As a sponsorship between American International Group, Inc. (AIG), an American multinational insurance corporation with more than 88 million customers in 130 countries, and All Blacks, The New Zealand national rugby union team which has won the last two Rugby World Cups, it’s reasonable for AIG to have commercials featuring their partner All Blacks. However, for this internet and social media advertising on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, the ideas are novel and closely related. First, the promotion channel of the internet is suitable for spread. With the interesting contents, the viewer tends to share the advertising on their Facebooks just for attracting more page views, which boosts the spread of the advertising itself. Moreover, the video features All Blacks members save people’s lives out of surprising accidents. This idea features the core value of its products based on AIG’s concept of ACTIVE CARE – a commitment to delivering a total customer experience that helps you mitigate risk instead of just dealing with the consequences when life catches you by surprise. In the other word, AIG will protect you from the surprise and risk in the life, as the All Blacks save people in Tokyo. Besides, the design of the film is very special. At first, All Blacks are kicking people with a football or knocking them down on the ground, which will capture viewers’ attention. Later, bad things happen and prove All Blacks are protecting people. Therefore, being surprised by the ending, viewers are keen on wondering who has done this, and then the AIG logo comes out to leave an impressive image on the viewer. Even though this is an interesting and successful promotion by AIG, it isn’t persuasive of how better AIG’s insurance works out than others so that people will tend to this company.
Before you go on and read this article, let’s do one thing at first – go to the settings of your phone, look up the battery option and check out the battery usage of your apps. You may be surprised by the results of how much time you spend on those apps.
This is a battery usage report of mine.
And let me introduce those great apps that I can spend a lot of my time on them:
WeChat
On the top of my list is WeChat, and I think most of the Chinese students do too. WeChat is really taking up a lot of time of mine, not because I’m chatting with people all the time. The reason of why WeChat is being part of our lives is its convenience. WeChat is really making people’s lives easier majorly in 4 aspects.
You can chat with you friend in any way you want.Text, voice message, voice chat, video chat, even chat using emoji and stickers. Now I’m really used to chat with my friends by sending voice messages, but this simple function is not quite fluent as WeChat when it comes to other Apps or even the message on iPhone.
You can recall the message within two minutes. I have the experience of sending wrong messages to someone else on other Apps, or when I want to send a picture of something, I accidentally touched my selfie and then sent it. These are the things really happen to me that I can still feel the awkward when I thought about it now. But if you are using WeChat, you will never worry about this.
WeChat is my life kits, book shells, and file folder.On WeChat, you can follow different official accounts or personal accounts. These accounts are just like the influencers on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, they send posts to every follower’s account daily or weekly so that the followers can read and learn. I’m following 191 accounts and actually read them a lot when I’m taking a taxi or when I just feel boring.
WeChat is my smart wallet. I can top up my mobile phone, and utilities, pay for my credit cards, pay for my food and groceries, order taxis, book hotels, buy movie tickets. Of course, these functions are only valid in China. When I was in China, I didn’t carry my wallet or card or cash with me anymore, what I need to take is only a charger of my phone.
King of Glory
I am a fan of games, all kinds. King of Glory is one of my favorite game apps. I promise most of the young people who download the game will be addicted to it once played. And as a fan of Play Station and computer games. I used to think games on phone is only for kids. However, King of Glory made me change my original thought.
This game King of Glory is like a mini version of League of Legends on phone, it’s easy to play but hard to play well. Although it was released on November 26th, 2015, it has more than 200 million registered users and 50 million daily active users. The number of people playing King of Glory is 2.5 times of League of Legends and 10 times of DOTA2. What made this game so successful? There are four good features of King of Glory.
Easy to play. This is a very important feature of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) because most of the game users will give up playing the game if they think it’s even hard to learn how to play the game. Although King of Glory is a game like League and DOTA2, it’s easier when people play, purchase and upgrades.
The fast path of one game. You can play one game within 20 minutes and surrendered after 6 mins.
All the characters are well-known. The characters in the game are from Chinese history, or famous manga or somewhere else. People have the
A good communication system in the game. People in the team can communicate with message and voice. This function largely enhanced the game experience so the team-based game can work better with a live talk with your team member.
Netease Music
This is an app provide music and video services. Unlike Spotify or Pandora, why I like Netease Music so much (and also I think this is a huge effort and advantage that Spotify or Pandora can’t catch up) is it build up a firm community inside the app. People are highly active on commenting songs and share their opinions under every song they like. It already became sure that if you see any song have a 999+ sign under its comment section, it’s definitely a good song or it’s worth listening.
Additionally, the song taste analysis from Netease Music of every user is really sophisticated and precise. They can generate personalized recommendation song list for every single user every day. And it’s liked by almost every user because those songs are really good and exactly what he or she likes.
Netease Music also offers a platform for talented musicians who are not that famous and new starters to post their own music and share their favorites. This app let most of people can speak to the whole world!
Meitu
Meitu app has an another name – “the god of camera” because this camera can make your photos look way better than you actually look. Besides the magic camera function, it contains editing, Photoshop, collage, and very sophisticated portrait beautify functions which can meet all the needs that people have about their pictures.
In addition, it’s easy for a green hand on Photoshop to become a professional photo editor with this app. Meitu has very simple buttons and bars for adjusting the color and shape. Moreover, if you are not confident with your photo editing skills, Meitu app have an auto-beauty function so that you can beautify your photo with a simple click.
Actually, Meitu App even launched its own phone with an advanced camera for those people who love to take selfies. It indeed sold very well, and more and more people are buying Meitu phones just for taking pictures.
Before & After
So that’s my four favorite apps on my phone! Which one do you like best? and what is your favorite app or apps? Leave a comment below ^ ^.
Recently, the biggest annual gala in video game industry, presented by the ESA (Entertainment Software Association), the Electronic Entertainment Expo, referred to as E3 is being held in Los Angeles, from June 13-15. Besides the fanaticism over the spot, All the video game companies are eager to launch their new games demo or consoles or news conference. For such geeky and ‘otaku’ industries, they will also promote their upcoming games in unconventional ways. Undoubtedly, the Call of Duty (COD), the most popular First-person Shooting game (FPS) series on different platforms like PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, have the most successful social marketing strategies in the campaign against others.
Ahead of the launching of their ninth game, COD: Black Ops ll, they promoted their new sequel by encouraging their potential customers to interact with ads themselves. The game company, Activision created a campaign that utilizes Millennial Media’s Photo Shoot feature, which allowed consumers to take a picture and insert it into an official COD soldier. In addition, once the picture is created, the user can download it or share via social media. People are also free to send a tweet directly from this application. After they share or tweet their customized soldier photos on the social media, other viewers can access to the official COD website through links, where they can watch the trailers or order the game. As a result, the rich media unit drove over 15000 interactions and the game itself grossed over 1 billion dollars in 15 days. Isn’t it amazing?
In the next year, Activation chose Instagram as a medium for their marketing campaign for the next sequel, COD: Advanced War. Unlike the last year that they used another media company, a mission called Mission Zero was created to encourage players creating an interactive story by themselves so that the customer experience of involvement was brought to a new level! Mission Zero uses Instagram’s tagging feature to lead users through a photo story to preview some new features, in which Mission Zero asks the player to tag an option for actions in the story such as “head into the alley”, and then the story goes to the next page. Players can also earn points in the game by connecting their social media with the game account. Finally, this activity increased followers’ numbers to an unprecedented level.
After two successes, they decided to try something different in the next year for Black Ops lll. At that time, even though it’s been three years since the last Ops ll was released, around 12 million people were still playing Ops ll, so the marketers wanted to seize this opportunity to promote their new game. First, they wrote an update for the Ops ll and deceived players that this was just a routine update. While everybody was downloading, they “hacked” into users’ games from all over the world and deployed Snapchat codes on the posters in the game’s scenes! Players noticed that updates and were transferred to the official Snapchat account of COD, where they could see the latest feed about Ops lll to be explored! This event created a buzz over all the social media, like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Players compete to figure out the code for the first place. Finally, this campaign resulted in 1.3 billion impressions in just five days and also won nine marketing awards.
From these successful campaigns, we can see how important the marketing methods are. Building up the story, capturing the customers, and then a chain reaction happens.
Before we answer the question why more and more advertising spent a lot of money but didn’t get their expected results? let me ask you another one. What will you do at the same time while you are drinking a cup of tea? If you prefer coffee or other beverage, there is no need for you to skip the question. I am a coffee people and will drink coffee every day in the afternoon. However, after seeing this commercial, I immediately ordered a box of tea and can’t wait to receive them. This genius commercial or say the brilliant product is called Manjushree. Manjushree is the finest tea company from India and they designed a special tea bag package with special material. In the same time, they print on the case so the customers can read a small piece of words while enjoying the hot tea.
The best part of the design is Manjushree chooses specific novels or poets as for great matches of the specific flavors of the tea. They call them tea stories. Since one has to use the steam from the hot water to heat the paper and “unveil” the story, thus, only when the customers have time enjoy the hot tea, they can read the great piece. You can have a look on this commercial via this link: https://vimeo.com/154495929
This is a great idea of tea company who does not just selling the tea but promoting an attitude and a lifestyle. They didn’t hire celebrities and didn’t add any fascinating special effects. But they truly earn the market with the content or say content marketing.So why many companies spent a lot of money but didn’t get the money back? There is a large chance that they didn’t do a good job on the respect of content marketing.
So why many companies spent a lot of money but didn’t get the money back? There is a large chance that they didn’t do a good job on the respect of content marketing.
Content marketing is a huge topic, and a lot of people are still staying in the stage of “contents equal to video or blog or anything you present to the public”. Yes, those forms of presenting contents are truly existing and play an important role, but what kind of content one is presenting is more important.
Why content marketing is important? Like Josh Steimle wrote in his article “What is content marketing”. He emphases how the business needs to involve customers not only in consideration and buy, but also, or say more important thing is to let them know and educated.
This is certainly true because the customers buying process is changing. In the old time, people go shopping for goods and needs. However, people are not intending to consume or spend money when they search products now. In another word, they consume content and being affected and paying for the product happily. In this case, the old fashion way of advertising will push the customers out of the buying circle and lose their interest even in the first stage.
Now, the pre-purchase process inside the customer buying journey has been lengthening because they are capable of accessing more information and intuitively comparing and selecting all the time. They are picking the price, so they can see all price regarding the same or similar product. They are picking the quality, then they can reach tons of reviews in varies types to help them know better. They are considering the personal status and belongings. In the same time, they will hold their original thoughts deeply with them and hardly get changed. In the case of this, generated great contents to attract customers and make them fall in love with the brand can be a really good way to do the marketing effort.
Recently, I fell in love with watching videos of eating competitions. Especially, there is a unique Japanese TV show, in which will invite eating influencers, the girls who can eat way more than normal people, and some movies stars or famous hosts to eat an extremely large portion of foods at local great restaurants as the daily challenge. The TV show certainly helped those restaurants gain the fame. These girls are perfectly contented with eating the delicious and it seems like they can eat as much as they want, which make me feel happy and have a desire to try out that food as well. After shown on the program, every restaurant will accept increasing customers after presenting their best dish in the largest portion to challenge those eaters. At this program, the movies or the famous hosts are not the focus. People are more willing to see those girls eating a large portion of food with happiness. And these girls individually have a lot of followers on their own social media platforms. In this case, it is a brilliant idea to use influencers promoting the restaurants and their foods.
The article isn’t long but it was written with great ideas and precise analysis into the point. In her article, Amirah Bey talked about four brands that hold successful campaigns with influencers. They are Tarte Cosmetics, Axe, Fashion Nova and Glossier. These four brands all have different tactics but with the same strategy, that is using influencers to attract more attention from the public. Bey did a great job explaining each brand and its special campaign. Like Tarte was holding a big party and invited powerful influencers like Tammy Hembrow, who has more than 6.5 million Instagram followers, as well as other influencers to cause a sensation.
The video about the Tarte campaign have more than 1 million viewers Amirah Bey talked about the real stactics that shows how the influencers influence the marketing
But in the same time, Glossier had a cooperation with a young influencer Cecilia Gorgon, who is a university student and has about 8,500 followers. This down-to-the-earth representative makes people feel much closer to the brand, and also they put more trust into the person as well as the brand.
Cecilia Gorgon shows how she use Glossier as her daily make up
Amirah Bey writes her article with great thoughts and there is also a fine video in her article to show as a beautiful and attractive opening. She listed four brands but each with an own special campaign and favorable result.
What I think she can do more is to add some deep analysis after presenting each campaign, and explore more for a prediction or an outlook of the influencer marketing in the future.
In my own opinion, the influencer marketing is meant to become a trend for the future marketing. The online celebrities are closer to the public. People naturally trust them with the daily look and personal lifestyle they have. Therefore, their referential kits are more acceptable to the audience than the stars on the TV shows. In the same time, influencers rely on the Internet, it’s also their strength because there won’t be the second place can spread the information faster than the internet. However, as the influencer marketing growing, there will be several problems come out with it. For example, since the low standard of being an influencer, there must have more and more online celebrities showing up. At that time, the content should become more important again. Also, the personality of the influencers should be reliable. Because influencers are individuals, they don’t have many rules to obey in their lives like a real star who have a contract with the company. Thus, they could do something accidentally and may cause the dislike of the public. Then, the brands associated with this kind of influencers will be affected as well.
In China, the battle among the troika of industry and E-business, “Baidu”, “Alibaba” and “Tencent”, also known as “BAT”, never comes to an end. Now, the war between Alibaba and Tencent over potential mobile payment market has been becoming even more intensive.
BAT: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent
Long before smartphones were so prevailing, millions of online shoppers had already used computers to buy commodities on Taobao, by Alibaba, binding their bank cards to Alipay. As technology progress makes the smartphone more powerful and convenient, Tencent, an internet company famous for its online chat application QQ on computers, begun a new project of an instant messaging application as WeChat in October 2010, and gradually accumulates more than millions of users in past years.[1]Also, Alibaba developed the mobile version of Taobao and Alipay to reinforce its own status in E-business among its existent users and hold around 83 percent of Chinese mobile payment in the third quarter 2014 as Tencent hold 10 percent only after it also launched mobile payment embedded in WeChat in June 2013. Therefore, analysts said “WeChat’s strong position in mobile offers an opportunity to seize market share from Alibaba. Alipay’s advantage stems from its integration with Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall e-commerce platforms.”[2]
As the rise of the mobile internet, a new opportunity is open for Tencent, which raised 468 million users by the end of September 2015, compared with only 190 million users, though many WeChat users have not yet linked their bank cards. Noticing the Chinese traditions of gifting cash-stuffed red envelopes-hongbao in Chinese-to friends and family during the Spring Festival, the biggest festival once a year, WeChat partnered with the China’s 2015 Spring Festival Gala to introduce the WeChat red envelopes shake.[1]During the gala, users who are watching the Gala through televisions are invited to shake their smartphones to win red envelopes of a total 1.2 billion red envelopes, worth over half a billion RMB, and for the later days of the festival (From 12 February to 21 February 2015), Tencent sent out 500 million cash-stuffed virtual red envelopes as well as 3 billion virtual coupons, collaborating with cinemas, restaurants, online shopping platforms, etc. People went crazy at that night. For higher chance to win red envelopes, some people shook several smartphones, some put their smartphones and iPads in a sieve to shake simultaneously, and some even devised a machine to help them shake phones automatically! However, the real trick to Tencent’s success after such a big investment is, people must link their bank card to WeChat to send or receive money. Finally, around 100 to 200 million users willingly bound their bank cards with WeChat, almost equal to the number of all Alibaba’s fans accumulated in 10 years, but just through one single night!
No matter what Tencent would do with such amounts of new card-linked users, the strategy is successful. Actually, Alibaba also joined the red envelopes battle soon later, and thanks to this battle itself, China has stepped into a new era of quick mobile payment before long.
Discover 