Sony Mobile India Over Achieved 2 Million Fans Through Social Media

System; Television and Projectors; Digital camera; Personal Audio; Play Stations; In-car Entertainment; Video Camera; Computer and Peripherals; Tablets; Smartphone and Storage Media and Batteries. Sony Mobile India is an official page of the company on Facebook to transform its ‘Xperia’ smart phones as the most popular choice of youth
in India.

Business Objectives of Sony Mobile India

In the smartphone segment and under the strategic wing of Sony Mobile India, the company had the following objectives to achieve:

• To grow the fan base and their engagement in the social media space.
• To make the customers and the target audience aware of the transformation of the brand from Sony Ericsson to Sony Mobile.
• To drive sales by leveraging its active presence in social media and through effective audience engagement.

Strategy Adopted By Sony Mobile India

Before adopting a strategy or an approach, the company did research to develop its insights about the emerging highly competitive, technology-driven smartphone market in India. The company formulated the following strategies to transform the brand popularity and drive its sales after observing its research:

• The company had selected Facebook and YouTube platforms to mark its presence on social media and hired the services from ‘2020 Social Media’ for building and nurturing its audiences.

• It focused on integrating its programs on social media, TVC and product launches for effective engagement of the audience through vibrant and youthful activities and contents.
• Tried to gain maximum strategic advantage and competitiveness with its two major attributes – Sound quality and stylish looks.

• Adopted the most effective content strategy by the engaging audience and through sharing of photo and video contests through a Facebook app and by running online campaigns, such as ‘LookBook’, ‘Go Thump! Live with Walkman’ and ‘Get Shorty’.

Results Achieved By Sony Mobile India

The following are the major results achieved by the company in its Xperia smartphone segment.

• The marketing team fulfilled the sales target of ‘Xperia S’ within three days of its launch.
• Sony Mobile’s fan base was dramatically increased from 500000 to over 2 million within 12 months of its presence on Facebook.
• The brand was recognized as the 10th most favorite youth brand in India by NM Incite.
• Sony Mobile reached 35 million users’ base before the completion of its first year of the managed Facebook campaign.
• On average the brand added more than 2000 fans every day on its Facebook page.
• The viral effect of its YouTube videos brought more than 1300 fans daily to its Facebook page.

Learnings

The 2 major learnings from this case study of Sony Mobile are as follow:

• Identifying the target group and its passion is the backbone of the success of social media marketing.

• The quality of success depends on how effectively a company or brand can leverage its unique competitive attributes through contents, campaigns, contests, and interactions on social media platforms.

Nokia Increased Its Reach By 9252 Unique Participants Through Social Media Campaign

Nokia is a Finland based company. They are pioneers in the field of communication. Nokia has its presence in various industries like rubber, cable, forestry, electronics, etc. Their venture into the field of telecommunication took place in 1960. Since then, Nokia has grabbed its unique space as a market leader. Their continuous effort to outperform others in innovation and technology has helped them to attract customers like a magnet. Nokia used ShortStack in order to start with the campaign. ShortStack is a campaign building tool.

Nokia’s Business Objective

Nokia launched an online campaign to identify ‘Brand Ambassadors’. Usually, companies identify various positive conversations about the brand on online media and tap them gradually. But in this unique move, Nokia organized an online campaign to find brand ambassadors by conducting an online contest.

The following were the objectives of the campaign:

• To increase the brand reach.
• To improve Nokia’s overall online presence.

Nokia’s Business Objective

Nokia used ShortStack in order to start with the campaign. ShortStack is a campaign building tool, which helps to understand the visitors and provide an opportunity to engage your customer. It can be used on any social networking site like Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, etc and it is very easy to use.

Below are the strategies implemented by Nokia in their online campaign:

• Identifying three brand ambassadors was the prime motive. Usually, organizations use a passive approach to identify their brand ambassadors but here, Nokia chose to campaign in order to select suitable brand ambassadors.
• The visitors could choose one of the celebrities, out of five, to play with. This allowed the customers to choose from various options thereby, making it interesting.
• Visitors were asked a simple question ‘What are you willing to do to be an Ambassador?’ People were given the flexibility to respond to this question in the form of an image, video or just a simple comment. People have different ways to express their opinions. The campaign gave them their freedom of expression which was well appreciated.
• The visitors could share their responses on Facebook or Twitter. This was the most exciting part for a visitor as it gave them a platform to express themselves. What did they feel about the brand? Why are they attracted to Nokia? Why do they consider themselves suitable for being the brand ambassador of Nokia? These were the questions that got clarified because of this online campaign.

Results Achieved by Nokia

The online campaign to identify Brand Ambassadors turned out to be a hit campaign. Nokia could tap more customers and thereby, their online presence also improved. The following results were achieved by Nokia:

• The promotional images were liked by many. There were around 5550 shares and that’s a huge number.
• Comments were flowing on the Facebook page. Nokia, on its part, proved capable to respond to the queries promptly. The number of comments reached 5493.
• Highly appreciated and Increased customer participation. This online campaign allowed Nokia to connect to its customers, earn their appreciation and extract valuable suggestions further development. This approach provided a sense of belonging to the customers. The number of likes on posts touched 61,781.
• Nokia witnessed amazing growth in their fan base. This is a huge achievement for a brand. A number of fans touched 68,469. This was because of prompt responses from Nokia. This automatically resulted in an increased online discussion about the brand.
• Increased App views. With the help of social media strategy and usage of Facebook as a platform to connect to its people, Nokia increased its app viewership rate.
• Unique Participants. The number of participants touched in 9252, making the whole campaign successful.

Learnings

Nokia’s success as an organization to improve its fan base and to reach out to thousands of people is really appreciable. The application of social media marketing strategy with proper planning helped Nokia to achieve this success. A simple strategy to identify its brand ambassadors using Facebook as a medium was a smart move. The presence of an organization on a social networking site and their ability to keep their visitors engaged gave a definite boost to its reach.

Volkswagen India Received 9,60,000 Updates On VW models By Leveraging Social Media

Business Objective of Volkswagen

The company wanted to target the working population of India by generating awareness about its brand, which could then be converted into brand loyalty.

Strategy / Approaches Adopted by Volkswagen

In order to achieve its objectives, Volkswagen launched its company page on LinkedIn. This page had a feature that made it possible for the VW brand lovers to air their voice about the VW models in the form of recommendations. The company also made efficient use of recommendation Ads on LinkedIn to widen the audience reach.

The choice of only LinkedIn as a platform had a strategic reason behind it. LinkedIn is a good platform that caters to the needs of working professionals quite efficiently. Hence, there are higher chances of locating genuinely interested customers here who can afford the brand. Volkswagen targeted the customers by seniority levels and geographical locations in order to be successful in their search for the customers who were searching for the dealer locations in their area.

Results Obtained By Volkswagen

Volkswagen received a whopping number of 9,60,000 updates on the VW models. This shows that the updated text got viral successfully. The number of followers got increased by 2,300 on the LinkedIn company page. This is not all and the company also succeeded in achieving 2,700 model recommendations in just a month’s time!

Learnings

A business is all about striking the right chord with the customers. This is not a joke but rather a smart play of well carved out strategies on social media. A business must use LinkedIn or any other social media platform to target the right customers and showcase its uniqueness to them who will be more than happy to find all the information needed by them so easily!

Social Media Helped Adidas To Become A Cricket Brand With 1 Million+ Fans

Adidas, one of the leading global sports brands that have never actively associated with cricket. It had been
synonymous with football, athletics, basketball and other sports, but never identified as a dedicated brand for cricket. After it has understood the vast potential of the Indian market and the cricket-loving Indian youth, it has successfully leveraged a social media campaign on Facebook to position itself as a brand or company very passionate for cricket and cricket lovers.

Business Objectives Of Adidas

The campaign was initiated to position Adidas as a serious cricket brand in India with the following two key objectives.

• Ensuring long term and sustainable process of interaction with the target audience.
• Simultaneously engaging the audience with quality and meaningful applications, events and activities.

Strategy Adopted By Adidas

With the professional consultancy and guidance from Isobar, an agency known for its communications expertise and social media marketing know-how, the company adopted the following strategies.

• I decided to create a snowball effect on its campaign through a social media platform, where the cricket fans come, discuss, share content and experience.
• The young people in the age group of 14-25 years with a huge affinity towards digital media were targeted.
• It selected Facebook as its primary social media platform because it was the most popular among its target audience.

• It created accounts on YouTube and Twitter to extend the digital touchpoints and to broaden the overall social media experience of the target audience.
• It started posting relevant content, such as conversations on cricket, games, Trivia and Fantasy Cricket games for long-time engagement of its visitors.
• It started posting ‘Sneak previews’ and TVC’s campaigns on the page, prior to their scheduled release on TV channels.
• It used to regularly post photographs related to different events and activities.
• It created an opportunity for 24*7 engagement by many other activities, such as (i) running instant competitions on the discussion board (e.g. ‘Predict and Win’), (ii) hosting a quiz contest (e.g. ‘Rapidfire Contest’), (iii) ‘Spot the ball contest’ and (iv) ‘Immortal Words Contest’.
• It added YouTube and Twitter links on the Facebook page to provide wider social media experience to its audience and the opportunity to expand their networking through sharing and participating in different activities.

Results Achieved By Adidas

Adidas Cricket has achieved a phenomenal success in its social media campaign. The following were some major outcomes:

• The Facebook page has been able to acquire more than 3.2 Million likes and 12,170 people are talking about the page (as on 3-6-2014).
• The Adidas Cricket community has grown to more than 1 Million fans and still growing.
• More than 5 Lakh visits to its YouTube videos.
• Acquired more than 300 followers on Twitter.
• As reported by AC Neilson, Adidas has emerged as the most popularly discussed brand on the social media.

Learnings

• The lead dropout rate on microsites would be comparatively higher than social media platforms.
• Social media platforms provide stickiness and so have better magnetic power to attract and hold the audience.

Read the next case study on Easycar Here