EE to switch to more ‘inspiring’ social message
EE intends to switch to a more proactive social marketing strategy aimed at “inspiring” people to upgrade to its premium service as it pursues its goal of tripling its 4G customer base by 2014.
The UK’s largest operator has primarily used its online communities as a customer support tool since the launch of its EE brand and its 4G network in the latter half of last year.
However, EE head of digital and social Ben Kay told Marketing Week it will begin to transition to a more proactive social strategy in the coming months as it aims to better articulate the benefits of upgrading to 4G.
“The customer support function is always going to be there but if we focus solely on that I think we’re missing a tremendous opportunity,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of this week’s Lithium Linc conference hosted in the US.
“What you’ll see is us generating a lot of content that will inspire people to share their experiences and interacting with our online communities is going to be a big part of that, ” added Kay.
The step-change in its strategy will involve generating high definition content that displays the potential benefits of using the superfast network, according to Kay.
The operator has taken early steps in this direction such as the creation of its “Fenton spoof video” that launched last year which has already received 4.5 million shares across multiple social networks, according to Kay.
“When 4G launched here, the operators focused simply on speed but we want to create experiences that people want to share [via their social networks],” he said.
Earlier this week EE announced that it already has 318,000 4G customers, with the operator’s CEO Olaf Swantee articulating his desire for this number to reach 1 million by the close of 2013.