Even though the social media scene seems pretty latent, several savvy brands are making their presence felt online by targeting popular bloggers. Examples:
Tangs new website launch
Tangs set the benchmark with their new website launch by having a bunch of bloggers spend 24 hours hang out in the displays of their departmental store, right smack on one of the busiest streets in town. They decked the bloggers out in sponsored gear and basically just let them blog and potter around at the display and online.
LG phone launch in Hong Kong
LG up the ante by flying bloggers to Hong Kong for their new Chocolate BL40 phone launch where they got to mingle with celebrities like Lin Chiling.
Bloggers at D&G boutique opening at Ion
D&G invited bloggers to a disco party at their new Ion shop. Throw in hot celebrities, a cool disco party and the word spread like wildfire across the blogoshere.
Burberry party with bloggers blogging 'live'
Burberry took it further by creating “live” blogging stations and inviting popular fashion bloggers to blog “live” at their recent store opening. Readers were treated to “live” updates from the event and were able to partipate on a whole new level.
Puma Create Your Style Photo Campaign
Tapping on the creative mind of bloggers and well-known personalities, Puma rounded up a bunch of them and got them to reinteprete their style with Puma. They then consolidated all the content onto a Facebook Fan Page which has close to 2000 members at last count. This campaign was created to generate buzz for their new store at 313 Somerset.
- majolica majorca ambassadors
Majolica Marjorca worked exclusively with 4 popular bloggers to launch their make-up range. Labelled as “chapters”, each make-up collection launch was a themed party with the bloggers which was then covered in their respective blogs. The bloggers got to play dress-up, dine on fine cuisine and test out all the products. Fan contests were also organised where the bloggers would run contests to invite their readers to join them at these parties.
Tagged as:
bloggers,
Burberry,
D&G,
LG,
Majolica Marjorca,
Puma,
Social media,
tangs
(* Source: One9Ninety *)
Over the 2009 Chinese May holiday, Lenovo launched a social media campaign titled “Red Laptop Girl” (红本女), which featured a man who was trying to track down a mysterious girl who carried a red Lenovo laptop.
While the campaign created a short-term spike in traffic, the story was quickly exposed as being fake by Chinese netizens, creating negative word of mouth for Lenovo. In a detailed analysis of the “Red Laptop Girl” incident, an IWOM expert in China identified the reasons why the campaign was a failure:
- Chose the wrong platform to release the information- Campaign launched on SOHU’s digital channel, three clicks in from the homepage so the page wiews were limited.
- Pictures too professionally manicured- Photos released were obviously photoshopped.
- Format / content too commercial- Information was formatted and written in a very obviously commercial manner.
- Timing too obvious- Campaign launched during the Labor day holiday (May 1) to attract attention from netizens, but smart ones figured out this timing was chosen as many people are online during vacation periods.
- Effect of the campaign too obvious- The campaign created a lot of buzz without much cost. IT netizens figured out that Lenovo was trying to use a low cost way to attract a lot of attention.
- Underestimated Netizens Ability to Spot Fake Campaigns- Chinese Netizens see too much commercial crap online and brands should not underestimate their ability to expose fake campaigns.
Tagged as:
case study,
IWOM,
Lenovo,
Negative WOM,
Red Laptop Girl,
红本女
(* Source: One9Ninety *)
Shenjiaxi is one of the top efluencers on China’s Onlylady cosmetics website and was contacted for efluencer engagement and product sampling for Rimmel by One9Ninety. Shenjiaxi wrote 4 authentic reviews of Rimmel products. 3 months after the reviews were posted online, Shenjiaxi posted a follow-up blog, explaining how a print magazine had picked up on her popular blog and edited some of her posts into a print article.
Shenjiaxi’s review of Rimmel products were featured prominently in the article with pictures of the Volume Flash mascara and Trio Eyeshadow products reviewed by Shenjiaxi, as well as pictures of her eyes with Rimmel makeup on. The print article published by “New Life” magazine is titled: “Low-Priced Products Can Also Give Your Eyes An Astonishing Look”
The crossover into print media demonstrates the long-term, unexpected benefits of genuine engagement with consumers online.
Tagged as:
China,
efluencer,
magazine,
One9Ninety,
print,
Rimmel
Maybelline Singapore’s 1st adventure into Social Media Marketing.
Product Microsite
A lot of brands still create a microsite and spend a rather large sum of $$$ buying online media to drive traffic to it. Its great if you are looking for absolute number of hits to the site but if you think a little about the value to the audience. Most microsites are online brochures and after looking at it once, its hard to think why anyone would return to the site.
We were exploring the online social habits of the audience that Maybelline was trying to communicate with and realised that there was substantial ‘hang out’ activity in blogs and online forums. We then decided to add a few small social media components to the microsite - a Facebook & Friendster link to a group page and some user generated Youtube videos on user experience on their products in other countries. We realised that it was the natural way their audience would look for information and decided to collect it all on the microsite for them.
The average time they spent on the site increase 3 fold on average.
Facebook & Friendster Group Pages
Traffic from the microsite streamed into the Facebook & Friendster groups. The number of member grew quickly with strong community engagement activities like contests and draws and in a period of 2 months, the groups grew to 800+ for Facebook and less for Friendster. Everyone wanted to participate and it was clear with the 300+ wall posts.
The tone of the group page was one that celebrated community sharing and member benefits. It played down “brand broadcasting”and any sales related activity because we wanted to listen, chat & learn from the members and not sell to them.
Most brands don’t realise but from our past experience interacting with various different online communities that it was easy to invite people to the group but the real work was maintaining the community and keeping it exciting so that people would come back to participate and the word of mouth would spread and users would introduce others to the group.
There are too many branded Facebook groups out there online without any activity and poorly maintained by some marketing executive get chanced upon by the potential brand fans.
Tagged as:
social web
