Our detailed annual review on digital presence of DAX/MDAX managers 2018 was written by the comnpanion core number bot. Enjoy reading!
About the CEO Echo
As specialists in the evaluation and organization of content marketing, we continuously examine the digital media response to all DAX and MDAX CEOs. We measure with the market-leading monitoring tool Talkwalker and have the results interpreted monthly by our own key figure bot.
The basis for the neutral data analyses is all digital content in German and English that is publicly accessible worldwide on websites, in forums and in social media.
The CEO Echo review of the entire year is a one-time evaluation of all CEO mentions in 2018. In the practice of data-based control of communication, evaluations are used on a daily basis. The monthly CEO Echo can be subscribed to free of charge with our newsletter.
The digital presence of DAX/MDAX managers in a review of the year.
CEO footprint 2018: Dieter Zetsche (Daimler) with the largest share of the total CEO echo.
What share of the digital opinion market does a CEO or board chair occupy, voluntarily or involuntarily? The CEO Footprint answers this question. It looks at the individual leader's share of all mentions of DAX/MDAX managers.
In 2018, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche enjoyed the most digital attention. His CEO footprint comprises a whopping 18% of all mentions of top managers. By comparison, the average DAX/MDAX CEO has a much smaller footprint of just two percent.
The extent to which the automotive industry dominates the global echo of the top DAX and MDAX employees is shown by second place with Herbert Diess (Volkswagen). His CEO footprint is 14%, just ahead of Joe Kaeser (Siemens) at 13%. While Diess' mentions over 2018 were clearly negatively colored, Zetsche's digital resonance in "Earned Media" was overall rather neutral, as was Kaeser's, according to the metrics bot. Zetsche's neutral response may be considered a success in light of the fierce and ongoing criticism of German automakers; his communications department is S-Class.
Echo Efficiency 2018 : Markus Braun (Wirecard) has the most efficient media echo in DAX/MDAX
How large is the CEO footprint in relation to the material possibilities that a company can use to position its own boss in the opinion market? Echo Efficiency provides the answer to this question. companion's metrics bot puts the digital mentions of corporate CEOs in relation to the size of the company.
According to this criterion, Dr. Markus Braun (Wirecard) is the top performer over 2018 with 344 points. His media response was in the best proportion to the performance of his own company. He can clearly set himself apart from the rest of the field. Rolf Buch (Vonovia) follows in second place with 209, then Maximilian Conze (ProSiebenSat1 Media) with 168 points.
For all 3 CEOs, a conservative media strategy focused on editorial media is evident. The Talkwalker tool found the digital mentions excessively frequently in digital media of editorial offices, but less frequently among bloggers or social media users. At the same time, reader activation of the CEO Echo on all three bosses was weak to very weak. So much ado about little that is relevant? Not necessarily, but the effectiveness of the communication should be examined.
Social Excellence: Mark Langer (Hugo Boss) with the most effective social media echo
"Social is not an end in itself. However, if you want to reach opinion leaders (influencers) outside editorial departments or interest groups that cannot be reached by the mass media, you have to be present in social. Those who are mentioned more frequently and more resoundingly in social media can have all the more impact on digital elites and consumers. This is exactly what the Social Excellence Index expresses, which companion's metrics bot calculates using data from Talkwalker. It shows how large the share of social media mentions is and how successfully readers could be activated to react.
Over the whole of 2018, Mark Langer (Hugo Boss) had the best Social Excellence Index of all DAX/MDAX CEOs with 89 points. This put him ahead of Bill McDermott (SAP) with 50 points and Kasper Rorsted (adidas) with 38 points. Langer's echo was 63% "social," his reader activation extremely strong. A full 34 comments, likes or other clicks triggered a digital mention of Lan- ger. For CEO mentions, which are really not among the most attractive topics in social media, this is an outstanding value and decisive for first place.
Reader activation is weak or very weak for 64% of all top executives, but not for Langer, McDermott and Rorsted. Why? The answer is celebrities. Show yourself with celebrities, use celebrity photos as click bait and you'll gain interest not only in editorial offices. SAP shows that you can use "bling-bling" for any company, not just global fashion brands.
Image impact: The digital echo on Mathias Döpfner (Axel Springer) has the best image impact
Did the PR departments and spin doctors achieve what they wanted? Whether a media echo can have an effect on reputation is indicated by the tonality of the texts in which the CEO echo appears. Does the content surrounding the mention have an emotional, opinionated tinge? And if so, in which direction does the echo have an opinion-forming effect, positive or negative? Companion's metrics bot interprets the potential image impact of the digital CEO echo using the Image Impact Index.
According to this indicator, the echo on Mathias Döpfner had the greatest impact potential in 2018. Over the entire year, 40% of his media response was potentially opinion-forming. The direction of the echo was clearly positive, which deserves an exclamation mark because Talkwalker and Kennzahl-Bot were only able to determine a positive coloration of the echo for 23% of all DAX/MDAX executives over the entire year.
The possible reasons for a positive CEO echo are good news or good content. One possible special advantage for the Springer boss is his own editorial teams as an opinion power. Markus Steilemann, the chief catalyst of Covestro, the new chemicals brand spun off from Bayer, shines in second place. Without the opinion-forming power of Bild & Business Insider behind him, he achieved almost as good 34% positive image impact in 2018. That's a top performance, in Leverkusen they obviously know how to handle communication chemistry. This should interest Stephan Sturm of Fresenius in 3rd place: 31% of his digital echo was also opinion-forming in 2018, but it had a negative effect, which was the case for only 10% of all CEOs in 2018.
Comment on the CEO Echo of the Year 2018
Digital response to DAX and MDAX managers is highly concentrated
The data from Talkwalker and the automatic analyses of the .companion key figure bot show an overall strong concentration of the digital echo on a handful of top executives of the very large DAX and MDAX companies. Zetsche, Kaeser & Co. are celebrities who experience a lot of attributions, which may or may not be intentional.
The top ten CEOs account for more than 70% of the total CEO echo. A differentiated media perception of business topics and management looks different. Editorial departments have their share in this, but so do communications departments. The latter should distance themselves from increasingly ineffective but well-rehearsed press releases and use their own content and channels to establish more direct contact with their target groups, who will carry corporate and brand messages on their own if they are packaged in a relevant way.
Bling bling for more broad impact
If class is not enough in digital communication relationships and you need to go for mass instead and become known, you need celebrities who draw "him" and, more often, "her" into the public eye. SAP's Bill McDermott, Mark Langer of Hugo Boss, and Kasper Rorsted of adidas set an example. For McDermott, a gigantic 20,000 likes and comments ran up on an Instagram post by German tennis player Angelique Kerber, in which she expresses her delight at having met McDermott and Angela Merkel at a panel discussion. What this means is that the key to widespread opinion power lies in social media. Trump, Putin and Co. have long since recognized this and are building their strategies on it- when will more CEOs do the same?
Echo to executives in media and finance particularly efficient
If you want to become a CEO and get the most out of your career and celebrity, you should go into the finance or media industry. Here, as the data show, disproportionate attention is a certainty. It takes a particularly brilliant brand and communication to push a large company to the top of the efficiency rankings. The Mercedes among the communications departments shows that it is possible: the CEO of the car manufacturer Daimler is in fifth place, with seventy times more employees than his table neighbors.
Emotional coloring is the exception
As far as the tonality and emotional coloring of mentions are concerned, the response to CEOs is mostly colorless and neutral. This is hardly surprising; after all, there are many more exciting topics in the media than CEOs on which to form an opinion. In contrast, just under a quarter of CEOs achieve a positive coloration of the digital echo in the annual report. This requires longer-acting influences. These can be exceptional successes, or even exceptionally good content, which is easier to buy into than objective successes. One-tenth of CEOs end the year with a critically colored balance of their echo. Objective negative reports can contribute to this, or also an ineffective distribution of content, sorry, press releases, which is still fixated on classic media.
Controversial content attracts
But if content is distributed properly, i.e., via the platform monopolists' own digital channels and social networks, what kind of content is most likely to generate private or editorial CEO echo? The answer is: content and topics that can be linked to ethics and morals or to currently discussed, i.e. controversial, topics. This is shown by the two articles with CEO mentions that were shared most frequently in 2018.
In the online edition of the business magazine Fortune, Bill McDermott (SAP) is quoted in an article dedicated to employee and management diversity as a strategic advantage. The article was forwarded almost 100,000 times, with a slightly positive slant. An article on Joe Kaeser, CEO of Siemens, received almost as many shares at Fortune when he refused to cancel his participation in the economic summit in Riyadh and continued to monitor the situation after the alleged murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Incidentally, in the month of publication of this article, the media response to Kaeser remained rather neutral in tone. So if you can handle risks, you can also tread on thin ice, but beware, the discussion culture is melting.