By John Mark V. Tuazon

It started out as a clever tale of unintentional and spontaneous humor, but the people behind Team Manila—a local graphic design merchandise collective—didn’t expect that printing the words “Payong na Itim” (Black Umbrella) on a, well, black umbrella, would pique the curiosity of its 3,000 followers on popular microblogging site Twitter so much that they haven’t stopped producing the distinct merchandise ever since.

What was once just an experimental venture is now a mainstay offering of their store, a solid proof of the much-hyped idea that social networking sites—or social media in general—indeed has its roots planted even in the enterprise sphere, if corporate heads have the mind and will to muster its potentials.

For Team Manila, a group of young graphic designers specializing on Manila-themed merchandise and lifestyle items, their business is heavily entrenched in the tangled web of the Internet given the young demographic of their customers.

And investing heavily on this group of Internet-savvy consumers sure had its payoffs. In November 2009, a Twitter link to a promotional graphic uploaded on the team’s Flickr account garnered much interest that as much as 1,333 viewed it within a few hours after posting.

But page views are nothing if they can’t be converted to actual product sales, and Jowee Alviar, half of Team Manila’s creative team and co-founder of the collective, was only more than happy to report that “many people turned up during our Saturday sale, which was only promoted through Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and our website.”

Team Manila, however, is no stranger to the unique social aspect of their product marketing. Before Twitter and Facebook were even conceived, they were already engaging their customers regarding the products they sell. “We would upload a number of designs on our mailing list, and members get to choose which ones they like,” narrates Alviar. “The top six designs are the ones that get printed and sold in our stores.”

This democratic inclusion of the customers in the planning and production stages of their merchandise was carried over to Twitter, which only expedited the process. “Through social media, we are able to include them [in our decisions as a company], especially because we want to be accessible to them,” Alviar says.

For its more than seven month run on Twitter, engaging with the customers has been the key to Team Manila’s social media success. “We want to establish a relationship with our clients, to connect with our market,” Alviar says. This is the reason why, aside from marketing promotions, Alviar—who handles the account—posts updates ranging from the mundane to the utterly nonsensical. “We want to find ways for them to re-tweet our posts, which further increases our reach,” he adds.

Zeroing In

Yet for all intents and purposes, the audience flocking Twitter—captive as it may seem—remain to be a niche segment of any company’s market. For Pepper Lunch Philippines, a local food outlet serving do-it-yourself grilled steaks, engaging with customers via social media meant zeroing in on a particular group of customers.

“Twitter is a way to connect with a certain customer group of Pepper Lunch customers. We have a lot of different customers and Twitter is a way for us to get close to this particular group,” says Jeroen van Straten, owner of the food franchise.

Since October 2009, van Straten says they’ve been posting promotional materials, information on upcoming events and store openings, and opportunities for customers to bag free items, food, and gift checks on their Twitter account. “It is a way for us to connect with our loyal customers,” he adds.

One particular time, van Straten shares, he posted updates about a new menu dish on the store. “People immediately re-tweeted the message and many have come over to the stores ordering the item, telling the cashier that they came over because of the Tweet!” he explains, adding that Twitter offers a unique new form of instant advertising for companies.

Realizing the potentials of the Internet in promoting their offerings, van Straten decided to shift to guerilla mode and has since been hunting feedback and comments about his venture online. “We monitor and follow all traffic, posts and comments on blogs and social networking sites that write about Pepper Lunch and answer them personally,” he says. “We use Google Alerts to notify us about all Pepper Lunch related stuff going on online. “

This “turning of the tables” is the immediate product of the social networking boom, with companies keen on hunting out the dingy corners of the web for conversations that can prove beneficial for their companies.

Every day, customers are talking about products and services over the Internet. “We need to listen to that conversation. When people are talking about your products and services to their friends, how can we take that info, and do something about it for the good of the company?” says Shivanu Shukla, industry manager, ICT practice for Asia Pacific, Frost & Sullivan, in an earlier interview.

Facing the Music

Turning into an all-seeing eye is exactly what Globe Telecom, one of the country’s three telecommunications companies, is hoping to achieve. After seeing the apparent impact of social media over the lives of Filipinos—down to even the ones who don’t have Internet access—during the calamitous period when twin typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng hit the country’s capital, the company went full throttle into the social media landscape.

“[The year] 2009 saw the rise of social media presence in the Philippines when Ondoy and Pepeng hit. Of all possible channels to reach loved ones and authorities, people turned to social media to seek help, refuge, and action,” relates Philip Caballes, social media manager of Globe Telecom. “This validates our observation that social media is no longer just a trend in the country but a reality.”

For Globe, latching on to this reality meant being present in every social media channel available. “Globe is present in all major social media channels such as Facebook, Friendster, Multiply, Twitter, Plurk and in some up and coming Web 2.0 destinations. Globe uses these channels in different ways depending on what the site is good at doing,” Caballes explains.

Globe has more than 17,000 fans on its Facebook page, over 10,000 contacts in Friendster and Multiply, and at least 2,000 followers on Twitter as of writing. Harnessing the potentials of this vast audience, however, required heavy investment on Globe’s part, which upper management was more than willing to provide. “Social media investment this year has increased from 5% to 25% of our digital marketing budget from 2008 to 2009,” Caballes says.

But even if social media in general can greatly benefit a company through marketing or PR means, the different platforms available possess unique intricacies that, when leveraged properly, can raise these benefits exponentially. “We are present and active in [most social channels available]. The most effective channels for us are Twitter for handling customer engagement issues, Facebook for topical conversations, Multiply for publishing and Friendster for broadcasting,” Caballes clarifies.

But Globe isn’t only present on these popular and public social media platforms. Caballes says they also have presence in proprietary social media assets developed internally, such as Gloo.com.ph—a collaboration tool—and Minglr.ph—a social media feed aggregator.

Establishing presence, however, is merely the first step. Globe backs this up with quick and efficient response to queries and inquiries, which Caballes says “ranges from quality issues to network inquiries and the occasional compliments.”

Globe takes no longer than 48 hours to respond to feedback, Caballes says. “Twitter interactions tend to be faster, though,” he adds.

And what does Globe get out of this? “We measure ROI for social media activities differently. It is not measured against a media buy but on the level and depth of engagement we get with our customers,” Caballes explains.

A Curious Case

But another kind of engagement got the Manila Electric Company (Meralco), the capital’s electricity provider, jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. As if jolted by the immediate and massive effects of social media, Meralco’s PR department woke up to a start during the recent typhoons when a deluge of false information being spread around washed up on their doorstep.

“We already had plans to setup a Twitter account, but mostly just as a supporting platform for our corporate blog,” narrates Kirk Campos, part of Meralco’s external communications group. “A day before Typhoon Pepeng (international codename: Parma) made landfall, a message circulated around Facebook claiming that Meralco will shut the metro’s power down by nine in the evening.”

Campos said people were already spreading the information around thinking it was accurate, which created more problems on their part. “I had to go on air and clarify the matter. We had to categorically state that there was, and there will be, no such incident,” explains Joe Zaldarriaga, the external communications group head of Meralco. “Aside from traditional media, we came up with almost a spontaneous move to go to Twitter.”

Meralco’s back-breaking crisis PR didn’t stop there. A week after the incident, a transmission facility operated by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) suddenly broke down, causing intermittent brownouts in some portions of Eastern Manila. “There was someone on Twitter—who goes by the handle of @manilaelectric— delivering a blow-by-blow account of the incident, even implying that a ‘Meralco substation exploded,’ which is not the case at all,” Zaldarriaga says.

That moment, he says, the PR team of Meralco got in touch with Nick Nichols, a power sector consultant who initially set up to reserve the Twitter handle @meralco because he “wanted Meralco to have its own Twitter account.” “After we got in touch with him, he verified our identities for due diligence, after which he turned the account over to us,” Zaldarriaga relates.

The PR Team then linked the Twitter account to the official website of Meralco, and announced subsequently the opening of the account over broadcast media, to give credence to the account. “We have around 1,500 followers right now, who mostly deliver queries and inquiries about power interruptions in their areas,” Campos says.

Evolve or Die

The massive explosion of social media reverberated throughout every aspect of society that choosing to ignore its business value can potentially spell misfortune for firms that do not harness its powers.

Analyst firm Gartner puts it boldly in saying that “resisiting social media is futile,” and that firms opting to resist or ignore it is still making a decision—of shutting their organization from a vast pool of valuable information.

Meralco, a 106 year-old company, has paid heed to this advice, and is slowly reaping the benefits. “You have to adapt to the changing environment, and keep researching, finding out, what are the new trends in the information field, what are the new channels being opened to further engage the consumers,” asserts Zaldarriaga. “Learning is a process, it’s an everyday process. You learn, and you have to adapt accordingly. You should always be in step with the development in the field.”

Possibly Related Posts:

• IT Budgets on the Rise
• Veering into Virtualization
• BUSINESS AS USUAL: Picking up where you left
• IT Outsourcing Reaching Out to Reach Further
• Forecast 2012

 Print This Post