Mediaboss Marketing

By: Emma Thomasson. Reuters October 26, 2012 6:31 PM

InterAksyon.com The online news portal of TV5

It looks like mission control: in a Swiss market town, an array of screens in Nestle's headquarters tracks online sentiment. Executives watch intently as California wakes up, smells the coffee - and says whether it likes it.

This is the nerve centre of the company's Digital Acceleration Team. By monitoring conversation about its products on social media - right down to "realtime recipe tweets" across the United States - they aim to win over a sometimes hostile world.

Other companies, such as PepsiCo, Danone and Unilever, have exploited the opportunities to promote themselves online. But Nestle is also concentrating on using social media for damage limitation.

Vilified for years for its sales of baby milk formula in developing countries, Nestle today is confronting its critics online as protesters find newer targets, such as the company's $7 billion a year bottled water business. The $200 billion food and beverage group set up its digital team a year ago, and says it has doubled spending on social media advertising in the last couple of years.

"People have been complaining about companies forever, but before they did it at the water cooler or at the bar," said Bernhard Warner, co-founder of London-based consultancy Social Media Influence. "Now they are doing it online and spreading their complaints to disparate communities."

Nestle is not the only bottled water producer under fire. Others including Coca-Cola are also accused of undermining public water systems. Groups such as Boston-based Corporate Accountability International, a non-profit which originated in the protests against Nestle's infant formula, have alleged for almost a decade that bottled water makers damage the environment when they extract the water, waste resources on bottles and shipping, and take what should be a common good.

The fight matters a lot to Nestle, as it's the world's largest producer of bottled water. Its brands include Poland Spring, Perrier and San Pellegrino and accounted for almost 8 percent of its sales of 83.6 billion Swiss francs ($85.31 billion) in 2011.

In 2008 it ran an advertisement in Canada claiming that "bottled water is the most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world." Campaigners in North America have nonetheless persuaded tens of thousands of people to sign a "Think outside the bottle" pledge to drink water from the tap, and pushed some U.S. campuses and municipal buildings to ban the bottled variety.

See the original post here:
VIDEOS | At Nestle, social media is used to track sentiments, spot trouble, control damage

By Ryan Holmes, contributor

FORTUNE -- Houston, we have a tweet.Growing numbers of global organizations -- from Gatorade to Dell and major universities -- are building multimillion-dollar mission control centers for social media: dedicated physical hubs for monitoring and responding to the torrent of social commentary and queries flooding in via Facebook, Twitter and other channels. Decked out with giant flat panel screens, sleek mood lighting and banks of monitors, the command centers track a dizzying array of real-time stats and indicators, from mentions on Twitter to general consumer sentiment and social media market share.

The glitziest of the bunch would give NASA a run for its money. Dell's social media ground control and command center in Round Rock, Texas, has a total of 70 employees monitoring social conversations from around the globe, according to ReadWriteWeb. Scanning Facebook (FB), Twitter and other networks, the team processes 25,000 daily social media events about Dell (DELL) in 11 different languages, responding to most queries and complaints within 24 hours.

While not every company is swamped with thousands of social media mentions, even mid-sized businesses and brands are facing increasingly daunting demands from social-savvy customers, says Altimeter business analyst Charlene Li in a recent post. "Today, 66% of online Americans are actively using social networking, but only 16% of companies use social media to engage with customers," Li says. "You cannot have credibility saying you are customer-centric if you ignore your customers in social media channels."

MORE: The Facebook tweak that killed a billion-dollar industry

With consumers flooding social media, and companies integrating Facebook and Twitter into business strategy, command centers are becoming standard equipment. Applications range from tracking ad campaigns and monitoring community engagement to handling crisis management. Gatorade pioneered the social command concept in 2010, deploying a mission control center in its Chicago headquarters with six reporting screens and space for five workers. Today, they use it to analyze product reception and connect followers with star athletes via Twitter. Earlier this year, the Red Cross launched a digital operations center staffed by three people to reach out to victims during natural disasters, with modules displaying everything from posts by people seeking family members to recent press coverage. AndClemson University recently developed a social listening center where students monitor a half-dozen screens, pooling data for, among other purposes, research on how to better respond to campus emergencies.

Behind the sudden command center craze is a serious case of data overload. Social technologies have given companies access to an unprecedented flood of new analytics, metrics and user data. But making sense of it all has been a challenge. Underneath the hood, command centers are wired to analyze millions of social conversations from not just Facebook and Twitter, but YouTube (GOOG), LinkedIn (LNKD), blogs and more. Results are spit out onto wall-mounted screens customized with dozens of different modules -- colorful charts and graphs tracking everything from retweets and Facebook Likes to buzz in the blogosphere and overall consumer sentiment. At a glance, teams can take in social trends from thousands of users that would otherwise require hours, if not days, to sort through.

During the 2012 Super Bowl, organizers set up a massive 2,800-square-foot social media ground control in downtown Indianapolis, outfitted with 150 square feet of networked screen space and more than a mile of ethernet cable. For more than two weeks, 50 experts logged 15-hour days inside, sorting through some 64 million social impressions. On average, they responded to questions within three minutes. The payoff? By providing real-time answers to queries on everything from parking availability to half-time shows while also amplifying fan feedback, the command center generated $3.2 million in positive press and a 12.5% boost in consumer sentiment.

MORE: "Rogue IT" is about to wreak havoc at work

"[Organizations] are monitoring online conversations about their brands, reacting instantly to viral buzz and creating companies that consumers feel involved in -- and, in some cases, even bringing in bigger profits as a direct result," says Intel (INTC)social media strategist Ekaterina Walter in a recent Fast Company article. The latest generation of command centers is already taking this a step further. (Full disclosure: my company provides software,HootSuite Command Center, which powers these kinds of nerve centers.)

See the original post here:
NASA-style mission control centers for social media are taking off

Tunis (Reuters) - Tunisian journalists went on strike on Wednesday, piling pressure on the Islamist government they accuse of restricting freedom of speech after a revolt toppled the country's autocratic leader last year.

Tunisia's once-staid media has enjoyed a new lease of life since the removal of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, but activists say the government, led by the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, is now seeking to impose new controls.

The strike, which also involved staff at state-run televisions and news agency TAP, was called by the 1,200-member journalists' union and is the first ever staged in Tunisia.

"The first general strike (by Tunisian media) aims to defend press freedom after we have exhausted the channels of dialogue with the government," the union said in a statement.

Journalists had in the past year demonstrated outside the office of the prime minister to demand an end to restrictions on media freedoms after the appointment of government officials and editors to state television positions.

The government has repeatedly denied accusations it is seeking to stifle the media.

Radio channels broadcast programmes about the strike, limiting news bulletins to just the headlines. The union plans to stage a rally later on Wednesday and newspapers are expected to be off the stands on Thursday.

Earlier this week, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch accused the government of failing to crack down on Islamist violence against advocates of secularism including journalists and artists.

"It's a shame that journalists continue to suffer from interferences in their work after the revolution," union member Ziad Hani told Reuters. "The government is trying to sow a climate of fear among journalists through beatings or jail".

"We will not allow a return to the pre-January 14 (revolt) era," Hani added.

Read more here:
Tunisian journalists go on strike to protest Islamist control

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Next Media Ltd, controlled by Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, will sell its Taiwan newspaper, magazine and television assets to Chinatrust Financial's former vice-chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr for NT$17.5 billion ($600 million).

Koo has entered into an agreement to buy the assets, including Next Magazine and Apple Daily, the company said in a statement on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Next Media has agreed to a 3-year undertaking under which the company and chairman Lai will not own or control any firm in the Taiwanese print media or television markets, the firm said.

"The possible transaction allows the company to rationalize and focus its resources on the group's operations in Hong Kong and also in further developing its digital content-related businesses", Next Media said in a statement.

The company has terminated an earlier memorandum of understanding with another potential buyer, Lien Tai-sheng, regarding the sale of its TV division in Taiwan, it added.

The move comes weeks after Lai said he was selling his Taiwanese television business - which is best known for its animated takes on political and celebrity scandals - as a result of financial losses.

Next Animations won global exposure when its take on golfer Tiger Woods' troubles was widely viewed on YouTube in 2010.

Lai is persona non grata in China, from where he fled at the age of 12 and was smuggled by boat into Hong Kong.

Shares in Next Media, which last closed on Monday at HK$1.12, were due to resume trade on Thursday. The stock is up nearly 65 percent so far this year, outpacing a 16 percent gain in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.

($1 = 7.7512 Hong Kong dollars)

Here is the original post:
Next Media to sell Taiwan print, TV business for $600 million

A motion for the media mogul to be ousted from his post was defeated Vote followed jump of 44 per cent in company shares Australian tycoon admitted the firm had had 'mishaps' but insisted it had 'seized the opportunity to make amends' Murdoch family owns 13 per cent of the equity in the company, but still controls 40 per cent of the voting stock Claims James Murdoch is being lined up for a top job in charge of Fox in the U.S. were not discussed Neither was the news of Rebekah Brooks' 7million 'golden goodbye'

By David Gardner

PUBLISHED: 02:47 EST, 17 October 2012 | UPDATED: 02:47 EST, 17 October 2012

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch swatted away a shareholder revolt at News Corporation's annual general meeting last night.

A motion for the 81-year-old to step down as chairman of News Internationals parent company was easily defeated in a vote at the Los Angeles meeting.

Other attempts to diminish the Murdoch familys control also failed in the wake of the companys huge 44 per cent share increase over the past year.

Powerful: The motion to remove the wealthy Australian from his post as News Corporation chairman was easily defeated

There was no mention of the 7million former News International chief Rebekah Brooks reportedly received when she resigned at the height of the phone hacking crisis in July last year.

The meeting also failed to discuss claims that James Murdoch was being lined up for a top job in charge of Fox in the U.S. despite the uproar over his handling of the scandal in Britain.

Read more from the original source:
Murdoch stamps out demands from News Corporation shareholders that he step down as media family retains control