Author: Matthew Mount & Marian Garcia Martinez, MIT Sloan,2014

Teacher: Soe-Tsyr Daphne Yuan

Presenter: Wayne Yang

Rejuvenating a Brand Through Social Media

BackgroundA Four-Step Framework for Social Media

UtilizationBefore you begin: Specify the goal or

objective.Scan and mapEngageLearn from engagementInternalize and apply

Conclusion

Agenda

Today’s managers understand the potential of social media engagement for generating business value.

With each click, comment, “like” or post, consumers leave vital pieces of information — in effect, virtual footprints — that can be aggregated to generate new insights for brand management and engagement.

However, companies often lack the right Framework to guide them in this process.

Background

Nestlé, which has developed a strong capacity to manage its social space and extract useful insights from the voluminous data created via social media

After an extensive series of interviews and detailed observations of Facebook fan pages, we found that Nestlé UK followed a four-step utilization framework

Background

Before the engagement, senior managers should specify a goal or business objective

Senior Manager is a title given in a large company. In a hierarchy, Senior Manager falls between Manager and General Manger and often supervises the largest or most important group in a company.

Before you begin: Specify the goal or objective

In this case, Kit Kat brand managers wanted to find ways to leverage social media as a means to build enthusiasm among 18- to 24-year-olds for Kit Kat, a leading chocolate bar brand for Nestlé UK.

Before you begin: Specify the goal or objective

Managers should actively monitor and track user-generated content — the conversations that are happening on both their own and competitors’ social media pages — to help identify emerging trends.

STEP 1: Scan and map the social space around the brand and its competitors.

To extract information about the Kit Kat brand, Nestlé UK managers used advanced IT tools to analyze, text mine and data mine user-generated content to find clues about how they might deepen attachment to the brand.

=>One such insight: Flavors were often a major topic of conversation among Kit Kat fans posting on the Kit Kat Facebook page.

STEP 1: Scan and map the social space around the brand and its competitors.

Next, companies should engage and create a dialogue with consumers based on the insights developed by scanning the social media space.

Today’s social networking sites support multimodal means of communication that can include text, pictures and audiovisual tools, as well as the integration of additional platforms

STEP 2: Engage with consumers on social networks to increase external knowledge in flows

In 2012, for this second step, Nestlé UK started a social media campaign — “Choose a Chunky Champion” — to capitalize on user interest in Kit Kat flavors and to engage users in cocreation by voting on new flavors.

By using an integrated polling tool that allowed users to freely comment on, “like” and vote for different flavors, Kit Kat managers built customer interest in the brand and stimulated much more content than the brand had generated before.

STEP 2: Engage with consumers on social networks to increase external knowledge in flows

Learning occurs through a conversion process, in which the company uses polls, conversation threads and open-ended questions to make user-generated content more digestible.

Nestlé UK outsourced this capability through an active partnership with Facebook as well as with digital agencies that helped the company handle the volume of data and user-generated content flowing from Kit Kat’s Facebook fan page.

STEP 3: Learn from engagement with consumers.

The success of Nestlé UK’s partnership with Facebook suggests that intermediaries or consultancies can play an important role in translating user-generated content into explicit knowledge that the company can learn from to realize the benefits of social media engagement.

STEP 3: Learn from engagement with consumers.

Next, managers must communicate the lessons and knowledge learned from social network interactions throughout the whole organization or division to ensure that the new knowledge, best practices and solutions gained from interacting with the social networks are put to work.

In this case, by integrated polling tool on Facebook that aggregated user votes, the winning flavor (peanut butter) was automatically selected after the 40-day balloting period without the need for any post-processing.

STEP 4: Internalize and apply knowledge gained from social networks

Kit Kat marketing managers had successfully engaged consumers in cocreation to generate and produce new brand alternatives that were better aligned with the needs of their target audience, which at the same time facilitated brand rejuvenation.

The assistant brand manager pointed out, "That's massive, and that’s people choosing actively to talk about us. And it’s us creating excitement for them and giving them a space and a forum to express that. For me, that is the key thing.”

STEP 4: Internalize and apply knowledge gained from social networks

Although we focused on one social media campaign for a candy brand, the four-step methodology we uncovered should be useful in a variety of marketing contexts.

How long is your break? 

Conclusion