Bluefin Harvard Case Study

Name: Jay Zinzuwadia

Student number: 1002631538

Course: Global Marketing

Date: January 30, 2017

Bluefin Harvard case study

This is an evaluation type of case and the analysis being done will revolve around the acquisition of twitter and Bluefin Labs. The benefits of the acquisition and different alternative for Bluefin labs will be also provided prior to the merger. A key concept called “social TV viewing” will be discovered through the case analysis. This concept will lay out the principles of how companies use it for their benefit.

People use social media platforms such as twitter to communicate with their friends and other viewers who are unknown to them though shows. They do it in order to feel part of the program as well as get other insights from other viewers who may have different points of analysis. It is also exciting to engage in such online conversations. Individuals have taken to social TV to feel part of a larger community of other individuals with similar interests.

Participation in social TV is widespread in the US. The conversations in social media are not representative of TV viewership since the viewers who tweet about TV shows fall into classes based on age and their activity when using social media. This relationship is crucial to TV networks since it calls for a correlation between a TV show and a brand or correlation between two TV shows in order to justify the spending on social media by companies. The conversations are highly valuable to media buyers since social media is experiencing growing numbers hence their attitudes, interests and opinions about brands advertised on social media will shape the positioning of that brand in the market. Brand marketers will also need the information since national ads that are tracked indicate brand mentions out of an advert, negativity and positivity in the sentiments and the improvement in mentions when an advert is placed in particular programs. Brand marketers can also use the information for advertising interpretation whereby the message communicated by the same ad is different depending on the program it is aired in.

Dave recognized that Bluefin’s system is a deep dive since it collected data from much larger samples than that provided by the panel. In addition, the high numbers from social media were more reliable since they had been collected from monitoring to a larger degree than that done by a network. The other factor is that TV viewers would comment on a program though very few would comment on adverts aired during the program. However, Bluefin’s system had the capability to supply a big sample of such data as opposed to Nielsen’s ratings.

Twitter bought Bluefin in order to use its analytics software to make it possible for advertisers to display their content on TV. It plans to capitalize on this space and create a strong niche. Twitter can use Bluefin’s capabilities for TV ratings in determining the amount of chatter, amplification on specific TV shows and earned media. This information can then be sold to TV companies who can then shape their TV shows accordingly. The other use is provision of clients with consumer sentiment. Bluefin has an edge in this area since it tracks real time reactions of consumers to TV content based on their tweets. Affinity software can then be used to report consumer sentiment to advertised brands. It was a sound decision to shut down product suite sales since Twitter will develop another revenue source since corporations will be in a position to purchase audience’ responses from twitter. They will get the value in terms of affinities between lifestyles and brands hence Twitter’s profits will grow as well as stabilizing Bluefin in a market that will grow exponentially in the coming years. We have seen that so far, Bluefin has lots of capabilities and now Twitter is going to use them to gain a competitive edge in the market. The main plan that twitter has is for them to use Bluefin’s data in order to gain sales on their advertisements. The decision will therefore result in success for both entities.
Conclusion: 
Twitter’s merger with Bluefin will go a long way in helping them earn profits for Twitter. It is Evident in the case that Bluefin’s data sifting software is differentiated from other competitors, and Bluefin can use that to their advantage by collecting data for twitter and getting them more advertisements to the right people. The merger between the two companies will give Bluefin and Twitter fruitful rewards in the long run since Twitter is already well established and Bluefin in a rapid growing market. Together Bluefin and Twitter can make a great team as well as generate profits on each side.