A case study on how ASUS took advantage of social listening to profile consumers and optimize the launch of a new smartphone.

Online sources and social media are extremely important for gaining insights into consumer opinions, desires, expectations, and needs. Additionally, they extend beyond the limitations of traditional market research with larger sample sizes and candid discussions. These insights are incredibly useful when looking to penetrate highly competitive markets like the smartphone industry. User conversations can be used to evaluate interest in new products and to support marketing campaigns with real-time data on the reactions of the target audience.

The following case study explores ASUS’s use of these social intelligence strategies to support the launch of their ZenFone Zoom S.

The Brand

ASUS is a multinational phone and computer hardware company founded in 1989. In both 2015 and 2016, Fortune ranked ASUS as one of the most valuable companies across the globe. The brand is ranked as a top brand in the gaming industry and as a top 3 laptop manufacturer. However, increasing competition in their market led the brand to reevaluate its development and promotional models.

The Business Challenge

ASUS quickly understood the value of social intelligence in creating a competitive advantage when properly leveraged and became a Digimind client. Upon employing Digimind’s social intelligence tool, they outlined a business challenge to overcome:

Generate customer insights for informed product development and launch campaigns supported by real-time social data.

The Project

To ensure their product was meeting consumer needs, ASUS monitored prospect and customer conversations with Digimind Social. The specific guidelines for the monitoring project were as follows:

• Understand current perceptions of products already on the market
• Determine the most highly valued product features for consumers of all degrees of product knowledge
• Understand market trends and customer expectations
• Define the priority projects for the R & D team

Following product launch, the brand planned its communications strategies upon analysis of relevant conversations, their sentiment, and the perceptions of the most active and influential social media users in order to increase sales among the target market.

The newfound insights enabled ASUS to do the following:

• Penetrate new markets by applying the social marketing and influencer strategies
• Amplify discussion of the brand and its products
• Identify relevant trends and audiences for informing communications strategies

A brand sentiment analysis by volume of mention, via Digimind Social.

Design and Launch

By monitoring customer conversations across social media, ASUS determined that camera quality and battery life were the most highly valued product features among their target audience. With this in mind, the Zenfone Zoom was designed, featuring a two lense rear camera (the first for the Zenfone series) and a 5000mAh battery.

ASUS simultaneously launched a product campaign focusing on these key features with the tagline “catching every important moment.” To further emphasize the camera’s features, ASUS launched an advertising campaign in which professional photographers discussed the phone’s ability to take high-quality photos.

This case is a perfect example of data-driven campaign strategy. That is, extracting insights from big data in order to analyze, model, and evaluate business actions in the long term.