The importance of being social: Digital & Music Matters

For Sony Music, social media has played its part in helping the company pull through a tough decade of losing revenue, according to Ole Obermann, executive vice-president of digital partner development and sales, who added that Sony Music is optimistic about the reach of social media.

“You have a billion people on YouTube and a billion people on Facebook, and that means we have a billion people to reach out to,” Obermann said. “Back in the days there was no record store or radio station with that kind of reach.”

SingTel’s director of marketing, Miguel Bernas, recalled being shocked on his first day on the job because Facebook was blocked within the company. Today, he assured, everything SingTel does is social.

“Whether it’s a campaign or an event, we’re using social media to drive people there,” he said, adding that social media has also become a key feedback tool. SingTel has approximately 200,000 people on its Facebook page and 10,000 followers on Twitter, and Bernas has dedicated teams that track and monitor social channels. “So if you tweet in your issue, someone at SingTel support will call you within 20 minutes.”

For SingTel, this has helped it prioritise services. Last year, while upgrading base stations, the telco put out feedback forms on its Facebook page and set out to fix the areas where customers were experiencing the most network issues. “It’s really become a basis for us to prioritise and reprioritise business,” Bernas said.

James Rothwell, Google+ marketing manager for Asia Pacific, said he’s seen firsthand how 'G+' has helped music artists connect and build relationships with fans around the world. “This is particularly true of K-pop artists, who are also using Hangouts on a weekly basis to host mini concerts,” he said.

For Sony’s Obermann, social media has now begun driving promotional activities for promising bands and artists. He cited One Direction as an example. The English band had just launched its first record, and Sony Music was looking to increase its fan base in other markets. Sony launched a campaign called ‘Bring 1D to me,’ where fans in each market were given YouTube and Facebook targets to achieve, and the band travelled to the countries that achieved those targets. “We were literally using real-time data to determine which markets this band would tour,” Obermann said.