2017 Silver Anvil Winner Case Study: Exposing the Privacy Predicament
In a world of constant competition, Syniverse needed a way to elevate its brand among senior decision-making executives within its target customer base of mobile operators and brands in the retail, finance, and travel and hospitality spaces.
Challenged to undertake a global brand elevation campaign to position the company as the industry expert on mobile, Syniverse undertook an in-depth “whitespace” audit to determine which key industry conversations were missing from the agendas of senior leaders among its target customers, competitors and trade organizations.
After conducting the whitespace research via content analyses of trade media and analyst reports, Syniverse learned that 57 percent of consumers were worried about privacy, yet the subject was not being addressed by the mobile industry. The lack of emphasis presented a brand elevation opportunity for Syniverse to become the authoritative source on the topic of privacy by offering unique industry insight not provided elsewhere.
Syniverse commissioned multinational primary research to uncover consumers’ attitudes toward exchanging personal data for the opportunity to receive personalized services on their mobile device from brands and operators. The company engaged On Device Research to conduct a survey of 8,000 consumers across eight countries with high penetrations of mobile users: U.K., USA, Brazil, India, China, South Korea, Germany and France.
Research revealed that trust in brands and operators to safeguard consumers’ information has fallen among 50% of consumers in the last three years; now more than 70% don’t trust brands and mobile operators with their data.
In early 2016, the Syniverse PR team analyzed data and used the results to create a case for operators and brands to take consumer concerns around privacy and security seriously, and rethink their approaches to harvesting, managing and using personal data.
The proprietary research gave Syniverse, the ‘right to speak’ on behalf of consumers, and positioned Syniverse as an innovative, visionary thought leader on the issue of privacy to teach brands and operators how to address the ‘privacy predicament’ they face.
Syniverse also gauged consumer perceptions in relation to offers coming from each of its target brand verticals within retail, finance, and travel and hospitality. The untold privacy story easily fit within Syniverse’s strategic wheelhouse of services and expertise since its solutions enable companies to leverage consumer data to deliver personalized services and information to mobile devices.
These personalized services depend on people’s willingness to share private information, so Syniverse set out to position the company as the industry expert on the evolving relationship between consumers, brands, operators and the exchange of personal data.
Syniverse decided to launch the campaign at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona because it’s one of the world’s largest tradeshows and is made up of Syniverse’s target group of senior executives from mobile operators and brands that make purchasing decisions based on interactions and relationships from the event. The campaign called for a more transparent approach to personalization, control for consumers and guaranteeing security.
Research showed that reliance on big data for personalization must be tempered with consumer willingness to share their personal details – thus forming the ‘privacy predicament.’
Syniverse followed an integrated marketing strategy consisting of paid, earned, owned and social tactics to create a range of influence across operator and brand target audiences.
The company built a Syniverse-branded pavilion to host meetings with key customers, media and analysts, and secured onstage keynote opportunity for its CMO to share privacy research results at MWC among C-level executives. It also prearranged 20 media and analyst briefings and news coverage via embargoed media release and pitches; and organized an informal media dinner with those pre-registered for MWC to further build relationships with pre-selected influencers.
Research insights were amplified via social media channels, using a variety of videos, graphics and data. A press release and downloadable research summary report were created, as was a “Mobile Trust Expertise” webpage. Additional tactics include an email campaign of the research findings targeted toward Syniverse’s brand and operator customers, and a ‘Bridging the Trust Gap with Mobile’ webinar to further help customers understand the significance of the privacy report.
Results included:
- Syniverse’s CMO spoke about the privacy predicament onstage at MWC alongside executives from Google and Bank of America to an audience of more than 600 operators and brands.
- Syniverse gained over 3,000 total unique views across all of its content designed to elevate its thought leadership and to educate the industry. This included 69 downloads of the privacy research report; 45 attendees on the ‘Bridging the Trust Gap’ webinar; 188 video views; 5 blog posts published, with a combined total of 591 page views; and 2,146 unique page views on the ‘Mobile Trust’ webpage.
- The news release and interviews garnered 2,501 mentions of Syniverse’s privacy story and 93 editorial articles in such publications as VentureBeat and Advertising Age.
- The stats, prominent media stories, infographics, videos, etc. led to high rates of social media users commenting on, sharing, and liking Syniverse’s content, which led to more than 160% total engagement growth across Facebook (2.92%), Twitter (23.3%), and LinkedIn (142.8%).
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