Instagram has limited its users and advertisers up until these days. There were only few options on which people can upload their photos, particularly on the layout of the photos. Much to users’ delight, its latest update now supports landscape and portrait formats, ending the restriction towards the imaginative minds of Instagram users. Both available on iOS and Android, users of the mobile media sharing platform can now post with city skylines, beach horizons, group photos and even full selfie portraits. Simply tap the format icon to adjust the orientation of your image to portrait or landscape. The full-sized version of the post can be seen by everyone on the timeline but on the profile grid, the posts will appear as if they were cropped to a square to maintain the organized impression.

The change is an answer to users’ petition for the platform to be open to flexible content. According to Instagram, over 20 percent of users’ photos on the platform are not in the square format. It only added to the users’ dismay in updating their timelines, most of them make use of third party photo editing apps to cramp their portrait and landscape photos to the square restriction.

With hundreds of millions of users, Instagram isn’t just the much favoured photo app for many people, but also an essential component for marketers to share their brands. Campaigns of advertisers and marketers in Instagram have been limited to the square orientation, forcing them to adjust shots or even crop entire parts of photos, but now they can enjoy this update to their own brands as well. For them, this amplified the range of possibilities of mobile marketing and on how they can market their products to users’ timelines.

People will receive the complete vision of the created images provided to their feed by these various brands. Videos are also part of the new features as well! 16:9 widescreen snap shot is now available to bring out additional movielike impressions. With apps like Snapchat, Twitter and Youtube, content marketing for video have risen to be one of the most important strategies brands can use in their campaigns. Accordingly, this new support for wide-screen video is a welcome feature for business across social media, citing the already increasing competition in digital marketing, particularly in mobile marketing. New filters are also added, bringing new promise to the selection of beautifying features of the platform, and more are coming soon. Users and businesses alike can adjust the intensity of filters to their own liking.

These aren’t just the new things Instagram will incorporate this year. Recently, new types of ads have been introduced while taking huge lengths to maintain its imaginative and austere character. “Later this year, we will continue to connect businesses to the right people through expanded targeting options,” Instagram said. Businesses will be given better capabilities to convey their message with mobile marketing and use effective mobile strategies to reach their audience. The advertisers will be equipped with ways to reach people based on demographics and interests. Improvements on Instagram advertising through Instagram Ads API and Facebook ad buying interfaces are also underway. It’s the result of Instagram’s commitment to create better features to aid advertisers in their objectives to empower businesses large and small.

To guide your brand to the latest changes and features of digital marketing platforms like Instagram and Facebook, contact IH Digital Singapore here and we’ll help you create social media marketing strategies to scale your brand.

We have all seen a viral video and probably shared one too perhaps. What makes a viral video worth sharing and re-sharing? Is there a formula that guarantees success for viral contents? As a brand, how are your contents fairing? Here are some tips to make those contents share worthy:

1. Most viral contents are unintentional. Most viral contents such as viral videos that we are familiar with are made impromptu. When shared, they are unintentional in gaining popularity and are usually surprised at how viral it became. The debate here – should content creators have a pre-determined mindset to create contents that’ll guarantee their content going viral? Is the time and effort spent worth it?
2. Play on human emotions. Like most viral contents that stir up a wave of sharing frenzy, all share a common factor which is playing with human emotions. What can best attract someone to watch a video and then press ‘share’? Contents that touch on human emotions such as anger, happiness, sadness, surprise, humor, fear, guilt, desire and etc. generally prompt attachment from viewers to the content itself. Contents with elements of humor generally fair better in creating buzz.
3. Contents need not be big budget. Contents that are produced with big budgets are risking it if their core intention for production is to aim for viral sharing. Only few ever succeeded and it’s really not that predictable.
4. Viral contents are easily replaceable. Most viral contents, videos in particular do not last long. They are quickly replaced by another viral video soon enough. Even the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ had its phase.
5. It must be relatable and simple. If the general public gets it, it’s simple enough to be understood by all and the chances of the content being shared and possibly going viral is higher.

In the world of digital marketing, brands are constantly trying to reach their target audience. In that sense, catering contents to meet the needs of target audience will put them ahead of the game in achieving top of mind awareness.

360 degree content marketing agency such as IH Digital Malaysia will be able to help brands connect with existing customers and reach out to potential customers by creating, distributing and amplify share worthy contents.

What is The Shilla Duty Free?

The Shilla Duty Free began its first shop in 1986. Since its opening, the company has established itself as Korea’s leading travel retailer. It has been known by international visitor as a retailer of trendy products and luxurious branded products with reasonable prizes. Its offered items include boutique items, cosmetics, fashion items, jewelleries, and watches, to name a few. The Shilla Duty Free takes pride as the first and only retail operator to open a boutique store for the brand Louis Vuitton.

Today, The Shilla Duty Free is operating in different areas around Korea – Seoul, Incheon International Airport, Gimpo International Airport, Jeju and Daegu International Airport. And overseas, it operates in Changi International Airport in Singapore.

The 50K Mark

Being the first in Singapore, The Shilla Duty Free Singapore established its brand online to invite people to visit and purchase its products at its Changi International Airport branch. Knowing that online marketing is a great way to establish connection with people, The Shilla Duty Free turned to social media. To do this, digital agency IH Digital designed an integrated digital marketing communications plan to best fit the brand and its target market in Singapore and visitors of Singapore. This integrated marketing plan includes social media plans on Facebook, WeChat and Weibo, a media strategy, live events updates with social video production, and offline event video coverage.

Below is an event video highlight of The Shilla Duty Free Singapore’s Grand Opening and SKII CC Cream Exclusive Launch at The Shilla Duty Free Changi Airport branch.

In as fast as 90 days, The Shilla Duty Free Singapore was able to achieve the 50,000 fan mark through the integrated marketing plan laid out by IH Digital. And today, its Facebook page holds 57,000,000 fans and counting! Thanks to the well-planned digital marketing integration through social, video advertising and digital media.

Is video advertising helping The Shilla Duty Free Singapore?

Video advertising is increasingly becoming a vital part of the social media and digital marketing. Definitely, it has contributed to the increased fan count of The Shilla Duty Free Singapore’s Facebook page. This simple video below for instance, is a mere suggestion that videos have worked utterly well in garnering social media user activities within the page, which eventually made waves around the social media to attract more followers. The Facebook video records 2,278 Likes and 13,295 views at the time of writing.

The Shilla Duty Free Singapore is also actively sharing its video ads to feature its products as well as its corporate videos including event-focused video production, on-site event video coverage and other marketing video specials. Below is one of its micro videos developed by IH Digital:

View The Shilla Duty Free Singapore’s Facebook videos here.

Do you want your brand to get an edge on digital marketing through videos? There is always a great video advertising plan that is most suitable to your brand. Check out more of IH Digital’s video advertising and video production projects.

A Successful Marketing video production for The Shilla Duty Free

The Shilla Duty Free Singapore offers a wide range of products. As it continues to present its brand as a leading distributor of quality, high-end and branded products, The Shilla Duty Free also puts up the name of the brands it offer. And finally, through a marketing video production, success came in an instant.

The Shilla Duty Free’s simple promotion video was viewed by more than 7,000 Facebook users in just a short span of time. On Facebook’s social media analytics tool, the brand hit relatively high engagement for the video as the Likes went up to more than 200 in that brief period. Moreover, the comments generated on the video post were positive, including more inquiries about the products.

Through a video production, many opportunities await. Marketers can now welcome more opportunities in posting Facebook videos directly on the social media site. However, YouTube still stands to be on top of the game in terms of SEO and easier searchablity features. With this, we recommend at IH Digital that you gauge your market well to learn which of the digital video portals best suits your brand’s objectives. As an SEO company, we can help you take your video to places through content marketing strategy including SEO.

As we help you create the best digital marketing strategy for all your brand’s needs, we ensure that your marketing video production will gain you more benefit not just for the product you feature, but also to your brand as a whole.

For more information about marketing video production and the integration of these efforts on different digital channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and more, please feel free to reach us at marketing@ihdigital.com.

Video Advertising Opportunities

Digital videos play significant roles in content marketing today especially this 2015. With the rise of videos in terms of views and engagement, digital marketers apparently perceive rising opportunities with well-planned content marketing videos. In fact, this year is the time seen to have the biggest opportunities in advertising through digital videos. Today’s swift developments in technology and communication are the major contributors to the rise of digital video production, even taking over the large share of traditional TV in display advertising budgets.

Digital video platforms are mounting in terms of use and performance as platform developers foresee how videos will provide digital marketing a crucial break. It is apparently witnessed in the actions of the biggest digital video channel YouTube, which is now taking steps to further improve viewer experience through better video resolutions. While YouTube remains to be on top, Facebook is aggressively entering the video platform competition by targeting video bloggers and convincing them to post their videos directly on Facebook. As we may all have observed, Facebook videos are everywhere on our newsfeeds and seems like many users are now posting directly on the social media site.

Do you have your corporate videos up on any of these channels? These major video platforms and a lot more such as Vine and Instagram are important advertising mediums that you might want to take advantage of to benefit your digital content marketing efforts. Below is IH Digital’s corporate video showcasing the company’s services in a video running for as short as 1 minute and 29 seconds.

Can you imagine how many display images it will take to showcase all of IH Digital’s services? Not to mention the amount of time that your audience will take to absorb all these information. That is the power of a powerful video strategy in content marketing. Messages can be conveyed through videos in a more efficient manner than other display advertising, and can even be maximised through a great strategy to make it appealing to viewers.

Read more: Facebook Videos vs. YouTube

Digital video trends you need to know

Digital mobile video

This year is said to be the best year that will showcase how mobile can become significant to videos. Online users increasingly watching videos through mobile only mean bigger marketing communications and advertising opportunities, and thus higher spending on this medium.

More action through video campaigns

Do digital videos drive more actions? Definitely! In fact, according to a study by the Business Insider, online videos generate three times more clicks on average compared to other advertising formats. This study mainly shows how powerful a content marketing video can become as it can showcase more stories than images and texts, making ads and features more engaging. Moreover, today’s social media marketing and online targeting capabilities are also improving. What can be more efficient in digital marketing when digital videos can share more stories to the right audience?

Below is an example of video developed to increase brand awareness through an interactive game. It is a video contest of the brand PUB Singapore.

Searchable posts

Nobody wants their best shot of marketing videos to get lost in the digital space. Making it searchable is as simple as organising your videos – where to place it and when. Did you know that YouTube is one of the largest search engines in the world? Searching for videos makes it easier when you do it on YouTube. Alternatively, you can also search Google, which of course prioritizes its own channel, YouTube.

Facebook, on the other hand, is different. Facebook videos are mostly seen via newsfeeds liked or shared by friends and pages you follow. But yes, posts are searchable. So make it easy for people to search your posts on the social media site. Headline or caption them with something worth remembering — a unique hashtag or easy-to-remember description, perhaps.

Advertise where all eyes watch

At this time, the largest share of viewers turn to YouTube for videos. Content marketing through this platform gives your brand strong opportunities to reach your audience more effectively. YouTube videos allow advertising on their videos that will be visible to its viewers on the duration of the video clip they are watching.

Engage hard-to-reach market

Digital videos usually appeal to hard-to-reach markets. In a study by Video Brewery and Forbes Insights, 59% of senior executives would rather choose to watch a video than to read a text. Even more interesting are the actions done by these audience. The study continues to point out that around 65% of them click through to visit the vendor’s website, 50% have drawn interest and seek for more information, and some 45% contacts the creator of the video.

As a final note, video marketing is undeniably a powerful content marketing consideration given that all the engagement and responses that videos get from its audience today are remarkable. Indeed, it is sensible to say that using videos in digital marketing is an effective medium to make your brand stand out from the rest. Taking note of the recent studies about digital video marketing, the vast opportunities that videos can gain for your business is impressive. The challenge in today’s video content marketing is targeting precision, quality and proper delivery of message.

Marketing communication goes more personal

As people choose to be wiser online users, online marketers seek a better marketing communication tactic to get their audience’s attention. To do this, two things evidently become the key essentials: high-quality content and a more personal approach. But to some marketers in Asia, one more challenge gets in the way – marketing products and services to China. Aside from the basic content marketing communication strategy, marketing products to China can be more demanding. This is because you need to consider the applications that are open to and widely used by Chinese online users.

Are you wondering how you can achieve this digital marketing move for your brand?

Fortunately, WeChat can help many marketers solve the social media marketing equation. It is an all-in-one mobile chat application that is definitely widely used in China and many parts of the world. There are several reasons why marketers need to be present on this platform when targeting the Chinese audience. One of them is earning more followers in the Chinese market. For instance, The Shilla Duty Free Singapore has been active on WeChat since October 2014. And today, it continues to gain positive brand recognition in its target market in China. More subscribers continue to follow the brand as WeChat continues to grow in China in terms of number of users.

Read further to learn things you need to know about marketing communication in China through WeChat.

WeChat’s Best China Marketing Features

Create user segment for followers

WeChat has quite an organised group categorisation. Although most social media sites have features of assigning contacts to a particular group, WeChat takes it to a different level. Categories are so organised that you may group your followers according to gender and target that particular category with the right messages. For instance, target women for messages about women’s fashion; and men for men’s fragrances.

More ways to present special offers

Ever thought of engaging your fans through chat application? Well, that is indeed possible with WeChat. Did you know that this mobile chat application allows you create different approaches in presenting your offers and social media campaigns? Digital scratch cards, for instance. Or even e-coupons that is redeemable by your followers. These remarkable marketing communication approaches make your brand more engaging to your WeChat followers.

Reliable and valuable market research

Do you want to witness your social media analytics results soar positively in the China market? As marketers of the modern society, we should always value the things that our target market is most interested in. Through WeChat, you will get a chance to hold a one-to-one conversation with your followers. This is one of the best ways to implement your marketing communication strategy. Moreover, you may also make use of the Poll feature to gather more meaningful information. This move makes your market’s data and information more significant. In this way, targeting can be even more efficient, effective and proper.

Easy payment medium

Chinese consumers are now making WeChat as part of their daily lives by using the payment function of the mobile application. WeChat is able to store in funds and use it to pay cab fees, food and even fashion apparels and accessories. What makes it more interesting is that WeChat is working to integrate the app to offline settings that allows the use of QR codes for payments including payments on vending machines. Wouldn’t it be a great benefit to your brand when payments are made hassle-free through a trusted marketing communications medium? This means more sales can be generated for your business.

Improve content

Shareable content is the key to a successful marketing communication. WeChat allows you to experiment on the type of content you may want to share. Choose from a range of media options to be part of your content, be it polls, custom stickers and images. You can always make your marketing communication content interesting for your viewers to share and consume.

Learn more about WeChat and social media for business. IH Digital can help you push your brand further in the Chinese market through WeChat, Weibo and Baidu.

The Google+ Landscape

As a marketer, you might be aware that Google+ is currently making huge steps upward the social media marketing realm. In fact, it has recorded around some 300 million+ followers in-stream active users. A study by Janrain says that Google+ in fact has continued to grow stronger through time. It has made its way to the second largest social network despite being a newcomer in the social media industry, making it one of the best platforms to distribute digital advertising content.

More reasons to establish presence on Google+ are increasingly becoming to be relevant in social media marketing these days. In terms of its traffic, users and active brand pages, the social networking platform continues to post noticeable improvements. In 2014, 22% of online adults use Google+ on a monthly basis, a figure the same as Twitter; and more than Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn. Moreover, 42% of Google+ users use the platform to interact with brands’ content. This is a great avenue to perform your marketing communications strategy when users are known to be using Google+ to interact with brands. And most significantly, 70% of the Top 100 brands are using Google+.

Google+ also generates nearly as much engagement per follower as Facebook and nearly twice as much as Twitter. It shows that Facebook (being on top) generates 0.073% engagement. It was followed closely by Google+ at 0.079%, while Twitter gets 0.035%. That said, it is only right to establish presence on Google+ as it posts to be an opportunity for most brands to show off their social media strategy in a pool of consumers waiting for quality content.

What makes Google+ work for most brands?

Search

For the most part, Google+ is a big help to your brand’s website and digital marketing efforts through searchability. As Google is most widely known for search, the platform uses its social media feature to favour Google+ active brand pages linked to its website. In essence, when you use Google+ for your brand’s social media marketing, you not only need to look at engagement, you also need to review how the links from your Google+ page affects your website’s traffic. It is quite important to note that Google refers to most quality traffic with 2.45 pages per visit.

Your brand’s information on your About section is searchable within Google+. Not only that, these information appear in the search engines too especially when information are provided properly on the page. The number of Google reviews and more will also appear on your page’s About section. See below Oasia Hotel Singapore’s search result, for instance:

Additionally, the content you post on your brand’s Google+ page may also rank on Google Search results. How? Basically by generating interaction on your specific post (which, by the way, has a unique URL for each post) you can easily make your individual post rank on the search engine. What does this mean for your brand? Well, nothing much. It’s just biggest favour from the digital universe that you can get towards the success of your content marketing efforts. Remember, Google still tops in terms of search.

Integration

With the rise of video content marketing as an internet marketing medium, what’s more to ask for when your brand’s YouTube videos can be easily shared on your Google+ page? Plus, when you post a video directly as content on your page, you instantly get it up on your brand’s YouTube page at the same time! Here’s an example showing Panasonic Singapore’s YouTube videos readily available for viewing right on its Google+ Page:

Emails are as important as any notification you get on Google+. Good news! Google+ Pages are now integrated with your email account, including a follow button and recent posts.

Be part of the trend

Did you know that Google+ actually suggests and automatically includes hashtags when appropriate? So when creating your content and social media marketing strategy make sure to include the best keywords that will work for your audience.

For more tips and updates about social media marketing, click here.

The changing ways of TV viewing

Are you one of the people who no longer watch their favourite television shows on their original airtime? Do you turn to your broadband connection and mobile gadgets instead to watch television shows? These and a lot more are just a few of the changing ways that people in this Internet-driven world embrace in their video viewing habits that affect the way advertisers do their content marketing strategy.

Traditional TV vs. digital video advertising

Apparently, these notable changes in people’s viewing preferences caused by technological advancements are excessively significant that marketers come to the point of rethinking their content marketing approach and medium. Traditional TV campaigns at the moment still play a huge part in brands’ advertising preference. However, due to the increasing attention to videos, digital players such as social media giant Facebook have been actively bridging possible opportunities in taking the share of people’s interest in videos. Just recently, Facebook announced its new video ad platform called Anthology, which targets marketers and advertisers to promote the use of its own video viewer feature.

Today, we can clearly expect that video content marketing will stockpile a substantial share of people’s attention as well as marketers’ interests. The conflict among various marketers’ preference with regards to their ad spending on digital mediums against the ROI can be expected to increasingly take place this year as digital marketing agencies and brand managers shift to video as a focus content marketing type. With different marketing communications approaches, shifting from a focus advertising avenue to another (such as from traditional TV ad to online digital ad) can be a tough decision. But marketers need to mull over the fact that videos and digital advertising in today’s digital world cannot be separated. Otherwise, you can be blindly slashing the main course off your plate when it comes to targeting the right audience.

The P&G example: Adjusting to the evolving ad sphere

The changing environment of the advertising industry is a constant occurrence that brand marketers will need to adjust to. But for this generation, the changes continuously happen faster than ever due to technology, internet and the growing need for quality content. To consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G), the adjustment has already started several years back. P&G is a known active participant in the marketing world through its wide range of consumer goods products including Tide, Crest, Gilette, Pampers, to name a few. Since 2005, the company has started to sharply cut down its spending in traditional TV commercials. Years prior to this decision, there has already been an increasing doubt on the effectiveness of traditional TV commercials due to the increased exposure of people to technology and online connectivity.

As it becomes easier for people to skip commercial nowadays, advertisers pose major challenges in reaching its audience. Moreover, the digital videos are becoming incredibly crowded through time. And where the crowd goes, the marketers follow. Today, video viewing sites such as YouTube and Facebook push for better advertising opportunities to compete for users’ attention. It is clearly comprehensible why P&G took this shift early on.

P&G’s then global marketing officer, Jim Stengel, declared at a conference of media-buying executives in 2004 that “There must be, and is, life beyond the 30-second TV spot,” In relation to quality content marketing, he also mentioned that…

We must embrace the consumer’s point of view about TV and create advertising consumers choose to watch.”

What is the significance of P&G’s advertising moves?

Being one of the largest consumer goods providers around the world, P&G’s content marketing strategy affects other companies as a response to the increasing competition for people’s attention and loyalty. In 2004, the company became the No. 1 US advertiser, recording a TV ad spending figure of US$2.5 billion, which was more than 80% of its estimated ad budget during the same year. The following year, the company began to announce the cutting of its TV ad spending by some 25% on cable channels and around 5% on broadcast networks. The amount saved due to the reduction of traditional TV advertising spend are to be shifted to a more advanced form of TV advertising.

Today, P&G is an active participant in the digital marketing sphere including social media marketing. Popular brands under the umbrella of P&G are building online presence through the execution of social media strategies. Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing where a vast audience can be targeted efficiently, made more successfully through the feeding of quality content including video production.

As technology evolves and new digital trends continue to shake the digital space, marketers are always on the lookout for possible opportunities. Today, content marketing through social media is taking it to the next level. And more to that, people are wiser when it comes to marketing materials that pops on their screens. Thus, it is only necessary that marketers prioritize quality content marketing, the rise of video marketing and the effectiveness of email marketing on top of their social media presence.

Video production bandwagon

In the recent months, clear indications of increased video views become even more apparent, not only on YouTube but also on the social media giant Facebook. In fact, statistics show that the percentage of shared and posted Facebook videos per person increased by nearly 94%. Everyone might well remember that many people had preferred uploading videos on YouTube before sharing them on Facebook to spread the word on social media. In terms of Facebook videos’ position in that competition with YouTube on the social networking site itself, November 2014 statistics reveal that Facebook videos have now surprisingly exceeded YouTube videos on Facebook.

As video production and video ad market grows aggressively on the social media (where videos instantly go viral), key digital players such as Facebook, YouTube and AOL race to implement a forward strategy to capture the interests of marketers and advertisers. That is why Facebook’s timing of its video sales event this coming 22 April, just five days before the NewFronts event, is believed not to be an accident. On that day, Facebook will finally announce its plans about its video ad product, Anthology.

Significance of Facebook’s ‘Anthology’

Facebook is on its way to the first phase of its transition from traditional messaging to videos. In the upcoming event this April, Facebook is expected to share its video advertising plans and roll out its new video-based ad project, Anthology. Several of Facebook’s partners will deliver presentations to brand advertisers and marketers covering Facebook’s plan to incorporate brand messages into videos. Facebook seems to aim to improve marketing communications by leveraging on what seems to be the rising approach in the social media marketing industry, which is apparently the use of videos. Essentially, the idea of Facebook’s new video ad scheme is to assemble a group of video production partners to help create branded videos and offer them as paid ads to online marketers and advertisers, including agencies.

How can marketers gain from the video ad Anthology? Basically, it can help marketers’ content to stand out on Facebook through the creation of compelling and engaging content.

Wall Street Journal says –

Facebook will use the event to provide specifics on Anthology, the company’s new initiative centered around partners creating branded entertainment video content.”

For video production related to this announcement, Facebook has partnered with publishers including Vine, The Onion and Vox Media. According to Martin Beck of Marketing Land, this partnership aims “to produce short-form videos that would be sponsored by advertisers (with a $2 million minimum buy in).” According to a person familiar with Anthology, Facebook seeks some 50% of the revenue from the arrangement with advertisers. Facebook was said to have also targeted BuzzFeed, Disney Interactive, Refinery29 and more as prospective partners in this new initiative.

Just in the past year, Facebook has implemented the auto play video feature in its users’ newsfeeds. Moreover, the social media giant became active in targeting YouTube stars and convinces them to post their video productions directly on Facebook. These two are significant steps to achieve better reach and content marketing advantages for Facebook video, let alone its new pace to introduce something more aimed for the marketers and advertisers. Its significance mainly involves challenging the current star in the online video platform YouTube. Once Facebook gets the formula right on this video production and advertising plan, retaining the No.1 spot can be quite shaky for YouTube.

Facebook generates some 3 billion video views a day, which is a huge opportunity for brands to implement their content marketing and social media strategy related to videos.

Background

Eucerin is a dermatologist-recommended brand known for developing skincare products that delivers healthy skin through well-researched facts with scientific basis. Its mission is to provide gentle and effective skincare products that are highly trusted by medical professionals. It offers a line of clinically proven products for cleansing, moisturising, healing and protection.

In 2014, Eucerin Malaysia widely introduced its new product called the Eucerin Soothing Cream through digital marketing, a revolutionary product that gives solution to one of the most common skin problems – redness and itchiness of the skin caused by dryness.

Objective

In conjunction with the introduction of the new product Eucerin Soothing Cream through digital marketing, Eucerin Malaysia aims to regain the brand’s image as an expert in sensitive skin through powerful internet marketing. Along with this objective is to create awareness that Eucerin offers the most complete regime for diseased skin needs through proper education of audience.

To encourage interaction and proper learning among audience and the brand, Eucerin Malaysia seeks to allow skin sensitive users to be able to communicate and seek advice from a dermatologist through the brand. Through this, the brand targets to stimulate viral engagement and active interaction.

Game Plan

To achieve its content marketing goal, Eucerin Malaysia, with the help of IH Digital, implemented a 3-phase digital marketing campaign through different digital channels – Facebook, Google Hangout and finally, YouTube.

Through social media marketing efforts on Facebook, the brand shares the most up to date stories about the campaign such as the teaser video and the Facebook application wherein fans can post testimonials and be directed to live chat apps and videos.

Through the platform Google+ and Google Hangout, a recorded live chat scheduled every month from May until December 2014, allows fans to enquire and consult about their sensitive skin conditions and Eucerin products. A monthly quiz following the live chat and a section for testimonials are also part of this digital marketing campaign. Even more, participants in the live chat sessions were also able to get free Soothing Care Lotion. These live chat sessions were viewable via YouTube, which link can also be shared via Facebook. Through different platforms coupled with an absolute social media strategy, Eucerin Malaysia’s message was distributed more efficiently.

Finally, through several doodling videos, Eucerin Malaysia was able to implement a successful marketing communications move by educating its fans better about skin problem, skin layer, skin cycle, skin types and ultimately, Eucerin products that can best solve these problems. The corporate video marketing strategy was a significant part of the campaign as its main focus is to create awareness through a more effective video marketing approach. The drawing video, that was planned to run a duration between 1 minute to 1.30 minutes, stemmed from the idea of educating audience in a more interesting and interactive way. Below are the doodling videos of Eucerin developed by IH Digital.

Drawing video #1: Posted July 2014

Drawing video #2: Posted September 2014

Drawing video #3: Posted December 2014

Result

The video marketing strategy worked very well for Eucerin Malaysia. In fact, fans have increasingly loved the videos, recording almost double in the number of views in just 4 months. Meanwhile, on the other social media channels such as Facebook, Eucerin Malaysia garnered responses and testimonials that were generally positive for the brand. Interaction such as sharing and liking of the campaign-related posts increased significantly and active communication was apparent.

The first doodling video posted in July 2014 recorded 56,504 and counting. By the time the second video went live, the number of views increasingly went up. The September doodling video now has 68,835. And finally, the last video was put up in December 2014. At the time of writing, the latest video records a successful 93,620.

Picking between the two giants

With the rise of videos as an effective content marketing tool, today’s marketers ask: which channel can be best used to present their brands to their audiences – Facebook video or YouTube?

Search vs. Social

YouTube and Facebook are two media platform giants that have different advantages. Search for the former, being under the umbrella of Google; and social for the latter.

When trying to discover content, we run to Google and simply search for anything through the use of keywords. Being under the umbrella of Google, YouTube holds the edge when it comes to search as Google can simply favour its channels. That said, when users know what to look for, they can simply try to play with keywords and results including YouTube videos can come up that easy. However, the case seems to be changing recently because of social media.

While YouTube remains to be the biggest traffic destination when it comes to videos, Facebook is working to take a larger slice of the pie. In just a short period of time, Facebook videos are seen to be gaining more control in the online video scene. It is not very surprising to know that Facebook will soon take action in turning its attention to videos. As video marketing continues to become popular in the online marketing industry, Facebook’s merger of videos alongside its social media edge is a huge benefit to online marketers and businesses. In today’s case, Facebook feeds the top and recent videos to its users, which makes it possible for people not to turn to search engines just to see the latest and the trending. Through this system, social media gains the momentum when it comes to presenting what’s hot, viral and most viewed. Moreover, let us not forget that YouTube videos are also being viewed through Facebook.

Weighing between the most recent and the permanent content

As marketers, you must carefully study your goals for your digital marketing efforts. Understanding the trade-off between permanence and recency is vital in deciding which channel to place your video as it will measure your video’s ability to hold attention over time. For instance, Facebook Video can help your content gain attention through social media actions such as likes, comments and shares, but it can disappear quickly since recency and social interaction are the only ways to keep your video actively visible on the news feeds. YouTube, on the other hand, can easily be searched even when the video has been posted years back or hasn’t even gained much social actions. The important thing to note on YouTube’s edge in this case is that, your video remains searchable over time and can even gain attention even it is an old content. So in terms of staying power, YouTube takes the lead over Facebook. While if you think you can leave your video’s success on social actions, turn to Facebook. Now, have you decided where to put your brand’s corporate video?

Good news for marketers

Although we try to carefully figure out which is best and more beneficial to our brand, there’s a slightly positive thing that might ease the dilemma of choosing between Facebook video or YouTube. That is, competition between the two video channel giants is actually beneficial to brands that are keen on video production.  Simply put, video content creators can in fact take advantage of the emerging online video developments in each channel. With proper planning and strategy, you can be sure that your video production efforts will be optimised.

Facebook videos are known to be made to grab the users’ attention, so one thing to do is to create teasers for the Facebook page, and connect them to the full length version via the YouTube channel. This, however, is one of Facebook’s biggest downside against YouTube. While Facebook works to convince marketers to post full videos on the social media channel, users can see gaining more potential on YouTube where the content can be monetised. Will Facebook offer a better arrangement to its video content creators than that of YouTube? We can only wait. But until then, try to work around how your brand can get the most out of the competition.

However, if you are more concerned about brand recognition than your video’s record of overall views in each channel, then you could post the same videos on both channels. BuzzFeed does this! Why? Simply because it’s fundamentally more significant to spread your video, gain recognition and increase recommendations in two different channels rather than increase the number of views by staying in just one channel. In the case of BuzzFeed, results have been different, wherein marketing videos on Facebook sometimes result to more views while the same video gathers relatively lower views on YouTube; and sometimes, the other way around when the video is found on YouTube search.

Understand the online video landscape

By understanding your brand and the online video landscape, you will be able to determine which approach is better. Plan and create a strategy to ensure where your video content will fit in and benefit your brand best. As you plan about your next move, try to leverage on these two biggest video platforms to make your social media marketing efforts a success.

Background

About Tupperware Poppy n Fiddles Eco Bottle and Campaign

Tupperware Brands is known for its colourful, lightweight and leak-tight liquid bottles. As Tupperware Brands introduces the Poppy n Fiddles line, the brand made sure to make it more than memorable to its audience. In 2014, Poppy n Fiddles made it to the hearts of Tupperware Brands’ audience during its launching campaign.

Objective

The main objective of the campaign is to achieve a successful social media marketing through the promotion of Tupperware Brands’ new Poppy n Fiddles Eco Bottle range alongside its overall goal to continue to grow Tupperware Brands’ Facebook page fans and engagement.

As it is Tupperware Brands’ passion to give its customers a wonderful experience through its products, the brand wishes to receive positive feedback from its audience through this marketing communications campaign to send an affirmative message to fans and soon-to-be fans on why it is worth to own a Poppy n Fiddles Eco Bottle.

The Game Plan

To attain its objective, Tupperware Brands, through advertising agency IH Digital, launched a social media marketing campaign on Facebook and Instagram called Poppy N Fiddles Malaysia Adventure that ran from 11 August to 26 September 2014.

The mechanics is simple and easy, not to mention that taking part in this campaign is going to be really fun for the audience and fans. The main characters of the campaign, Poppy the Penguin and Fiddles the Frog were introduced to Malaysia through a fun adventure introduction. Executed with a fun and awesome content marketing plan, it is expected to make a hit among the fans of Tupperware Brands in Malaysia. The digital marketing campaign embraces the fans familiarity about Malaysia’s adventure spots to achieve higher interaction, responses and engagement among the fans. Along with the social media marketing campaign is a contest wherein through a simple “selfie” with a Poppy/Fiddles Eco Bottle, fans can win their own Fiddles Eco Bottle. Below are the three easy steps to be part of the campaign:

1. Take a selfie with either Poppy/Fiddles Eco Bottle, or both.
2. Post it on your Facebook wall or Instagram with #PoppynFiddles & #lovemyecobottle (Make sure your settings are Public).
3. Register your details at http://bit.ly/1wB17ZQ

Result

Fan growth

Throughout the campaign period, fan numbers grew by 12.7%, gaining a total of 22,969 new fans. Moreover, the growth was a constant upward trend on the duration of the campaign.

Page Impression

Through IH Digital’s social media analytics tool, it showed that the social media marketing campaign impact on page impression was overwhelmingly positive, wherein post reach recorded 10,000 per post. In connection, organic posts also recorded to have reached an average of 11,550 users, while paid posts reached an average of 30,804 users.

Social action

On the duration of the content marketing campaign, 14 posts were put up over a span of 7 weeks. On these posts, average social actions reached 700.2, while average reach went up to 17,610 users.

General Summary

The result of the social media marketing campaign was generally positive. From the start of the Poppy N Fiddles Adventure campaign, fans in Malaysia received the content and campaign extremely well. Fans’ and participants’ comments were generally positive as they have enjoyed the journey with the characters, Poppy & Fiddles. Through a well-planned and strategic social media strategy, the contest ended with a total of 156 photo submissions, while Tupper Detective registrations recorded more than 1,300 in just 2 days. All in all, the Total Social Actions ended with 9,803 and the Total Reach with 246,548.