How social media changed the ROI at Cisco

Week 10 has arrived and my last blog post on my journey of “Discovering Enterprise 2.0” will finally focus on the bottom line outcome of investing in social technology – the Return on investment (ROI). The ROI can be specified as: (Net profit/invested capital) *100 and in general the examples of how ROI can be increased using social technology are numerous. In my final blog post I have chosen to take a look at Cisco, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of networking supplies, and how the company managed to decrease the investments of a productlaunch with more than $100.000 ultimately increasing the ROI. 

Product launch at Cisco

Usually when Cisco launched a new product the process turned into a costly activity. The cost more precisely was applied to: 

• Flying in more than 100 executives and press members from more than 100 countries to the HQ in California. 
• Time taken from the CEO and other executives to prepare and present the launch. 
• Designing well-crafted and statistical press releases. 
• Distributing press releases. 
• E-mailing customers. 
• Running print ads in major business newspapers and magazines. 

In 2008 Cisco therefore decided to launch their product campaign, for their newest ASR 1000 series router, entirely through social media using videos, images and product specifications. The changes in the product launch strategy more specifically lead to: 

• Saving 42.000 gallons of gas for travel. 
• Top executives not spending more than one hour recording the video presentations. 
• Expensive printed ads replaced with social media exposure.

In total the cost of approximately US$100.000 was only a one-sixth of the former product launch investments.

Reflections of the change in ROI at Cisco

I really think Cisco did a good job in including both tangible and intangible costs in their analysis, having the specific calculations available would, however, increase the validity of the study. As the source of this case study unfortunately do not provide either the net profit, the contribution margin or profit ratio of the product it can be hard to say how crucial the change in the marketing grant is compared to the overall ROI. 

When viewing the product launch in a bigger perspective, all things being equal, I would actually be bold to claim that the most beneficial part of the new product launch strategy, in terms of the ROI, was not the money saved but the money earned; from the following facts: 

• 9,000 people attended the social media product launch event – 90 times more attendees than in the past. 
• Three times as many press articles were published. 
• Over 1,000 blog posts and 40 million online impressions were recorded. 

All in all I believe that Cisco’s engagement in using social media in their product launch was a win-win situation both in terms of savings and earnings – ultimately increasing their ROI

In other news 

Finally in the clip below you can see how other major and minor companies have also increased their ROI using social media: 

 

Before signing off I just like to give a huge thanks to the people providing valuable inputs to my blog helping me “Discovering Enterprise 2.0”. I had a good time, learnt a lot and hopefully you did too :-)

Rererences 

ROI

examples of how ROI can be increased

Cisco

networking supplies

decrease the investments of a productlaunch with more than $100.000

the clip

Social media monitoring of Lego - the toy brand NOT the slang

So the topic of this week is “Social media monitoring”. In order to learn more about this concept I have picked one of my all-time favourite brands: Lego - which I am sure some of you as a child have had the pleasure of spreading all over the living room floor, building amazing constructions, getting lost in a fantasy world of pirates, knights, firemen and Indians…  well at least until one of you parents stepped on a brick and told you to clean it up - or maybe that’s just how I recall some good Lego times :-)

The Lego Group

For a few insights of the Lego Group I can reveal that Lego is a Danish founded and family owned company producing the best toy of the century. In fact Lego has most recently become the world’s most valuable toy brand overtaken the leading position of mayor toy manufacturers such as Mattel (producing Barbie), Haasbro and Playmobile.

Besides Lego being an awesome toy, the reason that I picked Lego is, however, also related to the fact that Lego worldwide has millions of both adult and younger fans that share their passion for the small coloured bricks through all sorts of social media such as blogs, wikis, YouTube,  flicker, Facebook and Twitter not to mention all the individual fan sites. 

In order for Lego to nurture the many fans Lego has also set up the rebrick fan site, not to brand their products, but to establish a common platform for fans to interact, share ideas, rate and comment on what’s going on in the “Lego community”

Social media monitoring of Lego  

So with all this social media activity around Lego why not have a look at how Lego performs using different social media monitoring tools:

HowSociable: offers a simple tool to measure the Magnitude score on a scale from 0 – 10 (which is the activity of your brand on different major social media platforms) on a given week . I thought it would be fun to compare the results of Lego with their largest competitor Mattel 

Tweetreach: is another monitoring tool that specifically analyse the activity on Twitter providing gaphs, circular diagrams etc. and provides a list of the newest tweets containing the brand name.

Topsy: takes it a bit further by also monitoring links, photos and videos.

Reflections of findings

As I typed in Lego on Tweetreach and went over the latest tweets I however discovered a bit of a bias of the numbers: As some of the tweets were in foreign languages I found (thanks to my good friend Google translate) that lego is actually a “word” in Spanish with several different meanings i.e. “I bequeath” or “layman”. Also I found that “lego”is slang for “let’s go”.

Furthermore when I used Topsy I also discovered that one of the latest posted videos was a rap music video with by a band called Smile and their newest hit: LEGO. You don’t have to watch more than 30 seconds to tell that this is again the famous slang and has nothing to do with coloured plastic brick toys.

Returning to my analysis I furthermore discovered that some tools were case sensitive which I guess can be problematic do to the fact that users might write either: Lego, lego or LEGO again biasing a valid result. These findings unfortunately also decrease the validity of my mini battle of Lego vs. Mattel on HowSociable.

Conclusion

Ultimately the results of my analysis proved not to be purely build on the Lego brand. I do, however, think that the monitoring tools can provide some indication of the activity around a specific brand. The uniqueness of the brand name is, nevertheless, also very crucial in terms of gaining valid results. If Lego were to get the most accurate measures of the social media activity I would recommend the company to engage in social media intelligence instead of monitoring - as I found this to be the next wave of social media listening.

References

Lego

the besttoy of the century

the world’s most valuable toy brand

blogs
wikis
YouTube
flicker
Facebook
Twitter
rebrick
HowSociable
Tweetreach
Topsy
“lego”is slang for “let’s go”
Smile and their newest hit: LEGO
next wave ofsocial media listening

McKinsey - practicing what they preach

In my previous blog posts I have so far covered how different types of organisations can benefit from social technology using McKinsey’s 10 value levers. Since this week’s blog post is directed at the professional service sector, why not take a look at how McKinsey use social technology themselves? This week I will especially focus on how blogging, twittering and using wikis support the company business.     

Who is McKinsey?

The McKinsey & Company Inc. was initially founded in Chicago in 1926 and is today one of the world’s most prestigious management consulting companies serving some of the world’s largest corporations. Being a well renounced company McKinsey also has high expectations of its employees. A famous saying from the McKinsey office is “If you can make it here – you can make it anywhere”. This of cause also makes the company a top priority for graduates all over the world and has helped build the company image and global profile.

Knowledge sharing at McKinsey

Being a widespread global company the risk of “reinventing the wheel” has during the latest decade reinforced the concept of knowledge sharing at McKinsey and the company has therefore established knowledge management centres and networks globally in order to source specialist knowledge and share the emergent findings through the company network. Even though the specific used platforms are unknown these actions are, however, a good example of how McKinsey benefit from using social technology in intra- and inter organisational collaboration and communication (number 9 of the 10 McKinsey Value levers)

Besides the internal and external company network McKinsey also uses blogging to share knowledge. McKinsey has in fact established a wiki where both current and former employees can publicise their blogs in order to increase knowledge sharing on the latest technology or just improve their work relations. 

In terms of sharing knowledge with the public McKinsey also uses RSS feeds, Pod casts, YouTube, not to mention Facebook and Twitter where respectively more than 73.000 friends and 25.000 followers regularly receives status updates and tweets from the company i.e. regarding new research and publications. One of McKinseys latest initiatives also include a new app for iPad offering several tools to share knowledge and stay connected with users.

Finally McKinsey also upholds a company page on Wikipedia where everything from the company history to clients and company criticism is publicised and regularly updated.

Conclusion

Like the other companies that I have previously discussed in terms of social technology McKinsey also seems to benefit from using social technology. The most striking difference comparing the former evaluated organisations with McKinsey is perhaps the shift from B2C to B2B which defiantly affects the way that the social technology tools are used. Nevertheless I still believe that the above-mentioned proves that a social service organisation like McKinsey can also benefit from the use of social technology.    

References 
McKinsey
The McKinsey & Company Inc.
A famous saying
the companynetwork
McKinsey Value levers
publicise their blogs in order to increaseknowledge sharing
app for iPad
RSS feeds
Pod casts
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube

How social media reinforce the wellbeing of animals

In my former blog post "Have you tried the Big McAfee ?" I came to discover how social media can support the enterprises on different areas and provide direct economic earnings. This week I will furthermore pursue to prove how non-profit-organisations and non-government organisations (NGOs) can also benefit from the use of social media.

According to the McKinsey report:The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technology NGO’s can also benefit from the use of social media in several areas as seen in the table below. 

A good example of an organisation benefitting from the use of social media is the Australian Animal Rescue organisation (AAR). AAR is a non-profit, non-government organisation, run entirely by volunteers. AAR was founded in April 2009 in the state of Victoria as a means to save the wildlife affected by the widespread bushfires that year. AAR has grown and expended its activites over the years and is today dedicated to creating a better life for both wildlife, livestock and pets within the state of Victoria.

Facebook as a key tool to improving animal wellbeing

Besides the organisation website, AAR has also established a Facebook page to reach further out into the community. Through Facebook AAR has experienced an increased feedback and interest in several areas. More specifically these areas include:

• Crowdsourcing resources and solutions (2)  in order to help lost pets finding their way home or putting pets up for adoption.
• Increased Fundraising (3) both in terms of financial donations as well as food and other supplies.
• Increased volunteer network (4).
•  Retaining public support (5) keeping the community up to date about what goes on in the animal world – telling stories about the god, the bad, the happy and the sad events.
• And lastly the opportunity to educate the public (6) 

Images from the AAR facebook site 

Even though AAR has already experienced many benefits of engaging in social media it can, however, be argued that even more initiatives could help support the work of the organisation. In terms of Gathering information (1) and Engage supporters (7) AAR might consider to urging the community to report any accidents or other critical events directly through the social media platform, for instance using on-the-scene pictures. In this way AAR could proactively gather critical information of animals in need fast and thereby forward the appropriate rescue resources. If an incident was reported in a remote area, nearby volunteers would also have the opportunity to approach the scene faster. Ultimately this use of social media could even make the difference of life and death for animals in need.

Having the public engaged in providing information can, however, also create some risks. I.e. if the platform was used to report animal cruelty or abuse it would most likely raise legal issues in terms of privacy rights or risks of unfair public discrediting.

In closure of how social media can be used to improve the wellbeing of animals I will finally also like to point to another NGO. RSPCA decided to take their fight for animal rights a bit further by creating the hashtag #PoliticalAnimal in order to put focus on animal-welfare-policies before the Australian election of 2013.            

Refrences

Have you tried the Big McAfee ?

the McKinsey report:The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technology 

Australian Animal Rescue organisation

AAR has also established a Facebook page
RSPCA

#PoliticalAnimal