Case Study: DTE Energy achieves employee-driven voter education and defeats Proposal 3 with TemboSocial

How to Engage an Army of Employee Ambassadors

DTE Energy, a diversified energy company, faced an urgent internal-communications challenge in the weeks before Michigan’s 2012 Proposal 3 vote: educate and mobilize its 10,000 employees about the proposal’s costs and timelines to counter misleading outside messaging. DTE engaged TemboSocial — using its Conversation Consultants and tools such as Quiz Polls, the Refer a Friend module and the Connect module — to create a “Myth Busters” employee campaign that fit into the company’s existing intranet and IBM Connections channels.

TemboSocial implemented a series of interactive Quiz Polls on DTE’s Quest home page, routed employees to a Proposal 3 community for deeper information, and enabled social sharing to extend reach; the campaign averaged about 45,000 poll shares and drove significant traffic to the CARE For Michigan website and Facebook page. In less than a month the effort mobilized employees into an “Army of Advocates,” and Michigan voters ultimately rejected Proposal 3 by nearly a 2‑to‑1 margin — outcomes DTE credits to the TemboSocial-powered engagement and sharing strategy.

DTE Energy

Lonnie Ross

Manager of Internal Communication