Question 4: Who are some of the competitors mentioned in the RFP?

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1 Social Media Monitoring, Engagement and Measurement RFP Section 1: Questions and Answers for Interested Parties Last Updated: February 20, 2014 Question 1: Why are listening analysts/workflow accelerators referred to as Community managers? Are they expected to directly interact with consumers/publishers? The RFP is unclear. Answer 1: The community managers referenced are Brand USA employees, agents or representatives, not vendor employees who help to analyze social conversations or enable workflow. Our community managers will help to manage Brand USA s social presence in- market and will use the selected tool set to interact with consumers/publishers in language. These community managers are expected to be a growth area for Brand USA and are end uses/customers of this RFP. Question 2: Is there an expected team size? Answer 2: Brand USA currently has one global Social Media Manager who is responsible for our consumer- facing engagements, a communications manager who is responsible for public sector engagements and a research manager who is responsible for analyzing data. The RFP is written from the perspective of our anticipated growth as an organization. We will use the successful selected candidate s platform to empower our team, agents and field representatives to be able to use the tool set on our behalf. Our current plan is to operationalize agents and representatives in, at least, 10 to 14 markets over the next six to 12 months. We have aspirations of growth on a larger scale once we have the right tool set, processes and procedures in place. Question 3: Please provide the expected organization hierarchy for the roles you ve provided. Answer 3: The Community Managers report to the Social Media Manager. The Social Media Manager reports to the Director of Digital Marketing. The Director of Digital reports to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). The Global Manager of Marketing and Analytics reports to the Vice President of Research with a dotted line to the Director of Digital. The Vice President of Research reports to the CMO. The Communications Manager reports to the Director of Marketing Communications. The Director of Marketing Communications reports to the Chief Communications Officer (CCO). The CMO and CCO report to the CEO. Question 4: Who are some of the competitors mentioned in the RFP? Answer 4: Competitors vary by country of origin and may include domestic competitors. Competitors may include any major country or city destination, supplier or any other entity that markets itself to potential international travelers in source markets where Brand USA is operational. For example, when inspiring 1

2 travelers to visit the United States of America in the source market of the United Kingdom, Canada and/or the City of Toronto may be competitors. Question 5: What topics are currently listened for? How much volume do they create? This will be a key driver of pricing for several listening providers. Answer 5: This RFP is about the future aspirations of Brand USA as such the current practice is not a good benchmark for our longer- term plan. We would like vendors that use key terms as a pricing mechanism to provide ranges for the number of terms, phases, negative terms, etc. To get a benchmark for yourself use the answer to question 4 above with the below information and use your own tool with the appropriate terms to search and get a sense of the activity. If appropriate, we are open to pricing based on ranges of terms in the following buckets: </=100 key terms, >101<500, >501<1000, >1001<5000, >5001<10000, We will collaborate with successful candidates to develop a list of key terms in a future phase. We expect successful candidates to be able to anticipate or use their own tools to research and create a short list of recommended key terms, phrases, negative phrases, etc. that we should be using to focus our efforts to monitor the sentiment, posting frequency and content sharing topics and activities of International travelers considering travel to the United States. For background in our current practice, we listen for terms that impact our Consumer Brand Discover America. We listen for terms that give us insight into the types of activities and interests that motivate particular segments of travelers to select the United States of America as a travel destination and try to discern what motivates them to travel. We listen for information on travel market timing, booking windows, travel boycotts and other market- specific or cultural events that may be dictated by the season or by political or economic conditions. We listen for information regarding Brand USA s business- to- business travel trade marketing digital identity and try to discern levers we can use to better advance the organization s reputation in the digital sphere. We also monitor social conversations and posts on or around articles published in the media about the organization and its products, services, value so that we can better inform our stakeholders on the perception of the organization. Question 6: Will a portion of analytics focus on areas of emphasis for messaging and content? Areas of emphasis related to types of tourism. For example, theme parks, winter sports tourism, beaches, etc.? Answer 6: We welcome respondents to make appropriate recommendations as to how to best achieve the goals outlined and will collaborate with them to refine. Although nascent our current practice is to focus on destination content that we publish, typically at the state or city- level. It is in our plan to be able to refine our messaging by country, city, interests, and the timing for activities and events, so we can better deliver the right content at the right time to the consumer segments we wish to influence. Question 7: Does Brand USA currently practice "monitoring and response" on social media? Does Brand USA have monitoring and response guidelines in place for its social media managers, or is there a plan to develop these guidelines in the future? Answer 7: Our current practice is not a good guide for the goals of this RFP. Brand USA does have monitoring and response guidelines in place. We will share our current guidelines with successful candidates. We expect successful candidates to be able to furnish best practices to help improve our existing guidelines when viewed through the prism of this RFP. 2

3 Question 8: How Brand USA envision the monitoring tool contributing to the organization's broader business and communications goals? (Or is a positive shift in sentiment the standalone success metric?) Briefly, what are Brand USA's business and communications goals? Answer 8: Please find more information on the organization s broader business goals in our current published business plan, found here. The monitoring tool will contribute to Brand USA s goals in many ways. The positive shift in sentiment is just one indicator of success. We are looking at the monitoring tool for a way to better target content to consumers, engage with travelers interested in traveling to the USA and in essence create raving fans of the United States. We will also use this tool to monitor content about the organization in the public and the media. We want to engage with key stakeholders to communicate the value of Brand USA. Question 9: Does Brand USA intend to report on the monitoring tool's findings to executive- level and non- digital staff or will this reporting largely be kept to Brand USA's digital and social media team? Answer 9: Reporting metrics, trends and analysis derived from the monitoring tool will be reported to the Executive Suite and be part of the organization s scorecard. These metrics will be communicated to staff and to stakeholders of all varieties. Message success, key terms, reach, audience sentiment and engagement metrics will likely be among the performance indicators that will be reported. We expect to collaborate with the successful candidate to refine this as appropriate. Question 10: Does Brand USA intend to internally manage, data collect, analyze and report on the monitoring tool's findings? Will current staff handle these responsibilities as described in the RFP, or will additional analysts be hired? Answer 10: See Answer #9. As this RFP helps to build out our aspirations, the current practice is not entirely relevant. Our near term plans include using current staff to actively manage and monitor, as well as growing staff, using our agents and market representatives, as well as sharing the tool with Brand USA s various agencies. Successful candidates may articulate a rationale for using analysts that they may have on- staff as a professional service offering. Question 11: What is your current Social Media footprint? What is your frequency of publish/post? How many fans, followers do you have? How many accounts do you operate? What platforms do you use globally? What review sites do you wish to track? Answer 11: Brand USA operates more than 25 social media handles, please refer to the following section to view our complete digital footprint. Frequency varies by specific Brand USA wishes to monitor travel- specific review sites, including but not limited to global travel review sites, such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Booking.com, Google+ Places as well as market- specific travel review sites (with published APIs). Successful candidates will be able to help Brand USA to identify the top market- specific travel review sites based on market penetration, reach, engagement, viral spread, volume, influence and other relevant metrics. Question 12: Is translation of posts to markets or from markets back through your workflow a requirement or a nice to have? Will geo- location applications that do basic native language translations suffice? Answer 12: Brand USA is seeking the best solution to scale that it can afford. If respondents use geo- location applications and solutions that work with Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, these options will be considered against other more robust translation solutions based on market need, cost and effectiveness. 3

4 Section 2: Background on Brand USA s Social Media Footprint & Frequency of Publish Background: The Corporation for Travel Promotion (CTP) has two online identities in the travel marketplace: Brand USA ( and Discover America ( The CTP is doing business as the Brand USA, which is the name of the destination marketing organization for the United States. Brand USA is our industry- and stakeholder-facing name. This name, website and relevant accounts are used when dealing with government organizations, tour operators, media, partners and the like. Discover America is the consumer-facing brand that international travelers associate (or will associate) with travel to the United States. Discover America, its website and related social media accounts should be used in all consumer-facing content and communications. Brand USA Social Media Channels These social media handles and websites should be used for industry-facing content and when we are updating our constituents on products and developments. For example, these handles should be used when tagging Brand USA in B2B promotions, trade shows, FAM events, press releases etc. Website: YouTube: Tumblr: LinkedIn: Discover America Global Social Media Channels These are the handles and the website that should be used for global, consumer-facing promotions in English. Each channel should localize these promotions. Website: (see the website for country specific content) Facebook: Facebook.com/DiscoverAmerica YouTube: Pinterest: Instagram: DiscoverAmerica 4

5 Discover America Current Global Footprint for Social Media Activity Brand USA through its Discover America brand currently has localized social media efforts in the markets listed below. When involving these markets with in-language content please use the country-appropriate handles. In Language Website Facebook Page Link Twitter Handle Canada (English) Canada UK Japan Brazil South Korea Mexico Australia Germany Facebook.com/EntdeckeAmerika n/a China Sina Weibo (Chinese microblogging site/hybrid of twitter and facebook): Tencent Weibo (Chinese microblogging site): RenRen: Youku (YouTube equivalent): GoUSA Facebook (Hong Kong & Taiwan): facebook.com/gousa.official 5