BLACKBERRY CUSTOMERS LOVING WHAT THEY DO ONLINE

Silver Spike
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TitleBLACKBERRY CUSTOMERS LOVING WHAT THEY DO ONLINE
BrandRESEARCH IN MOTION
Product / ServiceBLACKBERRY
CategoryA02. Best Use of Social Media
EntrantEDELMAN ASIA PACIFIC Beijing, CHINA
Entrant Company:EDELMAN ASIA PACIFIC Beijing, CHINA
PR/Advertising Agency:EDELMAN ASIA PACIFIC Beijing, CHINA

Credits

Name Company Position
Gerald Ang RIM Senior Digital Marketing Manager, Asia Pacific
John Kerr Edelman Digital Director, Asia Pacific
Karthik S Edelman Head of Digital Strategy, India
Varun Gambhir Edelman Account Director
Nanda Ivens Edelman Digital Director, Jakarta
Arief Syamsul Edelman Senior Consultant, Jakarta
Jason Chua RIM Interactive Manager, Digital, Asia Pacific

The Campaign

RIM’s brand proposition focuses on allowing people to ‘love what you do’ – by making the technology secondary to achieving their goals and sharing with those important to them. RIM’s ambition for social media was to reflect this in the brand’s persona and method of engagement online. With the aim to create highly engaged social media communities across Asia-Pacific for BlackBerry, RIM sought out a complex program including thirteen multi-lingual, country-specific BlackBerry communities across Facebook, Twitter and Sina Weibo. Following this campaign, RIM now boasts the largest and most engaged mobile online branded community in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, India and Australia. In June 2011, RIM online content was being viewed by over 6 million people per month – people who had opted-in to being engaged by RIM. Within 15 months, the firm’s regional Facebook community grew from 50,000 to over 2.5 million, making RIM one of the five largest brands on Facebook in Asia.

The Brief

Reflecting RIM’s brand persona, ‘love what you do’ was used as a method of engagement online. Working closely with key internal stakeholders across PR, Marketing, Product, Legal and Support, the objectives were to: • Drive sales by putting valuable product and application content in the hands of consumers, at the right time (product review and purchase), on the right social platforms • Increase brand loyalty by increasing and enhancing brand interaction with customers post purchase and ensuring that BlackBerry is top of mind when they repurchase.

Results

To individually assess the objectives, the following measurement frameworks were established: • BUILD: Grew social communities from 50,000 to 2.5 million within 15 months. 80% of this growth was attributed to word-of-mouth and community sharing of the engagement and content. • ENGAGE: By focusing on driving action, in Q1, FY 12 (Mar-May 2011) we delivered nearly 70 million impressions on BB APAC social media properties, helped amass over 231,000 Likes and 135,000 comments. • INFLUENCE: BlackBerry overall online buzz, sentiment, frequency for the top 25 influencers in each market has increased significantly during the campaign. BlackBerry Facebook communities lead the mobile category in most APAC countries. • CONVERT: As of June 2011, RIM social properties were being seen by 6 million people per month,

Execution

It is often said ‘brands do not build communities, rather they add value and make them better.’ This is the approach that we took in helping RIM APAC to achieve its sales and brand goals through social media. • Content and Engagement Rule: Growing a social community from 50,000 to millions requires the right mix of people, content, processes and creativity • Integrate Paid, Owned, Earned and Social Media While the above is the ‘secret sauce’ that drove overall success, two high-profile campaigns also helped to accelerate the achievement of the commercial and brand goals: • BlackBerry Live & Rockin’: An exclusive concert in Indonesia featuring four international acts, attended by 15,000 BlackBerry customers and promoted solely through social media • BBM Hero Videos: An on-going video series documenting interesting BlackBerry Messenger users across the APAC region, showcasing how BBM helps them do more of what they love

The Situation

When half of all purchase decisions rely on a combination of social media and search, and three in four consumers prefer Facebook as the desired platform for post purchase communication – a robust social media presence is vital to customer engagement and sales impact. Proprietary research, based on interviews with millennials across Asia, reveals: • people refer to four+ sources of information (especially online) before making purchase decisions, with 31% referring to seven+ sources • 82% had joined a brand-sponsored online community • 57% were open to trying new products from a preferred brand and review their experiences online

The Strategy

The key pillars of the strategy for RIM APAC were: • BUILD: A large and highly-engaged BlackBerry-centric audience, via relevant social platforms • ENGAGE: Drive valuable action and inspire conversation around key BlackBerry devices and apps Draw actionable intelligence for the entire firm, and respond in real-time, from online conversations • INFLUENCE: Enhance relationships with key online influencers to become BlackBerry brand advocates • CONVERT: Drive high quality traffic to country-specific BlackBerry.com websites to aid conversion