Case Study: Merck KGaA achieves real-time R&D insights and new business opportunities with Talkwalker

How the world’s oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company uses social media mining to advance technologies for life

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany — founded in 1668 and a global leader in specialty chemicals such as liquid crystals for displays — faced a common B2B challenge: being several links removed from end users. With faster product cycles, rising competition and the need to anticipate market trends, the company needed a quicker, more efficient way to capture consumer feedback and feed actionable insights into R&D and partner product development.

Using Talkwalker-powered social media mining, Merck set up a dedicated competence center for real-time trend scouting and sentiment analysis (examples: Pokémon Go’s impact on AR/VR, CES monitoring, and smartphone feature sentiment). Insights guided R&D priorities (e.g., focusing on resolution and brightness), enabled pull-marketing across the value chain, improved partner collaboration, shortened time-to-market and created new business opportunities through targeted reports, newsletters and bespoke studies.

Merck KGaA

Markus Czanta

Director of Global Technical Marketing