CMO Club May '08: Putting social media into the mix of a total media/marketing campaign

Paul Dunay, Global Director of Integrated Marketing at BearingPoint, and prominent blogger at www.buzzmarketingfortechnology.com offered a melee of answers to the subject of how to put social media in the mix of a total media/marketing campaign. As all marketers know, a business that engages in social media is opening itself up to a public conversation.

If you don't engage correctly, social media can be either ineffective or drain your resources. How do you build an internal team that is both a unified whole that addresses the company's environmental factors PLUS pull it off with less resources and money than their competitors since you're going to have to measure everything for ROI.

For Bearing Point, getting there required the company to come together on three critical understandings:

• "Need to share" is the new "Need to know"
• Identity theft has been the number one crime, therefore its a top issue for Bearing Point customers
• Its message to customers was if "you have the will, we have the way." Meaning we work off of your passion and we will improve your chances of success.

They pulled off the shift to social media by creating an online community and blog as a centerpiece. It wasn't just a singular campaign, it was a continuous stream of thinking.

Services and tools Bearing Point used included, but were not limited to:

• RSS feed
• Podcast through PodTech
• Video
• Google-search engine campaign and geo-targetting
• Traditional TV and radio ads
• Events like Pop!Tech, TED, and PGA Tour
• Facebook groups (23) and a contest on how to make your company more green.

A social media environment was critical to Bearing Point because they have an incredibly distributed environment of decision makers.

As a result of its foray into social media, Bearing Point has learned and is continuing to learn the following:

• There's no "campaign" in social media. You can't be social one week and then not the next week. Customers are committed to social media so you have to be committed as well.
• Command and control branding is dead. Everyone is aware that one-way dialogue is no longer viable.
• Media buying needs to evolve.
• Forget about collecting metrics and start nurturing leads.
• Don't interrupt what interests people. That means don't push your agenda. Be what interest people.