In a glass box in the middle of a PepsiCo marketing department, five people are staring at a huge bank of screens showing a constantly updated river of tweets, “likes”, praise and damnation from consumers of Gatorade, the company’s sports drink.
“Doing it in a glass room means every single person in the marketing organisation is seeing the insights brought to life in real time. It reminds them how important it is to know the heartbeat of the consumer,” says Bonin Bough, global director of digital and social media at PepsiCo. “I really feel like it is the future of marketing.”
A similar scenario is playing out in marketing departments around the world. A survey of members of the World Federation of Advertisers, a grouping of multinational brands, by Millward Brown found that 96 per cent were spending more of their budgets managing Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and other social media, racing to accrue fans, retweets and that elusive but ubiquitous quality: engagement.
However, the research also found that few knew why they were doing it – half were “unsure” of the returns they were getting from their efforts, while more than a quarter found the payback was “just average or poor”.