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13.10.2010 Brand owners target social media insights

Brand owners such as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and LinkedIn are leveraging the information available on social media to generate insights. Since last September, Coca-Cola has been testinga system, developed by Netbase, which tracks commentary covering 75m sources including Facebook and Twitter, alongside blogs and forums. It provides a "natural language processing engine" delivering real-time analysis across market trends, "hot topics", brand health and other core metrics. Coke began trialling this software by tracking responses to an ad campaign, and gauging popular perceptions concerning artificial sweetener.
 

Stan Sthanunathan, vp, marketing strategy and insights at Coca-Cola, said it will start introducing this platform globally in November, after "its ability to understand the context as opposed to just the content" made an impression. "Brands don't become great by monitoring the past," Sthanunathan added. "The challenge is to have a point of view on the future." "Consumers know what they want and are giving their opinions in an unconstrained fashion."

Netbase recently signed up 50 customers in 90 days, and is currently assessing around 50,000 sentences of content each minute in a bid to keep clients up-to-date. The impetus behind Netbase's activity resulted after Procter & Gamble, the FMCG specialist, requested an expansion of a service already being employed by in-house scientists in 2008.

Last month, P&G utilised a more official approach, partnering with TwitterMoms, which offers the "world's first social seal of approval programme" from such a key audience. P&G's Ultra Concentrated Dawn dishwashing liquid was subjected to a "blind study", with 100% of the panel saying it met or exceeded expectations, and 93% displaying a willingness to recommend the product.

B.L. 13.10.2010