CASE STUDY

How Grünenthal Supports Its Employees to Create Personal
Brands & Generate New Business

Summary

As a global leader in pain management and related diseases, Grünenthal is passionate about innovation. The science-based, privately-owned pharmaceutical company has a strong track record of bringing the latest treatments and state-of-the-art technologies to people living with pain worldwide.

It was this mindset and innovative thinking that led the company to look for a solution to help educate employees about what to share across social channels for real impact – in essence, guiding their employees on how to create personal branding and develop their professional reputation within the industry.

However, the company quickly realized that with employees at differing levels of social confidence and education, an approach beyond the existing process would be required to succeed. Grünenthal identified DSMN8 as the perfect partner, introducing the technology across departments, and achieving leadership buy-in.

The impact? A more socially active workforce, increased professional reputation, stronger client relationships, and a leading source of new business, enabling employee-driven growth!

Founded in 1946, Grünenthal (formerly Chemie Grünenthal) is a global pharmaceutical company headquartered in Aachen, Germany, and has been continuously family-owned since its formation.

The company focuses on the treatment of pain and carrying out research and development in this field, generating more than 50% of revenue from its pain medications. With over 4,900 employees split across 30 offices in Germany, Europe, Latin America, United States, and China. The company sells products in over 100 countries and generated sales of 1.3billion Euros in 2018. The organization’s purpose is to change lives for the better and work towards a world free of pain.

Client

Grünenthal

Headquarters

Aachen, Germany

Company Size

4,900 Employees

The challenge

Grünenthal employees were sharing content across social channels, but guidance was needed around what was the right content to share. However, after introducing a new direction and a basic approach, feedback from employees was that they then felt too restricted and that a different, more technologically advanced solution was needed. Having identified employee advocacy platforms early on, the Grünenthal marketing team wondered if this would help solve the challenge by educating, motivating, and incentivizing employees to develop their professional networks further.

There was a need to centralize the activity, provide clarity, and remove the level of effort required by employees to participate. However, having encountered challenges previously with the activity, any new solution needed to succeed to avoid losing employee willingness for good.

The challenge was set. How could Grünenthal succeed in empowering their employees to become even better professionals and drive business reputation?

The solution

Grünenthal identified DSMN8 as the ideal platform, due to its ease of use and innovative features. Initially launching a pilot program as proof of concept to the wider business and generating initial excitement and interest amongst employees.

Grünenthal’s most significant objective was to educate and support employees about what could be shared across social channels without restricting participation. The organization positioned the program as an optional activity for employees and a benefit that would help position employees as better professionals with increasingly active social networks. The program focused on localized content, curating from sources including company websites, press industry news, and influential third-party partners. 

Key Fact: Typically, less than 2% of employees share employer-related content across their social channels.

The key elements behind the success of the Grünenthal’s employee influencer program are:

1. Leadership Buy-in & Participation
2. Authentic and Unique Content
3. Segmentation 
4. Gamification and Leaderboards

Leadership Buy-In & Participation
One of the critical elements of the Grünenthal program was to engage key senior stakeholders and ensure they became evangelists, encouraging wider adoption from the rest of the organization. Leading by example and driving even further interest and participation. 

Key Fact: Engaging senior leadership as part of the program increased active users by over 60%.

As a user, this system gives me the security of being active in social media without taking risks. It is a platform aligned with our corporate policy that improves the position of the Company in social media, but also mine. Definitely, it is a win-win project!

Juan QuintanaCommunications Director

Authentic and Unique Content
DSMN8’s platform allowed Grünenthal users the option to include variations of imagery and copy for each piece of content shared. Which ensured employee feeds looked authentic and original, removing duplication and any audience frustration with seeing duplicated content across employee feeds. Providing Grünenthal with a unique solution for scaling the syndication of content across multiple employee profiles and markets.

Key Fact: Adding just 5 alternative options for images, post text, and preview title creates 125 unique content previews.

Segmentation
DSMN8’s inbuilt segmentation capabilities were an essential requirement for the Grünenthal program. Allowing the organization to curate and serve relevant content specific to each employee’s needs and interests.

Key Fact: Segmentation ensured 77% of Grünenthal users are active users within the program. 

Grünenthal Employee Advocacy with DSMN8

Gamification and Leaderboards
Another element that helped drive the effectiveness of the program was DSMN8’s gamification and leaderboards module. Grünenthal was able to tap into the power of competitive employees keen to rank higher in the team tables through a points-based engagement system. Driven by the support and adoption of key senior leadership, particularly across the sales teams.

Key Fact: Launching gamification improved user engagement by over 3X.

The results

Since introducing the DSMN8 platform, Grünenthal is now influencing as a company on social at scale with hard to reach prospects now coming directly to them and becoming customers through improved reputations, relationships, and third party endorsement.

The activity has been centralized and streamlined, becoming clearer than ever before for employees.

Qualitative feedback is also received regularly praising individual employees across several departments for their expertise, knowledge, and pro-activity across social. Grünenthal’s voices are being heard, with more employees sharing content regularly and company reputation increasing as a result.

The organization has helped employees to share the right thing and get real business impact!

The impact

In addition to 86% of users being active users in 2019. On average, the program generates the following results each month:

1,700
Avg. items of content shared
7,496
Content clicks
56.7
Shares per content added
£0.11
Comparative cost per click

With DSMN8, we can put 'approved social content' in the hands of our employees, allowing them to add value to their customers while increasing their personal brand and the company image as a whole.

Antonio IbarraOmnichannel Manager

Learn more

Interested to see how you could help your employees become active social influencers like Grünenthal and super-charge your content efforts?

We help brands empower their employees to Curate, Create and Share on-brand content. Your employees will have access to both a desktop and mobile application where they can effortlessly share your content across social, messenger, email and SMS, boosting your organic reach while keeping them up to date with company news and industry trends.

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