Use of software to support groundswell: Engagor

Pandora: Social Media Monitoring 2

Pandora has become a brand, which is associated with charm bracelets. This product idea has brought a huge popularity and advantages to the company.

But company's need to go further was so obvious that Pandora launched its new campaign all about rings in May, 2014. The campaign, entitled #MyRingsMyStyle, was aimed to "make sure that customers are aware that the Pandora brand is about more than charms and bracelets", said Scott Burger, president of Pandora Americas.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Pandora addressed its campaign to two target segments:

1. Urban upper middle and upper class women;
2. Gift-givers and gift-receivers (targeted when special occasion occur).

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

The main competitor of Pandora on a basis of product and similar price ranges and the target market is Tiffany&Co.

Here is the comparison of the brands:

Brand	Pandora	Tiffany&Co
Slogan	“Unforgettable moments.”	“There is only one true love.”
Key products	Charm bracelets, rings, necklaces	Diamond engagement rings and sterling sterling (bracelet and necklaces)
Target audience	Mostly women; gift-buyers for special occasions	Both men and women; gift-buyers for special occasions
Brand awareness	High	High
Distribution channels	2,465 stores in the U.S., online store	94 stores in the U.S.

In accordance with Google Trends statistics, Tiffany&Co. has much higher indexes of search interest on the Web, but if we look at the tendencies we can see constant growth of Pandora's popularity since 2009 and a declining trend of Tiffany&Co.'s popularity.

As about Twitter, in conformity with TOPSY analytics, Tiffany&Co. had two times more tweets for the last month than Pandora:

 BRAND SWAT ANALYSIS

Strengths	Weaknesses
Distinct unique selling point (Pandora is a leading brand in the bracelet category):      Positive brand image (Pandora has an image of high quality and refined products. It also very actively involved in charitable works);     Strong brand awareness (Pandora accessorizes are must-have in the U.S.). Developed chain of stores in the U.S.	Lack of service in official stories (There are a lot of complaints about Pandora stores’ service on social media, which can cause serious damage to the reputation of the company);     Limited product range.
Opportunities	Threats
Widening of product focus (The biggest part of Pandora’s revenue is generated from the charms and bracelet category. The company recently has started to develop other categories and widen other possible brand associations);      New target audience (The company can make a great success by developing an idea of creating a new male product line, for example).	Cheaper substitutes (There is a big probability of an appearance of substitutes which will be cheaper and no less popular);     Profusion of imitations (The more popular the brand, the more it is counterfeited).

CURRENT METRICS

In conformity with a recent study conducted by US-based specialist Karus Chains, more than 2 M internet users visit Pandora's website each month, which means that Pandora generates the most traffic among jewelry websites.

Pandora rings: what statistics say about the campaign?

As it was mentioned, the campaign #MyRingsMyStyle was launched in May, 2014. The Google Trends' graph shows how noticeably people's interest increased after that moment:

IceRocket analytics shows the next results about daily blogs citation of Pandora rings for the last 2 month:

Pandora as a brand got almost 300,000 tweets over the last month, and Pandora ring category got just 16,500 tweets.

On the TOPSY graph we can see that Pandora charm bracelets still much more popular than Pandora rings despite all the company's efforts.

Social Mention analytics showed a reduction of some indicators such as strength, passion and reach. All in all, changes for the last week is not critical. The indicators reflect the relatively high popularity of the brand and the product on the Internet.

Pandora Rings in Social mention: 10/20/2015 in compare with 10/28/2015

Here are Tiffany&Co. indexes in Social Mention:

POSITIVE/NEGATIVE REVIEWS

Pandora has incredibly high number of positive reviews in compare with negative ones on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and etc. That is why it is more interesting to look how it works with negative reviews.

Recently a lot of complains were posted on Pandora's Facebook page. People complained about services in Pandora's retail stores. Here is some examples of such posts and Pandora's responds:

Pandora pays attention to all negative reviews, its responses are placed very quick. But in most of cases responses can't help customers with their problems. In addition to the apologies, usually a response contains an advice to contact a local store, which is not very convenient for a client.

ENGAGEMENT

Pandora often conducts style contests on Facebook and Instagram. Most of followers are willing to participate in such contests and are very happy to receive prizes from their favorite brand. The company always publishes the best winners' photo on its Facebook and Instagram pages and receives a range of grateful comments.

It should be mentioned that Pandora doesn't need to conduct a contest to make people share their  happiness of having Pandora's jewelry. Followers constantly post photo of their purchases and gifts as comments to posts just to share their emotions about jewelry.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on this analysis, I would recommend to the company to consider the next steps:

1. To enhance its activity on social network pages. Pandora's activity on social media can be estimated as very high, but it still has some lacks: the company doesn't provide a qualitative customers support on Facebook and Instagram. There are some unanswered questions and complains, which can caused customers' dissatisfaction.
2. It would be also great for Pandora to think about centralized support in social media. As we can see from negative reviews examples above, company's representatives often suggest clients to contact its local stores, which is not very professionally for such huge company. Pandora should consider to develop a personal approach in social media.
3. To consider the idea of developing a new product line. Pandora has reached a significant market share, so now it should think about diversification in order to satisfy consumers' demands.
4. To listen the groundswell more carefully and react on it. Pandora's clients are constantly giving to the company a lot of ideas for a further development and a range of things, which should be fixed and improved. Among them are idea of developing a new male target audience; necessity of improving customer service at local stores; some notices about products quality, range of sizes, and etc. That all a great and, what more important, real ideas from the first hand, which can lead the company to a new level.
5. Pandora's attempt to promote its rings is pretty successful despite the fact that its charm bracelets still so much more popular then rings, earnings and necklaces. The company should continue to emphasize this certain product line and continue to listen the clients' needs and suggestions about rings in order to reach the same popularity with rings as with charm bracelets.

CONCLUSION

In comparison with Tiffany&Co, Pandora is a significant player on the market. It definitely has been reached noticeable results for the last few years since it started its vigorous activity and promotions in social media.
The company got the right idea of starting its ring promotion. It understood on time that charm bracelets' popularity is not endless.
Company's social media pages are full of content related with Pandora rings. And as we can see from the statistics, the popularity of this product line has really increased. Now Pandora rings has become a trend in social media and real life due to company's efforts.

All in all, the analysis has shown very good results of company's performance. Pandora has many ways to develop the business, but it still needs to work on its weaknesses and pay an attention to the groundswell on the Web. Professional and proper work with the groundswell can give the company much more opportunities to grow further and lead it to new achievements.

"...THERE CAN BE NO SEPARATION BETWEEN CORPORATE CULTURE AND A BRAND"

Now-a-days companies should care not only about reviews about their products/services, but also about... reviews about their inside performance from their own employees. It has become very actual because who know companies best? Of course, the employees. And currently they have a lot of opportunities to express their opinions about their workplaces.

Now such reviews are an important part of groundswell, and companies should remember and care about it.

Company's culture reflects the values, beliefs, attitude, and behaviors of its members. Therefore, company's culture has a considerable impact on the success of a business.

Smart executives realized and know how to use the right built culture as a competitive advantage.

So what is your desired company culture?

Let's get some inspiration and take a look at examples of great cultures, which is worth to emulate:

Google

Google is probably the first company, which comes into minds of the most people when they hear collocation "corporate culture". And it worth it. 

The company calls its employees "Googlers". Describing of its culture on the Google website is started with words:

"It's really the people that make Google the kind of company it is."

For the employees Google provides not only excellent philosophy inside the company, but also probably all kind of facilities and events such as bowling, amazing meeting rooms, parks, impressive designed working spaces and etc.

If you work for Google, you can ride a bike through the campus, play active games with co-workers, have a rest at equipped space, and literally slide down into the cafeteria.

Google's corporate culture now is the most famous example of creative, successful, and developed cultures inside a company. Undoubtedly it is a great part of Google's goodwill, and it is making a significant contribution in positive groundswell.

Apple

Apple is known for its innovative products and fabulous design. It is still a kind of phenomena how this company made people buy its products for higher prices than competitors'. 

But what is going on inside the company? The main idea of company's corporate culture may be described precisely by one of the opinion of a Former Apple employee, Chad Little:

"Apple is one of those companies where people work on an almost religious level of commitment. There are probably a handful of large companies that can command this, such as Disney or Google. Most workers, no matter how simple their job might be, truly feel they are changing the world with whatever they are doing."

Nike

Nike is a worldwide famous brand and a huge company. Everyone knows the iconic "swoosh", which is associated with sports, admire design and distinct culture. But what about the culture inside of the company? What a philosophy does it provide?

Nike's executives completely understand the importance of building and maintaining of extremely committed workforce and internal culture.

How the company sees the matters of its employees and internal culture? Here is its vision of it:

"We believe that a talented, diverse and inclusive employee base helps drive the creativity that is central to our brands. Our global strategy for human resources is to help unleash our employees' potential across every area of our business by enabling leaders to make great decisions that in turn enable NIKE's business growth."

You've seen just a few examples of how internal culture and employees' satisfaction with working conditions and their attitude to a company can make a great contribution in company's reputation. 
These companies understand an importance of listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing not only for external relationships with customers and partners, but also for internal groundswell and relationships with their employees and between them.

"No matter what you're after, in the internal groundswell, the secret to thriving is culture. This is not about technology implementation but about managing and changing the way organizations work..."

Li C., Bernoff J., "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies", chapter 12

Here you can see Top 25 Companies for Culture&Values.

Companies shouldn't be afraid to give their employees some ways to have fun and rest during a work day. The point here is to find a right balance, to show employees your respect and their importance for the company by providing some perks and benefits. Yes, your company is serious, but don't forget about fun and pleasure to be involved for employees. And it certainly will come back to a company as an competitive advantage.