JOURNAL of CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Volume 2

Home , Hyperlapse (application), Joel Comm

Journal IT’S TIME TO of START OVER Customer Experience

VOLUME 2 | WINTER 2015

On the inside... How to transform your business with: Shell Nasdaq Edelman Digital

Plus... Hundreds of brands ranked on social performance. What would happen if every business hit the reset button? Social recap: the social news you need to know. JOURNAL OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Volume 2 | Winter 2015

LEADERSHIP: ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION RAGY THOMAS The Journal of Customer Experience – brought to you by Sprinklr – Founder and CEO is a comprehensive resource for practical advice, original research, CARLOS DOMINGUEZ and valuable data about how social is transforming businesses. President and COO

JEREMY EPSTEIN VP of Marketing

EDITORIAL: ABOUT SPRINKLR

BRIAN KOTLYAR Sprinklr is the most complete enterprise social media management AVP of Demand Generation technology in the world, purpose-built for large companies to BROOKE BAUMGARTNER drive business outcomes and manage customer experiences across Data Journalist all touch points. Called “the most powerful technology in the market” by Forrester Research, Sprinklr’s fully integrated social DESIGN: media management software powers more than four billion social COLUMN FIVE connections across 77 countries. @Sprinklr

04 INTRODUCTION 26 CONTENT IS STILL KING 39 SOCIAL BRAND HEALTH ANALYTICS What would the world of business How publishers have the power Our rankings of the Alcohol, Automobile, look like if we could all start over? to fuel the conversation Consumer Electronics, Fashion, by RAGY THOMAS, Founder and CEO, Sprinklr by ANN MARINOVICH, Vice President, Luxury Hospitality, and Retail industries Advertising Products and Strategy, Forbes Media CONTRIBUTORS 06 46 ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH 29 BRIDGING THE GAP Eliminating silos for a cohesive 08 SOCIAL NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW customer experience How Nasdaq uses social to build by CHRISTINE CEA, Former Senior Director a sales and marketing partnership Marketing Communications, Unilever 10 THINKING HOLISTICALLY AND SOCIALLY by RUSS RUBINO, Vice President The agency strategy for the new age Global Marketing, Nasdaq by DAVE FLEET, Senior Vice President, 49 REFLECTING ON 2014 AND LOOKING Edelman Digital FORWARD TO 2015 32 TALKING STRATEGY WITH SOCIAL EXPERIENCE PRACTITIONERS A Q&A featuring: 13 SOCIAL BY THE NUMBERS A Q&A featuring: LISA STRYKER, Social Media Manager, Duke Energy JOEL COMM, New York Times Best-Selling Author and New Media Marketing Strategist Partnerships and 16 CONNECTING AT SCALE EDWARD DZIALOWSKI, Strategic Alliances Manager, Cheil Worldwide The importance of communicating JUSTIN GILLMAR, Director of Social Media authentically with your customers and Content Marketing, DeVry Education SHARON LASURE-ROY, Senior Consultant by Vice President and Head Group Social Media, Florida Blue, Florida’s Blue Cross DON BULMER, of Social Media and Brand Innovation, and Blue Shield Plan JIM HANAS, Director of Audience Royal Dutch Shell Development, HarperCollins Publishers

SLOANE KELLEY, Executive Producer, 18 USING SOCIAL TO REALLY KNOW PGA TOUR Digital YOUR CUSTOMERS DAVE KERPEN, CEO, Likeable Local, A four-point plan for embracing social media Author and Speaker to up your customer knowledge game by RICK WION, Co-Founder, Manifest Digital JUSTINE LOMONACO, Senior Social Media and former Director of Social Media, McDonald’s Manager, Say Media

JEREMIE MORITZ, Global Digital Content 23 HOW NEW YORK LIFE IS PROVIDING and Media Manager, Pernod Ricard CONSISTENTLY POSITIVE EXPERIENCES A Q&A with DIPAYAN GUPTA, Head of Social Media Marketing and Strategy, New York Life

RAGY THOMAS, If your company were a newborn startup, just taking its first steps Founder and CEO, Sprinklr into the world today, what would it look like?

Would you market in the same way? Sell in the same way? Provide customer service in the same way?

I spend time with Fortune 500 executives every day, and in boardrooms around the world, the answer is the same: “I would rethink everything.”

Does that seem strange to you? We are in an age of unprecedented corporate profitability. The Dow Jones is higher than it’s ever been. Companies appear to be thriving.

If things are going well, why are executives so ready for change?

The answer is simple and universal: “My customer has changed, but my business hasn’t.”

The signs are everywhere. Customers know about new products before the sales team does. They know how to fix bugs before the support team does. They know about pricing mistakes before the finance team does. They publicly discuss the quality of interaction at every company touchpoint – whether it’s in-store, on the phone, on Twitter, or on some brand-new, barely invented medium.

This change in customer behavior also changes consumer expectations. Hyper-informed and connected customers expect to do business with hyper-informed and connected organizations. They expect the quality of their experiences with brands to reflect the world we now live in. In fact, according to Gartner Inc., in just a few years, 89% of businesses will compete mainly on customer experience (2014). There’s little question that a focus on customer experience is no longer optional.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 4 This Journal is a testament to a group of visionary leaders who recognize the customer experience imperative and are transforming their organizations to thrive in the new world. These remarkable business leaders are thinking like startup CEOs, re-examining every assumption, and learning how to make customers fall in love with their brands all over again. We are proud to showcase a few of these remarkable leaders and the difference they are making in this new age of business.

Welcome to the age of the customer.

42% There is little of people will tell their friends about + a good customer experience on social question that a focus on 53% – customer experience is will talk about a bad one. no longer optional. Source: American Express Global Customer Service Barometer (2012)

Customers who encounter positive social customer care experiences are nearly three times more likely to recommend a brand. Source: Harvard Business Review (2012) 3X

DON BULMER JUSTIN GILLMAR Vice President and Head of Social Media Director of Social Media and Content and Brand Innovation, Royal Dutch Shell Marketing, DeVry Education Group

CHRISTINE CEA DIPAYAN GUPTA Former Senior Director Marketing Head of Social Media Marketing and Strategy, Communications, Unilever New York Life

JOEL COMM JIM HANAS New York Times Best-Selling Author Director of Audience Development, and New Media Marketing Strategist HarperCollins Publishers

EDWARD SLOANE KELLEY DZIALOWSKI Executive Producer, Partnerships and Strategic Alliances Manager, PGA TOUR Digital Cheil Worldwide

DAVE FLEET DAVE KERPEN Senior Vice President, CEO, Likeable Local, Edelman Digital Author and Speaker

SHARON LISA STRYKER LASURE-ROY Social Media Manager, Senior Consultant Social Media, Florida Blue, Duke Energy Florida’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plan

JUSTINE LOMONACO RICK WION Senior Social Media Manager, Co-Founder, Manifest Digital and former Say Media Director of Social Media, McDonald’s

ANN MARINOVICH Vice President, Advertising Products and Strategy, Forbes Media

JEREMIE MORITZ Global Digital Content and Media Manager, Pernod Ricard

RUSS RUBINO Vice President Global Marketing, Nasdaq

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 7 In social, news moves faster than you can say “tweet.” And we get it – you have more Social News important things to do than refresh your newsfeed all day. That’s why we’ve done the work for you and rounded up the most impactful news stories in social for the second half of 2014.

Facebook Messing The New Foursquare With Your Emotions Foursquare gets a huge Facebook comes under public makeover, increasing the scrutiny for going all “Big Brother” emphasis on neighborhood and controlling the amount of discovery, location-based positive and negative content notifications, and Yelp-style in user feeds. restaurant reviews.

JUN JUL AUG

Goodbye to the Twitter Timeline? Instagram Has Although Twitter’s algorithm a Need for Speed has remained consistent over the Instagram releases its new years, this could be changing as hyperlapse app, allowing users the company experiments with the to create professional-looking way tweets surface in user feeds. time-lapse videos.

SEP

Ello Hits the Scene Ello, the social network with zero ads, soars in popularity, raising questions about the role of advertising on social networks. Snapchat Experiments With Ads Snapchat experiments with ads OCT by allowing select companies to create branded and event-specific content in the “My Story” and “Our Stories” sections of the platform.

Organic Reach Takes Yet Another Hit Facebook decreases the organic Twitter Goes Visual reach of brand posts even further Twitter announces plans for native by filtering out content that is video recording, editing, and deemed “overly promotional” sharing within the app. or “click bait.”

NOV

Facebook No Longer NSFW Tune in... to Facebook Facebook is developing “Facebook Facebook teams up with ABC at Work,” a platform that lets News to create short pre-roll video you message with colleagues, roundups of the day’s top stories collaborate on documents, and titled “Facecasts.” make professional connections.

DEC

The #instapurge Tumblr Gets a Buy Button Instagram undergoes a huge Tumblr adds e-commerce cleanup, deleting millions of capabilities, including “buy,” spam accounts overnight. “browse,” “pledge,” and “get One user went from 3.6 million involved” buttons. followers to eight. Ouch.

JAN

DAVE FLEET, Big companies have a problem. The tools and tactics that have Senior Vice President, been the traditional cornerstones of brand building don’t work Edelman Digital the way they used to. In a world of hyper-connected, empowered customers, brands have to emphasize a new approach to brand building – but what’s the key to that approach?

The answer: a consistent, holistic customer experience.

As a brand, your image is the sum total of the experiences a customer has with your company. Before the advent of digital, social, and mobile, there weren’t that many places where consumers interacted with brands.

With over a decade of communications But what happens when your brand has tens of thousands of mentions a week in social media, and digital marketing experience, publishes dozens of mobile applications every year, retargets ads across thousands of sites, Dave leads a 40-person digital team in and constantly interacts with highly connected and well-informed communities of potential Edelman’s Toronto and Montreal offices. customers? For companies with valuable brand equity that has been carefully constructed Dave is responsible for developing digital through traditional media over decades, it can be chaotic. The complexity of ensuring and integrated communications strategies consistency in customers’ experiences has significantly increased. for brands across technology, health, corporate, consumer, and public affairs sectors. @davefleet

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 10 LESSONS FROM THE AGENCY SIDE While Edelman, my employer, is a family company, it’s also the world’s largest PR agency, with thousands of employees and a valuable brand. Like any enterprise, our attitude toward social has evolved a lot over the years. We’ve worked hard to master the skills required and have learned a lot along the way. In fact, one of the reasons I originally joined was seeing some of the early mistakes as social media emerged as a viable communications vehicle. Here are +11% some of my takeaways from over the years: Simplify Through Process While social media activities may begin organically, it’s just not sustainable to continue in this way as you achieve scale. Like it or not, process is important. We work with our clients to design and implement processes that enable them to manage social media 78% of companies now say at the kind of scale that drives business results, while maintaining flexibility to react in they have dedicated social media a real-time environment. teams, up from 67% in 2012. Source: Altimeter Group (2013) Hire Ahead of Complexity Social media is constantly evolving, and the skill set required to operate effectively As a brand, your is getting more diverse all the time. Gone are the days when it was as easy as hiring a community manager who could do it all (not that it was ever that easy to be a image is the sum total community manager). of the experiences a Over the last few years, we’ve added entirely new skill sets to the team to operate effectively in social channels. Social media teams still revolve around community customer has with managers, but also incorporate creatives (writers, designers, video production whizzes), paid media specialists, analysts, trendspotters, and strategists alongside that your company. core role. That has meant adding new skills across the board as the industry continues to evolve.

Recognize That One Size Doesn’t Fit All It’s natural to focus on the latest trends. Indeed, over the years we have experimented and learned on our own channels. With that said, don’t forget to think about the big picture. Consider the following examples:

• Make sure your website doesn’t have a layer of dust on it. • Refresh your content strategy regularly. • Don’t believe the headlines: email is not dead.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 11 SOPHISTICATION IS THE KEY FOR 2015 This is going to be a year of change in social media. The big platforms have matured, and marketers are going to continue to see demands for social media activities that have become more sophisticated as well. Here are five key trends we can expect to see in 2015:

1. The demise of organic reach on Facebook will drive discussion over platform choice, an increased focus on building audiences around owned properties (websites, apps, etc.), and a continued focus on the paid side of social media.

2. Increased alignment across communications, creative, and media when it comes to content marketing. Brands are making huge investments in this area but are missing out on big profits with a lack of coordination.

3. The war for social media talent will continue, and we will continue to see division of labor between specialized skill sets.

4. Brands will experiment more aggressively with messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Snapchat, as well as time-and-place specific networks like Yik Yak. As always, the challenge will be demonstrating that these channels can move the needle from a business standpoint, but the opportunity to tap into younger audiences can’t be ignored.

5. There will be further investment in sophisticated image and video based content as users demonstrate more and more preference for visual networks like Instagram, Vine, and Pinterest.

We are in the middle of a pivotal time for large enterprises. Brands are finally learning the value of embracing social as an opportunity to connect with their biggest fans. It’s a return to the earliest promise of what social could do for big brands: help them build relationships at scale. Brands are now a compilation of conversations and discussions: the voice of your customer. It’s time to listen to that voice and have a hand in those discussions.

MONTHLY ACTIVITY

FACEBOOK* 1.35 B

YOUTUBE** 1 B 47%

TUMBLR** 420 M

GOOGLE+* 343 M of Americans say INSTAGRAM* 300 M Facebook is their #1 influencer of purchases. Source: Search Engine Journal (2014) TWITTER* 284 M

REDDIT** 174 M

LINKEDIN** 167 M YELP** 139 M 15.8% SNAPCHAT* 100 M

PINTEREST N/A

FOURSQUARE N/A Facebook accounts for 15.8% of total time spent VINE N/A on the internet. Source: Rocket Post (2014)

USERS (MILLIONS) 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500

* MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS | ** MONTHLY UNIQUE VISITORS

MOST RECENT VALUATION FACEBOOK $209.4 B 500M

INSTAGRAM $35 B | SUBSIDIARY OF FACEBOOK

LINKEDIN $27 B tweets are sent per day. YOUTUBE $26 B | SUBSIDIARY OF GOOGLE

TWITTER $25 B

SNAPCHAT $10 B 400M

PINTEREST $5 B

YELP $4 B snaps sent per day on Snapchat. TUMBLR $1 B | SUBSIDIARY OF YAHOO PUBLIC FOURSQUARE $650 M

SUBSIDIARY REDDIT $500 M 92% GOOGLE+ N/A PRIVATE

VINE N/A | SUBSIDIARY OF TWITTER

VALUATION 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 195 200 205 210 of Pinterest pins are (BILLIONS) pinned by women. Source: Digital Insights (2014)

AVERAGE TIME SPENT PER DAY

FACEBOOK 42.1

TUMBLR 34.2

INSTAGRAM 21.2 33% PINTEREST 20.8

TWITTER 17.1

SNAPCHAT 17 of all mobile ad spend in 2014 is on track to be LINKEDIN 9.8 captured by Facebook and Twitter. MINUTES 0 10 20 30 40 50 Source: Zenith Optimedia (2014)

US social media ad spend is 2013 $6.1 B estimated to have topped $8.5 billion in 2014 and will reach 2014 $8.5 B nearly $14 billion in 2018, up from $6.1 billion in 2013. 2018 $14 B Source: BI Intelligence (2014)

DON BULMER, A more globally connected world has challenged how companies Vice President and Head interact, engage, and maintain relevance and trust with their key of Social Media and Brand Innovation, Royal Dutch Shell audiences and the public at large. The reputation of a company is no longer defined by what they “report” or what they “say” they stand for. Instead, they are increasingly defined by the shared opinions and experiences of socially connected consumers.

HOW DO YOU SCALE EMOTION? More than ever before, purpose, values, and cause matter. This is how people relate to one another and to brands and organizations on an emotional level. Above all else, it’s the basis for establishing trust.

What is so special about social media as a technology is that it truly taps into perhaps the

Don Bulmer is VP and Head of Social most human and innate desire for us as people to want to connect, learn, share, and engage. Media and Brand Innovation at Royal It allows us to do this at a scale of one-to-one and one-to-many – at an instant. Dutch Shell, where he is responsible for the design, governance, implementation, THE POTENTIAL OF SOCIAL and measurement of Shell’s social media, At its best, social media is changing the way governments are run; how economic, health, influence, and partner communication energy, and education services are delivered; and how we participate in global events in very programs. He has 20 years of experience personal ways, rooted in local traditions. leading award-winning marketing and communication programs. @dbulmer For brands, the ability to scale this communication capability with our audiences (be they consumers, employees, or other stakeholders), from 1 to 1 billion without being intermediated, is perhaps its core value proposition. However, just because we have the technical means to scale from 1 to 1 billion people doesn’t mean it’s enough to engage. Brands must be purposeful, and the art is in how we show up.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 16 MAKING THE CONNECTION In a fierce competition for the time and attention of a finite number of people, how do brands rise above the noise? 77% To maximize the full capability of social media to establish and deepen relationships with people, brands must first “relate.” By taking time to understand what people care about you can discover the difference between communication and initiating a conversation. That’s how you make a connection.

of all social network users are now accessing social networks via mobile devices. Source: Exact Target Salesforce (2014) Posts with videos NO VIDEO What is so special attract three times about social media as a as many inbound links VIDEO as plain text posts. technology is that it truly taps into perhaps the 1X 2X 3X Source: NewsCred (2013) most human and innate desire for us as people to want to connect, learn, share, and engage.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 17 Using Social to Really A four-point plan for embracing social Know Your Customers media to up your customer knowledge game

RICK WION, “Marketers need to put the customer first.” The platitude rang out Co-Founder, Manifest Digital and from the keynote speaker’s podium and echoed off the walls of the former Director of Social Media, McDonald’s ballroom during the much-hyped all-hands meeting, where the company’s marketing elite had assembled to learn the latest and greatest marketing trends.

They looked at the guru with his carefully crafted slides – no words, just pithy pictures – waiting and hoping for an answer. Hoping for an actionable punchline to the hackneyed saying that would provide something truly useful.

It never came.

Here’s the problem: Time and again, bright marketing minds invest their scant time and ever-thinner travel budgets to listen and learn, but they are served up little more than empty statements like “Know your customer,” “Put the customer first,” and “Understand your Rick Wion is the co-founder of Manifest audience.” Digital, a consultancy of pioneering brand-side marketers helping These are noble and worthy objectives, yet they are all too often delivered as platitudes organizations harness the power of social. without any real, practical steps to help marketers figure out how to really know, understand, Throughout his 20-year digital career, and put customers first – as if anyone would say, “We need to put our customers second.” Rick is perhaps best known for founding the social strategy at McDonald’s and making the brand the most talked about Such droning cliches are about as useful and arguable as campaign promises. Every single non-tech company in social. @rdublife politician says, “I stand for education,” as if that were a noble statement. As if someone, anyone, would ever come out and say, “I don’t support educating our children.”

This isn’t the fault of marketers. As the practice of marketing has become more agile, technology-driven, and real-time, most professionals barely have time to respond to their mountains of email, much less invest the effort required to dissect the customer insight reports from their research teams and agencies.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 18 This brings us back to the beginning: a roomful of marketing pros desperately hoping that this session will be the one that truly makes a difference. But, alas, it doesn’t happen. And another flight home is consumed by unread emails rather than inspiration.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Understanding your customer is easier than ever thanks to social media. Here are four easy steps, plus a little bit of pre-work, to understanding the voice of your customer via social.

PRE-WORK: ELIMINATE FAKE PERSONAS THEN GO OUT AND FIND THE REAL ONES As a former agency guy, I’ve spent my fair share of time culling through customer data research and articulating personas. For those not familiar with personas, they are the carefully 63% crafted embodiment of common consumer trends, demographics, and habits into a caricature of Millennials say they stay updated of a real-live person. They usually have a pretty stock photo and a stereotypical name. You on brands through social networks. may know Jessica, the Generation X mom, or Brad, the Baby Boomer facing retirement, or Carla, the multicultural Millennial. 51% say social opinions influence their Personas are not inherently bad, but don’t get sucked into the trap of looking at personas as purchase decisions. a narrow collection of dried-out stereotypes. Instead, look at personas as a starting point for 46% understanding your customers, and then dedicate time and effort to walk a mile in those shoes “count on social media” when through social media. Once you can do that, you will have a much better understanding of buying online. your customer. Source: Leaderswest (2014) So how exactly do you do that?

The real work begins.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 19 1. LEARN AND LIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS’ DIGITAL LIVES Be your customer. Literally. Leverage technology to conduct deeper digital research of your customers to understand their online behaviors across platforms. When, where, why, and how do they go online? This leads to an entire cascade of questions to ask, including:

• How often do they go online? • Through what devices? • If they have younger kids, do they share devices? • If they have older kids, do they monitor what their kids do online? • How often are they multi-screen viewers? • What do they watch live, record, and/or view on-demand? • How much of their online time is at work? At home? On the go? • Are bandwidth and cost of data plans a concern? • What are their preferred social sites? • How often do they use social sites? • Do they just read content shared by others? Do they share content or contribute their own?

The technology infrastructure exists to gather this kind of data.

Once you have a solid base of knowledge, emulate. Use personas to understand the motivations and behaviors of your target, and go native. Watch their favorite shows. Use their favorite apps. Spend time offline doing what they talk about online. Join their favorite Pinterest boards. Buy a phone with a limited data plan (if pricing for mobile is an issue for your customers), and figure out how you would ration your online life. Watch their favorite shows. Use their hashtags. Go to that golf course. Download that Austin Mahone album.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 20 2. BE PART OF THE TWITTER TEAM If you personally aren’t on Twitter, then you really don’t care about your customers. Refusing Twitter as a marketer these days is equivalent to saying that you got into marketing because you don’t like math. Don’t be that guy.

83% Think your customer isn’t on Twitter? Even if they aren’t Twitter hounds, they are influenced by the conversation. Name the last time you saw a news report that didn’t mention Twitter in some fashion.

Just about every consumer segment and type of company is on Twitter. Even the staunchest of staunch old-school, B2B companies are on Twitter, so you should be, too.

Being on Twitter doesn’t require you to suddenly become some sort of short-form content of F500 companies with corporate maven. In fact, more than half of the people on Twitter don’t tweet; they are observers and Twitter accounts – 413 to be consumers. No reason you can’t start here as well. precise – have tweeted in the past 30 days. That’s a 6% increase If your company has a social media team, call them up and ask if you can help. The community over last year. managers on Twitter would love to have some eager, extra hands. Source: UMass Dartmouth (2014) Even if expressing yourself in 140 characters isn’t your thing, get on and be a voracious reader. Follow your company, your competitors, your trade press, and your customers. You’ll be a You need to be better marketer for it. a student of your 3. BE A CRITICAL STUDENT OF WHAT competitor’s online MAKES YOUR COMPETITORS SUCCESSFUL You probably already do this, so I won’t belabor the point, but in the context of digital efforts. and social, you need to be a student of your competitors’ online efforts. Sign up for every email list they have and follow every social media channel. Set up a Gmail account for these activities if you aren’t comfortable doing it from your work email account. Study their design, wording, and key messages. Look at their social posts and analyze which ones get the most engagement and why.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 21 4. GET OUT OF THE OFFICE This point goes hand-in-hand with the first point, but it needs to be underscored. You can’t walk in your customers’ shoes unless you get out and live their lives. When I was at McDonald’s, I would regularly do three things:

1. Take my kids to the restaurants and talk to other parents at the PlayPlace. 2. Use my three closest buddies as my informal focus group/sounding board. 3. Randomly ask people – both friends and strangers – for their opinions on either a specific product or about a business-impacting trend to which many could relate.

KEY TAKEAWAY

Overall, it’s a simple four-point plan. Yes, it requires some effort, but once you establish a few of the practices outlined above, they will quickly become part of your routine. So the next time someone talks about “understanding the customer,” you can butt in by dropping reams of not just data, but walked-in-their-shoes digital knowledge. And that’s truly useful marketing insight.

DIPAYAN GUPTA, What is New York Life’s social strategy? How does your brand Head of Social Media Marketing Q: work to weave social into every aspect of your business? and Strategy, New York Life

New York Life has been around for nearly 170 years, and we’ve been adapting to new ways of communicating all the while. Social media is yet another opportunity for us to express and build A: upon our brand equity, and we have three objectives with our strategy. We want to use social media to educate and empower consumers, build emotional connections, and generate customer insights.

Like any other brand, we want to be top of mind, but we are also challenged by operating in an industry that many people do not think about daily. Our products can change people’s lives, but they are intangible and can be difficult to understand. So our mission is to remind people of the good in their lives that is worth protecting, and to explain to them how we can help secure their futures.

Dipayan Gupta leads the social media By educating consumers, we are building positive emotional connections. Our products are team at New York Life, where he is sold through agents who have the difficult task of speaking with people they often do not responsible for translating 170 years of brand equity to new and emerging know about very personal matters. It helps if these individuals have heard of New York Life, platforms. He holds an M.A. from New and it’s even better if they associate us with something positive. York University in Journalism, and a B.A. from Amherst College in Political Science. Finally, we want to use social media to become a smarter business. Whether it’s improving @Piron @NewYorkLife customer service, developing innovative products, or anticipating emerging needs, social media gives us a focus group of millions to keep up with the industry and the world around us. One simply cannot educate consumers and build positive brand awareness without listening to what people have to say.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 23 A successful social Q: How does your team work to elevate the voice of your company and profile is one that acts create synergies across the organization? like a person would, The social media team manages our brand’s corporate social media profiles. What makes social media so exciting is that it is a conversation; we are sharing information and interacting reacting to events as A: with people. This means that our responsibilities span marketing, community management, customer service, and business intelligence. As a result, we work closely with nearly every they unfold. department and product line. Working in this group, I’ve become an expert in social media, but it’s also been an invaluable education in how a Fortune 100 company functions.

We have the largest Twitter following in the insurance industry. And we’re in the top five among our peers when it comes to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+. We’re proud of the size of our social footprint, but audience interaction is what’s key. The team is constantly looking for ways to create and curate relevant content to engage our community. A successful corporate profile is one that acts like a person would, reacting to events as they unfold. Some content needs to be planned, but we’ve also built up enough internal trust to respond to trends in real time.

In the world of the empowered consumer, how do you ensure Q: your customers have a consistent experience online and offline?

Social media cannot live in a silo. It’s a given that a team like ours would work closely with our advertising and marketing groups to ensure that our messaging is consistent and that A: we are leveraging each other’s work. New York Life has 12,000 agents in the field, and our team is in constant contact to make sure that we are empowering them to be ambassadors of the company, while providing tools to build their personal brands.

We have industry regulations and internal processes that are there to protect consumers, but we work directly with departments to help them respond in a timely fashion while maintaining our clients’ personal security. We realize that operating in social media creates a consumer expectation that our responses to questions and complaints be prompt and consistent.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 24 CALCULATING THE RETURN What are specific ways that New York Life is interacting with ON INVESTMENT OF SOCIAL Q: its customers on social?

100 Social media gives us the opportunity to interact with people outside of the sales cycle. In 2014, we created CelebratingGood.com, a site solely populated by user-generated content. A: We wanted to create a space where people could interact with our “Keep Good Going” brand campaign and make it their own. It’s a place where people can share, via Twitter, the moments that they hold most dear. What’s significant here is that we are not asking people to take pictures next to any product or make a purchase. They don’t need to hold up a sneaker or a t-shirt. They are sharing genuine moments in their lives that are happening independent of us; all we are doing is providing a platform. This speaks to our company’s mission of creating a 80% foundation for people to live their lives according to their own personal good. of brands using

social media do not This past holiday season, we partnered with Feeding America to provide meals for families in quantify their ROI. need. Each time people tweeted their moments via Celebrating Good, we donated 25 meals to others in need. It was a wonderful way for the company and our social audience to Keep Good Going.

Overall, social media is integral to our strategy here at New York Life, and is an essential tool in providing a positive, consistent experience for everyone, whether they are a prospect, client, agent, or employee.

15%-20% quantify social media ROI.

Source: cio.com (2014)

ANN MARINOVICH, Since the advent of the written word, there has been one fundamental Vice President, Advertising Products dynamic that underlies every aspect of media: and Strategy, Forbes Media a few people create content, and a lot of people consume it.

But today, things have changed. We live in a time of media disruption. Audiences no longer just read content created by a chosen few – they now also actively provide feedback and generate content in their own voices. The consumer perspective is now a part of the experience of reading the news. The changed dynamic between publishers and writers has upended every aspect of the publishing business except for one: quality still matters.

The tension between user-generated content and the pursuit of quality is something every publisher and brand must contend with. We are all asking ourselves, “How do you facilitate a two-way conversation, while still ensuring superior content quality?” Forbes has been at the forefront of solving this challenge, and I’m excited to share some of our lessons. Ann Marinovich is responsible for leading Forbes Media’s digital, mobile, and print advertising products and strategy across their integrated product line. She THE NEW AGE OF CONTENT PRODUCTION currently lives in New York City and is a Our overall goals at Forbes Media remain unchanged: We have always and will always create graduate of the University of California, thought-provoking and intelligent writing. Only now, the scale that social and mobile provide Berkeley. @annmarinovich means we can produce those articles and interact with our readers in a huge number of new places. In addition to our editorial staff, we now have 1,300+ expert contributors creating content on Forbes.com. The core of our social strategy has been to use social to understand our audience, distribute content wherever that audience lives, and engage readers where they are most comfortable.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 26 Audience Discovery In today’s publishing landscape, your audience is both omnipresent and elusive. People consume more content than ever before in human history, but as they move from article to article, their attention is hard to pin down. Social is an enormous asset in helping us understand the content habits of our audience. What and where do they share? What do they discuss and grow passionate about? Our socially active readers 54% tell us this every day, as they engage with Forbes content. It’s up to us to listen to them and adjust accordingly.

Once we identify those insights, we can use them to develop deeper relationships with our audience. Many of our readers are influencers in their respective fields. If we can induce organic sharing among those leading voices, the reach and authority of our of brands don’t have an onsite, dedicated content skyrockets. As a brand that is always looking to expand our reader base, this is content director. incredibly powerful. Source: NewsCred (2013) Content Distribution Social has changed the way people seek out information and discover news. According The conversation to eMarketer, 60% of adults consume social media on their smartphones. At Forbes we are capitalizing on that with 15% of our mobile traffic coming from social. But we can can now be much more no longer expect audiences to seek out our content directly. Instead, both brands and publishers must bring content to the audience. interactive both between us and readers and amongst At Forbes, we are taking advantage of the explosion in available channels and reader access to content in print, online, on mobile, and on all social networks. We currently readers themselves. have 12 million people connected to the Forbes brand across two dozen social groups on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and we only plan to increase these numbers.

Reader Engagement As part of our strategy, we aim to spark discussions around thought-provoking topics and encourage readers to engage with our content as frequently as possible. User- generated discussion is essential to our publication and brand.

Social has replaced the traditional reader’s comments in Forbes magazine. We can now monitor comments on particular stories through social activity and integrate this feedback into the direction of the magazine. The conversation can now be much more interactive both between us and readers and amongst readers themselves.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 27 A great example of how we pursue reader engagement is the way we combine social activation with live events. In 2014, we held a Forbes “Under 30 Summit” in Philadelphia. The #Under30Summit hashtag generated an owned and earned reach of 750 million impressions during the week of the conference, where we gathered 1,300 entrepreneurs and change agents, including Sara Blakely, Malala, Lucky Palmer of Oculus Rift, and Sean Rad of Tinder to name a few. Monica Lewinsky even joined 71% Twitter for the first time at the Under 30 Summit, gaining 40,000+ followers within the first few hours. Using social listening, we were able to see what attendees were saying about the conference on social media and gain insight into the topics and themes that mattered most to them.

THE RESULTS ARE IN

of companies plan to increase With all of the investment and strategy involved in social, it’s crucial to monitor results across their digital marketing budgets this year, various metrics and KPIs. Every business is different, but at Forbes Media, our best measure by an average of 27%. of success is the response of our audience. We focus on driving meaningful growth in both Source: Econsultancy (2014) digital and print readership. And it’s working. In 2014, Forbes.com had 31 million unique visitors a month (according to comScore), up 18% from just a year ago. We also now have 6.7 million readers (according to MRI Fall 2014), which is up 10% from our previous highest all- time readership. We attribute much of this growth to our successful digital transformation and focus on driving business value from social.

CREATING A COHESIVE EXPERIENCE As a publisher in this time of disruption, we are in a unique position to lead the way in social content production and distribution. There are many ways our readers can connect with our company and the Forbes Media brand – through our magazines, websites, conferences, live events, and now our social channels. Creating this cohesive experience, and elevating it with conversation and participation from readers, is going to be the key to our continued growth and distinction in the space. $118,000,000,000 was spent on content marketing, video, and social media last year. Source: NewsCred (2013)

RUSS RUBINO, Nasdaq represents one of the most interesting success stories in Vice President Global Marketing, technological disruption and innovation that the financial markets Nasdaq have ever seen.

In 1971, the company created the world’s first electronic stock market and has since led the charge to embrace a host of technologies that now power much of the world’s capital markets. Technological innovation is in our corporate DNA, and it has enabled us to disrupt long-entrenched players in the financial industry.

If there is any financial company ready to seize opportunities presented by new technology like social media, it’s Nasdaq; but that wasn’t always the case, at least not at first.

EMBRACING MARKETING – AND SOCIAL – AS A STRATEGIC PARTNER When I joined Nasdaq a year and a half ago, I was immediately struck by a fascinating Russ is responsible for all marketing dynamic, one that should be familiar to successful technology companies: Our organization activities across Nasdaq products was focused on developing technologies and capabilities that were world-class in every and services globally. Russ is a highly respect, but we had limited experience with how best to tell our story. Technology is at our experienced professional with 25 years core, and we let our technology speak for us – with sales leading the charge. As a result, of global marketing and communications marketing was viewed more as a support function. A critical support function, but not a experience in the financial services industry at TIAA-CREF, Genworth strategic partner for the business to lean on. Financial, GE Financial, and IBM Corporation. Recently, we have been able to begin to shift that dynamic. We have worked hard to understand our business partners’ needs and to consistently collaborate with them in order to meet their objectives with the best possible solutions. Changing the culture of our team and how we are perceived is critical to our collective success.

Social media has and will continue to play a huge role in this transformation.

Social provides us with a new opportunity to promote our sophisticated technology. It is a crucial piece in the future of our company, our industry, and business as a whole.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 29 Through social, STAYING ON THE FOREFRONT OF CUSTOMERS’ MINDS Although we had a strong social presence at Nasdaq for our listing business, we were lagging we’re able to raise with usage within several of our other core technology businesses. A common perception was that social wasn’t necessarily going to move the needle nor influence the buying process for awareness, provide our more complex products and services. The inclination was to say, “I’m not in a transaction insight through thought business; I have little need for social.” That’s true on some level. Clearly, no one is going to buy a multimillion-dollar product simply leadership, and connect by reading a few tweets. But this does not imply social has no place in our marketing toolkit. with key influencers. An engaged, strategic social media presence can provide value for every organization, regardless of the industry, product, or audience. Every company can benefit from listening to its customers and participating in conversations. You never know what brand experience will influence a prospect or where in the buyer’s journey a potential customer finds herself.

By managing experiences and providing thought leadership through social touchpoints, we can remain on the forefront of our customers’ minds. And when the time comes to begin the sales process, prospects will already have a relationship with our company and confidence in our capabilities.

As we work to establish relationships with our customers through social media engagement, we focus on three key areas: mining for insight, elevating our brand and educating the market, and broadening acceptance.

Mining For Insight When using social in a technical industry, it’s not beneficial to view activity from a 10,000-foot level. In order to truly understand the business needs of our clients and prospects, it is crucial that we do more than observe and listen. We must actively participate in the conversations going on around us. I am interested in the specifics: the topics, services, and events that involve our technology, as well as the people discussing them in real time.

There are many knowledgeable thought leaders and specialists who have large followings and provide valuable insight to their audience. Whether it’s a media personality or a CEO, these individuals have influence within this narrowly defined space. Social allows us to stay current on new topics of interest and to work with these thought leaders to educate their audiences about our product. The credibility these influencers bring to our company would not be possible without social as a facilitator.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 30 100 Elevating Our Brand and Educating the Market Social provides a valuable opportunity to enhance Nasdaq’s awareness and branding 92% efforts. While public knowledge centers around the US-based equities division of 86% our company, our goal is to raise awareness around the full portfolio of products and services we offer. These are driven by our four business units: tech, trade, intel, and list. Based on studies we conducted last year, approximately half of our current customer base does not understand the full depth of our capabilities.

In order to reposition our company in the minds of prospects and clients, we recently launched a brand campaign to highlight the full suite of our products. The entire campaign has social at its core. It is mobile-friendly, it features user-generated content, and it aims to drive engagement at every touchpoint.

Overall, the core focus of the campaign is to increase awareness of the breadth and depth of our products and services. By incorporating social into our branding

0 campaign, we can elevate the reach of our efforts like never before and can reposition Nasdaq properly and accurately as more than just a US-based equities exchange. 2013 2014

Marketers place very high value on Broadening Acceptance social media: 92% indicate that social The cultural shifts underway at Nasdaq and throughout our industry are indeed media is important for their business, disruptive, but they are also crucial to the development and growth of our markets. up from 86% in 2013. Previously, about 25% of our businesses units leveraged social. Now, most are at least Source: Social Media Examiner (2014) thinking about it as we move toward full front-office integration.

Through social, we’re able to raise awareness, provide insight through thought leadership, and connect with key influencers. These activities are elevating our business To us, the choice and proving there is true value in social for technical providers. to embrace social as a THE TIME IS NOW TO EMBRACE SOCIAL new technology is clear. Nasdaq has always been at the forefront of innovation, embracing disruptive technologies and incorporating them into our product and service offerings. With the development of We are no longer merely social, we are once again facing a pivotal time of disruption, and in 2015, we’ll take our early ‘doing social’ – we are success and leverage it across our entire organization. To us, the choice to embrace social as a new technology is clear. We are no longer merely “doing social” – we are becoming a truly becoming a truly social organization. social organization.

JOEL COMM JUSTIN GILLMAR JIM HANAS New York Times Director of Social Media Director of Audience Best-Selling Author and and Content Marketing, Development, New Media Marketing DeVry Education Group HarperCollins Publishers Strategist Joel Comm is an entrepreneur and New York Times Justin Gillmar serves as the Director of Social Media Jim Hanas has served as a marketing consultant, a best-selling author. An expert on harnessing the power of and Content Marketing for DeVry Education Group, newsroom social media editor, and, now, as the director the web, Joel is a sought-after public speaker who leaves where he oversees social marketing strategy and of audience development at the world’s second largest his audience inspired and armed with strategic tools. content marketing initiatives. @justin_gillmar consumer book publisher. @jimhanas @harpercollins @joelcomm SLOANE KELLEY DAVE KERPEN JUSTINE Executive Producer, CEO, Likeable Local, LOMONACO PGA TOUR Digital Author and Speaker Senior Social Media Manager, Say Media

Sloane Kelley leads the content team at PGA TOUR Dave Kerpen is the founder and CEO of Likeable Justine Lorelle LoMonaco heads up social media Digital where she’s responsible for the strategic Local, a social media software company, as well as strategy at Say Media, providing best practices direction of PGATOUR.COM and the TOUR’s the chairman and co-founder of Likeable Media, and digital promotional direction for brands. presence on 10 social networks. @SloaneKelley an award-winning social media and word-of-mouth @justinelorelle marketing agency. @DaveKerpen

JEREMIE MORITZ Global Digital Content and Media Manager, Pernod Ricard

Jeremie Moritz is currently the Global Digital Content and Media Manager for the Pernod Ricard Group in Paris. Since joining Pernod Ricard in 2012, he has coordinated efforts on social media for their catalog of brands. @jmoritz

JOEL COMM JIM HANAS JUSTINE LOMONACO New York Times Best-Selling Author and Director of Audience Development, Senior Social Media Manager, New Media Marketing Strategist HarperCollins Publishers Say Media

A: A: A: Consumers connect much more with a For HarperCollins, our goal on social is to Say Media has always prided itself on being brand when we have a person, or brand engage and delight. Getting clear about a strong voice in an overcrowded digital voice, that speaks to us. Think of the that has led to a lot of growth, especially space, and incorporating social has made success of brands with strong forefront on Twitter, in the last year. We’ve doubled that voice even more vibrant. Now, instead personalities like Steve Jobs or fictional our following, and our engagement rate is of simply tossing messages into the air and characters like Ronald McDonald. It allows regularly twice that of accounts two times hoping they stick, we’re having meaningful for some sort of connection on a human our size. Social is, for us, a top-of-the-funnel conversations with our fans. We’re able to level. Social now provides an opportunity activity where we can start conversations learn more about them to deliver content, for all brands to become more human and about books and book culture, about which products, and advertising that is more participate in these conversations. People we are passionate. meaningful to them. are discussing your brand whether you’re there or not, and any brand that ignores social is giving up a huge opportunity.

SLOANE KELLEY DAVE KERPEN JUSTINE LOMONACO Executive Producer, CEO, Likeable Local, Senior Social Media Manager, PGA TOUR Digital Author and Speaker Say Media

A: A: A: Experience management is about two The days of trying to be in control of As a platform that backs over 40 million things. One, it’s understanding the needs messages and customer experience are over. monthly page views, we fully recognize that and expectations of the audience. Two, Instead, you must guide your customers experience management begins wherever it’s following through on those needs toward the opportunity to have remarkable our consumers discover our content. That and expectations with a response. For experiences and to be blown away. The means we take personal responsibility years, companies have been gathering customer really doesn’t care about your job not only in where our readers end up by information about their audiences, but there title and department or what platform you’re providing elegant, user-friendly websites, isn’t much value in data without action. connecting with them on; the customer just but also by managing the avenues of Acting on audience needs should lead to wants solutions to problems, whether they’re access, whether that be social, search, or greater satisfaction, loyalty and, eventually, in-store, online, or on mobile. Social media syndication. You have to be mindful of the advocacy. helps you deliver solutions and makes you customer’s experience from beginning better as a brand. As soon as businesses to end. realize that consumers are now empowered with information, they can more readily embrace transparency and storytelling, and can become a likeable business.

JOEL COMM JUSTIN GILLMAR DAVE KERPEN New York Times Best-Selling Author Director of Social Media and Content CEO, Likeable Local, and New Media Marketing Strategist Marketing, DeVry Education Group Author and Speaker

A: A: A: When I advise companies on their One of the biggest areas of opportunity Likeable Media is focused on creating, social media strategy, I stress that their in social for us is helping prospective curating, and promoting content in order to content needs to have a huge emphasis students get a real sense of whether our drive results. We believe that social content on conversation and focus very little on university is a good fit for them socially and done right can absolutely drive measurable marketing. Brands should spend minimal academically. We want them to see what results if brands listen first – and never time talking about their products and real life is like as a student here – the good stop listening – in order to determine the instead demonstrate that they care about stuff and the hard stuff. Similarly, more than wants and needs of their customers. If their customers and bring value to their ever, college these days is about preparing you manage and track every experience communities. I’d say content should consist for a job, and social media plays a huge a customer has with your brand, from an of 90–95% engaging in conversations and role in career management now. In addition interaction on Facebook, to downloading an 5–10% selling. The more of a human touch to the traditional academic curriculum, we e-book, to asking a question on the phone, brands can bring to their social profiles, teach our students how to leverage social you can better customize their experience the more they connect through sharing media and their networks to help progress and provide value at every step. new news stories, conducting polls, asking in their careers. questions, and using humor, the more successful they will be. We all relate on these levels, whether a big name, a brand, or an individual. Brands need to show that they don’t just care about the bottom line – show that they are humans as well with relatable hopes, dreams, and fears.

JUSTIN GILLMAR SLOANE KELLEY JEREMIE MORITZ Director of Social Media and Content Executive Producer, Global Digital Content and Media Manager, Marketing, DeVry Education Group PGA TOUR Digital Pernod Ricard

A: A: A: Truth be told, we’re still working on this. As both the sports league and the players’ Connecting directly with our customers We use social on the front end of association, the PGA TOUR looks at social has been at the heart of our strategy for the student experience to help show media from the perspective of the PGA decades, and it is now reinforced even prospective students an authentic view TOUR brand, as well as our players. For more with the rise of social media as a of student life here. Once you are a most fans, connecting with the PGA TOUR marketing tool. Pernod Ricard’s founder student, social is woven into the classroom is one thing – and it can be rewarding and Mr. Paul Ricard was a visionary who truly experience. Threaded discussion boards, useful – but the opportunity to connect transformed the spirits industry by building for example, are a core element of our to the players themselves is an invaluable passionate brands and giving a clear motto online learning curriculum. Many faculty experience that we can provide. To facilitate to his employees: “Make a new friend work social media into class projects. For these connections, the PGA TOUR team is every day!” Since then, Pernod Ricard has example, one of our standout Senior Class a resource for our players, helping some of spent a majority of its marketing efforts Capstone Projects this year was a group of them get set up in social media and helping building strong and close links with local students who created a social network for others with advice, best practices, or even communities and moments of celebration. aspiring musicians called UpStage.com. And introductions to contacts at social networks. Through technology and powerful content, of course social media plays a large role in we’re able to amplify the social nature of how we stay connected to alumni and help our business at scale. alumni stay connected to one another.

JUSTINE LOMONACO SLOANE KELLEY JIM HANAS Senior Social Media Manager, Executive Producer, Director of Audience Development, Say Media PGA TOUR Digital HarperCollins Publishers

A: A: A: The biggest change for us has occurred Within the past year, we’ve shifted our The biggest thing that has happened is that when social comes into play for our approach to content, embracing the idea – like “digital” before it – “social” has ceased campaigns. Say Media has always been that all content is social. Whether we’re to be a separate practice or specialty apart pretty digitally savvy, but in the past, crafting a tweet or a story for pgatour.com, from other media. This is overdue and is Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest were seen the goal is the same: to engage our fans the typical trajectory for all innovations. At as content marketing tools that didn’t come and encourage them to share and continue first it is new and at the margins, then it is into play until after the editorial process the conversation in some way. To execute a specialty, then it becomes another tool was complete, or as added value for on this, it’s meant a shift in responsibilities in the toolbox. Social is now another tool advertisers. Now, we’re looking at what has among our in-house team of content in a toolbox, with its unique strengths and resonated with our fans in the past before creators. Each producer is now responsible weaknesses. we start selling and creating future content. for developing content across all of our It has also become a more integrated digital platforms. It’s up to each producer part of our partner campaigns, which has to take a story and then look at the tools pushed us to find new and innovative ways in the toolbox, determining which platform to broaden the reach of paid messaging. or platforms are most appropriate. The goal isn’t just to build up their personalities online but also to ensure they’re developing relationships with our audience and, hopefully, as a by-product, creating more loyal fans of the PGA TOUR.

JIM HANAS JEREMIE MORITZ DAVE KERPEN Director of Audience Development, Global Digital Content and Media Manager, CEO, Likeable Local, HarperCollins Publishers Pernod Ricard Author and Speaker

A: A: A: My favorite social media tactic is our We’ve seen a lot of success on social with our One example of a Likeable Media case regular Twitter takeovers, as they so clearly brand-specific campaigns. These campaigns, study is our project with Entenmann’s. The put our company values into practice. such as the Jameson First Shot, Malibu Best baked goods brand wanted to better bridge At HarperCollins, authors are the focus Summer Ever, and the Chivas project “The the gap between generations and reach a of everything we do – so instead of just Venture,” allow our fans to connect with our younger audience. With these objectives tweeting about them or interviewing them product and brand in a fun, creative way. of awareness and engagement, the brand from our account, we periodically let an These campaigns inspire user-generated aligned its efforts with Grandparents’ Day author run our account for a few hours. We content, increase exposure to new customers, and launched a social media campaign change the picture and the name and let and reinforce our brands’ images. connecting families to their products with them loose. Who better to speak for us? the tagline “grandparents never run out They are what we are about. of hugs or cookies.” This drove excellent awareness and consideration among the younger demographic and resulted in 10 times the industry average engagement.

As interactions increase and newer social networks continue to grow, the need for tools to simplify social 85% media marketers’ jobs becomes more important. A whopping 85% of practitioners feel like they don’t know which tools are best. Source: Social Media Examiner (2014)

The Journal features social engagement rankings of key industries to determine who OVERALL WINNER is best engaging, connecting, and reaching The brand with the highest Composite Score consumers across multiple platforms. The within the leaderboard. top brands understand social experiences and manage those experiences in order to facilitate powerful brand-consumer relationships. AMPLIFICATION WINNER The brand with the highest Content Engagement Ratio, Sprinklr’s Brand Health Analytics tracks when controlling for audience size. 35,000 of the world’s largest brands from the outside in, across all major social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, ENGAGEMENT WINNER LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Foursquare, The brand with the highest Engagement Ratio, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, when controlling for audience size. Renren, Vkontakte, and blogs.

In Brand Health Analytics, brands are ranked according to Sprinklr’s Social Business Index AWARENESS WINNER Composite Score over a 30 day period. The brand with the highest Impressions Ratio, This score is composed of multiple metrics when controlling for audience size including audience size, engagement, impressions, and content engagement, and allows for within-industry comparisons and Featured industries include: Alcohol, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, rankings. Fashion, Luxury Hospitality, and Retail.

In addition to the overall ranking, we SOURCE: Sprinklr Social Business Index. Collected 1/9/15, covers 12/9/14–1/9/15. highlight brands that are succeeding in key target metrics:

RANK* BRAND IMPRESSIONS ENGAGEMENT CONTENT RATIO RATIO ENGAGEMENT OVERALL WINNER RATIO Highest Score 1 Michelob Ultra 4.70 0.0544 236.05 MICHELOB 2 Maker’s Mark 11.89 0.0642 71.05 ULTRA 3 Rolling Rock 4.39 0.0420 559.70 4 Dewar’s 26.41 0.1212 41.42 AMPLIFICATION WINNER 5 Tecate 4.83 0.0366 153.57 Highest Content 6 Kirin 1.00 0.0152 253.52 Engagement Ratio 7 Moët & Chandon 22.64 0.0062 166.01 ROLLING 8 Stella Artois 8.48 0.0304 11.81 ROCK 9 Brahma 0.05 0.0061 9.52

10 Jack Daniel’s 6.98 0.0289 15.12 ENGAGEMENT WINNER 11 Kingfisher Beer 4.19 0.0235 27.99 Highest 12 Malibu 52.44 0.0067 11.26 Engagement Ratio 13 Schin 2.65 0.0055 263.66 DEWAR’S 14 Hennessy 5.00 0.0047 110.75 15 Bud Light 3.94 0.0185 14.31 16 Fireball Whisky 4.64 0.0070 151.74 AWARENESS WINNER 17 Shock Top 2.94 0.0211 92.86 Highest Impressions Ratio 18 Amstel 4.36 0.0332 28.72 19 Bacardi 4.43 0.0141 5.06 MALIBU 20 Ciroc 17.47 0.0033 13.87

COMPOSITE SCORE: An overall ranking of brands within IMPRESSIONS RATIO: Measures brand awareness ENGAGEMENT RATIO: Measures what portion CONTENT ENGAGEMENT RATIO: a vertical leaderboard that takes into account Audience based on the propagation of content through of brand’s audience has actively engaged with Measures the degree to which a brand’s content Size, Impressions Ratio, Engagment Ratio, and Content owned and earned media. Audience size factored the brand. This includes all social activity, such as is resonating with its audience by calculating the Engagement Ratio. out of the measure, so brands don’t rank high tweets, likes, comments, shares, and @mentions. average social actions per brand post. Audience simply due to existing follower base. Audience size is factored out of the measure, so size is factored out of the measure, so brands brands don’t rank high simply because of their don’t rank high simply because of their existing *Overall Composite Score Rankings existing follower base. follower base.

Automobile Industry – The Top Social Brands

RANK* BRAND IMPRESSIONS ENGAGEMENT CONTENT RATIO RATIO ENGAGEMENT OVERALL WINNER RATIO Highest Score 1 Hyundai 9.49 0.0283 0.63 HYUNDAI 2 Nissan 11.75 0.0508 0.50 3 Cadillac 9.39 0.0049 11.81 4 General Motors 8.65 0.0102 0.83 AMPLIFICATION WINNER 5 Tesla Motors 4.99 0.0041 9.44 Highest Content 6 Kia 9.91 0.0319 0.43 Engagement Ratio 7 Chevrolet 8.18 0.0081 1.20 ROLLS- 8 Ford Motor Company 8.12 0.0225 0.85 ROYCE 9 Porsche 5.77 0.0217 9.46

10 Infiniti 5.47 0.0085 1.48 ENGAGEMENT WINNER 11 Mercedes-Benz 6.35 0.0049 0.74 Highest 12 MINI 5.06 0.0030 14.77 Engagement Ratio 13 Subaru 7.57 0.0043 1.93 NISSAN 14 Volkswagen 5.27 0.0233 0.48 15 Mazda 7.43 0.0024 1.66 16 Dodge 4.81 0.0024 10.22 AWARENESS WINNER 17 Rolls-Royce Motor Cars 3.20 0.0024 31.48 Highest 18 Lexus 5.85 0.0030 1.16 Impressions Ratio 19 Maserati 3.54 0.0023 27.06 NISSAN 20 Peugeot 5.77 0.0040 1.46

COMPOSITE SCORE: An overall ranking of brands within IMPRESSIONS RATIO: Measures brand awareness ENGAGEMENT RATIO: Measures what portion CONTENT ENGAGEMENT RATIO: a vertical leaderboard that takes into account Audience based on the propagation of content through of brand’s audience has actively engaged with Measures the degree to which a brand’s content Size, Impressions Ratio, Engagment Ratio, and Content owned and earned media. Audience size factored the brand. This includes all social activity, such as is resonating with its audience by calculating the Engagement Ratio. out of the measure, so brands don’t rank high tweets, likes,comments, shares, and @mentions. average social actions per brand post. Audience simply due to existing follower base. Audience size is factored out of the measure, so size is factored out of the measure, so brands brands don’t rank high simply because of their don’t rank high simply because of their existing *Overall Composite Score Rankings existing follower base. follower base.

RANK* BRAND IMPRESSIONS ENGAGEMENT CONTENT RATIO RATIO ENGAGEMENT OVERALL WINNER RATIO Highest Score 1 Lenovo 2.67 0.0283 2.30 LENOVO 2 Acer 15.06 0.0193 3.30

3 Nikon 8.95 0.0354 3.08

4 Nokia Corporation 6.43 0.0254 5.12 AMPLIFICATION WINNER 5 Sony 9.31 0.0135 0.85 Highest Content 6 LG 9.49 0.0194 1.69 Engagement Ratio 7 Panasonic Corporation 8.37 0.0149 1.59 MOTOROLA 8 Samsung 6.31 0.0183 0.50

9 Apple Inc. 10.01 0.0142 1.88

10 Royal Philips Electronics N.V. 4.39 0.0181 2.28 ENGAGEMENT WINNER 11 Dell 7.75 0.0114 0.40 Highest 12 Intel 5.79 0.0018 2.20 Engagement Ratio 13 Microsoft 7.90 0.0090 0.42 NIKON 14 IBM 12.01 0.0046 0.19

15 Motorola 4.49 0.0034 15.39

16 HP 3.22 0.0058 0.14 AWARENESS WINNER

17 Nintendo 2.28 0.0040 0.76 Highest 18 BlackBerry 5.96 0.0006 1.07 Impressions Ratio

19 Canon 4.23 0.0013 1.77 ACER

COMPOSITE SCORE: An overall ranking of brands IMPRESSIONS RATIO: Measures brand awareness ENGAGEMENT RATIO: Measures what portion CONTENT ENGAGEMENT RATIO: within a vertical leaderboard that takes into account based on the propagation of content through of brand’s audience has actively engaged with Measures the degree to which a brand’s content Audience Size, Impressions Ratio, Engagment Ratio, owned and earned media. Audience size factored the brand. This includes all social activity, such as is resonating with its audience by calculating the and Content Engagement Ratio. out of the measure, so brands don’t rank high tweets, likes comments, shares, and @mentions. average social actions per brand post. Audience simply due to existing follower base. Audience size is factored out of the measure, so size is factored out of the measure, so brands brands don’t rank high simply because of their don’t rank high simply because of their existing *Overall Composite Score Rankings existing follower base. follower base.

RANK* BRAND IMPRESSIONS ENGAGEMENT CONTENT RATIO RATIO ENGAGEMENT OVERALL WINNER RATIO Highest Score 1 Calvin Klein 20.58 0.0232 50.32 CALVIN 2 8.50 0.0305 3.19 Diesel KLEIN 3 Christian Louboutin 12.35 0.0038 50.85 4 Hollister 8.98 0.0149 3.23 AMPLIFICATION WINNER 5 Roberto Cavalli 18.33 0.0041 8.97 Highest Content 6 Timberland 9.48 0.0075 12.06 Engagement Ratio 7 Jimmy Choo 5.44 0.0042 40.53 CHRISTIAN 8 Elie Saab 7.62 0.0085 13.61 LOUBOUTIN 9 Valentino 11.82 0.0089 3.29

10 The North Face 11.38 0.0153 0.91 ENGAGEMENT WINNER 11 Kate Spade 6.17 0.0078 1.71 Highest 12 adidas 7.39 0.0109 0.19 Engagement Ratio 13 Coach 8.62 0.0026 6.59 DIESEL 14 DVF 22.36 0.0050 8.05 15 Express 9.33 0.0102 1.43 16 J. Crew 7.37 0.0068 0.61 AWARENESS WINNER 17 Ralph Lauren US 6.45 0.0078 3.19 Highest 18 DKNY 9.87 0.0048 0.92 Impressions Ratio 19 Barneys New York 18.73 0.0083 1.35 DVF 20 Versace 7.25 0.0036 7.02

RANK* BRAND IMPRESSIONS ENGAGEMENT CONTENT RATIO RATIO ENGAGEMENT OVERALL WINNER RATIO Highest Score 1 Le Richemond 43.02 0.0526 514.00 LE 2 21.50 0.0142 742.39 Hôtel Plaza Athénée RICHEMOND 3 The Ritz-Carlton 12.91 0.0318 6.24 4 Mandarin Oriental 19.61 0.0126 10.80 AMPLIFICATION WINNER 5 Beverly Hills Hotel 11.30 0.0090 318.16 Highest Content 6 W Hotels 14.24 0.0171 2.50 Engagement Ratio 7 Four Seasons 17.83 0.0073 2.10 COWORTH 8 Shangri-La International 7.44 0.0035 4.16 PARK 9 Bel Air Collection 12.47 0.0045 185.54

10 InterContinental 5.34 0.0036 28.77 ENGAGEMENT WINNER 11 Hotel Principe di Savoia 11.26 0.0037 482.71 Highest 12 Sofitel 5.42 0.0034 6.91 Engagement Ratio 13 Coworth Park 3.33 0.0077 1098.42 LE 14 Le Meurice 4.45 0.0033 658.35 RICHEMOND 15 The Peninsula Hotels 3.05 0.0012 914.55 16 Grand Hyatt 4.35 0.0028 36.59 AWARENESS WINNER 17 Raffles Hotels & Resorts 3.13 0.0016 65.00 Highest 18 The Dorchester 3.47 0.0030 679.44 Impressions Ratio LE RICHEMOND

COMPOSITE SCORE: An overall ranking of brands IMPRESSIONS RATIO: Measures brand awareness ENGAGEMENT RATIO: Measures what portion CONTENT ENGAGEMENT RATIO: within a vertical leaderboard that takes into account based on the propagation of content through of brand’s audience has actively engaged with Measures the degree to which a brand’s content Audience Size, Impressions Ratio, Engagment Ratio, owned and earned media. Audience size factored the brand. This includes all social activity, such as is resonating with its audience by calculating the and Content Engagement Ratio. out of the measure, so brands don’t rank high tweets, likes, comments, shares, and @mentions. average social actions per brand post. Audience simply due to existing follower base. Audience size is factored out of the measure, so size is factored out of the measure, so brands brands don’t rank high simply because of their don’t rank high simply because of their existing *Overall Composite Score Rankings existing follower base. follower base.

RANK* BRAND IMPRESSIONS ENGAGEMENT CONTENT RATIO RATIO ENGAGEMENT OVERALL WINNER RATIO Highest Score 1 The Home Depot 40.93 0.0048 32.40 THE HOME 2 Petsmart 13.21 0.0060 14.99 DEPOT 3 Kohl’s 5.92 0.0137 9.43 4 BJ’s Wholesale Club 8.72 0.0040 37.20 AMPLIFICATION WINNER 5 Target 6.44 0.0123 3.79 Highest Content 6 Kmart 11.90 0.0028 4.85 Engagement Ratio 7 6.75 0.0135 15.37 Costco ROSS DRESS 8 Best Buy 9.29 0.0032 3.73 FOR LESS 9 Toys R Us 5.36 0.0059 7.72

10 Marshalls 6.44 0.0024 19.80 ENGAGEMENT WINNER 11 Wal-Mart 6.67 0.0017 0.56 Highest 12 JC Penney 4.87 0.0037 14.58 Engagement Ratio 13 Bed Bath and Beyond 6.83 0.0033 22.50 KOHL’S 14 Big Lots 4.96 0.0023 28.26 15 Macy’s 4.57 0.0016 5.05 16 T.J. Maxx 5.32 0.0012 22.68 AWARENESS WINNER 17 Office Depot 7.88 0.0029 12.52 Highest 18 Ross Dress for Less 1.96 0.0008 390.13 Impressions Ratio THE HOME DEPOT

COMPOSITE SCORE: An overall ranking of brands IMPRESSIONS RATIO: Measures brand awareness ENGAGEMENT RATIO: Measures what portion CONTENT ENGAGEMENT RATIO: within a vertical leaderboard that takes into account based on the propagation of content through of brand’s audience has actively engaged with Measures the degree to which a brand’s content Audience Size, Impressions Ratio, Engagment Ratio, owned and earned media. Audience size factored the brand. This includes all social activity, such as is resonating with its audience by calculating the and Content Engagement Ratio. out of the measure, so brands don’t rank high tweets, likes, comments, shares, and @mentions. average social actions per brand post. Audience simply due to existing follower base. Audience size is factored out of the measure, so size is factored out of the measure, so brands brands don’t rank high simply because of their don’t rank high simply because of their existing *Overall Composite Score Rankings existing follower base. follower base.

CHRISTINE CEA, It is not news that a company’s values and actions directly impact Former Senior Director Marketing its corporate reputation. There is plenty of research to support how Communications, Unilever both positive and negative perceptions affect purchase intent. What is unprecedented is the current breadth and depth of scrutiny with the number of ways a customer can now come into contact with your company, as well as their willingness to express an opinion.

To initially or continuously build a brand – be it to strengthen equity, enhance reputation, or increase share of voice – requires consistency and cohesion. People today have myriad vantage points from which they see a company, often looking, often simultaneously, through a fractured, multi-faceted prism of retina displays. From platform to platform, screen to screen, channel to channel, an organization’s actions, voice, values, and identity are constantly Christine Cea is a senior marketing monitored and scrutinized. communications executive who has counseled some of the world’s most iconic What are you saying about your company – and more critically, what are your customers brands, and is recognized for thought hearing and seeing – as they jump, hop, pivot, and pirouette from monitor, to tablet, to phone, leadership on brand engagement and and to the still-ubiquitous TV? What experience do they have offline and how consistent is it reputation management. As the former head of marketing communications for with the online one? And when your customers’ points of view are refracted back into your Unilever, she led transformational change, company, who sees them and what do you do about the concerns they raise? advancing enterprise communications in the social media era.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 46 MEETING THE HIGH STANDARDS: WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT? Consumers are both overtly and covertly asking questions of your organization. How much do you want my business? How willing are you to let me walk away? Are you truly allowing my voice to be heard?

Marketers indeed have their work cut out for them to keep pace with consumer behavior 71% shifts, higher service demands, and constantly emerging engagement platforms. In decentralized organizations, the challenge is exponentially greater.

Developing, deploying, and discerning the outcomes of all the related fields on the marketing landscape – channels, platforms, engagement, community, content, ROI – is one job. Optimizing the total impact of these tactics, however, is job one.

But whose job is it? Who is responsible for the holistic view a customer has of your company of customers say that valuing or brand? And if it’s not one person, how do you structure the organization to align their time is the most important accordingly? Even more importantly, what kind of roles and talent are necessary to best thing a company can do to capitalize on the mission-critical opportunity to increase loyalty, harness advocacy, and drive provide good service. growth through enterprise-wide engagement and marketing communications mastery? Source: Forrester (2013) What are you saying COLLABORATE AND INTEGRATE FOR GREATER RETURN ON INVESTMENT about your company – and Truly integrated marketing and communications provide an opportunity to aggregate a better engagement. When a customer has fractured interactions across mediums – from in-store more critically, what are to online – it diminishes your ability to create a better and deeper customer experience. If your customers seeing and you apply the “rule of seven” (that the prospective buyer should hear or see the marketing message at least seven times), think of the efficiency and ROI to be gained by a more holistic hearing? approach.

In addition to executing internal tactics, it is also necessary to respond to moves by competition in order to achieve consideration, preference, and ultimately share of wallet. If different executives, different departments, and different agencies are each working without collaboration, customers will notice (at least on some level) a differentiated experience.

Even if they don’t, how can disconnected experiences underscore company values and make a company stand out against its competition? The organization needs to foster enhanced collaboration and reduce any residual territorialism by departments and agencies.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 47 BREAKING DOWN THE SILOS From a customer’s point of view, communications, content, and community are inextricably linked. And yet these responsibilities often reside as completely separate entities within a corporation. Departments – digital, PR, social, advertising – remain siloed and, even more critically, so do the dollars.

A more holistic approach that better reflects today’s prismatic and multi-dimensional landscape enables the organization to facilitate decision-making, cross-channel optimization, and inter-disciplinary effectiveness.

Think of it like light shining through a prism. If marketing and communications teams cast multiple lights, the refracted rainbows may be pretty and plentiful in their impressions, but dizzying to those trying to absorb the message.

Remember, how you deal with the light once it is reflected back at you counts significantly as well. All the goodwill a company builds can be eroded customer by customer if the brand or behavior they encounter feels disjointed from experience to experience.

CREATING THE HOLISTIC EXPERIENCE Today, how you communicate with customers is mission-critical to the success of your business – as is how you communicate and align across all departments, including marketing, customer service, public relations, social media, community management, corporate communications, employee engagement, and legal. For greater effectiveness, consider the following:

1. Be prepared: 2. Break down 3. Rally Anticipate any silos: Organize, stakeholders: issues with collaborate, and Foster connectivity, clear roles and budget differently. shared goals, and responsibilities, accountability. guardrails, and ready responses.

To gain a competitive advantage and deliver greater ROI with communications, it is vitally important for leadership and every essential department to be on the same wavelength.

EDWARD SHARON LISA STRYKER DZIALOWSKI LASURE-ROY Social Media Manager, Partnerships and Strategic Senior Consultant Social Duke Energy Alliances Manager, Media, Florida Blue, Florida’s Cheil Worldwide Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plan

Edward serves as the Partnerships and Strategic Alliances Florida Blue’s Senior Consultant Social Media, Lisa H. Stryker started at Duke Energy as their first social Manager at Cheil Worldwide, Inc., a full services and Sharon LaSure-Roy is responsible for developing, media specialist and now leads the company’s social solutions advertising agency headquartered in Seoul, managing, and implementing a digital strategy that media team, helping people feel good about the folks South Korea. Edward’s main focuses are enterprise digital supports Florida Blue’s corporate mission and digital who provide their power. @Lisa_Stryker marketing technology and solution management. communication priorities. @sharonlroy @teddycanada

Q: What trends do you see on the rise in social for 2015?

EDWARD DZIALOWSKI SHARON LASURE-ROY LISA STRYKER Partnerships and Strategic Alliances Senior Consultant Social Media, Florida Blue, Social Media Manager, Duke Energy Manager, Cheil Worldwide Florida’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plan

A: A: A: I expect major trends to surface in Relevance is a trend that will influence What I’m seeing is that everything is terms of connecting offline and online how we use digital communication. In getting shorter, quicker, tighter. Fewer consumer experiences through online to our industry, customers can use many words, more pictures and infographics, offline implementations in malls, retailers, resources to get information. We know our shorter videos. I see a lot of companies stadiums, airports, and other DOOH (digital communication will have to be extremely developing platform-based strategies out of home) venues. Sophisticated brands, relevant to our audience, so we remain and consolidating social media properties, large and small, will embrace beacons more relevant to them. This may involve targeting trying to get a handle on social media readily and interface consumer activity communication on specific social channels sprawl. The trend is toward a refined focus between beacons and their brands’ social that are important to particular audiences. in strategy. channels.

EDWARD DZIALOWSKI SHARON LASURE-ROY LISA STRYKER Partnerships and Strategic Alliances Senior Consultant Social Media, Florida Blue, Social Media Manager, Manager, Cheil Worldwide Florida’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plan Duke Energy

A: A: A: In 2015, we plan to continue focusing on Here at Florida Blue, our 2015 strategy Our main social strategy going forward is building strategic partnerships with social is to support profitable company-wide to simply tell our story – or, rather, stories. technology providers and paid digital media growth through timely and engaging This is a company made up of thousands innovators throughout our agency network communications. These goals are an of amazing people who are dedicated to in order to increase our digital capabilities. evolution of our 2014 initiatives, not a their work and communities. Our social These kinds of services are excellent tools complete shift in strategy. With social media, media channels are the perfect medium for engaging and activating our network we aim to humanize the Florida Blue brand, for sharing all the individual stories that and clients, helping them transact digital increase awareness and position ourselves make up the huge body of work we do as media efficiently and effectively. as a thought leader in health care. a corporation. This is not a full strategic pivot of our past tactics, just a continued These initiatives build upon our 2014 refinement of a long-term strategy. strategy, which centered on rebuilding our complete digital marketing framework by embracing “digital transformation.” Clients are undergoing their own digital transformation, and it is equally relevant for agencies, vendors, and innovators to stay on the cutting edge and reinvent themselves constantly.

Copyright © 2015 Sprinklr. All rights reserved. Journal of Customer Experience 50 Q: How do you think social media will influence marketing and advertising in 2015? EDWARD DZIALOWSKI SHARON LASURE-ROY LISA STRYKER Partnerships and Strategic Alliances Senior Consultant Social Media, Florida Blue, Social Media Manager, Manager, Cheil Worldwide Florida’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plan Duke Energy

A: A: A: As social media has become a much more Rather than social media influencing There’s a trend toward experiential established medium and synonymous with marketing and advertising, I predict advertising, and social media is a natural marketing and advertising, the pendulum increased partnership between these platform for enhancement to this approach. of influence will swing in the opposite teams and the social media team in There’s also a downward trend in organic direction. Brands will develop more mature order to produce consistent and efficient reach for promotion-heavy content, so and sophisticated business requirements communication that delivers on our mission companies are challenged to think carefully for campaigns, which will force social media and values. At BCBS, we have become an about what their audiences want from them to evolve further instead of becoming an organization where the social media team if they want their content to be seen. inhibitor. The genesis of new and successful is part of an integrated marketing and social networks may be inorganic and advertising plan, not just an afterthought. highly influenced by brand behavior instead of consumer behavior. One trend that we predict in 2015 is increasing social media budgets. Q: What do you think these additional resources will improve or help accomplish? A: A: A: A large proportion of new social media Additional resources can help teams working A bigger budget has allowed us to build budgets will be allocated to paid digital in non-traditional channels to spread the out our team, which is in turn allowing us spend. Leading this change is Facebook’s word about the potential of social media – to provide greater support to the business. continued modification to its edge rank specifically within an organization. When That support will enable our colleagues to algorithm, which is slated to move organic resources are applied to “socialize” social incorporate social media tactics into their post exposure closer to 0%. For brands and educate employees about its benefits, overall plans for community engagement, with a more established social presence, it’s a sound return on investment. It is kind customer service, corporate storytelling – digital media will be used to sustain and of cliché to say, but once the employees of anywhere there’s a human connection, we improve the brand health of their social an organization become aware of the power can look at how we might strengthen our channels, including consumer engagement. of social media, the exponential value on the relationships through social media channels. Brands that are in a growth stage will use brand can be tremendous. Our aim is to coach, train, and enable our the digital spend to scale their fan base and colleagues. Social media belongs to the yield higher-quality fans in the process. whole business.

A: A: A: One current problem with the social media Since social media is all about relationships, Every year, social media is taken a little industry is ghost traffic or “bots” that next year we will see how consumer more seriously by leadership. Credibility actually comprise a large amount of overall relationships with brands will be and the perception of value improves. Internet traffic. This has led to attitudes strengthened or weakened. Do consumers The trend toward bigger budgets is clear questioning the overall transparency, really want to engage with brands to share evidence of that. We’re also getting a methodology, and validity of measuring moments of their lives, or do they just seat at the table in the strategic stages of and benchmarking results on social media engage because they see it as a way to get planning more often now. That paradigm networks. Further scrutiny arises when what they want at a moment’s notice? shift brings greater responsibility to brands are paying a premium for reaching demonstrate value, and that’s an exciting audiences. More widespread enforcement challenge to face down. of standards and consistent verification of vendors will be needed to help normalize expectations and reduce false clicks and impressions from bot traffic.

Social media marketing budgets are projected to double over the next five years. Source: Social Fresh (2014)

2014 2019

NEW YORK, NY (HQ) Sprinklr is the most complete enterprise social media management 29 West 35th Street 7th Floor technology in the world, purpose-built for large companies to New York, NY 10001 USA drive business outcomes and manage customer experiences across (917) 933-7800 all touch points. Called “the most powerful technology in the market” by Forrester Research, Sprinklr’s fully integrated social media management software powers more than four billion social connections across 77 countries. Headquartered in New York City with more than 700 employees globally, Sprinklr is revolutionizing customer engagement for more than 750 top enterprise brands, including IHG, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung, and Virgin America, and partners like Deloitte, Accenture, R/GA, Golin, and AKQA. For more information, visit sprinklr.com or tweet us @Sprinklr.