SOCIAL MEDIA AND
F
ew CEOs today question the impor- tance of marketing and communica- tions. Changes to the business environment in the past five years have only served to underline how integral a strong brand is to overall company performance. With more channels available to communi- cate messages, and more stakeholders now act- ing as advocates (or critics), the challenges of controlling brand messages and reputation man- agement increasingly preoccupy those at the very top of the business.
As a result, a growing number of CEOs are becoming more involved in the appointment of marketing and communications agencies. Re- search by The Observatory International found that over one third (36 per cent) of CEOs now actively steer decisions about the agencies the business appoints to execute brand strategy. This is both a recognition of the impact of a strong brand on the bottom line, and a need to ensure that significant spends deliver a healthy return on investment. Big budget marketing and communications appointments that would have been left to the CMO a decade ago now demand CEO involvement. The rapid growth of social media has made marketing and communications even more central to corporate strategy, with some CEOs now seeing digital as a means of transforming their organisations. CEO involvement is largely considered a good thing: in a recent BRANDfog survey, 94 per cent of customers said that executive in- volvement in social media enhanced the organ- isation’s brand. Advocates of digital believe social media’s contribution goes beyond mar- keting – companies should be creating coherent strategies that form part of broader business
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Understanding what’s on offer Best practice is still being formed, and the ef- fectiveness of social media marketing cam- paigns can be hard to measure, particularly given the proliferation of devices and platforms used to deliver them. The CEO’s involvement in agency selection
THE CEO By: Lucinda Peniston-Baines, co-founder of The Observatory International
objectives and demonstrate a clear link to the bottom line.
According to IBM’s 2012 CEO study, over half the CEOs surveyed expect social media channels to become a primary way of engaging with customers in the future. But as one health- care CEO observes, “social media has grown faster than industry knowledge on how to use it”. “We are all scared to death about social media... We want to start with it. But we’re all just looking at each other, and nothing material is happening,” says another.
Despite this widespread nervousness at the
top, some global organisations have begun to engage with customers via social media, with mixed results. Bodyform’s spoof ad, which used an actress to perform the role of CEO Caroline Williams responding to a critical Facebook post, went viral with 100,000 likes and three million views. But McDonald’s #McDStories Twitter campaign was less successful – with people la- beling it ‘#McFail’ as they added less than savoury stories to the #McDStories stream. The company was eventually forced to pull the pro- motional hashtag. Entrepreneur Richard Bran- son is an astute user of Twitter (with over two million followers) and LinkedIn, not simply promoting his wares but also commenting on is- sues that are close to his heart. Given social media’s growing importance to
brand and reputation management, it’s hardly surprising the CEO should expect to be involved in the appointment of marketing and communi- cations agencies. But while almost all agencies have a digital offering, do CEOs know what they are buying, and how social can be successfully integrated into the selection and decision-making process?
can add another layer of confusion unless it is well managed. Without preparation, it can de- rail the process and it must be clear who has the final say on creative and budgeting decisions. There may be differing priorities from finance, the CEO and the marketing team, so it’s impor- tant to gather internal stakeholders together to discuss expectations and resolve conflicting goals within the business before inviting agen- cies to pitch.
The number and types of suppliers is grow- ing, with a multiplicity of digital specialists offering everything from websites to SEO to so- cial campaigns. With more traditional agencies also bolstering their digital capabilities, selecting the right match for the business is a growing challenge.
Businesses should expect any agency,
whether specialist or traditional, to understand their strategy and be commercially-minded. They should also be able to demonstrate per- formance in metrics that are clearly understand- able to non-marketing experts – arguably, a benefit of having the CEO involved is that there will be less jargon and more focus on ROI. An- alytics will track user behaviour or click- through, while ‘social capital’ can be tracked using tools such as Klout or Peer Index if you’re after ‘mindshare’. But ultimately, it’s a question of ensuring expectations and performance measures are clearly defined at the outset. While ‘old rules’ apply to agency selection, execution will differ for social media campaigns, which should not be viewed purely as an ‘add-on’. Digital campaigns may call for a different set
of skills-digitally-literate specialists who under- stand the ‘from one way, campaign driven mes- saging, to two-way, participative platforms and experiences online’, according to eConsul- tancy’s Progression of Agency Value Report. Crucially, there is a greater need to develop
listening habits, and agencies need to demon- strate an understanding of the so-called ‘con- versation economy’. They must monitor social media constantly to make sure they can see bad publicity coming, and be on the front foot with strategies to manage risk, and sometimes, capitalise upon them.
New European Economy
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