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Table of Contents

Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction to EE (Everything Everywhere) ............................................................................................... 4

Analysis ........................................................................................................................................................ 5

Conclusion with Recommendations.............................................................................................................. 9

References ................................................................................................................................................... 11

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................... 13
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Executive Summary
“Social Media” is a generic term encompassing a very rich and diverse landscape of platforms,
websites, and online tools through which people connect, express, interact, comment, and share.

It is used to inform, communicate, entertain and share information and experiences privately to
interact with businesses and consumers. From a marketing perspective, social media serves a
wide variety of marketing purposes: customer service, conquering markets and customer
knowledge, word-of-mouth marketing and inbound marketing, and even direct marketing.

Social media has received rapid importance just within few years of its existence. Typically, it is
the socialising medium and many are inspired by the revolution of communications processes,
mainly among generations Y midwifed by the media platforms. Today, social media has changed
the world of business as well by transforming the process of selling and buying. Although social
media is not a very old phenomenon, it has really established to be simply an effective and
helpful approach than traditional marketing for marketers.

This report aims to discuss the present social media marketing and communication strategy of
EE (Everything Everywhere), a British mobile network operating firm, internet service provider
and a division of BT (British Telecom) Group and founded in 2010, and provide best possible
recommendations for how the company’s strategy can be enhanced.
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Introduction to EE (Everything Everywhere)

EE (Everything Everywhere), as the largest mobile operator and Internet service provider in the
United Kingdom, formed in 2010 by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile and since then it has
served more than 28 million customers, making it the largest 4G mobile operator in Europe. In
addition to managing the country's largest 3G network, EE also provides a fast and efficient
connection thanks to its T-Mobile and Orange plans. Recently, the company launched an ultra-
fast 4G network. EE offers a 4G plan that allows consumers to use 3G and 4G networks. The
advantage of this is that when they are not in the 4GEE band, consumers can easily switch to a
more affordable 3G network. The company manages the EE, Orange and T-Mobile plans,
providing more than 27 million customers with the best network and the best service so they can
trust the digital life of the company. (EE, 2018)

The company is working to ensure 4G voice and data coverage over 90% of the geography of the
United Kingdom and more than 99% of the population of the UK (EE, 2018). The company
strives to reach the speed of completion of the call over 99.6%, and the network makes more
than 150 million calls every day. The company presents 4G Calling - or VoLTE - to cheaper
smartphones to allow more customers to access higher quality voice and use our 800 MHz
spectrum (EE, 2018). The company also allows Wi-Fi connection on multiple iOS devices,
Microsoft Windows and Android, to allow mobile phone calls and texts for all homes, offices
and entertainment venues at speeds of up to 2 Mbit / s (EE, 2018). In fact, the company brings
4G + to the busiest places in the UK, increasing the bandwidth of the network for each user.

In 2015, EE provided access to its network to more than 29 mobile telephone operators, serving a
total of 5.7 million customers (Williams, 2015). Besides facilitating with mobile services, the
company is also involved in managing more than 700 sale points throughout the country.
Regarding its retail business, EE also deals in selling smart devises including mobile phones,
tablets and patented broadband access, through which the company increases its revenues and i
2014 this revenue was more than 6 billion pounds (Williams, 2015). EE operates the largest and
fastest mobile network in the UK, which in October 2012 first presented the first in the 4G
mobile service in the UK (Williams, 2015). The current coverage of 4G covers more than 75% of
the geography of the United Kingdom and 99% of the population (Williams, 2015). The fibre
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optic broadband service EE covers approximately 80% of the population of the United Kingdom,
and broadband ADSL covers 98.7% of the population (Williams, 2015).

On the basis of operational size, EE has the potential to offer best and competitive services to
gain competitive advantage over its market rivals. For this, EE developed an exclusive
partnership with BT in 2013 with the aim of offering its target audience free access to Wi-Fi
hotspots throughout the country (Williams, 2015). Afterwards in 2015, the company planned to
develop its own mobile communication strategy because the company aims to be the first main
provider of 5G (Williams, 2015).

In the current scenario, the promotion is one of the most important parts of the marketing mix. It
is about sending a marketing message to the customer to provide information about services and
products. EE uses advertising strategies, such as advertising, social networks and the Internet,
which can have a direct impact on customers to receive services and products, since the company
presents a new service and is the launch of a new phone in the market, using promotional
activities. The platform marketing and advertising on social media platforms help organisations
gain direct access to a potential customer and provide them with more benefits. The social
network plays an important role in the promotion, since, when using it for marketing and
communication, the organizations reach their potential group of people and sell them products
and services. In addition, to improve brand value, EE also uses sponsorship methods that can
spread among people and attract more customers. (Rogers, 2016) Therefore, social media can
become the heart of the campaign to promote EE’s services and products, fostering the
advancement of this brand.

Analysis
The reason behind success and competitive advantage of EE is their firm focus on social media
marketing strategy, which is an integral part of their marketing mix approach (promotion
element). According to the company, digitalisation is the key to success for EE (Naylor, 2016).
Through this the company pay strong attention to social media platforms in a variety of
innovative ways to communicate with target audience, covering marketing, consumer feedback,
management information, internal communication, and much more.
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According to Hudson and Hudson (2013), the role played by traditional marketing approaches
has been disappeared and innovative social media marketing through Facebook for example
enables a brand like EE to cost-effectively communicate to a wider audience. By adopting this
trend, EE has recently invested more on social media communications. Regarding Facebook in
2016, EE has received over 800 000 “likes” and has been serving over 100 000 followers only
via their Twitter page.

Social media platforms play a hybrid role in the promotions mix (Hudson and Hudson, 2013). It
suggests that while social media lets organisations to communicate their marketing messages to
their customers, it also allows customers to give their feedback (consumer feedback) about the
brand to organisations. Because of the influential power of word-of-mouth, EE has paid strong
attention to shape discussions on social media platforms with the aim of making sure they are
aligned with the organisational goals and objectives. As an integral part of this digital strategy,
the company launched a comprehensive social media campaign in 2014 by involving with Kevin
Bacon as the brand ambassador of EE (Kimberley, 2012). To connect with the World Cup,
Bacon was an integral part of a humorous campaign on social media through which the company
demonstrated the power of the company’s 4G network (EE, 2018). The company enabled an
effective dialogue and for this they encouraged the public to share the advert through different
social media channels for exclusive World Cup merchandise.

Two years ago in 2015, EE also invested in online sponsorship with the aim of increasing brand
presence. For this, the company got sponsorship of the British Bafta awards, allowing them to
launch the “#EEBaftas”, a social media Hashtag (EE, 2018). By using Twitter, the company
conducted a live event and used over 16 000 tweets through this Hashtag, which let the public to
associate the awards with the brand and to spread brand awareness at the massive level through
social media word-of-mouth strategy.

Now, customers are not the passive recipients, and it is the responsibility of organisations to
engage their target audience and learn from them (Bolton et al., 2013). Now, customers’ role is
very active in co-creating the brand’s promotional message and in giving their feedback on the
organisation’s and brand’s role (Im and Ha, 2015). As discussed, social media is the key
promotional strategy of EE, which has supported the company in gaining and maintaining a key
competitive strength. As the company’s core business segment is mobile communications, by
 Page | 7

using social media EE is allowed for more active engagement from the product’s and service’s
initial purchase to the routine usage. Focus of EE is strongly on incessant active engagement and
for this the company adopted a combination of traditional and social media strategies in an effort
to create customer experiences and to make such experiences wonderful. Modern-day digital
organisations need to focus heavily on their social media strategy and consider it as an integrated
strategic approach, so that they bring the customer experience to the forefront (Bolton et al.,
2013).

These strong points are highlighted in present-day social media campaign of EE about the EE
Wembley Cup, which was launched two years ago in 2015 (#WembleyCup, 2016). As a ten-
week media campaign, the focus of EE Wembley Cup was on offering the company’s target
customers the greatest opportunity to participate in the iconic Wembley Stadium by playing (EE,
2018). EE used all social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, paid strong
attention to create regular communication with followers in an effort to engage customers and
encourage their feedback. With this, the first strong area is the active participation with the
public through the Wembley stadium as the central point to the campaign, and through which EE
is capable of targeting their customers with a recognisable brand. To begin with, traditional
media was used to create hype, while intimacy was created by social media and for this EE used
actively YouTube and Facebook to serve customers by providing daily information and updates
((#WembleyCup, 2016).

To make a social media strategy effective and influential, it must empower customers (Duffett,
2017). Customers are more confident in their views, opinions and feedback and of their peers as
well (Bolton et al., 2013). EE acknowledged this and focused exclusively on using its social
media accounts to display media content, believing that customers are spreading virus
communications (EE, 2015d). The campaign, to further develop intimacy, focused on target
audience who use their mobile phone to register their football skills and send them to their
friends via the #EEWembleyCup Hashtag (EE, 2018).

With target audience actively influencing the brand message, EE is also benefiting from the
campaign’s strength to seek customer's feedback on their phone services. EE is offering a free
4G service to encourage customers to partake when they use their recently launched app called
the Wembley (Wembley, 2018). Through this app, once downloaded by a user, EE can measure
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customer involvement in the campaign while observing who the social media influencers are.
Modern-day organisations can benefit from the social media ecosystem through which they can
view online 'chatter', serving as a crystal ball that assists them in ascertaining prospective product
of service strategies (Im and Ha, 2015).

While EE is successful regarding its social networking strategy, the focus is on establishing
contacts with customers. The company’s current strategy focuses heavily on controlled events
and brand opportunities. The strategies in social networks can help customers promote brands or
products, but they can also help improve customer loyalty through customer service (Boateng
and Okoe, 2015). EE has demonstrated its ability to attract new customers, but its social
networking strategy cannot hold existing customers.

In 2015, EE enjoyed a one star rating with Trust Pilot, an online customer watchdog service, who
rated the organisation poorly on their capability of addressing and solving consumer issues
(Trustpilot, 2018). Because of inadequate social media communications, EE were accused for
overlooking issues of customers. These all accumulated in Ofcom that issued the company a fine
of £1million (Trustpilot, 2018).Thus, an organisation needs to have a more flexible social media
strategy so that it deals with ever changing issues more effectively (Boateng and Okoe, 2015).
For EE, the consequences of this fine led to the mass movement of dissatisfied customers' social
networks expressing their grievances. Instead, the publication of strategic complaints in social
networks was silent, encouraging public opinion leaders to create virus groups that publicly
criticised the United States. As a result of the reaction, U.S. headquarters has finally apologized
to customers for making a direct statement from Facebook, and Boateng and Okoe (2015) show
that companies should have a social media strategy that allows you to monitor news and / In the
local context of all the social networking platforms involved in corporate branding. What can be
done as a small problem can be delivered from mouth to mouth through opinion leaders, which
must be quickly eliminated to evade the cat brand image of astrophysics (Boateng and Okoe,
2015).

Another potential challenge with social media is the privacy and personal security issue (Raghu,
2013). Within the social media marketing world, a niche element is involved concerned with the
ways their data is used. One of the main elements of EE’s social media marketing strategy is the
communication with target audience through social media campaigns. Nevertheless, EE was
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rated as the most-complained about provider to Ofcom and its main reason was the breach of
data in 2015. Customers interacted with the company’s through social media campaigns found
that that their information was not secure and being accessed by other marketers who can target
and worry them for their marketing purposes. It means that a company’s social media strategy
needs to be opened to all so that organisations avoid the issues of customers and data privacy
(Malthouse et al., 2013).

After brief analysis EE’s current marketing strategy via social media platforms, it is clear that
there is a certain pattern emerging on how the company benefit from Facebook, YouTube and
Twitter to communicate with its target audience. At present, the company’s social media
strategic approach is still based traditional concepts of marketing and pays strong attention to
interim effects on the company’s sales. This is indeed an incentive-induced behavioural approach
that depends on the use of well-known brand ambassadors and events related to control
marketing to lead and forward sales instead of retention.

Conclusion with Recommendations

EE needs to address how they deal with the issues or complaints of target audience via social
media. The current issues, as discussed earlier, with angry consumers, EE needs to have a
feasible and effective way out in ensuring that consumer feedback and issues do not spread
virally. For this, EE will have to develop a thorough audience strategy and find who the opinion
leaders discussing the brand are. Using this highly supporting audience as customers has the
strong potential to provide a benefit (Malthouse et al., 2013). There is the need to address
correctly and if so, their feedback and views can really spread a positive an influential brand
message. Virgin Media and other telecoms providers as the market competitors of EE use social
media channels to search key phrases or words of compliant and directly communicate with their
target consumer to properly address and solve issues (Malthouse et al., 2013).

To make a social media strategy effective, an organisation needs to communicate very humbly
and truthfully with customers (Duffett, 2017). Thus, EE needs to focus more on thorough
campaign via social media to attract new customers. Nevertheless, EE also needs to continue to
gratify the information needs of customers (Duffett, 2017).
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Overall, EE is the best model of how to develop and implement an influential social media
marketing strategy. The operational size of company indicates that the company has the best
resources to establish effective digital marketing campaigns that involve a perfect blend of
conventional and contemporary media to interact with and engage new customers. Through
influential brand ambassador, effective sponsorship and viral-based events, a very strong brand
has been created by EE by successfully using the word-of-mouth approach. Nevertheless, this
focus on making clientele base strong via Facebook, YouTube and Twitter has some weaknesses.
EE, as of 2015, has no effective approach to address consumer feedback and complaints via their
social media channels. In its place, the company’s social media either overlook or hide any
complaint. EE simply needs to look at the recommendations given in this report and improve its
social media strategy accordingly.
 Page | 11

References
Boateng, H. and Okoe, A. (2015). Determinants of Consumers’ Attitude towards Social Media
Advertising. Journal of Creative Communications, 10(3), pp.248-258.

Bolton, R., Parasuraman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, T., Komarova
Loureiro, Y. and Solnet, D. (2013). Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media:
a review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 24(3), pp.245-267.

Duffett, R. (2017). Influence of social media marketing communications on young consumers’

attitudes. Young Consumers, 18(1), pp.19-39.

EE. (2018). About EE. [online] Available at: http://ee.co.uk/our-company/about-ee [Accessed 5

Feb. 2018].

EE. (2018). Rising Star Nominees. [online] Available at: http://ee.co.uk/why-ee/ee-baftas/rising-

star-nominees [Accessed 5 Feb. 2018].

Hudson, S. and Hudson, R. (2013). Engaging with consumers using social media: a case study of
music festivals. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 4(3), pp.206-223.

Im, H. and Ha, Y. (2015). Is this mobile coupon worth my private information? Consumer
evaluation of acquisition and transaction utility in a mobile coupon shopping context. Journal
of Research in Interactive Marketing, 9(2), pp.92-109.

Kimberley, S. (2012). First look: EE ad with Kevin Bacon. [online] Campaignlive.co.uk.

Available at: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/first-look-ee-ad-kevin-bacon/1158001
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Malthouse, E., Haenlein, M., Skiera, B., Wege, E. and Zhang, M. (2013). Managing Customer
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Interactive Marketing, 27(4), pp.270-280.

Naylor, J. (2016). Estimating population mobility using big data sources–the benefits and the
challenges. [online] Available at: https://www.iaos2016.ae/uploadfiles/0059db89-1029-47cc-
9468-7d3fb7b3c96b___jane%20naylor%20paper.pdf [Accessed 5 Feb. 2018].

Raghu, G. (2013). Novel Brand Building Strategies Through Social Media Marketing. SSRN
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Rogers, D. (2016). Sears given top comms job at EE and makes integration and brand growth
his priorities. [online] Prweek.com. Available at:
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Spencer FC crowned the EE Wembley Cup Champions #WembleyCup. (2016). Spencer FC

crowned the EE Wembley Cup Champions #WembleyCup. [online] Available at:
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Trustpilot. (2018). EE is rated "Bad" with 1.6 / 10 on Trustpilot. [online] Available at:
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Wembley.ee.co.uk. (2018). EE Wembley. [online] Available at: https://wembley.ee.co.uk/app/

[Accessed 5 Feb. 2018].

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