Every major brand generates petabytes of data in the marketplace from media stories and social media conversations. Specifically, this data tsunami comes from the mobile connected consumer in the form of media mentions, social shares or publicly expressed sentiment. Unfortunately, most CCOs are challenged to leverage this data when it matters most:  Countering a digitally-fuelled crisis, engaging vocal  influencers or understanding the issues driving public opinion. As the CCO’s role is elevated in the C-Suite, forward-thinking leaders are centralizing their function and harnessing the power of media intelligence to drive business transformation, understand changing consumer sentiment and build brand reputation.

The market recognizes the tremendous benefits from moving to a centralized model. According to consulting firm McKinsey & Company: “As social technologies mature and organizations become convinced of their power, we believe they will take on a broader role: informing competitive strategy throughout the organization…creating reports for internal company “clients” often “siloed” by function or business unit.”

How can Chief Communications Officers benefit from adopting a centralized media intelligence platform?

Faster Response Time

CCOs and enterprises that leverage a consolidated model benefit from a unified view of their media environment by quickly spotting stories, trends and issues before they break. Where siloed social listening might reveal part of the picture, a centralized structure shows where a story started across the media spectrum and its spread. This insight helps decision-makers identify the most effective response – with the speed and agility to protect brand reputation.

Comprehensive and Standardized Reporting

With centralization, reporting can easily be shared across the enterprise spanning the marketing, communications, public affairs, executive teams and beyond. Media insights covering the full media spectrum can be shared in a concise, actionable reports and used to highlight key findings such as current issues, competitive news, consumer perceptions or marketplace trends. With standardized reports and templates, teams are empowered with consistent information and can take action with confidence in the data.

Reduced Complexity and Streamlined Workflows

Today, many teams leverage siloed toolsets to monitor media and social activity. Rather than implementing an array of toolsets for each separate department, a unified structure creates internal efficiencies.  Through centralization — combining all data sources and required functions — can be used across multiple departments. With a complete view of the data landscape, collaborative reporting, and powerful analytics, enterprises can immediately identify and resolve issues or inefficiencies in their day-to-day workflows. Shared insights from comprehensive media intelligence creates a common mission across the organization and ultimately results in more efficient decision-making.

Strategic Alignment

Centralizing media and social intelligence removes redundancies while also improving the clarity of the enterprise’s public voice. Internally, this structure creates strategic alignment and agreement on the direction of the business. If all departments are tapping into the same source of the truth for media and social intelligence, there will be opportunities to work across departments, share expertise, and communicate more effectively.

For example, an organization can track how a particular event — like a significant M&A deal — is simultaneously performing both social and traditional media and leverage that insight to inform their internal decision-making as well as their future messaging. Centralized, data-driven strategies are transforming how leaders and cross-functional teams frame a problem and inform decision-making, allowing them to rely upon objective data. As such, the centralized infrastructure, data, technologies and workflows from media intelligence can be applied to the broader organization. Data, when applied strategically across the enterprise, can result in much needed change and have a tremendous impact on the company’s bottom line.

 

The benefits of a centralized approach to media intelligence affect more than just the communications department. The consolidated set of metrics gives the C-Suite a greater understanding of brand perception — which leads to a greater level of trust being placed in CCOs.

If you would like to learn more about how communications departments can benefit from a centralized media intelligence platform, download our whitepaper: “The Mission Control Mandate for Today’s Chief Communications Officer.”