AMD: The Social Media War Room
Business case: Monitoring the Buzz at CES 2009

Technology provider AMD has always been engaged to some degree with their users, collaborating with them to “ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions.”

Their technology-savvy community has been present and participating in forums and developer and enthusiast communities, and AMD has been there for over a decade, contributing to the larger conversation.

So when social media started taking center stage in the communications world, AMD focused not on joining the conversation per se, but evolving what they were already doing to make the most of these new communication platforms.

The Groundwork

But as exciting as that was, AMD needed to turn curiosity and enthusiasm into business strategy, so they began putting in place a structure for integrating social media more deeply into their organization.

It was critical to the marketing and PR team that they take a methodical approach, so they built an internal social media council - including representatives from marketing, PR, and legal. They used the council to lay out goals and expectations, outline policies that addressed any legal concerns, and create a comprehensive strategy for social media that aligned with their business goals.

Building a social media strategy is unique to every company, and AMD had their own set of challenges to address when setting up their monitoring and outreach efforts.

They needed to be sure that their approach to social media was focused on the audience and not individual tools and sites, and that their communications were focused on good strategy and well-defi ned measurement. AMD had been trying to do everything well, so they needed a system for determining where their efforts were best focused.

A big part of that system was analyzing and measuring success. AMD needed a tool to monitor the conversations about their brand in real time, and to track higher level conversations around their company and industry, so they turned to Radian6 to help them.

CES Las Vegas: Listening in Action
In January 2009, AMD used the Radian6 platform to help them build an on-site “war room” at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The company had several products launching at the event, so as a concentrated study and analysis of social media conversations, they deployed a team and Radian6 to help them track what was happening around the event.

The team, consisting of marketing, PR and product representatives from AMD, listened for:

• Share of Conversation: Listening to how mentions of their brand stacked up during the event as compared to their competitors and the event buzz overall
• Product Mentions: Tracking who mentioned specifi c brands and product names and code names to determine how well they did releasing and spreading the word about the products
• Relevant Conversations: Paying attention to periphery conversations about the event itself, and what the collective audience was interested in reading and hearing about
• Brand Associations: Capturing how people were talking about their brand overall, and what other associations (both positive and negative) that people were making with their brand during the event, including in the week before and following.

Over the course of the event, the AMD team captured some key learnings through their analysis. For starters, they came away with some big wins in regard to share of conversation; they learned that not only were their communication efforts alone driving buzz, but that their fans and evangelists at the event were furthering the conversation within the community and driving awareness for the new products.

A bit of epiphany for their communication team, this insight led the marketing team to realize just how important monitoring and analysis would be to their overall brand tracking and social media efforts. As a result of their monitoring efforts, the AMD team was able to do just what they’d set out to do: focus their future communication and community outreach efforts on the sites and channels that were most effective for them.

They learned that by leading their communication efforts with the community as a central focus, they spent less money on customer acquisition and recovery over the long run, and could trim the ineffi cient parts of their marketing and PR efforts out of the mix.

What’s Next
The AMD team is now focused on how to make the “war room” concept a core competency for them rather than a singular effort. The process of analysis and reporting, as well as how to distribute that information internally and act on it, has become an integral part of their approach to mining the intelligence and insights of their larger community.

The social media council is leveraging Radian6’s workfl ow and engagement capabilities heavily to manage and track their outreach, and already they’re citing the value that this streamlining is adding to their communication teams. To build on that success, The AMD team is working with their support and customer service teams to proactively engage in online conversations for troubleshooting and issue resolution in real-time.

By employing the power of focused listening, measurement relevant to business goals, and targeted community outreach, AMD has been able to tap the potential of social communication and propel their brand into the next generation of business and technology.

Download AMD: The Social Media War Room

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"Radian6 created tools to help remove the barriers to effective social media monitoring and analysis."

The impact of social media on public relations and advertising is fundamentally changing the profession. Brand ownership is no longer solely the domain of the institution.   A brand is now defined as the sum of all conversations taking place amongst users and it's happening regardless of whether you are part of these conversations or not.

Radian6 is focused on building the complete monitoring and analysis solution for PR and advertising professionals so they can be the experts in social media.

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