Dr Pepper has a unique strength as a true passion brand. Whether it's the taste, the nostalgia, or the brand personality, our fans flat out love Dr Pepper. Our social accounts are flooded with comments about love, craving, and loyalty on a daily basis. Without having a true brick and mortar store to facilitate interactions, we realized we had a special opportunity to reach these fans and followers on a one-to-one level via social media.
Through community management, we aimed at connecting with our fans and fueling their fandom on a deeper level. We sought out strategies that would allow us to build relationships with our audience past consumption, and elevate their passion to new heights.
Our strategy is led by a dedicated team of community managers who monitor social channels throughout each day to respond to all private and public messages across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as all brand mentions across these channels. Moderation utilizes a refined social persona with clear tone of voice guidelines that allow us to take on a consistent, humanistic role. The Dr Pepper social persona makes the brand a friend, never an ad, that is relatable, flavorful, and encouraging.
Our primary focus for our community management strategy is to recognize and champion our fans on a daily basis. By responding and creating these one-to-one engagements, we aim to deepen relationships with our fans and create meaningful and personalized moments with Dr Pepper.
We look for opportunities to create large-scale, meaningful moments and recognize our fans who go above and beyond to show their brand love. These "moment making" opportunities elevate a fan's passion point and reward them in a variety of personalized ways. One way is with Dr Pepper care packages, which include product, branded swag, handwritten notes, and anything that taps into their unique Dr Pepper fandom. Throughout 2016, we had the opportunity to connect with a variety of influential users ranging from YouTube stars, A-list celebrities, musicians and sports figures. An example from this year includes an exceptional interaction with pop star, Nick Jonas, on Twitter and Snapchat.
Social moderation allows us to bring real life experiences into the digital landscape. Throughout college football, we run war room activations around key brand and football moments where brand character, Larry Culpepper, takes over the Dr Pepper Twitter account. We use Larry to engage in conversations with Dr Pepper fans, Larry fans, and general college football fans. Larry allows us to insert the brand strategically into the college football demand space. Larry comments on real-time events, supports storylines from TV, and drives campaign activation interaction through one-to-one engagements.
Customer service is another key feature of community management. Our social media channels allow consumers to easily access a team to address their questions, comments, concerns, and complaints. To manage these comments, we refer to a strategically outlined customer service process to ensure efficiency. Our team works closely with the consumer relations department at DPSG to guarantee all requests are addressed.
Our social channels also allow us to make strategic decisions during moments of crisis. We use social listening tools and channel moderation to monitor and evaluate brand conversation, which informs us if and how the brand should respond.
Dr Pepper utilizes social media for more than just another content channel. Community management is at the core of what we do and filters into many of the different creative and marketing decisions that we make. We recognize the way fans talk about Dr Pepper and use those insights to make informed decisions that weave our most passionate fans into the brand. This strategy allows us to create richer experiences for our audience in the digital landscape and in real life.
At the end of 2016, Dr Pepper owned social channels had a combined audience of over 15 million followers. Throughout the year, our team spent roughly 800 hours moderating these owned social channels and over 1 million mentions of the brand or Dr Pepper campaigns.
As we executed moment making opportunities, and connected with influential fans, we were able to reach higher engagements on related posts. For instance, the Nick Jonas interaction garnered 4.6K engagements in a matter of hours.
Our community management strategy often can't be measured with hard numbers. Through one-to-one engagements we are deepening relationships with our existing fans, growing our community, and ultimately helping to future-proof the brand.
