Company: BMW x Accenture Song
Company background:
Striving for change and for a more sustainable world should be a goal for every country doesn't matter how well developed this topic already is.
In 2019 BMW x Accenture Song have been implementing a joint project aiming to support 30+ BMW Importers with strategic planning, development and adaptation of brand and product campaigns. In this project, we improved all processes using Khoros and therefore enabled all markets to reach better results in their digital marketing activities.
One of the main goals is to ensure consistent communication on the priority topics, regional focus models as well as a seamless customer experience across all digital touchpoints, especially through the social media channels Instagram and Facebook.
The project scope is characterized by strong diversity and a highly complex set up. Only for social media, we are currently working with Importers from 16 countries throughout the world: Middle East, Northern and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Northern Africa as well as Caribbean Islands. One can imagine such a widespread geography implies the complex network of cultures, mindsets, languages, economics and levels of social awareness. Our highest goal is to find a way how all these nationalities, people and markets can strive for the same goal: A greener world.
Kudos Category: Best-in-Class: Social
1. Tell us about your unique marketing campaign and/or promotion as well as your goal and key strategies.
BMW makes an impact across the globe every day. Rooted in this reality, we approach our work with passion and dedication. This goal is highlighted by our drive to ramp up innovative automotive endeavors. Our focus? To help further enable e-mobility, digitalization, and sustainability the world over with effective and relevant messaging across social media.
"The ramp-up of e-mobility,
digitalization and sustainability are our focus.”
Oliver Zipse
With this in mind, our market has a high diversity of maturity in regards to electromobility and sustainability solutions for people. What's more, it represents many different cultures, economies, and infrastructures. Overall, we want to enable each market - regardless of its starting position - to use an effective communication strategy to denote the importance and impact of topics such as electromobility and sustainability.
Needless to say this is a big and complex challenge. Very different levels related to the transition to electric mobility exist across countries. Some are well known for their green goals, which have allowed them to stay at the cutting edge of electromobility advancement. Others are at the beginning of their journey - they're generally developing countries - ones who are just now considering the e-mobility transformation and are sometimes hindered by the lack of infrastructure or other local circumstances to make this a reality.
So, we asked ourselves: "How can we encourage the interest of electromobility and sustainability solutions for those living in communities that lack such infrastructure by utilizing social media?"
Additionally, how can we continue to improve upon social communication in markets that are already established and well known for green goals?
We drove through these challenges by beginning to analyze our different target audiences and their local needs. Then, we created a way to provide precise localization and customization. Tempered by a sensitive dosage of core messages about electromobility and sustainability, all we needed was a Social Media Management Platform. That's where Khoros came in.
Example of localization:
2. Share your plan with the target audience and how your digital technology (e.g. social media management platform) helped drive success for the campaign.
With a nuanced strategy that included our need for a diverse scope and the need for localization, as well as the ability to customize and offer different communication avenues, we needed a Social Media Management Platform.
BMW has been working with Khoros Marketing for several years now. In Khoros, we were able to find a partner who let us maximize our flexibility while also fulfilling other core needs. The platform allows us to be beneficial and effective within the social media sphere. We've been able to run communications throughout all of our 16 markets while also providing handling for our 29 accounts.
By enabling us to provide a Social Media Plan for all our markets every month, we've been able to work with Khoros to provide a robust and efficient drip of content distribution. This is pivotal, as we need to work with a lot of parties to implement, change as needed, and approve this plan.
Starting with creating a general plan that considered all of our markets with Khoros, we then drilled down with the platform to create segment markets ranked by things like preferences, local situations, languages, as well as the additional need of customizing their plan if needed. With this tactic, we're able to ensure the right message, no matter the market, culture, or a country's development on the path to electromobility and sustainability.
This endeavor has been running strong for more than three years. As it stands, we've been proud to say that our goal of educating our markets and demographics about electromobility and sustainability have resulted in helping them adapt and improve their maturity levels accordingly.
Khoros Analytics has also strengthened our communications strategy, especially when it comes to the detailed data it provides based on audience insights. With these insights at hand, we can constantly improve our strategy every month by fulfilling the needs of each of our markets as we've been able to focus on local and global trends all at once. Additionally, we've been able to use the ability to harness Khoros Analytics' targeting features for our paid activities on Facebook, as well. In the end, we are using Khoros platforms to ensure that we've crafted the right message which reaches the right audience.
Another wonderful aspect of working with Khoros is their highly efficient and functional options included within their Social Media Communication offerings. For example, we need to respect established time zone diversity, embargoes in different markets, and other such nuances throughout our 29 accounts. Khoros offers a multitude of ways to include and adapt to these challenges so that our plans can run smoothly.
As a whole, using all these features has created a streamlined and improved communications plan and overall work flow. That's why it's no surprise that in the end, we've been able to improve electromobility in all our differing markets.
“First, we denied offering content for electric cars models at all, because it was just not relevant.
But now, as we decided to communicate it,
the iX is everywhere.”
Feedback from North African market
3. What were the results? Tell us how it helped you seize new revenue stream opportunities, serve customers, protect your brand and/or grow your business (increased subscribers, engagement increase, increased awareness).Please include metrics if possible.
Through the Social Media Management platform, we've seen increased KPI's throughout all of our markets in 2021. For example, we've improved the number of post published by +86.6% from 2020. In addition, our fan base has increased by +8.5%. We've also included other fantastic results:
Highlights: Best Practise
The best part? This is just the tip of the iceberg. We are just beginning to see the fruits of our work to denote the important of sustainability and electromobility of BMW throughout the world.
Here's to an even more prosperous future.