Our social media sentiment analytics platform, PUMP, is being used extensively by traders, investors, fund managers, and analysts to track and evaluate cryptocurrencies, stocks, commodities, and other financial assets. However, social sentiment analysis has another critical use case – corporate brand and reputation management.
Social Media as a Driver of Brand Perceptions
Social media has long been a key driver of brand perceptions for corporate brands and sub-brands. In the earlier days of social media, more than a decade ago, it was consumer-centric industries and brands, such as Nike, Apple, or Guess, whose reputation and brand perceptions depended on social media sentiment to a large degree.
By now, social media forms and drives brand image and reputation not only for mass consumer industries. B2B brands, luxury segment brands, banks, and even utility providers are highly dependent on their brand-specific social media sentiment.
This was clearly demonstrated in the last couple of months with the failure of several banking institutions. The first bank to collapse, Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB) was far from a business serving mass consumers. Specialsing in providing finance to Silicon Valley startups, the aptly named Silicon Valley Bank was a classic B2B oriented entity.
Yet, social media, primarily Twitter, turned out to be critical in stirring up negative sentiment that led to a bank run on SIVB. As we are all aware, the bank run proved fatal for the company. Had the bank’s brand custodians monitored social media sentiment developments closely and started this activity well before the bank’s reputational troubles started, they could have reacted better and possibly even saved the business. Many analysts do believe that it was the massive negative sentiment rather than the actual balance sheet weakness that put an end to SIVB. SIVB wasn’t among the healthiest businesses from a financial perspective. However, arguably, it was the social sentiment driven to extreme negatives that served as the bank’s death warrant.
Reputation-Sensitive Corporate Brands: The Case of LVMH
Banks aren’t the only businesses that can benefit from social media sentiment monitoring and management. A key use case for PUMP and social sentiment tracking exists within an industry that relies on reputation and word-of-mouth more than perhaps any other – luxury goods.
Walking around Paris’ upscale Le Bon Marché department store, you can feel the opulence radiated by the many luxury brands here. Among the exclusive brands presented in the famous store, quite a few belong to the world’s top luxury corporation – LVMH. Operating an empire of no less than 75 brands, LVMH is a classic example of a business highly dependent on brand reputation.
While each sub-brand of the LVMH family, which includes names like Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Fendi, or Hennessy, maintains and actively develops its own branding, the reputation of the parent LVMH super-brand is perhaps even more critical. Consumers might focus on Fendi or Hennessy, but investors contemplating LVMH stock will undoubtedly follow the super-brand more.
How PUMP Can Help Brands Like LVMH
Brands like LVMH can benefit immensely from PUMP’s ability to closely track in real-time social media sentiment and signals related to their stock. PUMP has the unmatched ability to monitor asset-specific social sentiment across six different social media platforms.
Managing a diverse multi-brand empire, corporate super-brands like LVMH need the ability to monitor social media without getting lost in the forest of each sub-brand’s social signals. This is where PUMP, with its focus on stock market based asset monitoring, comes into the picture.
Using advanced NLP models, PUMP measures social sentiment among a critical segment – investors. While many consumer brands are tracking their social sentiment, corporate super-brands now have the opportunity to do the same. In 2023, monitoring your brand reputation among investors and traders has become as critical as doing so among consumers!