IT giant EMC used a social-driven coordinated strategy to magnify the impact of its biggest ever global product launch
EMC is a global leader in information management, providing data storage, information security, virtualisation, big data and cloud computing products and services that help customers store, manage, protect, and analyse massive volumes of data.
The challenge
EMC was planning its biggest ever global launch to the IT world, promoting its latest midrange products. EMC’s global marketing team chose to work with agency partner The Crocodile to promote the excitement of the launch event and the advantages of its new products in a social-driven global campaign.
The primary objective was to generate massive awareness and engagement among key target audiences before, during and after the launch event to drive new leads across EMC’s global market. On a wider scale, the campaign was designed to leverage the new product launch to reinforce EMC’s position as industry leader and vendor of choice for mid-range enterprise IT solutions.
Specific goals included:
- Sustained international social presence
- Global digital media coverage
- Online event attendees: 15,000
- Partner participation: 1000
- Prove increased engagement via social and mobile channels
- Deliver a sustainable volume leads pipeline.
To achieve all these objectives, the team developed ‘Speed To Lead’, an immersive 360-degree experience, executed globally across multiple social channels to allow the audience to engage however, wherever and whenever they chose.
EMC and The Crocodile devised a storyline for Speed To Lead around how EMC enables organisations to achieve business success by accelerating IT transformation.
The team then mapped a Speed To Lead content framework to key buying personas and buying cycles, enabling identification of clear user journeys. This clarity enabled delivery of more fun and playful social-led touchpoints relevant to specific audience types.
The social-led strategy was delivered over three phases.
Phase one – Drive buzz, excitement and buy-in prior to the live events
Tactics included:
- Teaser video series hosted on YouTube and distributed through mobile, content syndication and social channels.
- Provocative blog series supported via Twitter to raise awareness of key themes airing at launch event.
- Exclusive Pit Lane VIP Pass direct mail to encourage registration and attendance – publicised via Twitter.
Phase one successfully gained buy-in from key analysts, strategic partners and existing clients, and activated a global workforce to get behind the initiative
Phase two – Maximise coverage, reach and engagement during the event series
Staying on the Speed To Lead theme, the main launch event was hosted in Milan, just before the Italian Grand Prix, and was the basis for key content generation in real time, including:
- Product launch announcements.
- Education on key trends and market disruptions.
- Live interviews with industry leaders, analysts, partners and clients.
- Video clips and images from entertainments such as Pit Crew. Challenge and Virtual Racing.
The event then rippled throughout the globe over 24 hours with a series of 12 coordinated regional events in key EMC markets.
The team successfully mobilised more than 1200 EMC employee social ambassadors worldwide to create a social ‘sonic boom’ of publicity and conversation around the event using the #Speed2lead campaign tag.
A tightly orchestrated social media activation plan was used to coordinate activity across LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and deploy a rich mix of content including games, Vines, augmented reality, analyst papers, product facts and thought leadership.
A bespoke social dashboard was used to monitor interactions as they happened.
Phase three – Support lead generation and sales by extending the campaign post-event
The focus here was on maintaining momentum through regional Field Marketing and Sales by equipping them with:
- All market-leading content portfolio to engage, excite and educate at both ends of the funnel.
- All comprehensive social media toolkit to enable a richer, multi-touch approach to marketing.
Throughout each of the three campaign phases, the intent was not to simply announce new products but to use rich content and a dynamic social media strategy to entertain, educate, and bring to life the idea of Speed To Lead.
Results
Awareness
- 8.7 million social media impressions
- 38 million mobile ad impressions
- 22 million online advertising impressions
- 201,000 YouTube views.
Social and digital engagement
- 85,000 new engagements generated from social posts (280 per cent improvement on previous launches)
- 25,700 non-employee fans and followers added on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+
- 3,858 new members on EMC Community Network (ECN) – up 20 per cent on daily average
- Interactive racing game drives 90 per cent of ECN page views – 64 per cent game completion
- EMC Online Store – 186 per cent traffic uplift via social.
Event attendance and involvement
- 19,000 online viewers of events
- 2,000 partners participated through 12 live regional events
- 98,000 campaign launch page views.
Commercial outcome
- 11 per cent year on year uplift in sales of midrange enterprise solutions.
Chris Blaik, VP, global solutions sales and marketing campaigns at EMC, explains: “Social media was always going to be a central part of our product launch strategy; but we could not have conceived how much additional impact and amplification was generated for Speed To Lead through the social mobilisation of employees worldwide. We talk about the ‘sonic boom’ of publicity but even this underplays the remarkable effect of 1200 highly motivated, socially-engaged employee ambassadors, orchestrated by EMC’s marketing team and The Crocodile – all working in collaboration to reach, converse and activate our regional audiences. Results surpassed expectations across all metrics – most notably in social engagement – providing the best possible sales foundation for EMC’s most important product launch for years.”
