B2B - Seca - grp9 - Maersk Line B2B Social Media

Group 9: Sushmeeta Das (M048-18) | Divyani (M017-18) | Desai Pushya Hemal (M083-18) | Raval Rahul Nitin
(M169-18) | K Vinod Kumar (M094-18) | Rishi Prakash Misra (M172-18) |

Maersk Line: B2B Social Media
Case Problem
Nina Skyum-Nielsen, as the new head of social media for Maersk Line, the largest shipping container
company in the world, has to decide how she can expand the use of social media, and use a budget of
$250,000 to leverage the power of Integrated Marketing Communications across various social platforms
to enhance the company’s push, pull, and reputation management strategies.
About Maersk Line
It is the world’s largest container shipping company, with 15 to 17% market share worldwide. It
transported manufactured goods, perishable commodities and everything that required freight. The
shipping vessels made approximately 70,000 port calls annually to its 100,000 customers – all businesses.
Case Scenario
Nielsen’s predecessor, Wichmann has not only launched social media in the marketing plan of the
company but he has successfully leveraged it to reach out and communicate to customers, increase brand
visibility, attract awareness and responsibility among employees, and create a buzz as a whole. Wichmann
has used a bare minimum fund of $100,000 and generated over 1000,000 fans on Facebook, 40,000
followers on Twitter, 22,000 on Instagram. He has also successfully marked Maersk’s presence on LinkedIn,
Google +, Pintrest, etc., and created a social media home base called Maersk Line Social, that published
articles and stories about the company.
Social Media Strategy
Wichmann believed that Social media is more about communication than marketing. It is more about
engaging and not pushing. Main emphasis was laid on four areas:
1. Communication
2. Customer Service
3. Sales
4. Internal Usage
Mission: Get closer to Customers, in spite of being a conservative industry.
Social Media Channels
The channels were divided into 4 segments, namely – Fans, Customers, Employees, and Experts. The
various channels used were as follows:
1. Facebook: It all started with Facebook. It was mainly fan based and was used to create a buzz and
initially 25000 employees of the company helped to achieve virality. The huge archive of photos
helped in storytelling and transforming an otherwise boring industry to an interesting one. Apart
from posts, user polls were also taken to identify number of customers from among 100000
followers.
2. Twitter: It was mainly about sharing various news related to the industry and the company with the
purpose of interacting publicly with stakeholders and humanizing the brand. This network was
more influential and contained shipping professionals, customers, and employees.
3. Instagram: Leveraging the hashtag trend, #maersk was used to enhance brand recognition and
engagement. To keep products and services on top-of-mind and talk-of-town.
Group 9: Sushmeeta Das (M048-18) | Divyani (M017-18) | Desai Pushya Hemal (M083-18) | Raval Rahul Nitin
(M169-18) | K Vinod Kumar (M094-18) | Rishi Prakash Misra (M172-18) |
4. LinkedIn: the most corporate network, it was used to directly engage with only customers and not
fans or followers. Specific industry related content, videos, and article was posted for customer
referral purposes.
5. Google+: It was more professional compared to LinkedIn. It was used for candid discussions around
innovations. If LinkedIn was for customer communication and collaboration, Google+ was for
innovation, leadership, and business.
6. YouTube: It was used as a video library to consolidate most of the content on a common platform
for creating synergy across business units.
Challenges
There was a perception that social media won’t work as the industry was perceived as boring. Also there
was struggle in using Google + and Pintrest
Recommendations:
B2B online communities have begun to grow, these contain content that can be used as collaboration
opportunities around shared business experiences.
Neilsen should go ahead with the budget of $250,000 and create a dedicated cross-functional social media
team as per Wichmann’s recommendations. If at 2013, with $100,000 Wichmann can penetrate this
further into social media, given the present budget a lot can be done.
She should now focus on creating integrated marketing communications by looping all the various
channels amongst themselves. The 3 fold IMC mix can be used as the objective, I,e,,
1. To create awareness and build confidence in product and service offerings
2. To generate demand
3. To build customer advocates to gain new clients
Various promotional tactics can be applied using the various channels, like the following:
 LinkedIn can be used to track emails, and contact details of key prospects, generate leads and
contact them as a part of direct selling
 Linked In in-mails can be written to pitch customers about their products and services
 Email marketing can be used for promptly and accurately communicating with customers
 Google+ can be used to identify recent innovations and trends in industry and accordingly tailor
products and services
 YouTube and Instagram Vloggers and Bloggers can be used to broaden the circle of customers
In order to leverage all these a dedicated cross-functional team of social media enthusiasts is necessary,
who could extract the bottom-line benefits from the social media assets. There can be global as well as
local social media channels and a B2B community manager for each of these channels. These channels has
to work as an ecosystem along with sales and marketing events. Just like Facebook and Instagram can give
an uplift to brand recognition and building buzz around an event, LinkedIn can be used to reach out to the
Key decision makers and influencers at the right time; Twitter can be used to convey event related crisp
news to various stakeholders.
Community managers also has to ensure that the local markets communicate a consistent message and
hence has to device a number of guidelines, training sessions and support functions.

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Group 9: Sushmeeta Das (M048-18) | Divyani (M017-18) | Desai Pushya Hemal (M083-18) | Raval Rahul Nitin

(M169-18) | K Vinod Kumar (M094-18) | Rishi Prakash Misra (M172-18) |

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