mInteraction Showreel
Since we posted our work a few months ago, we’ve gotten numerous requests to do a show reel on our projects. With that being said, we tried to capture it in a video that encapsulates our work. We hope you like it!
Big Brand Ideas + AR: Blippar
We all love when bright ideas can be executed even better than imagined. The main question we tackle this March is how can we effectively leverage a big brand idea in the entire communication platform? If you’ve ever seen an online campaign and wished the products would just appear in front of you, I know a lot of consumers would greatly benefit from Blippar. Known as the first image-recognition photo app with augmented reality experiences, it breaks down products from newspapers, prints, catalogues, and posters into advertising inspiration, bringing items to life on your phone.
It has even been externalized further by the definition ‘Blipp’ in the dictionary: ‘the action of instantaneously converting anything in the world into an interactive wow experience’. Media owners and companies have utilized the app to breathe life into their brands by elevating real-world images with augmented reality to provide comprehensive digital information while simultaneously offering interactive experiences for the user.
What are some ways to ‘blipp’ some brands? You can test the blipps for yourself here, see the videos here, and/or join the Facebook page here. If you would like to have the chance to use the Blippar app, just visit the download page here. Sounds exciting? Happy blippin’!
mInteraction Buzz
Adman Awards– Interactive & Digital Media / Social Media / Mobile
Bangkok Post Digital Marketing Set to Explode with Broadband and 3G
Bangkok Post Thailand Still Active Despite 3G Auction Delay
Bangkok Post Social Media Changing Whole Business Outlook
Bangkok Post It’s a Small World
Business Report Thailand Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
Campaign Asia GroupM Partners AIS to Launch Text Ad Service
CNN Go Facebook Snags 5 Million Thailand Users
Digital Media Awards– Bronze Winner: Retail
FOCAL 2011 GroupM Reveals 4 Key Digital Trends for Marketers in 2011
FOCAL 2011 GroupM
Integrated Tools & Strategies for MARCOM Conference 2011
MediaMind Creative Zone – Homepage Takeover
Media Week GroupM Partners AIS to Launch Text Ad Service
Mobile Marketing & Customer Engagement
Spikes Asia– Mobile
Spikes Asia– Online Media
Spikes Asia– Social Media
Tech Wire Asia Mobile Internet Users Up 40pc in Thailand, iPhone Dominates
Tech Wire Asia Analysis: Thailand Passes 5 Million Users
Thai PR กรุ๊ปเอ็มเผย 4 ศาสตราวุธสื่อดิจิตอลมาร์เก็ตติ้งปี 54
Thumbs Up “ศิวัตร” นั่งแท่นนายกสมาคมผู้ดูแลเว็บไทย
The American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand
The Nation ‘SMS 2.0′ with Color Pictures to be Launched by mInteraction
The Nation Spirited Online-Ad Battle Looming
The Nation Better Webmasters Needed
The Nation Boom Predicted in Digital Marketing
The Online Advertising Playbook by Siwat Chawareewong
WPP WPP Acquires Majority Stake in Digital Agency, mInteraction, in Thailand
Digital Outlook 2012
One year ago, we identified four key trends we held important for the Thai online advertising industry. Keeping our eyes on all of them throughout the year, we realized significant growth on all the trends. Here are our opinions regarding the development for 2012.
1. Online video content – Have you ever watched “VRZO” on Youtube? If not, we recommend you to search for this series, one of Thailand’s fastest growing programs on Youtube. Proven that Thai people love video content, broadband coverage is growing and the number of views on Youtube content is increasing significantly. This encouraged the content producer to release more and more programs on the Internet, making online video more attractive. Interesting fact is that 40% of Thai Internet Users have a YouTube profile. This virtuous circle will drive the reach of online video to the critical mass, which will be vital from a media POV, especially coupled with the clear signal of 3G development and investment on wi-fi coverage all over Bangkok and urban areas. What we need to explore further is how can advertisers leverage this fast growth of online video consumption? Can we simply put TVC in the front and center of video content? Would branded video content work and how do we measure it?
2. Mobile – Besides the 3G network development, the development of devices is another key driver for mobile growth. All the newer models give much better experience to the users when they use data. For mobile ad impressions in Asia, Android grabs 17% versus the iOS at 6%. Additionally, the tablet boom gave people access more often especially when on the move. We saw phenomenal growth of unique users for the iPhone (148%), iPad (763%), and Android (2995%) from June 2010 to April 2011. Competition from the operators will continue driving the market. That being said, what are the implications? How could marketers utilize this opportunity? Do we use augmented reality or QR codes like Japan? It will probably be a bit too difficult for Thai users. We would rather see the bigger opportunity on mobile search. Considering that Thai people already search very often (10 times per day on average), the more frequently they can access the Internet, the more search we do. Marketers must be prepared on how to respond to the increasing number of search queries towards our brands or categories, both on Google and the second largest search spot, Youtube. The great advantage of mobile search is that it is conducted “on the go” meaning it’s easier for searchers to take subsequent action after the search (example, visit the location and buy products and/or services).
3. Social Media – This may be a surprise, but we foresee slower growth on social media investment with the main reasons that majority of these brands have since developed a sizable community and/or gained a substantial number of fans. Consumers are also bombarded with brand messages on multiple social spaces. We see the shift of social usage from advertising to be more on relationships and reputation management. This is evidenced by the drastic 10% dip in social network ad revenues worldwide this year alone the number is expected to slump.
4. Better data – The development of audience measurement system by Effective Measure started to pay-off. Most of the marketers and agencies began to gain bigger trust on the industry data. The use of ‘Adserving’ and the tracking system, Mediamind, make campaign performance reports more credible and reliable, which experienced double growth last year. Moreover, Facebook and Twitter are trending with advertisers realizing the unlimited possibilities of rich media display delivering a big impact. Going forward into 2012, we anticipate higher investment in deeper ROI, conversion tracking, and the rise in online branding tracking.
Growth from 2010 to 2011 was high, but we believe it will be even higher in 2012, only if we manage to find the right way to deal with the flood. Merry X’Mas and Happy New Year:)
Credit: Written by Siwat Chawareewong, Managing Director of mInteraction
Flood Forecast: People Find Silver Lining on the Internet
October has been a particularly tough month for residents and locals affected by the flood surrounding all the major provinces. Everyone can agree that social media is playing an integral role as traditional communication channels isn’t exactly the safest choice anymore. We all love the notion of helping hands during times of national disaster so it’s interesting to see how consumers use the new media in a bunch of different ways. Here’s how they are jumping right in with digital media.
A private sector group referred to as ‘Thai Flood’ from Kapook.com’s founder, Poramate Minsiri, has become one of the prime sources of real-time information on the nation’s flooding with the aim of breaking down and alerting relief efforts coordinated by multiple parties. Volunteers and others can chat via social networks on Facebook and Twitter for news that makes sense. Thai Flood is now the place for latest updates and reporting on the fly here.
Conservationist and Secretary-General of the Seub Nakasathien Foundation, Sasin Chalermlap, known for his unwavering passion for the environment decided the crisis would be best told through his personal videos on YouTube here after the government’s much-delayed response to flood warnings prompted him to make a stance. His video clips spread virally with massive supporters and Facebook users have dished out unending praises from his daily updates here. You can spot him on local television with Professor Seri Suparatti, an energy expert at Rangsit University who prepare consumers for accurate and honest information they simply can’t miss.
As most users perhaps discovered, Facebook is filling up with conversations and multimedia sharing about the flood. Based on recent news from ‘Thai Trend’, the system has tracked tweets from over 600,000 Thai Twitters. #Thaiflood is the most common hashtag while น้ำท่วม, for ‘Flood’ in Thai, piled more than 348,000 mentions. That’s over half a million tweets combined, which is on average a mention every 1.15 seconds.
Additionally, virtual maps are helpful. Google implemented a crisis map that determines flooding areas with active updates working with organizations to investigate and confirm reports found from the links on the map. Esri and Nostra are also other maps worth checking out equipped with their own specific features.
Be sure to turn on your mobile devices. The ‘Thai Flood Reporter’ iPhone app will tell you to report the flooding in your area. When your present location is marked on the map, simply choose messages and send a tweet or SMS, upload a picture, and edit the text to be tweeted. Also, the ‘FloodFeed’ app purveys the latest tweets with the hashtag #Thaiflood. For those who don’t have a Twitter account and wish to forward and share news right away via the social network, you might find this useful.
As the flood (and information) keeps streaming in, concerted efforts from the online community is proof that social media may be the best usage during times of uncertainty. It’s the quickest and easiest way to communicate in a rescue-me-now situation. Thais are quickly becoming one of the fastest growing tech-advanced users. This calls for brands in the private sector to develop more digital channels in response to disaster relief efforts.
The Social Good Guide – Fall 2011 Creative Campaigns
For this month, youth activism is a recently trending topic that is in full force. Young people are in support of causes of which they’re passionate and organizations are recognizing the importance of giving back, a concept known as being ‘Social Good’, in its entirety. Brands aimed at youth are integrating social causes in their business strategies in order to align their mission with the vision of the youth. By doing so, companies forge stronger relationships with the target, and in turn, enhance their long-term longevity, build trust, garner transparency, and find new opportunities in emerging markets. We have rounded up some of our favorite brands that fully support social change in the digital world.
In an attempt to target both ice cream aficionados and social activities, Ben & Jerry’s launched an integrated social marketing campaign, ‘Fair Tweets’, emphasizing the importance of World Fair Trade Day. A self-proclaimed campaigner of fair trade ingredients, the brand utilized the social media tool in support of better education about Fair Trade to fans. Ben & Jerry’s helps you recycle unused Twitter characters to be auto-replaced with a message, which is then linked to an article regarding fair trade. In addition, the hashtags #FairTrade and #FairTweets raise awareness of the campaign on Twitter followed by traditional media in the form of a blogosphere. A good half million characters have been donated thus far here.
Dog lovers everywhere were activated by the commitment of Pedigree Chum’s August social media campaign. Recently winning the Grand Prix Awards for Digital category at the Spikes Asia 2011, the ‘Doppelganger’ is software developed using facial recognition technology to match the user to a dog with the closest resemblance. The cause is dedicated to dog adopters where the software displays the details of the dog and step by step directions for easy adoption. If that’s not enough, Pedigree Chum donates a portion of the money from their sold products to help save comprised and isolated dogs to be happy, healthy, and loved. If you’re from and/or in New Zealand, you can adopt a pet here.
Macy’s mstylelab, the retailer’s teen clothing department, teed up with Dosomething.org to provide teenagers volunteer opportunities nationwide to address issues in the community, school, and environment. The mobile campaign calls for young people to visit local mstylelab departments and participate in the scan-to-donate program. In return, the U.S. based retailer donates $1 to the organization each time a customer scans an in-store QR code. As a bonus, for every ‘like’ on the mstylelab Facebook page, Macy’s will go from $1 and donate up to $250,000 to the foundation. Kelly Osbourne, the brand representative of the Material Girl clothing line, is featured in the QR video in the departments to raise awareness and funding to the organization. By reporting back what they did and taking the ‘Do Something Cause’ quiz online, teenagers can win a chance to earn $250 shopping spree and even scholarships for the best submitted projects. Visit here to learn more and get involved.
Younger generations may question the honesty of corporations of meaningful social causes, which is why companies can reach out more to combat specific issues via the online community. As they find comfort in the social network, being ‘Socially Good’ is a great way for brands to truly shift their focus to bigger things, and that, to teenagers, is credible and trend-worthy.
Brand Spaces: Delivering the Ultimate in Brand Experience for Fans
Nowadays, digital media has become the center of advertising, both literally and figuratively – where consumers come for one on one time with friends and brands actively engage with them. The ‘brand space’ demonstrates the importance and value of creating a special moment with consumers whether it is discovering a new product, evoking a certain feeling, or capturing special moments. Here are two brands that urged consumers and shaped their digital experiences into life.
Ford Fiesta is the best-selling car for fun and adventure, which is great news for trendy consumers, the target audience in Thailand who want cars that align with their goals and is an extension of their character and style. It was ideal to present the key features and position the Fiesta as the signature car for the coolest rider. With the powerful phrase, ‘Feel the difference’, the campaign portrays the well-engineered, easy to drive, and affordable sleek vehicle for the urban young professional who is on the ultimate journey, ‘Choose My Ride’, showcasing the action-packed and powerful design features of the Ford in an engaging space. Each player in the game must direct the celebrity’s every move and the strewn key features in the story line allowed followers to virtually experience driving the car. The Ford Fiesta equipped with its mean performance keeps the sense of freedom always alive for its fans. This ‘brand space’ encompassed all the key benefits of the Ford Fiesta for users while creating a certain presence about the brand and delivering the ultimate product experience through its exhilarating premiere of the “Choose my Ride” movie. Experience the movie here.
Axe Provoke needed to bring their angels to life with its campaign, ‘Even the Angels Will Fall’ in Thailand. To roll out its new campaign, Axe created the Axe iPhone application to induce conversation and spark excitement for Thai teenagers. The Axe application enabled users to track down a wide variety of angels in different spots around the city then capture and own a collection of angels in their phones. To bring across the message of bringing guys ‘closer to their dreams’, this inspired the location-based application linked to their Facebook. When a location hits 10,000 angels, Axe sends their angel promotional troop to the corresponding area to give away free samples and boost sales and generate trial. Axe users caught 1,500,000 angels sparking AXE’s next plan to unveil the biggest, sexiest, and much anticipated dreams-come-true themed event, a coveted VIP access to a secret party with Elly Tran, further proof that Axe brings guys closer to real angels. The campaign is an enabler in the best way possible for guys and the brand clearly knew what factors needed to come into play to empower guys within this creative ‘brand space’. As always, the ever sexy and predictable Axe, stayed true to their loyal fans where the angels made everything better for them. Download the application here.
Ultimately, the ‘brand space’ comes in handy for brands when passive advertising isn’t just going to cut it. Striking a good balance between the content and the consumer is of utmost importance and how seemingly simple insights are what make the space most meaningful to resonate with consumers.
Leveraging Digital Media Benefits to Engage Various Consumers
The development of information space has significantly impacted consumer’s behavior in the past few years. For those people who access greater amount of information, we expect that they use more data in their complicated purchase decision, while those who access to the information less could make quick and simple ones. The challenge for marketers is, whether or not, to design a single ad message suitable for every consumer.
Great creative ads still have great power to engage consumers, however, when it comes to the purchase decision, although our target customer already feels good about the ad, the product, and the brand, there could be some other factors that intervene their purchase decision and even influence them to end up buying products from competitors.
Digital media, by nature, is a perfect tool for marketers who are facing such above challenges due to the lower cost of adaption, more flexible and more liquid ad formats in combination with targeted addressability. However, how much do the Thai marketers leverage these advantages?
There are three steps to make the most out of your digital campaign shown below:
1. Segmenting the audience and customization of the message – Most of the media publishers collect consumer’s information and provide addressable ad opportunities. We may send the message claiming the lowest price to the people with lower income as they are seeking for the smallest package with the cheapest price, while sending another message related to “value for money” to the moderate income people as they always make cautious decisions while engaging the high income people with some luxurious, innovative, and exclusive message.
For some other publishers who cannot provide target ad placement, the contextual targeting technique can be applied. For example, when we put the car ad on the entertainment site, we can use the one with great visual and animation, while delivering another version with downloadable factsheets and numbers when we advertise in automotive sites with the belief that people who read auto sites make more rationalized decisions. This contextual targeting technique is actually the same technique as we use in Search Marketing – mapping the right ad copy with the right keyword that targets the right people.
2. Performance tuning and optimization – Digital advertising provides immediate feedback in which advertisers can use such data to analyze and optimize media channels as well as ad messages. We could do monthly, half-monthly, weekly, or real-time automatic optimization to ensure we get the biggest return from our ad investment.
The first two steps can be applied with most of the digital advertising campaigns. However, for high-involvement products or services, advertisers need another level of optimization.
3. Optimization based on post-click behavior and conversion statistics – as consumers require more information to support their purchase decision, basic optimization at the first touch-point may not be enough. Advertisers need to collect clickstream data after they enter the site to understand how they navigate and the key trigger before the conversion. Cross-platform data is also required as it will make us understand which piece of data will lead to conversion letting us optimize our campaign in a much more effective way.
Credit: Written by Siwat Chawareewong, Managing Director of mInteraction
Y2011, What Happened Thus Far and Where the Industry is Heading
The latest TVCs launched by Google, with an intention to educate Thai people more about the significance of the Internet as well as to educate Thai business owners more about opportunities to use the Internet as a business tool, is a strong signal from the market leader that industry spending will sharply increase.
Last December, we identified four key trends we believe important are significant for the Thai online advertising industry. Now, it’s time to see where we are.
1. Massive hit of video content on faster network – The competition from operators remains. The latest move from True is the major network upgrade to 7 Mbps via 5,000 million THB investment. Thai consumers tend to spend more time watching various types of online video ranging from soap opera, reality show, to music videos. The popular video clips can easily hit 500,000 across the night. Many brands have to adjust the way they advertise from a normal TVC, which can be trimmed out before the clips are uploaded, in the form of engaging brand content.
2. Mobile – adding more frequency rather than reach. Consumers tend to be more familiar with mobile application and spend more time on it while marketers are trying to encourage people to download their Apps. The operators are now aggressively driving mobile data usage. One of the best examples is a 19THB promotion for mobile social media usage through SocialApps from Happy DTAC. An affordable mobile data plan will create new mobile data users while motivating them to be “Always on”. The challenge remained for marketers, an effective way to advertise and grab their attention under the circumstances that mobile advertising formats are still quite limited.
3. Social Media leads to purchase decision. The number of Thai facebook users goes over 10 million or equal to 15% of the Thai population, combined with the ease of using Facebook page as a promotional tool, have encouraged Thai SMEs to put themselves more into social media. The challenge for all leading brands is that, the more ads they are exposed to, the less trust they may have. Marketers have to reconsider using the “old-style” social media such as influencer blogs or community, as well as increasing the Facebook ad budget to get their brand up to the front.
4. Better data makes marketers more focused. The latest panel launched from Effective Measure, combined with their tracking methods, definitely make them a very good information source for marketers. The more confident marketers are, the more budget flown into digital territory that we can foresee.
One last interesting factor that everyone keeps their eyes on, is the result of the election and how efficient the new government invests for Thailand’s information technology infrastructure. This factor will drive the changes of media consumption and lifestyle of Thai people, and later effect the ways of how marketers advertise into the future.
Credit: Written by Siwat Chawareewong, Managing Director of mInteraction
ACE: 3 Ways to Enhance Your Experiential Marketing Campaign
We all know that advertising can be both an art and science at the same time. Digital advertisers always find it challenging to combine the “art” of engaging people through multimedia presentation and the “science” of data collection, tracking and conversion to create an effective campaign. This month, we will recommend 3 ways to leverage digital tools to enhance your experiential marketing campaigns.
Amplify – Many FMCG advertisers try to create new experience for the target audience through below the line activities. Most of them are participative, exciting, and engaging. However, reach is always limited and marketers always have to use PR techniques to ensure they can communicate to larger group of people about the great moments they have created. Digital media is a great tool for such purpose, especially through social media where event participants can help spread the word to the broader community. The Coca – Cola Village is a prime example. View the video here.
Convert – Many high involvement products, such as cars and residential projects, started using the emotional approach in their above advertising in order to attract consumers’ interest and make the ad more relevant. However, although the target is impressed with the ad, they are more careful in making the purchase decision and spend more time researching for information, especially on the Internet. The Search engine is a great tool to bridge them to various relevant information sources. The volume of search queries rises every time the TVC is put on air. Our recommendation is to always convert those demand into sales by allocating substantial budget for search marketing as well as putting the right conversion tracking tool on the website whenever we launch a TVC campaign.
Engage – Some of the high involvement products still continue approaching the consumers by pointing out the key features of the products with support rationale. This is already matched with the way consumers make their purchase decisions. Latest digital tools can make it even better by transforming the hard facts into something which is more real and lively. Augmented reality and rich media techniques are key tools to make our campaign more experiential. Here are some examples from iButterfly and Toyota.
Credit: Written by Siwat Chawareewong, Managing Director of mInteraction