ANALYTICS POWERED BY

Social Media Strategy Review

Oral Healthcare Brands

Author Bio

Mrinil MathurWith a love for coffee and reading, passion for social media and a flair for perfection, Mrinil comes from a computer science background. Her diverse experience in social media marketing and digital marketing speaks for itself. She believes in adding value to work every day. An amazing cook, and Angry Birds enthusiast she loves playing basketball too.

Introduction

Brands of Oral Care Sector have a proud history of their existence but most of them have recently made their entry into Social Media world. The industry in India entails some brilliant brands who are trying to build their Social identities and make a mark in the digital space. Since the sector is still in the beta stage of Social media campaigning thus ideas and content plans are naïve, which calls for attention from social media enthusiasts and requires monitoring, tracking of their performance.

This study includes in depth analysis of brands like – Colgate, Pepsodent and Vicco on two major platforms, Facebook and Twitter for time duration of 30 days (15th May to 15th June).

Colgate was started in 1806 in New York and was incorporated into Indian market in the year 1937 with the launch of Colgate Dental Cream and became a company committed to oral health and care. Ever since Colgate is occupying a legendary market share with completing 75 years in 2012. Dedicated to the sector of oral health and care, the brand believe in promoting healthy habits through its annual national awareness program, Oral health Month.

Colgate joined Social Media in 2009, but it started using it to the max potential from 2012 only.

My study period is based on the last 30 days (15th May to 15th June 2014) and in depth analyses of Colgate on two major platforms, Facebook and Twitter

Monthly Timeline Chart

Audience Analysis

Colgate has slightly more of female follower base than male customers interacting with the posts. While the difference is not much, 53.5% of followers are females and remaining 46.5% are males. This almost equal gender proportion can be attributed to the fact that Colgate is a neutral brand and caters to both the genders.

*These are stats of people talking about the brand.

1

Buzzword Chart

Colgate on Facebook

This week Colgate India achieved the mark of 2 million fans on Facebook ever since they joined in 2012. Owing to brand’s recent entry 65.9 K people talking about it is remarkable.

The frequency of content is 1-2 posts per day which is too low for engagement for a brand of this stature and follower base. With a total of only 61 posts the brand holds a negligible share of posts which is 0.1 % and a greater amount of content which is a total of 113745 is by the stakeholders which is approx. 99.9 %.

2

Content Strategy on Facebook

The brand’s content strategy majorly focuses on showcasing the benefits of their products, oral health and life’s goodness related to it, like aid in bleeding gums and other gum problems, relief from sensitive teeth, freedom from yellow teeth etc.

3

The brand also brings out the essence of life and small happy moments in life.

One interesting thing to notice is that brand uses Facebook applications a lot to run their campaigns. Recently they are running 2 Facebook apps for Earth Day and Selfie. The brand shows concern towards environment and water conversation this Environment Day.

4

5

Overall engagement quotient on Facebook page is low considering the huge fan base they have. Only a few posts gets 40-50 comments and few posts get none. The number of likes when compared to fan base is also negligible. The posts which got maximum comments and likes attained that because of the picture used and not for the product or the benefit of the product.

In terms of customer service, Colgate rarely replies to the comments. Although on few instances the brand tried to second any remark in the comment, which is a good initiative to make a conversation with fans and customers.

One noticeable and good activity of Colgate on Facebook is that their ‘About’ page and ‘Timeline’ gives the full history about the brand, from its foundation day to till date. In fact such a glorious history is need to be showcased.

6

Another current campaign of Colgate is for their newest product Colgate Visible White. Banking on the obsession of selfie amongst everyone they have made an app for perfect selfie attaching the fact that for best selfie you need to have perfect white teeth.

7

Colgate on Twitter

Content Strategy on Twitter

Although in short time span Colgate managed to garner a good amount of fan base on Facebook, the brand has very poor presence on twitter. The only verified account of Colgate is @ColgateSmile which is used by Colgate across the globe. Another official Twitter account is of Colgate-Palmolive Co with the twitter handle @Colgate. Colgate uses this account as its official account to share global, company news and information. Both the twitter handles are associated with Colgate India’s official website. @ColgateSmile being used globally have merely 28.8K followers. In addition, Colgate tweets 2-3 per week and majorly believe in Re-Tweeting.

Content wise, the approach on Twitter is totally different. Although they joined Twitter before Facebook but brand doesn’t use it to best of its capability. Brand despite of being less frequent, tries to interact with few customers on twitter by retweeting or replying to followers.

Along with re-tweeting brand tries to add a comment with it thereby acknowledging the conversation. This method helps them to maintain engagement with followers and encourage them to tweet more about the brand and its products.

8

Brand also patiently replies to any query posted by the customer. Thereby making it a customer service oriented brand.

Unlike Facebook where an organized campaign was run, content strategy of Twitter is not focused. Also the content on both the accounts differed in their approach as well as strategy.

9

Online Buzz

Service Feedback

Most of the online buzz of Colgate is through microblogs, twitter being the most dominant platform from where most brand mentions and conversions occur. One of the reason for more number of impression through Twitter was the #ColgateTOTAL booth in an international fest called as “Essence Festival” and second one being retweets and interaction done by brand on this platform. Out of all 60.2 % of mentions happen through microblogs, 34.6% mentions are by social networking platforms like Facebook and remaining 5.2% mentions are contributed by blogs.

Out of all the posts, 66939 posts i.e. 58.2 % are written across microblogging sites, majorly Twitter, which accounts to be a major platform. The other important platform is social networks where 38521 posts i.e. 33.5 % of posts are posted. Around 5751 i.e. 5 % blog posts have been written and only 954 news articles about the brand are published. Rest all the other platforms are negligible.

10

Sentiment

Conclusion

A huge amount of positive sentiment of brand is present across online platforms. 76.8 % of users are talking positive about the brand on Facebook and Twitter and only 23.2 % negative sentiment is spread across. It is a winning situation for a brand to achieve such an amount of positive sentiment, which adds great credibility and makes it everybody’s favorite brand. The reason to lot of positivity can be attributed to the two campaigns themed around most in trend topic – environment and selfie.

While analyzing the sentiments around the major reasons attributed for positivity, there are two major reasons. Branding and Advertising being the major factor of positive sentiments overall, itself has 72.8% positive sentiment which becomes obvious because of their campaign around hottest topic of the year selfie.

Colgate portrays itself as a family brand that makes everybody’s life happy. It managed to garner a decent amount of fan following across different platforms but they are overshadowing the benefits of social presence and not using it to its max potential. Brand can have more engaging content on Facebook and if their current frequency on Twitter can make such a huge amount of impressions online the increased regular activity can do wonders for the brand.

Overall the brand has decent positive sentiment but there lies a great scope for improvement and development in their social media strategy. Maybe monitoring and tracking their impressions can help them to devise a focused campaign strategy on both social platforms.

Another factor contributing for positive sentiment is pricing, it accounts 62.1 % positive sentiment.

11

Pepsodent belongs to HUL family. It was launched in India in 1993 and since then brand has raised the standard of Indian Oral Care market. Pepsodent has a wide range of products making it expert in oral care solution for germ check, bleeding gums and sensitive teeth.

Pepsodent uses an approach to appeal kids, thereby their communication revolves around cartoons and fancies. Brand seems to underestimate the hidden power of Social Media thus is inactive on major social networks. It made its entry in social networking world in May 2010 with the bollywood star Shahrukh Khan as its brand ambassador.

My study period is based on the last 30 days (15th May to 15th June 2014) and in depth analyses of Pepsodent on two major platforms, Facebook and Twitter.

Monthly Timeline Chart

Audience Analysis

Pepsodent has uneven follower base talking about the brand on social media. More of male customers interact with the posts than female customers. Out of all 62.1 % of fan base is male and remaining 37.9% are females. This scattered gender distribution of a unisex brand may be because of its previous advertising campaigns like “Pappu and Papa”. Contrary to this uneven gender distribution where interaction with males is more, the brand’s recent campaigns are themed around mothers.

12

Buzzword Chart

Pepsodent on Facebook

Pepsodent’s fan base on Facebook is only 1.8 million considering the fact that they joined 4 years ago. Also, number of people talking about the brand is 35.6K which is really low for an internationally famous brand, that too belonging to Unilever family. But such a low amount of fan base can be reasoned to their less frequent updates and disappearance from Facebook for longer time intervals. Brand’s last update was on 13th May 2014 and they are absent on Facebook ever since. This sort of carelessness is not appreciated from any brand as it reduces the engagement on page thereby losing the trust of fans and followers. Before this absenteeism phase also frequency of posts was 1 / day, which is quiet a low count for any brand if they want to have some activity on their page. For the past one month’s post brand had zero contribution and stakeholders made 100% contribution with 18314 posts. This distribution of voice amongst stakeholders and brand is inappropriate.

13

Content Strategy on Facebook

Prior to absenteeism phase brand’s communication was based on cartoons and fancies. The content of these posts were tooth tips, simple quizzes like match the following, multiple choice questions, spot the difference, which of them look alike etc. and posts related to relationship between parents and their kids. Last time they were seen on Facebook was wishing mothers on Mother’s Day.

14

All these posts witnessed less interaction from fans, therefore overall the engagement on page is relatively low. May be the brand needs to rethink about their communication and content strategy along with correct targeting.

While considering the customer service factor the brand replies personally to all the participants of small quizzes they hold to build engagement. This is a great approach by brand to motivate others to participate in these activities alongside maintaining interaction and engagement with them.

Pepsodent’s ‘About’ page and ‘Timeline’ is very well crafted and gives a snapshot of growth history and success of brand in Indian market. Although they joined Facebook in 2010, they have Timeline posts dated to previous years to showcase their activities and campaigns of that time.

15

Pepsodent on Twitter

As mentioned earlier, it seems like brand does not believe in social media and multi-channel communication. There is no other justification for a brand like Pepsodent to be totally absent on a major microblogging and social networking site like Twitter. Being away from Twitter they are losing on the opportunity to get into direct conversations with their followers and prospective customers. They can tap on these customers present on Twitter by interacting with them, addressing their issues and finally converting them into Pepsodent’s brand advocates.

Online Buzz

16

As Pepsodent is present only on one Social Network i.e. on Facebook, most of the online buzz comes from Social Networks. 56.7% mentions happened through Social Networks and 42.6% mentions occur from microblogging sites like twitter. These mentions are totally contributed by consumers and other fans and not a single impression is because the brand.

Out of all the posts, 9934 posts i.e. 54.2 % were written across Social Network, especially Facebook which is the only platform where brand is officially present. Another important platform are microblogs where 7459 posts i.e. 40.7 % of posts are posted. Around 639 i.e. 3.5 % images are shared and rest all the other platforms are negligible.

Even though brand was not active for the past one month it still managed to gather enormous amount of positive sentiment around it across online platforms. 92.9 % of users have positive sentiment about the brand and only 7.1 % negative sentiment is spread across. It is a matter of pride for a brand that their absence on social platforms is not hampering their positive aura. This positive sentiment shows that the existing followers have trust in brand’s offerings. This may be because of neutral and funny approach used in their campaigns, which adds great credibility and makes it everybody’s favorite brand.

Service Feedback

Sentiment

17

Branding and advertising is a major contributor to positivity of brand and itself has 97.0 % positive sentiment and the reason for the same can be attributed to the comical and engaging activities put up by the brand. Also the way brand personally replies to all the entries of quiz makes it a very approachable brand. The factor which is majorly responsible to bring negative sentiments is pricing, itself has 66.8 % negativity.

Pepsodent is neutral and a family product which aims to become an essential part for Oral care. While pepsodent is worried about customer’s Oral health, its Social Media health is very poor. Agreed it managed to garner lot of positivity around it which is majorly because of its name, its parent family Unilever and branding done, but it fails to build a good social community which can later on be converted into brand advocates. Brand being inactive on Facebook and absent from Twitter is not justified in the times of digitization. The brand should rework their communication plan and analyze the huge opportunity they have to tap customers online. May be monitoring and tracking digital impressions can help in revamping their Online personality.

Conclusion

18

Vicco Paste belongs to Vicco Laboratories founded in 1952 by Vicco Group of Companies. The group manufacturers Indian Ayurvedic Herbal Medicinal Oral Care Products like herbal tooth paste Vicco Vajradanti Paste, Herbal toothpaste, Sugar Free Vicco Vajradanti SF Paste, Herbal Tooth Powder, Vicco Vajradanti powder etc.

Vicco recently made its debut on Social Media, 2013 on 2 major platforms. My study period is based on the last 30 days (15th May to 15th June 2014) and in depth analyses of Vicco’s Social Media Strategy.

Audience Analysis

Vicco has highly uneven gender distribution on social media. Major contribution in interacting with posts is by male followers than female followers. Out of all 75.6 % of customers are males and remaining 24.4 % are females. It is strange to have imbalanced gender distribution especially when brand tries to target both the genders equally and takes a neutral approach in their communication.

Monthly Timeline Chart

VICCO on Facebook

Being a new entrant on Facebook, Vicco’s fan base is only 199.5 K and only 1000 people are talking about it, which is an alarm for the brand to buck up and try more innovative and resilient approach to increase their follower base. Vicco’s Facebook page is not only dedicated towards their oral care products, it caters all the products. Brand is very irregular in posting content on their page and amongst it they rarely post about their Oral care products.

19

Content Strategy on Facebook

As the products of Vicco are ayurvedic and natural, the content strategy is also themed

around nature and its benefits with the usage of a hashtag #GoNatural. Wherever possible

brand very cleverly tries to use general and searched hashtags relevant to their posts like

#natural, #BeAwesome, #BeOriginal, #monsoons, #umbrella, #HappyMonday etc.

Vicco runs a series of post with their hashtag #Viccology through which they showcase benefits of ayurvedic ingredients used in their products.

In last one month voice generation on Facebook was done by stakeholders through 7933 posts, i.e 96.7 % out of all and remaining 3.3 % was through brand’s 269 posts. This is very uneven distribution of voice.

20

In an attempt to post content which can engage people and increase interaction level on page brand publishes some puzzles related to the product. It is an intelligent way to advertise product as well as engage people with the product.

21

Strangely display picture of brand is not the logo or any product, it is of a beautiful smiling woman. This gives a wrong impression that the page belongs to women oriented product and clearly does not gives an insight about the brand.

Despite of all the efforts posts receives less interaction and thereby reducing engagement score on page. May be the brand needs to rework their content and communication strategy with an effort for collaborative agenda to gain more followers and make it a unisex brand. One noticeable and appreciating effort by the brand is that they try to initiate a conversation with people who engage with posts either through like or comment. This adds to their engagement score and it is a great way for customer service.

22

VICCO on Twitter

Twitter is only used to increase digital footprints and it is not leveraged the way it is meant to be. Facebook page of Vicco is linked to their Twitter account @Vicco_Labs, each and every post published on Facebook automatically gets tweeted through their twitter handle with a fb link attached to it.

Brand takes no initiative to communicate with followers on Twitter and indulge in conversation with them. It looks like twitter account is not of their concern and the brand resorts to an easy route to manage both the platforms. Vicco has only 31 followers on twitter which is almost negligible for any brand if they want to make presence felt digitally.

23

Online Buzz

Service Feedback

As Facebook is an important social networking platform for Vicco where most of the activity is done, maximum online buzz about the brand comes from Social Networks. Surprisingly 91. 7% mentions happen through Social Networks and as less as only 7.5% mentions occur through microblogs like Twitter. It is justified as there is almost no activity done by brand on this platform. This huge difference is justified as every tweet by their twitter accounts brings back to Facebook, thereby increasing traffic on their Facebook page. Blog mentions are negligible.

Vicco is majorly active only on Social Networks especially Facebook therefore out of all the posts, 7495 posts i.e. 91.2 % were published across Social Network. Another important platform is microblogs where 614 posts accounting for 7.5% are posted. Rest all the other platforms are negligible.

24

Sentiment

Conclusion

Although Vicco recently joined digital world yet it managed to garner positive sentiments for itself. 70.7% of users have positive sentiment about the brand and only 29.3 % of them have negative sentiment. This positive sentiment shows that although they have small follower base the existing ones have trust in brand’s offerings. This may be because brand highlights the hidden benefits of their products and tries to maintain transparency in terms of their product offerings. The dedicated efforts done to interact with followers adds to positive sentiments.

Vicco is a non-cosmetic ayurvedic brand therefore all its branding and advertising is based on it, highlighting a natural and healthy approach through their communication. Brand tries to personally suggest and guide followers to use natural products this is the reason why branding and advertising itself has 84.3 % positive sentiments. Another feature for positive sentiment is pricing, but it plays negative role when compared to branding and advertising.

Vicco provides unisex oral care products still its follower base includes more of males than females. The communication strategy used by the brand is in line with product but it is not channelized. There is an urgent need for a focused and state-of-the-art campaign strategy to bring in more followers and engagement on the page. Monitoring their activities on different platforms can help them in utilizing the platforms to the best of their potential.

25

Comparative Analysis of

After analyzing brands individually here is the comparison of these brands on few parameters like number of posts, sentiments, features distribution and mentions.

Oral Care Industry offers products which are unisexual and are targeted neutrally to both the genders. There is an almost equal gender distribution in the industry but a few brands individually have more of male followers.

Oral Care Brands

26

Number of Posts

Source of Posts

All the brands are irregular in posting content on their social profiles but amongst all the frequency of content posts from Vicco are relatively high, this can be attributed to their new hashtags #GoNatural and #Viccology. Pepsodent is absent on social media since mid May and thus contributed zero posts in studied time frame. Colgate manages average content posting. Vicco’s number of posts, 177 was the highest amongst the three brands.

The various sources of post are social networks, microblogs, blogs, news, reviews, complaints etc. Social Networks are major contributor for almost all the brands but for Colgate highest number of mentions occurs through Microblogs. Colgate received 59.2% mentions from microblogs. On the other hand, Vicco and Pepsodent received 91.4% and 56.4% of mentions from Facebook respectively.

27

Surprisingly not even a single brand studied above believes in using Twitter as their prime social media platform to showcase their products and to connect with their prospective customers.

Most brands receive mentions and positive sentiment because of Branding and Advertising. Vicco leads the chart of mentions about branding and advertising by 98.8%. This list is followed by Colgate by 87.1%mentions for the same feature. In case of Pepsodent it receives approximately 26.1% of mentions for Pricing.

Most brands manage to get positive sentiment across digital platform, mainly because of their branding and advertising. The idea of content plan themed around nature and family adds an emotional touch to the approach but what these brands need is a revamp in approach and retargeting. Irrespective of the fact that

Pepsodent is absent on social media for longer period it still manages to get 92.2% positivity. The reason for the same can be attributed to product’s performance. Colgate and Vicco have negative sentiment in the range of 20-30%, which can be reduced easily.

In terms of customer service, Pepsodent and Vicco replies to all the participants engaging with quizzes and other similar activities on page but Colgate rarely replies to any on the comment. It is necessary that brands involve in one-to one communication with followers as this add a personal touch to the relationship and rises engagement score of the page.

Features Distribution

Sentiment

28

Three brands studied earlier – Colgate, Pepsodent and Vicco, all have distinctive content strategy but since the products are family oriented, and their communication strategy is themed around family and nature. There is a thin line to differentiate the approachamongst three of them. Usage of Social media is new for Oral Care industry and most of them made their debut recently, therefore there lay an opportunity for this sector to uncover the benefits of having social presence. Brands need to understand that socially active profiles of them can indirectly lead to generation of brand advocates and prospective customers. The Oral Care sector being a sub part of FMCG sector holds the potential to artistically device a content plan which captivates the audience and engages them with the brand. Current content strategy of brands involves less of innovative posts to interact with fans and followers.

Colgate is active on Twitter but is not leveraging the medium to the max of its potential. Therefore despite of the fact that most mentions of Colgate take place because of their twitter activity the overall engagement for the brand is really low, which suggest that they can still tap on lot more followers. Vicco is a recent entrant to social media and therefore it makes honest effort to garner more followers but the approach used by them is not up to the mark, the brand really needs to buckle up and work hard to refine their strategy. Pepsodent lags behind in the race for Oral Care Brands on Social Media. The Brand is not present on twitter at all and is inactive on Facebook from past 1 month. This kind of approach can eventually lead to fall in trust bestowed on Pepsodent by their customers thereby losing them. They really need to rework on their communication plan and practice regular consistency in content.

These brands should start monitoring and analyzing their activity on Social Media, and they will definitely realize their short comings and which might help them in devising focused and impactful campaigns which make greater impression on brand’s profile.

Conclusion

29

A

PUBLICATION

ANALYTICS POWERED BY

www.SocialSamosa.comBlog I Jobs I Pro I School I Lists I Ask