unfiltered. Consequently the views don't necessarily reflect those of the corporation but the people within it. A fine but very important line.
We endeavour to follow everyone back (we are at about 11,000, it is holiday season after all). We also try to respond the all DMs and @ogilvy comments.
I believe this authenticity and open attitude is one of the drivers of it's relatively large and loyal following (there has been about a 5% drop off over the life of @ogilvy). The majority of feedback is positive and very often enlightening and thought provoking.
We find experimenting in the space for ourselves, rather than talking about it, provides valuable feedback and insight that we can bring to bear to help build our clients businesses.
Giles Rhys Jones
http://interactivemarketingtrends.blogspot.com/
http://www.twitter.com/ogilvy
You really can't do poorly if you know who you want to speak with, have something of value to discuss with them, and say it in a way they can appreciate The problem always comes when companies and their agencies lose site of why they are communicating and what results they want the messages to deliver.
Also, it is nearly imnpossible for agency professionals who don't have anything to say to not say anything.
John Ribbler
www.media-proinc.com
www.media-proinc.com/ribblog
Social media isn't just another media platform. It's, well, social. It's about interaction.
People interact with people. Like several people have commented above, agencies (or especially holding companies!) with twitter accounts are are kinda weird - like my dad trying to befriend me on Facebook. They're clearly not in on it for altruistic reasons. No one would argue that agencies need to monitor and engage with what's being said about them in the social media world, but to periodically engage in some forced broadcasting of their ideals or offerings? Awkward!
The beautiful thing about twitter is that is transparent, quirky, and personal. God bless the Grey interns for thinking about tequila at 9:30am. You know what? I'm kinda relieved that they are. They're people... I'm guessing 22 or 23 year-olds who aren't getting paid much and are supposed to be creative. Tweeting about tequila makes them real.
Consumer brands (i.e., DMOSS' Starbucks, Dell examples) act as entities. Their brands need to be carefully molded, and so singular communication from them makes sense.
But clients don't hire an agency anymore, they hire the people... the real, live, quirky, breathing, individual people with ideas and opinions, and kids, and jokes. Those are the people I want to hear from on twitter.
For me, the most dissappointing part is the fact that I have worked my butt off to get this internship opportunity and have been complimented on my ideas and work ethic (I am an account person). These creative interns at the other Grey building are setting Grey Healthcare Group and other agency interns back. I hope this AdAge article does not let this be the face of agency interns. Arrogance and ignorance should be the last thing any intern should have, because we are lucky to have the opportunity to prove ourselves while gaining insight into an industry that many of us feel so passionate about.
I BEG YOU ALL, PLEASE DO NOT LET A FEW INTERNS ON TWITTER LEAVE A SOUR TASTE IN YOUR MOUTH.
Jesse Brightman
Jesse@Brightman.com
Twitter: @jessebrightman
As manager of Draftfcb's Twitter feed (@draftfcb) I definitely feel our biggest challenge right now centers on responding to direct messages and replies. Not because of a concern with regards to messaging, but timing as I juggle all of the day's other tasks. I've actually found that a great resource has been other agency employees. If someone asks about a job, I can direct them to people here like @creativeadgigs or @AConnJob who are using their feeds to find talent. The same is true for people who are looking to learn about the agency's other disciplines or work. I think it's equally important to know what others in the agency are doing with their feeds and utilizing them as a resource if you can.
Josh Dysart
Manager, Corporate Communications
Draftfcb
Perhaps these agencies feel the same way.
Perhaps these agencies feel the same way.
Ultimately, we had to do what was right for us. We figured our followers were people who were either potential hires, potential clients, vendors, those interested in advertising or fans of Austin, TX (where we are headquartered). As such, we try to use this as the guiding light for our tweets: Is it about us, advertising, our people, clients or Austin? If it isn't, we don't put it out there.
Our advice? Do what fits your brand, and don't let people say you are doing it wrong. If you are there, reading tweets and trying to get a sense of the space, you are at least doing something right.