Social Media Intelligence Case Study – Consumer Packaged Goods

Situation:

A large consumer packaged goods company wasn’t getting the sales expected on a new product line.  The client is in a highly competitive industry and wanted to understand the consumer attitudes toward the product and identify the reasons for/against purchasing.

Solution:

We used our proprietary social media intelligence methodology and analyzed all public online mentions about the product line.  Four (4) relevant themes were identified within the consumer conversations: brand reputation, cost and value, product quality, and product packaging.  We further analyzed the demographic and geographic information within the discussions to further segment and uncover rich consumer insights.

Results:

Within two (2) days, ListenLogic collected and analyzed 17,000 comments over a 30 day period.  We determined the following:

• Consumer attitudes toward the brand, reputation and value were relatively positive for all age and gender segments, no issues there
• Quality was seen as a slight issue, but not enough to explain the lack of adoption
• For female consumers, specifically 18-34 which was one of the product’s primary targets, packaging was the issue

Through social media analysis, we were able to determine that females, specifically 18-34 located in the Northeastern United States, had real issues with the packaging design and were choosing a competitor’s product.  The packaging size was too big, and during the cold stormy winter in the Northeast women didn’t want to carry the large package out to their cars from the retailer.  The competitor’s packaging was 25% smaller.

Armed with this qualitative and quantitative data, the client made a well-informed decision to quickly alter the packaging size to make it more universally acceptable, as well as create a new campaign targeting female consumers.

For more information and to see how we can help you leverage social media for consumer intelligence, please contact ListenLogic at 1-888-ROI-ON-SM or info@listenlogic.com.

Social Media Intelligence Case Study – Carnival Cruise Lines

Company:

Carnival Cruise Lines

Date:

March 2010

Objective:

To understand travelers’ perceptions of Carnival Cruise Lines as well as reputation issues surrounding the brand. Some specific questions to be answered include:

1. What drives decision making for particular cruise ships?
2. Is the ‘Fun Ship’ reputation turning away travelers?
3. Are ‘noisy kids’ harming the brand?
4. How is Carnival’s cancellation policy viewed?

Answers:

We used our standard methodology of mining social data on message boards, forums, blogs, microblogs, news and social networks sites using RESONATE, our monitoring technology, to extract themes, opinions, influencers, demographics and geographic segments.  Our analysts were then able to interpret the data and provide the following insights:

1. Travelers discuss multiple reasons for switching cruise lines including ship noise, doors slamming, loud public announcements, and the “partiers, drinkers, kids” on the ship.
2. Nearly 10% of Carnival consumers are attracted to their budget friendly cruises, but hesitate due to fear that it will be too much of a party atmosphere.
3. Experienced Carnival travelers indicate kids are kept very busy and are not a noisy distraction
4. Carnival’s cancellation policy is perceived very negatively. Particularly surrounding flight delays and flight cancellations due to weather.

Additional Findings:

In addition to the above insights, other interesting findings were uncovered:

• Carnival travelers favor the amount of pre-travel information that’s supplied including destination information and logistics
• Travelers find group travel easy with Carnival
• Some travelers have concern over Carnival’s food, “It can be very inconsistent”
• Many travelers had concerns over the impact of large groups on individual travelers, “I’m stuck on the Star Trek ship!”

What is Social Media Intelligence?

Social media monitoring has significantly changed the way brands and marketers leverage social media for business. The constant stream of mentions on sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs provide a great way for companies to monitor their brands, products, and consumers in social media. While monitoring has been useful primarily in customer service and buzz-tracking, there is far more value to be realized.  Enter the age of social media intelligence.

What is social media intelligence?

Social media intelligence is the combination of quantitative and qualitative insights gained from monitoring a specific brand, product, or subject matter in social media.  All in real-time.

How can social media intelligence benefit my business?

Social media is the world’s largest focus group with millions of participants sharing their unbiased thoughts each day. With this massive data set, businesses now have the power to mine and further understand consumer opinion and slice and dice data by gender, age segmentation and location.  Here are 5 specific case studies on social media intelligence:

Applebee’s Restaurants – Campaign (in)Effectiveness

Seven (7) days after the launch of Applebee’s ‘Real Burgers’ national TV ad campaign in March 2009, the campaign was really striking a cord with consumers. The only problem was that we saw it was overwhelmingly negative (80%) with most wondering ‘What were they serving us before?’  Applebee’s ended up running the campaign for 4 months too long.  Imagine the money saved and harm avoided if they had learned that it was bombing sooner.   Their competitor, with our help, knew all of this as it unfolded, whoops.

Membership Association – Why are members canceling?

A national membership association was seeing a sharp increase in membership cancellations over a 3 month period.   Through social media intelligence they learned they had a material age segmentation issue: the organization’s stance on key political issues and a changing membership demographic was making a segment of members very unhappy.  The association segmented their member-base into three distinct buckets and now speaks to each segment with a unique voice.

Soft Drink Company – New Product Launch

With the launch of a new soft drink in 2009, a soft drink company saw that young men loved the the new product while women had mixed opinions.  Through social media intelligence the company quickly learned that older women were taking offense to the TV ad creative, not the product (the taste was great).  The soft drink company replaced the creative to better reach its female target.

Major Restaurant Chain – Location-based Issues

In September 2009, a restaurant client saw  ‘tough meat’ being discussed by its guests in social media.  Through geo-location, we helped the restaurant chain learn that the issues were regional in nature and all specific to the northwest US.  The client traced the problem back to a regional meat purveyor who had outsourced to a third party.  This issue was resolved within 3 business days.

Cable TV Network – Rapid Consumer Insights

In TV and Entertainment, learning what viewers think of programming is critical to success.  In Q2 2010, a cable TV network aired its hit show’s season finale on a Friday, by Monday we delivered the network intelligence on what viewers thought of the finale, the show’s entire season, and reported on 100’s of fan suggested story-lines for next season.

Social Media Intelligence Empowers Decision-making

Social media intelligence gives actionable insights into business and detailed and segmented information about consumers.  If your organization wants to understand questions like “why teenagers choose a competitor product, or how females in the northeast US feel about your service”, contact us.   We deliver the intelligence.