Samsung

Measuring campaign performance 

With Brandwatch, Samsung can access the billions of conversations happening online every day across Europe. Samsung then closely monitors social reactions, experiences, opinions, and trends for various topics in real-time to understand consumers’ feedback for different products and events, not only for Samsung's but for their competitors' offerings too.

Samsung have created customized dashboard trackers for their brand, categories, and products, enabling them to capture signals from the internet to understand their needs and frustrations better, so they can continue to enhance and optimize their marketing communications across the European region.

Social data is a vital tool for teams to gauge the reception and performance of any campaign launch. At Samsung, Brandwatch plays a crucial role in assessing new product announcements and launches. With Brandwatch Consumer Research, the team can track real-time reactions, sentiments, and key performance indicators (KPIs) like mentions, comparing them to previous campaigns and competitor launches.

This instant availability of social insights is particularly valuable to Prash and his team. They also rely on Brandwatch to stay informed about the overall ecosystem and competitor activities, allowing them to compare campaign metrics with major competitors.

“When a major competitor elsewhere in the industry has an event, we obviously look at what they're doing. We’re trying to understand: is there anything we can learn from what they've released or what they've announced and the general reception to it” explains Prash. “We've evolved the practice from generic social listening into social intelligence, where we look beyond performance and dive into the qualitative of what’s driving conversation related to our ecosystems around our brand, categories, and products.”

Monitoring potential crisis

In any Business-to-Consumer environment, monitoring brand mentions is an essential piece of a crisis management strategy. For Samsung, Brandwatch Consumer Research was a critical tool for unearthing unusual activity or potential issues as they happen and before they escalate.

An early warning system

Social listening provides an early warning system for a potential crisis. Once you see the spike in conversation, the data can help you determine the scale of the situation and guide you toward the best solution. Response time in these scenarios is crucial, and teams need to be able to access the right insights to enact the proper responses quickly.

For Prash, the speed of insight is Brandwatch’s greatest strength. Crisis communication often requires executive-level oversight, adding an additional layer of urgency to the work. Prash will identify an issue and then collaborate with leaders and relevant teams to monitor and coordinate the right response.

“There are certain scenarios where basically it feels like the Avengers, where all the key stakeholders get pulled into a room, and it's just like: right, we've got this issue, but how can we tackle it?” explains Prash. “I think the beauty of Brandwatch is that data is available very quickly, so you can see what people are frustrated with and then work to rectify it.”

A dashboard for each market

Social data enables Prash to inform the relevant team and then mobilize towards a solution – whether it's updating brand messaging, optimizing media spend, or jumping in a content trend. This instant insight is critical for agile decisions, saving time and money. As such, Prash set up dashboards for each European market, enabling teams to get into Brandwatch and find the insights they need quickly.

As the heavy lifting is already done, the individual teams just need to open the dashboard and filter for their markets. This drastically reduces the time it takes individual teams to locate the insights they need. It elevates the power of social listening across the business because Prash enables individuals to self-serve.

"There's nothing worse than having a blank canvas when you've got an urgent request, and you have people peering over you, waiting to get some data or just some quick 'insights.' In cases like this, we must have appropriate templates for all teams, markets, and use cases."

Tracking trends across audiences

Today, trends appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. That is why it is important to have the tools to track new conversations and emerging patterns. Using Brandwatch Consumer Research, Prash is able to understand: 

• Are there any cultural trends Samsung should be tapping into?
• How big could certain trends become before we engage with them?
• Are there any parallels or affinities with Samsung’s existing product range?

The dashboard enables the team to filter and understand trends while gauging their longevity. From there, Prash can get even more granular and consider how a certain trend plays out with the brand’s different audiences. How are they reacting to things that are out there? What are the responses or general reactions to certain topics?

Speed of insights enables timely campaigns

Having this level of insight into brand conversations online also empowers Prash to respond quickly to emerging trends and consider how to further the conversation with supporting campaigns or content.

For example, social data helped Prash and the team spot a viral opportunity. Samsung washing machines and dryers all play a little jingle at the end of each cycle. Recently, the sound went viral on TikTok as people began creating dances to the tune and even freestyling songs over the jingle with voiceovers.

Once they identified the trend using the Brandwatch platform, the team quickly determined it was worth jumping on and mobilized supporting content and partnerships.

“The social data helps us determine if we’ve stumbled across a trend that has a presence online and is already engaging online communities. We then think about opportunities to scale the content, while it's relevant, and build into a content workstream to entertain our audiences could be useful and then enables us to triangulate it with other data points,” explains Prash.

“We try to intercept trends where possible, as this is typically something we wouldn’t intentionally be listening for, but finds its way onto our radar, often through word of mouth by appearing on someone's personal feed – especially if it has a positive association with our brand.”

Enabling social insights across markets

Access to real conversations happening online also helps when you have such an extensive range of markets. Prash is responsible for the European division of Samsung, but there are 43 different segments within that branch. What resonates with one market might not play well in another. Social listening helps overcome the cultural nuances across the region.

Prash can track conversations by market and understand what is working in the UK vs. what is working in France. The ability to filter between markets in Brandwatch makes it easier for the Samsung team to build campaigns that resonate with the range of audiences they are serving.

“We know that when people talk about our products and categories, they will usually go on to talk about particular themes, features, and attributes such as the; batteries, cameras, processors, and price,” explains Prash, “I set up the queries, rules, and dashboards centrally from an English perspective, and then we scale these for all the other markets, with the support of native speakers from our markets, who are best placed to localize rather than just translate.”

Supporting brand development with research and insights 

Social listening data also provides the Samsung team with organic insights that they could not access elsewhere. Prash worked with the Brandwatch Professional Services team on multiple niche research projects to uncover new ideas around TV placements and smart device connections for the brand.

Understanding secondary TVs in the home

Traditionally, the TV is the focal point of the living room. However, Prash and Brandwatch's Professional Services Research Team set out to determine where else TVs tend to live inside a house.

The Research Team identified various use cases for televisions elsewhere around the house. In addition, the insights revealed how TVs could be designed for certain uses or room placements. The way people talked about this helped paint a better picture of what consumers want from TVs beyond its use in their living room spaces.

“All of these insights spark new ideas for the teams in the TV category,” explains Prash. “It provides inspiration about what we could do with some of our content, how we could shape the way we talk about our products and new opportunities of positioning a product in a way where it could be appealing.”

The TV teams used those insights to inform new product ideas and as a part of wider discussions to add more context to their strategies.

Recognizing the smart device ecosystem

Another research project with Brandwatch’s Professional Services Team looked into consumer technology ecosystems and how Samsung could potentially connect to multiple devices for a more convenient user experience.

This research project led Prash to explore how Samsung may be part of unbranded conversations. Using social data, the team was able to paint a clearer picture of how people tend to use connected devices and why. The insights Brandwatch’s Research team helped provide more color to Samsung’s existing research.

“We have plenty of research around our own products, but as newer products outside of our brand ecosystem come into the market, these allow for more integration opportunities. Such as how you connect with other (non–Samsung) smart devices, like your Ring doorbell, Amazon Alexa, or Phillips Hue lighting,” says Prash. “These all play a role in the modern smart home, and it's always really useful context to understand the application of these from real-consumers and provides invaluable insight when you’re able to understand how your products fit into the wider technology ecosystem, based on modern use cases.”

In both examples, social data played a key role in sparking new ideas and feeding new opportunities based on pre-existing conversations from consumers. When widely shared across the organization, those insights become useful category-specific insights that spark innovation and new product strategies that appeal to their audience. 

Leveraging Brandwatch for better business outcomes

If understanding your consumers is truly at the heart of your company strategy, having insight into social data is critical to building and positioning products your audience truly wants. For Prash, Brandwatch provided the data and insights he needed to feel empowered to share social insights with senior stakeholders. The data helped the company build a fuller picture of their audience, impacting product decisions, content strategy, and campaign creation. 

“Curiosity, exploration, and proactive research are so important in this industry. Therefore, people need to be willing to just go down that rabbit hole, as you never know what unknowns you may stumble across among the noise – ensure you factor in effort vs. reward, depending on the use case. Having your ear to the ground is often beneficial, as it helps to triangulate data points with other sources. This could be content from your own social feeds or building on an insight shared in a presentation.”

“When you’re immersed into your brand on a day-to-day, it is sometimes hard to see beyond your brand or category bubble, and you risk becoming quite insular. But there is plenty of merit in zooming out and analyzing consumer behaviors related to other brands in your category, or even brands you consider a ‘north star,’ and that’s often when you’re able to innovate and gather new perspectives,” explained Prash.