Opinion

What Telstra learned from our HTC Desire social media experiment

Six months ago Telstra tried the brave experiment of inviting 25 consumers to review the new HTC Desire. Six months on, head of online communications and social media Kristen Boschma reveals what the brand learned.

When Mike Hickinbotham came to me with the idea of a consumer-led product review via social media, I had one of those rare moments as a marketer when everything tingles. The “tingle moment” has only happened to me a couple of times in my career and it usually happens when an idea is powerful, experimental and can change the status quo permanently. That or I’ve moved to a new multivitamin.

Telstra HTC desire MumbrellaOn May 3 this year, Telstra embarked on a social media experiment. We decided to see what would happen if we gave 25 HTC Desire handsets to 25 people and asked them to review their experience via social media channels. You would be forgiven for thinking that Telstra would respond to this with raised eyebrows and clenched cheeks and yet, apart from some logistical challenges, we met no opposition from within Telstra.The various layers of decision makers here at Telstra seem to understand social media and want me and my team to experiment.

Here’s what we learned:

  • People love an informed and robust conversation. We were surprised by the number of people who joined in the conversation even though they weren’t designated reviewers.
  • The best way to mitigate any risk in a program of this nature is to ensure that everyone is honest and transparent. Our social media lawyer Rachael Falk absolutely gets social media and had a really clear vision of what the terms and conditions should look like, what we should ask of our social reviewers (honest opinions based on real experiences) and the degree of transparency needed (every reviewer was obliged to declare they got the phone from Telstra).
  • We didn’t try and guide the conversation. We didn’t ask the reviewers to focus on any particular element of the phone or the network. We did however ensure we had people from diverse backgrounds with diverse interests. They took care of the rest.
  • Even though we set up our corporate blog, Telstra Exchange, as the anchor point for conversations, it didn’t really work out like that – the conversation happened everywhere and that was OK too, but we needed to find a better way to aggregate the opinions.
  • We were really careful to bring the reviewers together for a briefing before the review period started. We wanted to make sure the group met each other along with me, Mike and Rachael. We wanted everyone to feel as though they were part of something special and to have contacts within Telstra.
  • The process is as important as the outcome. People were interested in the selection process and whether or not the reviewers had “sold out”. We think that the honest opinions and transparency elements were critical as they ensured the process stood up.
  • That social reviewers and tech journalists can reach different conclusions about a handset. Again – that’s OK as it’s about giving consumers a variety of viewpoints.

Here’s what happened with our social review from an outcomes perspective:

  • We had over 2200 applications for the 25 positions
  • Nearly 200 blogs and other pieces of content were generated
  • On Twitter alone the review generated 19 million impressions using the #TelstraDesire hashtag
  • Even though we only had 25 official social reviewers, nearly 400 people joined in the conversation
  • Our SEO results were stellar
  • Sales of the handset were strong even without the social review. We found that sales growth paused during the review period – one theory is that the online audience held their breath and waited for the reviewers to come to a conclusion about the handset.

We’re running a new Social Review right now on Windows Phone 7 (applications close at the end of today). Here’s what we’re doing differently this time:

  • Increased our presence on Facebook to drive awareness of the sign up blog
  • Used Wufoo instead of Survey Monkey to gather applications because the tool tips and user interface are more suited to this sort of program
  • Working on a solution that automatically aggregates RSS feeds from the reviewers social media assets so that readers can keep find all the content on one spot
  • Worked on a mobility solution to make sure that people with smartphones (particularly the actual device used for the review) can see and contribute to the conversation in a richer way
  • Asking the social reviewers to review the operating system (Windows Phone 7), the handset (HTC Mozart 7) and the Telstra Next G network

We’re looking for people over the age of 18 within defined interest groups:

  • social networking;
  • Xbox LIVE and gaming;
  • business on the go;
  • apps and apps development;
  • kids and family;
  • technology and gadgets.
  • We have worked closely with the team at Microsoft on this one to share the promotions and logistics elements.

If you would like to know more about our social review program please comment here and I’ll contact you or follow me on Twitter . If you’d like to be a social reviewer – go for it!

  • Kristen Boschma is Telstra’s head of online communications and social media
ADVERTISEMENT

Get the latest media and marketing industry news (and views) direct to your inbox.

Sign up to the free Mumbrella newsletter now.

 

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up to our free daily update to get the latest in media and marketing.