As Marketeers, we are all constantly on the outlook for innovated ideas, paving new ways of doing things and opportunities to take engagement, efficiency and impact to a new level. Well, I want to share some background on a recent change I made within my Marketing Strategy Organization at Intel.
In a recent re-organization, I merged my Social Media team and Global Media team together. For the past several years, I have been encouraging every opportunity for them to work as one, sharing information and insights; driving cross media opportunities with our partners and thinking about a new world where the idea of “paid” or transactional media dissolves. Yes, we can discount the fact that we spend a significant amount of money on our paid efforts. To that point, we are also investing heavily in the social arena with our budget as well as resources. The growth of tools that helps us scale and track data has exploded, and our social partners more and more have been expanding opportunities to engage with their users in a multitude of ways.
Why does this make sense? I found we were having similar conversations across teams. The role of communities is not exclusive to the social space. Our paid media partners are looking for ways to drive engagement and conversation in ways previously unheard of. Our social partners are open in an exciting way to new product ideas and testing. The idea of “test and learn” has never been so real.
It’s important to note that this philosophy and vision is also represented in our expectations for service and support from our agencies. We recently developed a stronger support model around social at our global media agency. To their credit, it wasn’t about just expanding their role (which wasn’t significant) but embracing the changing world we live in. They meet our requests to drive change and do more with a passion for living on the cutting edge. We may not be the easiest client, but we sure are an exciting one.
I believe Intel is driving a new way to look at the world of media. We’ve moved beyond conversations around stakeholder management and where social media teams should sit to evolving a new model that I believe will be the course of action for most companies over the upcoming year. Reaching and driving engagement and conversations is at the heart of what we do. We’re at the very early stages but I’m extremely excited and the team has embraced the idea of driving a new model with enthusiasm and support.