Social Listening Done Right – 5 Best Case Studies To Fuel Your Strategies!

  • By Andy Fox

Call it Social Media Monitoring or Social Media Listening, I can’t emphasise enough on the importance of assessing how your brand engages with the common masses and how it's being perceived in Social Media! 

Given there are 500 million tweets in a day with almost one-third of the world population residing on social networks, it’s a ‘no-brainer’ that brands should ‘listen’ to  these candid conversations that take place in Social Media in the name of tweets, Facebook posts, Pins, Snap Chats, Vines and many more. 

But simply monitoring ‘social mentions’ and conversations related to your brand or product and just keeping a good tab on them, gets you nowhere – unless you decide to take strategic actions from the acquired data… only then it can qualify as ‘Social Listening’! 

Dan Neely from Networked Insights, rightly puts it when he says, “Monitoring sees Trees; listening sees the forest”. In other words he means to say - ‘monitoring’ is simply looking at symptoms, that which lies on the surface, whereas ‘listening’ is to find the causes, to see the bigger picture, to feel the underlying vein, find patterns and track sentiments to help decide and devise the next effective action. 

The brands who have mastered this practice of ‘social listening’ know only too well that social media can be quite ‘noisy’, and it requires a well-crafted Social Media Strategy to cut through this clutter and find and engage with the mentions, actions or conversations related to their brand. 

The following are 5 Case Studies of such creative brands that have thoroughly used their ‘Social Listening’ skills to make a positive impact with their audiences: 

Zelmer’s Response To Vacuum Cleaner Enthusiasts

CASE STUDY 1

This story involves Zelmer, one of the long-standing vacuum cleaner manufacturers of Central Europe and a four-year-old boy, Wojtek. 

As it happens, little Wojtek seemed very fond of home appliances, especially vacuum cleaners. And to cheer him up on his birthday, his mother surprised him with a birthday cake that was made to look like a Zelmer vacuum cleaner! She even posted it on Instagram with hashtags #birthday #zelmer #vacuum:
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Zelmer was quick to catchup on the story and reached out to the family with a surprise offer. They went that ‘extra mile’ and offered them a free tour in one of their factories – A dream comes true for a little 4-year-old-kid!

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Wojtek, his older brother Krzy and their mother immediately accepted Zelmer’s invitation. They visited a nearby factory and were given a tour of the entire process involved in vacuum cleaner manufacturing. 

The brand of course didn’t leave it at that but took the opportunity to shower the little fans with other goodies including teddy-bears and yet another birthday cake! The video starring little Wojtek has already gathered 40k views, over 250 likes and 27 shares. 

A Photoshoot Offer

CASE STUDY 2

On a similar vein, Zelmer took their ‘social listening’ game to reach out to Irena and her granddaughter Ewa on Facebook. When Ewa wrote on Zelmer’s Facebook page that her grandmother cannot imagine cleaning without their 46-year-old Zelmer vacuum cleaner, the brand surprised the girls by inviting them for a photo shoot in their studios:
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These stories from Zelmer give a clear picture on how brands can truly listen and use their creativity to reach out, surprise and establish a strong relationship with their customers, all the while crafting a positive brand image. 

Da Grasso – ‘Pizza Giveaway’ Campaign based on ‘Social Listening

CASE STUDY 3

How can you use social listening to kick off an innovative marketing campaign to increase customer engagement and brand presence? Da Grasso, a pizza restaurants chain has done just that with its out-of-the-box social media publicity stunt, entirely based on social listening! 

This was a ‘one day’ campaign, where the brand tracked all the mentions in Facebook to zoom in on the ones where people talked about fancying a pizza or they were hungry or wanted something to eat in general. 

They would then make the effort to find addresses of these audiences (most likely from a friend) and send a Da Grasso Patrol team to deliver a hot pizza at the doors of the authors of the posts. 

Here’s an example of a posting on Facebook of a ‘soon-to-be Da Grasso Pizza fan’:

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The Snapshot below shows the Da Grasso Patrol team delivering pizzas at the doors of pleasantly surprised Facebook post authors:
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Throughout the day, this clever campaign managed to deliver 52 pizzas, generated 135% increase on online discussion about Da Grasso, with 95% opinions about the stunt being positive. The Da Grasso Facebook page interactions also increased by 25%! 

All in all, Da Grasso proved how a brand can use ‘Social Listening’ to strategically apply with creative campaign ideas and bring immense value to the audience and win new customers along the way – along with an added ‘all positive buzz’ for a brand that takes goes the ‘extra mile’ to serve its customers! 

A Porterhouse Surprise!

CASE STUDY 4

Taking the food delivery to another level, here’s how a US based restaurant chain, Morton’s Steak House managed to pull an amazing social media stunt based on social listening on Twitter. 

The tweet they managed to pick up was of a person who was boarding a plane and mentioned that a steak dinner from Morton’s would be a perfect end to his flight. 

Yep, all he had to do was ask and as soon as he got off the plane, there was this waiter in a tuxedo who received him with a bag of full steak dinner:
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If you’ve been wondering why would a brand go to these lengths to make one customer feel good, then here’s a catch; The person tweeting happened to be Peter Shankman, a celebrated entrepreneur and thus a credible ‘Influencer’ for the brand to amplify it’s act of ‘incredible customer service’. 

Imagine the response and reaction from more than 100,000 followers of Peter once they receive the above tweets in their feeds.  A great example of how a brand can identify and use influencers and advocates through social mentions, to create a positive stir! 

Virgin Train – Missing Toilet Roll!

CASE STUDY 5

As funny as it sounds, Adam Greenwood, 16, who was travelling from Euston to Glasgow in Virgin Trains, realised there was no toilet paper in the loo… but it was too late. This is what he tweeted from the loo: I’ve just had a reasonably large poo and there is no toilet roll left on the @virgintrains 19.30 train from Euston to Glasgow pls send help

To the boy’s amazement, within 2 minutes Virgin responded with a ‘Which Coach Adam? And promised to send someone immediately.


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It wasn’t long before he found a guy in a black suit knocking at the door, who handed him the toilet rolls he so desperately needed. Once finishing the job he started, Adam happily posted his appreciation for the brand’s amazing customer service:

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The humorous ‘missing toilet roll’ incident immediately went viral across Twitter, Reddit and many social media platform. Some of the newspapers also covered the funny tale. 

That was yet another story of how a seemingly disastrous situation was converted into an all-positive ending. It was only possibly because Virgin Trains had their ears and eyes wide open and were constantly monitoring the SM platforms - and of course their response to the issue with the ingenuity to flip the story to add value to their brand image, is worth learning from.

Finally…

Let's all be vigilant and keep our ears/eyes open on Social Media. It's not possible for brands to control what people mention about them in the social tweets, posts and vines, but it sure helps to ‘listen’, analyse and  plan before one engages to bring a positive outcome.

If you'd like more assistance with your content or would like to discuss anything covered today, we'd love to hear from you.

Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au

Our Website is element7digital.com.au 

Andy Fox - Author

I have a firm belief there is only one great challenge in life… And that is… To be the best version of you possible. I have lived my whole life to this tune. I love that I am not perfect and I love that every day I get up and make at least one change in my life that makes it better, one change that takes me closer to my life’s goals.

More about me, visit: andyfox.com.au