InterCall Data Study

The Challenge 

Despite its status among elite conferencing providers and a high level of recognition by enterprise executives, very few consumers and everyday employees had heard of InterCall. With the desire to increase its brand awareness among everyday employees in the most cost-effective way possible, InterCall engaged Walker Sands Communications to conduct a national media relations campaign.

The Solution

With the goal to generate as much mainstream coverage as possible, the Walker Sands team knew it needed to create an interesting piece of content that everyday employees could relate to. With this in mind, Walker Sands decided to conduct a data study of 1,000 full-time employees to determine the answer to the question, “What do people really do during conference calls?”

To get the data, Walker Sands drafted a survey and used a third-party polling vendor to survey 1,000 full-time employees. The data did not disappoint.

Respondents were honest about their conferencing habits, admitting to using their mobile freedom to multi-task in both traditional and very non-traditional ways. Employees noted their ability to do other work, check social media, online shop and handle household chores while on conference calls. However, the best pitch material came from the more unique places people claimed to be while “in” a meeting. This included taking calls from the beach, fitting rooms and Disney World. One respondent even admitted to conducting a conference call while chasing their dog down the street!

On top of that, slightly disturbingly, the study found that 47 percent of respondents had participated in a conference call while in the restroom.

The Results

Immediately after the Harvard Business Review article went live, Walker Sands made sure the data and report quickly spread across all target news outlets and social media channels. Top-tier media placements included The Wall Street Journal, which used the data in five different articles over the course of the next two weeks, as well as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, VentureBeat, The Atlantic, AOL, Inc.com, CIO, Business Insider and more. CNBC even created its own graphics to run on air during its primetime TV slot and Al Roker and friends discussed the data on The Today Show the morning after the study was released.

Overall the campaign resulted in 114 top-tier media placements and 350+ total placements. In total, the campaign generated 371 million impressions, most of which included “InterCall, the world’s largest conferencing provider” tagline. Harvard Business Review’s initial story received so much attention that the editor asked InterCall to provide a follow-up contributed article. Walker Sands used that opportunity, as well as many interviews throughout the campaign, to discuss how businesses could use this information to improve their conferencing processes.