The Social Stock Ticker

CEOs of the world’s publicly listed companies have no time for social media. Just 3% of FTSE 100 business leaders are actively engaged in social media1, while just 2.5% of Fortune 500 chiefs are active on Twitter2. 

The businesses themselves perform rather better. Of FTSE 100 firms, 71 have an active Twitter account and half have an active Facebook account3; at Fortune 500 brands, 61% are engaging with customers via Twitter4.

That disconnect is alarming, but it becomes business critical when considered in the light of the study that finds a correlation between higher social media performance and positive movements in stock price among companies listed on the British stock exchange5. 

For today’s CEOs, the value of social media is an intangible reality. 

The Social Stock Ticker, created by SapientNitro, is designed to help. An executive tool which finds its origins in the telegraphic stock tickers of the mid-19th century, the purpose of the Social Stock Ticker is to connect today’s CEOs with the reality of their company’s social value in an ever-present and tangible way.

When the user enters a term of their choosing into the Twitter search field, the Social Media Ticker whirrs into life – printing out real-time Tweets and analysis. The analogue-meets- digital characteristic of the device serves as a highly visual and audible reminder of the always-on nature of social media, and of the power and influence that conversations can have on a brand’s performance.

The Social Stock Ticker translates digital to analogue – monitoring Twitter for key terms and printing out to ticker paper a physical measure of those brand mentions in real time. As the global stream of Tweets flows, the conversation can be picked up, quite literally, and reviewed by the metre.

As well as real-time Tweets, every hour it prints out a summary of positive and negative Tweets – semantic data it has collected on how users feel about the key search terms – followed by a daily report on whether public sentiment is up or down. 
SapientNitro London’s idea engineering team designed both the physical product – a commercial printer unit and ticker-paper roll under a glass dome – as well as the custom technology and remote interface to monitor Twitter and produce the sentiment analysis, all powered by an Intel processor.

Just like its 19th century ancestor, the Social Stock Ticker is designed to keep the C-suite up to date with their stock – reporting their brand’s social value in physical form as a reminder of the impact it may have on business and stock performance.

Malcolm Poynton, Chief Creative Officer Europe at SapientNitro, says: “For years, business leaders have had the means and intent to watch their stock price and its constant fluctuations. The Social Stock Ticker brings the same focus to business-critical social conversations – a space with which C-suite executives are notably disconnected. By crashing together digital with analogue outputs, the Social Stock Ticker introduces a visible and audible reminder to busy executives of the value of their company’s social stock.”

Citations

1 - Text100 Digital Index: Business Leaders
2 - Brandfog
3 - PR Week Social Media Index
4 - Brandfog
5 – ‘Social Media in the City’: Sociagility and the Public Relations Consultants Association

Credits

Malcolm Poynton – Chief Creative Officer, Europe
Nick Bradley – Art Director
Jules Hunt - Copywriter
Dan Beattie – Associate Director, Creative Technology
Eric Chia – Design Director
Dan Eagles – Production Manager
Kiley Leong – Project Manager
Duncan Collins – Project Manager