September 19, 2012
By Judith Aquino,

Mass Relevance Unveils The Product Studio

Mass Relevance, a company that helps clients such as Victoria's Secret and Pepsi enhance and curate their social media content, today released a self-service tool, The Product Studio, to enable marketers to quickly create opportunities for customers to interact with brands through social media.

Noting that it has become common for people to watch television while also browsing the Internet or checking emails on a tablet or smartphone, Mass Relevance CEO Sam Decker told CRM magazine that interactive social media offerings can be a way for brands to keep their audience's attention.

"Companies are starting to understand that social media can be an effective tool for engaging their customers, but as I learned [as founding chief marketing officer] at Bazaarvoice, conversations are constantly changing…brands and companies need to be able to offer relevant and engaging experiences as quickly as possible," Decker comments.

The Product Studio offers more than 30 social data–based features for users to choose from, such as an interactive photo wall, social leaderboards, Twitter Q&As, and polls that are based on social voting. Users can choose from a series of templates and settings to customize each feature.

Fox Sports, the first client to use The Product Studio, used the platform to create a Twitter Q&A during the Olympics for the U.S. women's soccer gold medal match. It took less than 24 hours to create and launch the Q&A, which proved to be a "tremendous attraction," according to Rick Jaffe, senior vice president at Fox Sports.

"Fans crave instantaneous information," noted Jaffe in a statement. "We look forward to rolling this out with other sports and finding new ways to integrate social media into the FoxSports.com experience."

Programs such as American Idol, X Factor, and The Voice use Mass Relevance tools to show television viewers what people are saying on Twitter about the performances in real time. Facebook and CNN are them to power an Election Insights heat map.

As more marketers and agencies experiment with social media, companies are getting better at how they integrate social media with other channels, Decker maintains. "Customers expect a seamless experience when interacting with a brand," he notes. "So it is crucial that companies get it right."