The Yellow Papers Series

Me, My World,
The World
Social Media Made Simple
Me, My World, The World The Yellow Paper Series 02

Social media itself is simple;

brilliant execution
is what’s difficult.

Not since the dotcom bubble has so much fluff and hyperbole been devoted to
emerging digital technologies. Social media specialists are keen to emphasize
the complexities and risks inherent in social media participation. But we think
different: Social media itself is simple, brilliant execution is what’s difficult.

Social media is simple because it draws on skills innate to most of us; the ability
to socialize, make friends, copy and share. Social media is simple because it
offers consumer insights that can be added to all the other data that modern
firms use to run their businesses. Social media is simple because 99% of our
employees are already successfully using it every single day.

The mistakes that have been made so far stem from three causes:
1. A focus on the platforms (e.g. Facebook) rather than the strategy
2. A lack of clear objectives
3. A failure to agree metrics upfront

The industry is in a state of flux, with agencies from all disciplines competing for
ownership of the social media strategy. We believe that no one ‘owns’ social
media, rather everyone has a role to play in incorporating social media into their
core competencies.

We also believe that the talents that set DDB apart in other spheres are equally
relevant for social media. Clients still need sound strategic thinking - without
smart interpreters, the social media numbers remain meaningless. Clients
need great creative ideas – ideas that aren’t original or remarkable will pass by
unnoticed. Clients need scale – social media has brought globalization more to
the fore and clients need creative networks that can operate globally.

In this paper, we look at how to embark on robust monitoring and analysis

of conversation in the social web before turning to the wider implications for
strategy and organization design.
Me, My World, The World   The Yellow Paper Series 03

Brent Annells heads up DDB Sydney’s Telstra business with twenty

year’s communications experience in digital, advertising and PR. Brent
is responsible for the entire strategic and creative output on the youth
segment of Australia’s largest telco and a core part of his remit is to help
Telstra engage with consumers via social media.

Peeyoosh Chandra is an award winning digital strategist, who has

worked on a number of successful social media led campaigns.
Recently he has taken the lead in developing DDB’s social media
monitoring and insights centre of excellence in Sydney.

Losing Control, but Gaining Influence

Today’s consumer is acutely aware – and highly cynical – about the brands
competing for attention in his or her world.

However, many brands still act as if they are the only brand in a consumers’ world
and they seek to impose a degree of control that has long since evaporated. In
reality, most consumers compare and discuss multiple brands before choosing
one. And, with the advent of social networks and social media, in a highly public
way.

Put simply, consumers prefer brands they hear about from friends or social
networks.

This is having a profound effect on consumers’ path to purchase and the way
brand marketers need to approach this highly connected, and highly cynical,
audience
Me, My World, The World   The Yellow Paper Series 04

Today’s consumer context

We like to see ourselves as individuals, but in truth we are reminded on a daily basis of just how connected we are.
Participation in social networks results in constant exposure to “status updates” – updates that occur independent
of face to face interaction.

The rapid-fire nature of these updates, combined with peoples’ need to feel always connected, provides almost
constant exposure to new “news”. Add to this the delivery of almost 3,000 advertising messages a day1, and it’s
not surprising that most people are facing information overload.

Their response is to filter the information they receive, and prioritize what they pay attention to - what matters to
them. They start to prioritize My World, over The World.

Me, My World, The World.

Put simply, the consumer is starting to view the world as Me, My World and The World2.

My World is a representation of who I am, and also adds meaning to my life by connecting Me to the things I care
about or want. The World is everything outside of My World that does not have immediate meaning to Me. I gain
and maintain credibility in my friends worlds’ by expressing opinions, sharing ideas, observations and thoughts.
My influence within my friends world is based on what I share, and how frequently. Given the very important role
brands play in consumers’ lives, brands have become social by default.

As consumers, we now rely on our social networks to “protect” ourselves from information overload. As a result,
information that comes to Me through My World will be prioritized and receive more attention.

Advertising operates in The World.

Social media provides a window into a public form of My World. Social media monitoring, when executed
correctly, provides critical visibility into My World. We think of this as social intelligence.

DDB’s social media monitoring methodology generates highly relevant, meaningful insights that allow brands to
move from The World into My World.

Monitoring conversations in My World

Only 1% of conversations happen in publically visible social

media environments3. However, even this small percentage
of conversations is often highly representative of consumer
conversations in general. In real terms, large brands will often
attract in excess of 100,000 conversations.

These conversations can be recorded and entered into a data

warehouse for the purposes of analysis and insight generation.
Once captured, conversations are classified according to rules
set by a monitoring analyst.
Me, My World, The World   The Yellow Paper Series 05

Three phases to developing a successful monitoring solution

There are three phases to setting up a successful monitoring (intelligence) program.

Three phases to monitoring

Audit Setup Monitoring

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3

Conversation Audit Monitoring Insights and Reporting

Discover and catalogue Monitoring System Setup Insights and Reporting

conversations
•  Discover conversation zones
(e.g. forums)
•  Discover key terms to
search for
•  Establish influence and
reach estimates for zones
•  Setup base monitoring •  Regular insights into
system consumer queries and new
•  Implement custom crawlers content requirements
for specific information •  Search Optimisation
sources (e.g. private forums) recommendations
•  Setup baseline measures •  Regular reports
•  Setup alerts and tracking •  Incident reports

•  Conversation Audit Report •  Regular reporting and monitoring •  Insights into consumer behaviour,
•  Baseline sentiment by Social Media •  Ability to provide alerts as required issues and opportunities
zone (e.g. twitter, forums, blogs, etc) •  Regular SM reports

• Conversation Audit : Find what and where conversations are happening

• Monitoring : Routine for tracking on a monthly basis
• Insights and Reporting : Generate insights and reports

Grouping keywords

The first step in the conversation audit is to understand the terms that consumers use when discussing topics of
interest (in My World). It is then important to group terms in meaningful buckets to simplify the analysis process.

The diagram above illustrates the Social Intelligence method of grouping terms. By collecting keywords in this order, a
complete view of the brand and category can be formed.

For large scale brands, the monitoring platform will often track between 250 and 300 distinct sets of keywords. This
will yield a universe of approximately 1M conversations per quarter.
Me, My World, The World   The Yellow Paper Series 06

Analysing the data

The data warehouse represents the universe of conversations that need to be analyzed to understand
what is being said. Depending on the size of the universe, the conversations need to be catalogued into
“conversational topics” for more detailed analysis.

In addition to allowing conversations to be catalogued, monitoring tools allows for the evaluation of
tone, sentiment and emotional context. Automated sentiment and tone analysers are typically 60% –
70% accurate, and require an analyst to continuously test the classification and adjust the automated
classification.

There are 5 tonal classifications available.

Very Negative Negative Neutral Positive Very Positive

For most brands, without a crisis, Tone Neutral will be the most prominent. Neutral reflects the majority
point of view and so it is also the place to search for real insights.

Deconstructing Conversations to get insights –

Telstra Mum 2.0 digital makeover

The real gold from a Social Intelligence point of view

is in deconstructing what’s said in Tone Neutral
conversations. Tone Neutral conversations provide
visibility into unprompted conversations about a brand.
They reflect real usage scenarios, questions, frustrations
and, most importantly, emotions.

A simple example of this approach is the Telstra Digital

Mum campaign. While analyzing conversations relating
to the topic of “calling mum”, the social, achievement and
anger emotions indexed higher than all others. By looking
at the achievement related conversations, it became
apparent that mums were looking for a way to connect
with their children, using new technologies. It was also
clear that the children were frustrated (and sometimes
embarrassed) by their mum’s lack of tech savvy. It
became clear there was a role for Australia’s dominant
telecommunications company to facilitate better
communication between mother and child, by teaching
mum’s net-etiquette. This insight led creatively to Mum
2.0 - a digital make-over for mums that allowed Telstra to
move from The World into My World.
Me, My World, The World   The Yellow Paper Series 07

Testing the insight

As with any research methodology, it is important to validate the results. In most instances, it is possible to
verify the insight through the sheer volume of conversations that match the insight. In the case of Telstra’s
Digital Mum insight, over 10,000 separate conversations confirmed the finding.

In traditional qualitative research, insights typically come from far smaller sample sizes and often rely on the
prompting of researchers in a focus group environment. Although social media analysts do play a role in
interpreting the conversations they observe, the conversations themselves are largely unprompted and based
on large samples. So, social media insights are pretty robust.

However, the dynamic nature of social media means insights can also change quite quickly – meaning the
analyst, and the creative solution, must remain flexible and responsive to change.

So respond.
But be selective.
Monitoring will often show that there are many, many topics in which a brand could choose to participate.
There is a risk that brands act like social butterflies, jumping from one theme to another, never achieving any
lasting change in consumer behaviour. It requires a strong sense of the overall business strategy to ensure
that participation is selective, properly planned and backed-up by what clients are doing on and offline.

The response to a particular theme can vary from doing nothing, to keeping watch, to actively participating.
Participation can be very positive – adding value to a community of fans, but also defensive – correcting
inaccurate information in forums. But, don’t be ham-fisted: frequently critical comments about a brand are
self-regulated, as another member of the public often jumps in to provide an alternative point of view.
Me, My World, The World   The Yellow Paper Series 08

Co-ordinating your Social Strategy

There is little point in pushing social marketing via Facebook, whilst at the same time failing to respond to
customer service criticism on Twitter. The highest performing businesses in the social space have taken an
organization-wide approach to managing social media engagement. This can prove challenging to large
organizations with lots of silos. That is where the role for a social media coordinator – or chief community
officer - with senior-level access, comes in.

The chief community officer (or social media co-ordinator) is responsible for building consensus over how
to tackle the key challenges and opportunities presented by the social intelligence. They provide training
and rules of engagement for all employees and third-parties engaging in social media on behalf of the
brand. They are responsible for recalibrating the social media reporting dashboard in order to ensure that
only useful insights are generated.

Entry into My World

Companies that understand how people consider, appraise and interact with brands inside of My World can
effect great change in the way they connect with these consumers.

In the advertising context, we need to recognize that participation in the consumers’ world necessitates new
skill sets and new types of creative solutions. We must embrace the community management function and
be more digital and PR savvy.

Put simply, brands need to understand that entering a consumers’ world carries a responsibility to respond
and react in a much more dynamic way, and to commit to two-way communications. Fundamentally, brands
are now social as a rule, not the exception.

Those brands that deliver on this will be rewarded with entry into My World.
Sources:

1
Zakazukha Zoo: a social media blog

2
The Consumer Agenda, World Retail Congress presentation by Peter Fisk
(http://www.slideshare.net/geniusworks/the-consumer-agenda-by-peter-
fisk)

3
WOMMA survey 2010

DDB Worldwide Communications Group Inc (www.ddb.com ) is one of the

world’s largest and most influential advertising and marketing services networks.
With more than 200 offices in over 90 countries, DDB provides creative business
solutions by its proprietary philosophy and process built upon the goal of
influence. DDB and its marketing partners create and deliver unique, enduring,
and powerful brand experiences for competitive advantage.

DDB is excited by ideas. We invite you to visit our website to share yours and
keep abreast of ours. We believe that creativity is the most powerful force in business
and that ideas get sharper with more minds rubbing against them.