I recently did a social media scan on a certain product and its competitors. Its standard procedure now isn’t it, especially for a pitch situation, which this was.

Often scans like this – looking at the noise around the category, the brand, and key competitors – simply reaffirm what you already intuitively know through more formal research. But you do your homework, and glean what insights you can, and feed them into your strategic process to come up with a compelling strategy for your pitch.  But this scan was different.

What people don't say can speak volumes.

Using our scanning tool (Radian6), I looked at the brand we were pitching for, as well as a set of competitive brands.  The results for one of the competitors – the one the client was most concerned about – was astounding to me. There was not one single attitude or emotion noticeably associated with the SM posts about the brand. Furthermore, the conversation cloud was pretty much a wall of words in the same small black font. Nothing stood out in what is a very emotional category. Nothing. My initial thought was, “Wow. This brand is dead! It’s a commodity!”

The insight was further proof to our team that the client was in fact worried about the wrong competitor. We went on to pitch an idea that enabled the client to reshape the market, rather than to merely play by the rules of the current market dynamics. The result: fantastic feedback in pitch and an invite to the next round.

As you can tell, I can’t reveal details or the names of the brands. I wish I could. Given the amount of advertising the competitor does, you’d be amazed by how little brand engagement there is. But its proof of the power of the insight that social media scans can provide.

At the very least, it just goes to show that what your customers aren’t saying is just as important as what they are saying.

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