Effects of Traditional Advertising and Social Messages on Brand-Building Metrics and Customer Acquisition

This study examines the relative effectiveness of traditional advertising, impressions generated through firm-to-consumer (F2C) messages on Facebook, and the volume and valence of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) messages on Twitter and web forums for brand-building and customer acquisition efforts. The authors apply vector autoregressive modeling to a unique data set from a European telecom firm. This modeling approach allows them to consider the interrelations among traditional advertising, F2C impressions, and volume and valence of C2C social messages. The results show that traditional advertising is most effective for both brand building and customer acquisition. Impressions generated through F2C social messages complement traditional advertising efforts. Thus, thoroughly orchestrating traditional advertising and a firm's social media activities may improve a firm's performance with respect to building the brand and encouraging customer acquisition. Moreover, firms can stimulate the volume and valence of C2C messages through traditional advertising that in turn influences brand building and acquisition. These findings can help managers leverage the different types of messages more adequately