The Singapore Marketer (Jul-Sep 2016) by The Singapore Marketer

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The Rationalisation of

CONTENT

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12 How Social Listening Can Enhance Your Content Strategy 18 Using Data Technology to Drive Your Content Marketing Strategy 30 Content Marketing Trends for 2016 and How Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) Digital is Riding the Wave The Official Publication of the Marketing Institute of Singapore, the National Body for Sales and Marketing

Editor’s Note

THE SINGAPORE MARKETER

July - September 2016

Editor Mickey Hee Contributing Writers Lena Chong, Teo Hui Shan, Jacky Tan, Robin De Rooij & Paul Janssen, Veronica Lind, Cynthia Loh, Harish Shah and Ankur Bagga MIS EXECUTIVE COUNCIL President Roger Wang 1st Vice President Bhavik Bhatt 2nd Vice President Dr Roger Low Honorary Secretary Gerry Gabriele Seah

Dear Readers “Content is king” is an often cited quote in the world of online marketing, search engine marketing and content marketing. Content has grown to become one of the most powerful tools available for doing business and connecting with targeted customers through the Internet and digital media. That being said, are you jumping on the bandwagon haphazardly just because others are doing so? Please do think again. Writing a good piece of content is both an art and a science. It takes creativity, but there are also proven strategies and tools that can be implemented to drastically increase your chance of success. One of the most common mistakes marketers made in content marketing is not knowing what they don’t know. In order to be successful in a rapidly changing field like content marketing, you need to constantly be up to date on what is working and what isn’t. In this issue, we asked content marketers to pen down what they think constitutes a good content, how can content be customised to various channels and ways of tracking the effectiveness of your content. Content is no longer just writing about the benefits of your products or services but making the emotional connection with customers. Especially in the digital age, we received so much content every day, only the ones that are relevant and thought provoking will stand out from the mass. Last but not least, it will be wise to first spend enough time to establish a content marketing strategy and document it! Without a written strategy, content creation and management, audience engagement and impact measurement can only be a haphazard process! Ensure you share the strategy plan with the relevant team members. Best wishes to your content marketing journey.

Honorary Treasurer Jackson Chua Asst Honorary Treasurer Freddy Tan Co-opted Council Members Lee Kwok Weng Mark Laudi Design & Layout Kelvin Wang Production, Advertising & Circulation Joreen Yee joreen.yee@mis.org.sg Publisher Marketing Institute of Singapore 51 Anson Centre #03-53 Singapore 079904 Tel: (65) 6327 7580 Fax: (65) 6327 9741 Email: singaporemarketer@mis.org.sg Website: www.mis.org.sg

Mickey Hee

Editor

The Singapore Marketer is a quarterly magazine published by Marketing Institute of Singapore. Tel: (65) 6294 7227. Subscription is available upon request; please contact Joreen Yee at joreen.yee@mis.org.sg. The views expressed in The Singapore Marketer do not necessarily represent those of the Marketing Institute of Singapore. No responsibility is accepted by the Institute or its staff for the accuracy of any statement, opinion, or advice contained in the text or advertisements, and readers are advised to rely on their judgment or enquiries, and to consult their own advisers in making any decisions which would affect their interest. All materials appearing in The Singapore Marketer is copyright. No part of the publication may be reproduced without prior written permission of the Marketing Institute of Singapore. The Marketing Institute of Singapore welcomes contributions and letters. These might be edited for clarity or length. Articles, letters and requests to reproduce articles appearing in The Singapore Marketer should be sent to the Editor, Marketing Institute of Singapore, 51 Anson Road, #03-53 Anson Centre, Singapore 079904 or write to singaporemarketer@mis.org.sg.

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Content Page

04 COVER STORY The Rationalisation of Content

A MARKETERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S STORY

Interview with Soyeon Kim, Google

FOCUS

How Social Listening Can Enhance Your Content Strategy

FEATURE

Comparative Claims: Yes or No?

Content in the Future of Marketing

DIGITAL DIGEST

Using Data Technology to Drive Your Content Marketing Strategy

GURU TALK

BUSINESS SCHOOL

Content Marketing Trends for 2016 and How Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) Digital is Riding the Wave Marketing to the Millennial and iGen Consumers: The Role of Content

MARKETER@WORK

Interview with Virginia Lim, Sony

LEARNING SITE

The Art of Personalisation & Content Marketing

the singapore marketer jul-sepâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;16

Cover Story

The Rationalisation

of content » By Lena Chong

In a world full of information, it is much harder now to get the attention of your audience. The good news is, with the rise of interactive media, the audience you get could be much more responsive. So, where does content play in this? Everywhere. Marketers have always been creating content. Content Marketing raised from a need to become more strategic in sharing messages to create the right impression. It focuses on how organisations wish to bring their special knowledge and contributions to the community saying it to their ideal audience in a way that captures their attention most. Obviously, this can be done in various media, over various channels.

Let’s look at some thoughts around content marketing. CONSISTENT BASICS AND INTEGRATED PLATFORMS Make important purchase information readily available and easily found. According to research done by Brand New Media, 80% of purchasers buy after researching in an online environment. Not only does having fresh and accurate online content help educate customers to make informed buying decisions, it also helps to establish a good customer impression of the business/brand, giving it more credibility as a trusted source, which contributes to building brand loyalty.

This will also ensure you leverage benefits from connecting content to more information which will allow your customers to make quicker decisions and increase the effectiveness of call-to-actions, increasing ROI on your content. WHERE? WHAT? HOW? Half the effectiveness of content is hinged on where it is shared. With the constant increase in where consumers can get their information, marketers are hard pressed to find the best places to make their content good marketing investments. In an ideal world, brands would know their consumers inside out, and would always be in the channels that they use most. However, a brand’s ability to do that is often limited by their budget for analytics and resources.

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Marketers now need to think even harder about what makes people stop and pay attention.

Does more content = better communication?

Recent years have trended minimalist movements mentality in areas from fashion, interiors to life attitudes. With algorithms taking over what writers can do, more and more words are flooding the Internet. Some brands, in an aim to generate more content, have even passed on the control of their content to their everyday users, artists and even kids, according to Digital Marketing Asia. User generated content is often very effective in community building, however, marketers need to ensure a healthy balance of original expert content is around to showcase the brand while giving space to opinions and for support.

Smart marketers know how good content can be cut-to-tease, serialised, re-used, re-modified and re-packaged to give even more depth to a message. But are you putting everything and anything out there with the logic that more communication is better than no communication?

Marketers now need to think even harder about what makes people stop and pay attention. Stop and check: Are your target customers looking at your content? If not, why waste time on them? Does your content glorify the organisation and leaders rather than provide customers with information?

Keep asking questions like: • Where do your customers get information? • What is our customer’s online behaviour?

• How do they interact within channels? Only then can you truly understand how best to present content to them. MORE OR LESS, CURATED VS. ORIGINAL

GAMES, CUSTOM, INTEGRATED AND REAL-TIME CONTENT Mobile devices have given gamification its wings. As much as we like to believe it draws attention to a brand, even the casino business makes more money on their floors. Just like it was in the past, think of how to build an online/offline relationship with your customers long-term. There are few instances where customers like a hit-and-run brand experience.

Cover Story

While integrating online and offline content make for an amazing interactive campaign, analytics have also allowed for real-time content delivery to be much more efficient. Landing specific content in line with a customer action or customer type can now be automated. The sky is the limit.

There really isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a solution. Staying relevant has never been more important. As with life, we can only get better trying. However, one truth rings constantly. Everyone loves the neighbour who shares practical experience, but the nosy neighbour giving you cake every week always has an ulterior motive.

CONTENT FATIGUE IS VERY REAL

Here are three basic guidelines to keep in mind when building your Content Strategy:

As spoilt consumers, we are inundated by more data every day. How much can one actually absorb? As our attention span shortens and searching for information replaces knowledge retention, consumers will expect even more from on-demand content and may still react lukewarm to innovative campaigns. So, where is the line?

1. Create a plan and stick to it this means, not posting as and when you feel like, but have a planned delivery in each channel. Research shows that a plan not only helps you stay on track, but allows you to know what needs to change.

2. Think of how the content you want to produce fits into the message you wish to convey. 3. Always begin with the end in mind - Steven Covey. Finally, we know the content will keep coming. In some ways, the more useable knowledge people have, the better we can make decisions. However, redundant information can confuse. As marketers, perhaps it is our duty to help clients rationalise their content efforts; ensuring the information is accurate, useful and well shared to their audience and the world at large. After all, in this digital age, what you put out there can last a long long time.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Lena is a content idealist and mindful marketer. Her passion for content takes her into all areas of research from technology to life and art. Her current portfolio includes being a freelance writer, consultant as well as Content Director at Retinel. Write to her at lena@retinel.com.

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A Marketerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Story

Interview with Soyeon Kim

Regional Lead, Marketing Insights and Content Strategy Google Soyeon is a marketing specialist with eight years of experience at Google. She is an expert in scaling marketing campaigns across the region and maximising the impact in the market by working cross functionally. In this issue of The Singapore Marketer, we managed to hear from Soyeon, as she speaks about her viewpoints on gearing up Content Marketing strategies in optimising brand performance.

Tell us what your job entails at Google? As the editor in chief for Think with Google APAC, my responsibilities revolve around content strategy development, marketing research as well as content creation and curation. To empower APAC businesses adopt and excel in digital marketing, I have to think about how Google can help them engage with the target audience in the most effective way. Since there are many countries in APAC region with different cultural traits, I work closely with marketers in each Google offices to bring locally relevant content to the markets.

Furthermore, I also work closely with cross-functional teams such as sales and research team for developing marketing insights. I design and oversee research to study consumer behaviors and analyse Googleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s data to discover new industry trend. Regarding content creation and curation, my team decides the topic and focus areas for each month and quarter, and we work with content contributors from inside and outside of Google to produce content with actionable insights. This is to help marketers integrate digital channels into their marketing mix in an easy and effective way.

How has content marketing changed in recent years? What do brands have to do differently now that they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to before? Digital channels have changed the way brands engage with their customers. Via social network services and messengers, customers can now speak to you on what they think about your product or service and talk to others about your brand. So, it is important for the success of marketing to provide the content your customers want, in a way they want it. Here are three points to incorporate into your content marketing strategy.

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Be authentic: Tell the story that people can resonate.

Be authentic: Tell the story that people can resonate. P&G’s Olympic campaign “Thank you, mom” is one of the best examples. It tells a beautiful story of moms’ unconditional support for their children that everyone can empathise with, and then presents P&G’s home care product brands as “proud sponsor of moms”. The campaign was well received because the company chose the story that people can accept as an authentic voice of the brand. Fully utilise digital canvas: With various technologies digital offer, you can create a unique brand experience to engage with customers. Try digital canvases such as interactive content format, virtual reality and location targeting that were not possible with other marketing channels before.

Create shareable content: Let’s take “Ice bucket challenge” as an example. It went viral all over the world thanks to people’s active sharing. The fun element drew everyone’s attention, and its simplicity accelerated the expansion of the campaign. It can be a good start to think about what topics your target audiences would like to share with their friends and colleagues. What are some of Google’s Content Marketing strategy that has performed remarkably well? From launching the site a year ago, Think with Google APAC readers’ numbers has grown eight times. Although a few different approaches were used in achieving this, I believe the key to success was a series of great content.

When we surveyed what people want to hear from Google, most people answered it’s “marketing tips based on Google’s own analysis and study”. We know the unique selling point of Think with Google is the insights from Google itself, so we allocate more than 50% of what we publish to those content. Another topic people wanted to hear from us is what would be the big trend for tomorrow. So we introduce what we think is the future, the ideas which are being baked in Google, such as our new products and marketing narratives. We also suggest what marketers need to prepare for coming seasons, by analysing previous years’ consumer behaviour data.

A Marketer’s Story

Just providing big numbers, statistics and trend doesn’t add much value to busy marketers, so we always end our articles with actionable insights that can be directly applied to day-to-day work. We also summarise the key points of each article and make it visually stand out from the page for the convenience of readers on the go. The saying goes “The rich will get richer if they create great Content”. How can one use Google as a platform to garner content that truly matters to the target audience or end user? The beauty of digital marketing is that you know who you are talking to and it is easy for anyone to share the content you create. Below are my quick suggestions: Read the context (e.g. time of the day, the device in use, keywords they search, etc): Catch the intent by seeing what they are actually searching. It cannot go wrong when you give users what they want and customised to their context. Make the best out of what digital channel can offer: There are many cases that brands implement their TV ads to digital video campaign as they are (e.g. YouTube), and my question is why don’t they make their content interactive, fun and sharable when there is an option to do so?

Lastly, make the content people would love, not just ads. Create content that has the story people will love to talk about and share. They will advocate your brand more effectively than you do for yourself. The famous Dove “True beauty” video is a great example. When we talk about SEO or Search Engine Optimisation, we are mainly talking about Google. How can marketers ensure their content are the most relevant piece to top the search list? Ironically, this was a challenge that I personally faced when I first launched APAC Think with Google last year. I have learned a couple of things from this experience. First, create original content and don’t copy content from other websites. Make it shareable, as the more it is shared, the more the search robot will think your content is valuable to the readers. Second, consider SEO when you write the content. The title of your article and the body text should include keywords of the content. Help the search engine to easily grasp what your content is about, by adding the keywords that explain your main thoughts and arguments.

Companies seem to be most challenged by measuring content marketing performance and ROI. What advice can you share? Each marketing approach should be evaluated in the most relevant measurement. It is difficult to prove that content marketing brings direct impact on revenue in a short-term, just like TV commercials. I would suggest treating it as a channel for building a better relationship with your consumers and earn their trust and brand loyalty. The time we think of ‘digital marketing equates to ROI-driven performance marketing’ is long gone. When everyone lives and breathes in the digital world, branding and content marketing campaign should also be done through digital. What kind of content marketer would you call yourself? A digital evangelist. By providing leading digital insights to marketers in this region, I support businesses go digital and take their marketing to the next level.

Third, work with trustworthy SEO partners. They will give you technical tips about adding relevant tags, linking with relevant websites, etc.

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Focus

How Social Listening Can Help To Enhance Your Content Strategy Âť By Teo Hui Shan

The growing demographic diversity and evolving media consumption habits have altered how consumers get information and how they perceive branded communication messages. A successful content marketing strategy, has therefore, become ever more crucial for brands to be able to successfully break through the clutter and appeal to their target audience by creating and distributing valuable and relevant content on a consistent basis. The emphasis on producing relevant and quality content became more apparent when Google released Hummingbird in 2013, an algorithm which provides query results based on semantic search and contextual relevance, thereby, forcing brands to

rethink of how they need to produce more authoritative content to help maintain or boost their search engine rankings. How Can Social Listening help? Social listening- is loosely defined as the active monitoring of social media channels (e.g. blogs, websites, Facebook, Twitter and forums) for information about a company, individual, product or brand. When it comes to social listening, there are dozens of tools currently in the market available for brands to use to analyse data and extract key insights for a better targeted and more efficient content marketing strategy. Here are six ways how social listening can be leveraged on:

1. Improve Understanding of Consumer Behaviour

In the online sphere, consumers are less disposed to social desirability bias and mistaken recall. They tend to be more open and unbiased since they usually post their opinions without being prompted or moderated by survey question or in a focus group. Hence, social listening enables brands to gather consumer data in a more unsolicited way and allows them to better identify key problems, motivations and issues that audiences have with their products or services. Knowing what makes customers tick is excellent for developing great customer service as well as powering content creation.

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Social listening can be used to find out how consumers talk about your brand and products online in a very unprompted and organic manner.

Uncover Key Topics or Content Ideas in Online Conversations.

Social listening can be used to find out how consumers talk about your brand and products online in a very unprompted and organic manner. By monitoring specific key terms relevant to your brand with a social listening tool, it can help pinpoint your consumers’ interests. The top conversations associated can then be used as a parameter to help inform the selection of content that will be of most interest to consumers and thus, potentially drive maximum engagement. For instance, a social listening query surrounding the topic of “healthy eating”, can showcase the following: Search results derived from a social listening tool – based on the phrase “healthy eating” The bigger the ‘buzz cluster’, the more predominant the conversations associated are.

Figure 1: Foam Tree – based on the phrase “healthy eating”

Netizens often talk about exercising along with healthy eating as part of the healthy lifestyle.

Focus

Salad is often mentioned as a popular food choice for healthy eating.

As observed, the search results derived from social listening tools can help to reveal the top trending conversations surrounding a particular topic. In this instance, ‘exercise’ and ‘salad’ are indicated as some of the key conversation topics associated with “healthy eating”. Based on these, brands can consider creating relevant content surrounding these popular conversation topics as part of their content strategy.

3. Keep your content fresh, engaging and relevant to your audiences These days countless brands are creating micro-content in reaction into hot topics – a practise known as ‘real-time marketing’. Examples can be seen in how brands have capitalised on the viral hashtag #SG50ShadesOfGrey and #thedress phenomenon to push out relevant social media content for maximum engagement.

(Images source: Twitter screenshots)

With the help of social listening tools, real-time marketing is made even more possible by helping brands to keep abreast with the latest online trending topics, track reactions to current events and find breaking news quicker than ever before. Hence, this helps brands to identify and publish relevant content that is aligned with the ‘hot topics’, in a timely manner, thereby keeping their content fresh and relevant for their audiences. Furthermore, fresh content can also help boost their search rankings since Google’s algorithm favours content that is the most recent.

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4. Identify and measure the success of marketing content Through social listening, brands can identify what type of content has been gathering the best engagement in terms of likes and shares, and hence, most likely to have most relevance and resonance with the audience. With that, brands will be able to better ascertain if their content strategy is on the right track. For instance, based on figures 2 and 3, it can be observed that the photo posts are primarily driving the most interactions. The use of a social listening tool can even help further help brands to drill down and identify the exact post that gathered the best interactions and thus better understand how audiences have reacted to the brand’s content.

Figure 2: NTUC Income’s Facebook Asset Analysis using a social listening tool

Figure 3: NTUC Income’s Facebook Asset Analysis using a social listening tool (Photo posts with the top comments)

5. Create more relevant content for target audience Social listening can help brands understand their target audience better in terms of: • Psychographics – type of profiles and related interests, occupations • Demographics – age, gender (this would usually require the use of Facebook topic data) This information will allow brands to better tailor and customise their content accordingly so that it will hold most resonance for consumers and thus motivate them to interact with their content.

Figure 4: Excerpts of social media report to analyse consumer psychographics surrounding the banking industry

Focus

6. Select the right influencers for your content No one can deny the growing power of influencers in the online space. Armed with social media savvy, sharp opinions, purchasing power and swathes off followers on their social networks, these players are quickly changing the game and paving the path for the growing adoption of influencer marketing by brands. The right influencer can not only help expose your content to a bigger audience, but one that is most relevant to your brand as well. Hence, by focusing on specific topics or key areas of interest related to the brands, social listening can help identify and shortlist the most popular and relevant influencers or advocates, across different platforms, to tap on and engage for content outreach and content amplification. Top influencers with regards to skincare (using a social listening tool)

In conclusion, applications of social listening can help boost your content strategy and optimisation efforts. By tapping on the use of social media intelligence, brands can develop a better understanding of audience and industry trends in order to produce more authoritative and relevant content that will appeal to their target audience.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Teo Hui Shan is a marketing executive at Isentia, Asia-Pacificâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading media intelligence company. She is passionate about learning and sharing on how brands can utilise media intelligence and insights for maximum business impact.

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Feature

Using Data Technology to Drive Your

Content Marketing Campaign?

» By Jacky Tan What is exactly data technology? With all the newly derived terms in the content marketing industry such as big data marketing or data-driven content strategy, the marketer may be feeling a little bit overwhelmed or puzzled. Not to worry too much, we are all basically talking about the same thing. That is, using data to develop content relevant to your customers into your marketing campaign, thus making it easier for your company to take care of your customers. As simple as that. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba group and the person who coined the term data technology, said, “In the society of tomorrow, data will be the most important means of production, innovation and social development. People and data will be interwoven. We must continue to invest in the development of data technology.”

Is Data-driven Marketing something new? One may asked, “is such datadriven marketing a new IN thing in the market?” Not at all. In fact, every serious small, medium or big sized businesses today, were already practising some form of data-driven marketing without realising. For example, the cafe manager and her baristas adding new flavours to the drinks menu by understanding the “latte preference” of their regular customers. Or that fashion apparel shop introducing their new lace dresses from its knowledge of their majority customers’ shopping habits who bought more lace clothes than other types of apparels. Even to the simple local “karang guni” (rag-andbone man) man who understands from their experience, which neighbourhood or which season of the year will he received more preowned goods for him to resell in the market. The list just goes on and on.

So why suddenly it (Data-driven Marketing) becomes the talk-of-thetown? So why is data-driven or big data marketing the new trend many marketers are talking about right now? One reason from my observation is perhaps the growth of the E-Commerce market in Singapore as well as other parts of the Asian market. E-commerce sales business or Internet-dependent businesses are booming during the past few years. The large scale sales volume garnered in the E-commerce sector forms essential data where e-commerce business can collect, analyse and come out with marketing strategies to reach out to their targeted consumers.

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The Importance of Content and Data And then with all the data at hand, the best and easiest way to capture the entirety of the data is perhaps using quality content marketing strategy. That is, by understanding the data which includes demographics, age, interests, income level, buying seasons and many more, marketers can quickly design interesting branded articles that are highly relevant to the data. Quality content marketing is just like a magnet, attracting like-minded consumers that are likely to buy your products and services, to your brand.

Another key success factor to content marketing as mentioned in my previous article, is to have an archive of articles. One or two articles are not enough to convince and influence the customers today. You will need to educate the consumers on a consistent basis with quality content. Therefore, most types of traditional marketing such as print or TV or radio advertising can only be seemed as relatively less effective in terms of content marketing due to its limited space and high costs.

Data Technology Content Marketing for Big Boys Only? A friend of mine who is the head of marketing for a world renowned bank once said that 70% (or more) of his marketing budget will be put solely onto customer-centric or datadriven content marketing. Since we are already hearing news of big corporations spending millions dollars of marketing budget on data technology to ride the trend wave. The other question, is data-driven content marketing only affordable for the big boys? The answer is no, of course. This strategy is for everyone. To be exact - companies of any size from sole proprietorship, partnership, small medium sized enterprises and of course the mighty corporations. In fact, smaller enterprises and startups can harness the effect of such strategy better with almost zero cost and much more efficiency! How to Apply Data Technology in Your Content Marketing Strategy? If you had been to the many recent seminars and conferences, you might be bombarded with a wide diversity of methodologies in terms of data-driven content marketing. For now perhaps, you could throw them away and just remember these three simple steps!

1. Collect Data There are two types of data, current metrics and distant metrics. Current metrics are data that you collect on the spot from the day to day running of your businesses such as your sales data, your cash flow data, your marketing leads, your consumers budget, competitorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; strategies and more. Try to add some more details into your current metrics by getting your frontline sales staff to find out a little bit more about your customers especially during the aftersales period. Find out more about their buying reasons, age group, demographics, interest level and others that you think is important in your marketing decision-marketing. Distant metrics are data that are collected over a longer period of time. Examples of such data include your past yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sales figures, third party industry analytics and statistics gathered over the period of 6 months or more, business reports, news and more. Creating strategies out of the distant metrics may not reflect a more accurate ROI (return on investment). This is because our marketing climate is constantly changing. Consumer preferences change. By the time you execute strategies based on the distant metrics, many things had already been changed. That is why it will be relatively risky to create strategies with the distant metrics.

Feature

The emphasis will be on the current metrics as they will paint a better picture of your current customer behaviour, which may result in better sales revenue generated out of your data-driven marketing strategies. While the distant metrics may hold some accuracy to the overall marketing result, I would still recommend focusing not more than 20% there and 80% to 90% on the current metrics. 2. Analyse the Data Once you have gathered your data, it is time to sit down, have a meeting with your marketing department and analyse the data. Gather the current metrics and put them into pie charts, graphs or whichever pictograms that you like.

By looking at these visuals, you can clearly understand more about your consumers, where your company is standing now, what are your best selling products, what are the best selling seasons and many more. From here, analyse the data, design your content marketing strategy and start your marketing plans. Specialised content marketing agency works more than just analysing the company’s data, they also help in analysing the competitors’ data. From there, they can help to create topics that are unexplored by the competitors or interesting trends topics that will create interest among the targeted consumer community. 3. Take Action on the Data The fun part is here! The third step is to simply share the content to the right audience which is the existing group of consumers as well as the potential group of consumers. Discuss about the possible content channel, where you want to display your content to.

Different media channels or social media platforms have a different group of consumers. Hence, you will have to find out more about the demographics of the users and readers from the media publishers first before sharing your branded content at the relevant channels. Content channel does play an important role in distributing your content and carrying your subtle marketing message to the right consumers. However, as mentioned earlier, the key is still to create good quality “magnetic” articles that are highly relevant to your targeted audience. In summary, using data technology to drive your content marketing campaign is one of the most important things to do right now for marketers today. However, do not get carried away too much by the “colourful” or complex talks about data-driven content marketing. Just collect the data, analyse the data and take action on the data! As simple as that!

ABOUT THE WRITER

Jacky Tan is the principal brand strategist of Jack And Chaz Pte Ltd, a boutique content marketing agency in Singapore. He is also a professional marketing writer, brand strategist, speaker as well as published book author of “Social M – How Your Startup Can Take On The Big Boys Today”. Jacky is contactable at biz@jackchaz.com.

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Comparative Claims: Yes o r No?

Âť By Robin De Rooij & Paul Janssen

Guru Talk

As more and more brands enter the market, all with the ability to easily broadcast themselves to the masses through multiple platforms, it is becoming increasingly harder to stand out and grab consumers’ attention. This leads many marketing executives to instruct their teams to be more aggressive and hard-hitting in their messaging. However, attempts to be “hardhitting” often result in the use of comparative claims – focusing on how a product compares to the competition. After all, comparing oneself directly to others should be an effective method to cut through the noise and demonstrate superiority. However, the real question then becomes whether focusing on an explicit comparison is the most helpful use of a marketing message, or if there are better alternatives. To answer this question, let’s first look into the basic question of why consumers buy a certain product. Consumers buy a product because they have a need and they are searching for something that will fulfill that need. All things being equal (including price), they will choose the product that delivers the highest perceived value — thus, the greatest potential to fulfill their need. In other words, the product that best addresses the reason for making the purchase in the first place. Following

this logic, it surely makes sense to use comparative claims to position yourself against the competition in such a way that demonstrates more value. But before we move further, let us evaluate the viability of such marketing claims. Proceed with caution

However, there are also serious risks involved with using brand or product comparisons. They include: • The brand being judged negatively if the comparative claim is seen as bashing the competition. For example, a Coca-Cola loyalist may respond negatively to a soda brand that draws explicit comparisons to the brand.

Brand comparisons can successfully contribute towards reaching certain goals. By making a comparison, a challenger brand or new market entrant can leverage positive associations consumers have with other, more established brand to:

• The message primarily being used to draw a comparison to competitors rather than focusing on what’s in it for the consumer usually the key benefit that drives purchase.

• Help establish credibility for new entrants that a consumer may not be as familiar with.

• Undermining a brand’s credibility if the comparisons are viewed as unrealistic.

• Help overcome specific barriers to purchase (e.g. quality concerns). For example, consumers tend to question the quality of inexpensive products, such as private labels or products that are always on promotion. If consumers are triggered by price but possess quality concerns that act as a barrier to purchase, comparative claims can help overcome them and convert sceptics into shoppers. By using comparative claims, you can “borrow” the associations of quality that come with an established, competitive brand to break down the barrier and obtain shoppers.

Avoid nasty side effects of comparative claims Although there are risks associated with using comparative claims, they can be a very powerful way to communicate and stand apart from others in the marketplace. For more functional categories where tangible benefits can be substantiated by numbers or research, comparative claims can work very well if you stick to the following principles:

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Always remember why the consumer is buying the product in the first place and make sure to emphasize it when trying to sell them your offering.

Always focus on the key benefit

Effective communication starts with addressing what really matters to the consumer. Always remember why the consumer is buying the product in the first place and make sure to emphasize it when trying to sell them your offering. This seemingly common sense tip is easily forgotten in the pursuit of differentiation and creativity.

will do for them and helps them relate to it. This can be done through graphics, text, numbers, etc. It’s great to get creative, as long as you don’t lose sight of that key benefit! For instance, a personal care brand might claim to provide “softer, smoother skin after one shower.” Alternatively, the brand could include a picture of smooth skin, a numeric tagline such as “15x more moisturising power than regular soap,” or a combination of the three to appeal to the aspirations of consumers and effectively communicate the benefits that their product will provide to the consumer.

If you’re afraid that you’re losing your focus, ask yourself the following questions to get back on track: • What does the benefit mean to the consumer? • What would the consumer get out of your product? Make your benefits tangible and relevant to the consumers’ needs / aspiration Be specific in how much value (benefit) you have to offer. Specificity allows consumers to get a better understanding of what the product

(Image taken from: vztotalwireless.com)

Guru Talk

Be creative in defining your benchmark When defining good comparative claims, it’s really not about comparing, per se. It’s more about establishing a sense of superiority. In the end, a product offers as much value as the consumer perceives. By comparing against creative benchmarks, such as easy-tounderstand wireless coverage maps as illustrated in the above figure, a brand can portray a sense of superior performance. For instance, a make-up remover can claim that it “helps remove 2x more dirt and make-up,” and the back of pack states, “compared to regular washing.” Regular washing

here might simply refer to washing with water. By creatively setting benchmarks, brands can highlight an irrelevant benefit where the product outperforms key competitors or communicate superior value without the need to bash their competitors. Comparative claims should not be seen merely as a side-by-side comparison of features or benefits against competiton, but as a means of communicating superior value. The key is always to focus on the key benefits to the consumers that are congruent with their needs or aspirations while setting your product against a creative benchmark instead of bashing your competitors.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Robin De Rooij is the Director for the brand new SKIM Asia Pacific office in Singapore. He is responsible for building up the right team and ensuring high quality research is performed for all clients in the region.

Paul Janssen

Robin De Rooij

Paul Janssen is the Communications Platform Manager, US at SKIM. Paul is an expert in the field of claims and communication and regularly advises clients like Unilever, PepsiCo and Philips on how to optimise their claim and communication strategies for specific marketing initiatives.

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Business School

Content in the Future of Marketing Âť By Veronica Lind

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Forrester Research says that customers are into 90% of their buying journey before they contact a vendor. This means that BEFORE the customer makes the initial contact, the sales department would need to depend on marketing to engineer the customers’ journey, to entice, guide and provide the necessary information to steer them to a decision. THE FUTURE OF MARKETING The Future of Marketing is where marketing and communications teams come together to create a content-driven ecosystem that will elevate the brand and effectively motivate customers to move to their next stage of lifecycle FASTER than they would their own. In fact, according to PQ Media’s ‘Global Content Marketing Forecast 2015, Content Marketing will be $300B industry. This goes to show that GREAT content marketers are needed to differentiate organisations from their competitors. Still, based on research by Altimiter Group, 70% of marketers say they lack a consistent or integrated content strategy. That means content is still being created and distributed in silos from different product or business units and/or from different marketing channels, causing confusion in the marketplace as well as being seen as spamming customers with irrelevant marketing promotions. To eliminate the silo development, marketers and communications professionals should involve other business stakeholders in their content-driven ecosystem, and to align content to business objectives.

A PRESCRIPTIVE GUIDE There are three key steps to building a content-driven ecosystem.

1. Create and manage content providing a personalised experience

2. Publish and promote relevant content across the right channels and social integrations

3. Use analytics to convert KPI to ROI

1. Create and manage content providing a personalised experience Create a few value-based themes that appeal to your audience and organise your content and marketing efforts by these themes. Align the themes to your sales initiatives so that sales, marketing and communications speak the same language to the customers. In this way, you will ensure relevance to different stakeholders as you systematically plan and execute your strategy. In developing content, adopt a customer-first philosophy. Aim to be the thought leader for content that is of value to your customers to help them solve problems with your set of products or services aligning to those themes. Also, think how you want your content to be managed for local, regional or global campaigns.

Business School

2. Publish and promote relevant content across the right channels and social integrations Create a campaign map where you spell out what contents are shared for each select audience at each stage of their lifecycle for each value-based theme and how they are shared across various marketing channels (including social channels) to maximise reach, engagement and call to action. This is important because your content is worthless until your customers and prospects read and react to it. 3. Use analytics to convert KPI to ROI From the content marketing perspective, there are certain metrics you would want to track using analytical tools. Analytics help you see what’s working and what’s not and allow you to make intelligent decisions so that you can tweak your campaigns to meet your goals. It also allows you to make ROI reporting in a fashion that your business will appreciate.

Do not get hyped up over one metric – e.g. look only at brand awareness or customer retention numbers. Look at results holistically. Sometimes a multi-attribution modelling for ROI reporting makes more sense. There are many metrics to track but the top 5 would be these: 1. Website Traffic/Reach that measures the very top of the sales and marketing funnel. This metric will be useful for understanding the percentage of traffic driven by the content created. 2. Leads Generated/Prospects Acquired. This is the most popular and important marketing metric that can provide you with useful information to move customers through the path to purchase. 3. Click Throughs that show the quality of the marketing content—or lack thereof.

5. Conversion Rates. B2C marketers should use this to understand the path to purchase and to achieve the highest possible conversion rate. 6. Average Deal/Purchase Size. Marketers need to understand that purchasing trends will vary by segment and these trends impact the type of content created, especially if the end goal is to drive deals for the business. 7. Revenue. Literally, the most important metric that is discussed at management meetings. Content, in today’s world, is no longer just about the best visuals or coolest videos, it is about delivering the brand’s message, making the emotional connection with customers, and driving them to a decisive decision for the brand. Content is serious business in the future of marketing.

4. Lead to Marketing-Qualified Lead (MQL) Ratio. B2B marketers need to know the effectiveness of converting leads beyond simply gathering contact information towards qualification.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Veronica Lind has a solid track record in helping small businesses, large organisations and higher education institutions create multiplier effects in their business growth. She heads up Vermilion Marketing, in Australia.

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Digital Digest

Content Marketing Trends for 2016 – And How Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) Digital is Riding the Content Marketing Wave » By Cynthia Loh We’re almost mid-way through 2016, but content marketing continues to excite and – dare I say – intrigue, many marketers. We all know what content is. Or, at least we think we do. But it’s a brave new digital world that marketers and publishers manoeuvre in today. There are many things that content marketers will tell you about what they do: story-telling, native advertising, content discovery, branded content – I think you get my gist. What exactly are they talking about? It takes a while for all these buzzwords to really sink in. But what is clear is this: Traditional marketing has had to take a back seat in the digital space, and along with it, the media publishers of yore who have long pushed their brand messages on traditional advertising, regardless of who was listening, are on the decline.

It’s a different ballgame now, as the age of digital has proven to be a great leveller of all things – brands and publishers included. Think Mashable, Buzzfeed, WSJ and Forbes, among other social influencers who have made considerable inroads into the content discovery sphere with their various content types. I make no differentiation between new players and traditional media publishers in the digital space, and particularly in content marketing because neither camp can claim to have more of an advantage over the other in reeling in audiences. Readers will click on what they want to see and read, be it white papers, listicles or the most beautifully taken Instagram travel pictures. Your task as a marketer is to provide content that resonates with your reader, without irritating them by overt, in-your-face brand messages that have absolutely no relevance in their lives.

Seth Godin, an entrepreneur and marketer who thinks about marketing in the digital age, said that ‘content marketing is the only marketing that’s left’- a statement that reflects the state of content marketing in America and Europe. In Asia, advertisers are only beginning to scratch the surface of content marketing. For publishers faced with declining ad revenue, content marketing is a potential goldmine, as advertisers in Singapore and the region find it a way to reach their audience with authentic, relatable content. After all, media publishers have long honed the craft of storytelling – which is where the essence of content marketing lies. In Singapore, media giant SPH is already helping advertisers to connect with their audience through storytelling. For the digital-age audience who no longer needs to be fed information – they can get this sort of data for themselves with

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“ Google, thank you very much – telling a good story and keeping in mind what content will most benefit them is the key to their heart. For SPH, with its long and rich track record in news and journalism, storytelling in the digital age is a natural next step to creating and connecting with a community in the new age of social media.

What is the trajectory of content marketing in the local market, and what implications will it have for a publishing house that embraces a digital future? The horizon is promising, for one. Content marketing will continue to garner even more attention from industry players. As my team and I continue to ride the wave of content marketing, these are the areas of focus we believe will shape this space: 1) Think audience first Taking an audience-centric approach helps you to empathise with your readers, and puts you in their shoes. These days, the 4Ps of marketing – price, product, place and promotion, seem like a dinosaur in the brave new world of digital

... content marketing is the only marketing that’s left... marketing. That was a marketer-first approach. With Google, customers now have the ability to seek out answers for questions they have. An audience-centric approach lets a content marketer help audiences discover content that matter, be it providing solutions that address their pain points, or showing empathy by using channels they are familiar with, which will earn you brownie points, and thus, a larger share of voice. To do this, start by providing informative, bite-sized pieces of content that help to answer their questions - this ranks highly on our list of “Things a good content marketer should do.” 2) There is content. And then, there is storytelling Most people think storytelling is content, content is storytelling. It is not. Good content offers expertise, is helpful and informative. These could be in the form of thought-leadership papers, lists or easy-to-digest infographics. Providing these could get you audience interest and even lead generation. But these types of content, while good and useful,

do not inspire. And that’s what storytelling does. A good piece of storytelling content evokes emotions within readers that they identify with, and is stamped into their memory. 3) Native advertising. That’s the same as content marketing. Not. The truth is, many clients come to us with requests for editorial assistance, and then end it by saying: Isn’t content marketing just native advertising? We beg to differ. Many clients we work with at SPH Digital want content that shouts loudly about their branding. Very often, they also embark on shortlived campaigns because that’s what their marketing budgets allow for. But this hurts optimisation of their content hub in the long run. Going back to my first point about making it audience-centric, I would like to see more marketers start by asking this question instead: How can I create content that my audience can relate to, and is authentic to my brand voice? The answer is simple: Tell your brand story – in a way that your audience wants to hear.

Digital Digest

It remains a continuing education process to help clients see that behind every brand is a story worth telling. Content marketing works best when you’re advocating the values that drive the brand, not running campaigns to drive sales. 4) Quality, not quantity LinkedIn says that over 4.6 billion pieces of content were created every day in 2015. About 92,000 new articles found their way onto the Internet, with 83,000 blog posts published every hour. WordPress users produce about 35.8 million new posts each month. This is some mind-boggling volume of content being pushed out last year alone. And the quantity will continue to increase exponentially. The truth is, most of the content out in the digital space will never get read. Creating quality content is vital to making your content discoverable. What makes quality content? What makes one piece of content more shareable over another? Most content marketers agree that quality content is what audiences find useful to them.

5) The average attention span of a human has fallen In 2000, a Microsoft study found the average attention span of a human was 12 seconds. In 2015, it fell to 8 seconds. A goldfish is believed to have a longer attention span of about 9 seconds. A Nielsen Norman Group study found that it takes web users about 10-20 seconds to leave a web page, so it’s a good idea to make it clear to them what they’ll be seeing on yours. How else can you overcome the 8-second attention span? Use rich media such as video to grab - and hold - their attention for the first 8 seconds. 6) Video continues to dominate Touched on in the last point, videos help to grab and hold a user’s attention. From new ways of shooting videos (think 360o videos) to more ways to share video, via Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, it’s no surprise that videos now contribute to more than 50% of mobile traffic. The adoption of 4G will also see Facebook start to stream more video into its newsfeed.

7) It’s all about mobile According to the Wall Street Journal, there has been an overall increased use of mobile devices, while desktop use has remained relatively stable. For media owners and marketers, the implication is clear. Begin your content execution content, be it video, creative, or story flow, with that mobile screen. Try to use a webresponsive design that works on both mobile and desktop screens. Through better story-telling, quality content creation, and strategic placement on content discovery platforms, it’s an exciting journey we undertake to help advertisers build a better content marketing approach that will result in a long-lasting relationship with their audience.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Cynthia Loh is Editor for BrandInsider, a content marketing solution offered by SPH Digital for brands to reach online communities in Singapore and the region with a bigger share of voice amidst the noise of the digital sphere. She was the former deputy editor of AsiaOne with a decade’s experience in digital.

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Digital Digest

Marketing to the Millennial and iGen Consumers:

The role of

Content Âť By Harish Shah

Generational Change and Consumer Behaviour With time, newer generations replace older generations, and this also applies to the consumer market. Each generation differs from the prior generations, shaped by unique combinations of impacting realities of their respective formative years, over separate time periods. These differences manifest as unique decision-making considerations of each generation of consumers. Meet the Millennial Consumer Generally accepted as the demographic group born on the cusp of the millenniumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s turn, the Millennial Generation is the group of individuals born between 1980 and the year 2000. Assuming the threshold age of adulthood as 21, the Millennial Generation reaches maturity in the year 2021, with its

youngest member reaching entering adult life, thus rendering it as the main dominant consumer group by then, displacing Generation X. It is also the largest generation yet, in terms of numbers, and therefore presents a greater importance as well as opportunities to Marketers. The Millennial Generation has grown up discovering and figuring out the fastest shortcuts to getting quick bite-sized precise answers to everything off Google or Wikipedia. Their thought-trains too are therefore, shaped as such. A curious bunch, the Millennials are accustomed to questioning everything, until they can either question no further or see no need for further questioning, so as to be satisfied, that they know enough about the subject matter that they need to make a decision about. This includes buying or purchasing decisions.

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Both the Millennials and iGen do pretty much everything on platforms or through tools that are made feasible by the internet.

Meet the iGen Consumer

The iGen or “Internet Generation” is the generation born immediately after the Millennials and after the normalisation of the internet being a part and parcel of the everyday human life through computing and mobile devices, including the Smartphones. In terms of time, this generation is made up of those born between 2001 to the present. Every teenager by 2021 will belong to this latest generation and therefore will be an important consideration for marketers. The iGen is more impatient than the Millennials, because while the preceding generation has grown up experiencing the transition from accessing information through binary means to accessing it through digital means, for the iGen, information has virtually always been readily accessible wherever and whenever it has been required or desired, without limitations, through relatively refined digital means. For the same reasons,

this is a generation better informed and with a more refined decisionmaking ability, in comparison to the Millennial Generation, let alone the yet older previous generations. The iGen is also viewed as a “lazy generation” by some, because they have mastered the means of finding the most essential information, most efficiently with the least effort, through their savvy for technological tools. The New Generations and Technological Access Both the Millennials and iGen do pretty much everything on platforms or through tools that are made feasible by the internet. They communicate through Data supported mobile applications. They seek entertainment content that is streamed online. They maintain ties, both personal and professional through online networks. They express themselves through blogs. They study and work through

online means. They also shop and purchase online for everything from cinema tickets to holiday packages to groceries. Even if they do not necessarily make online purchases for certain products, they enquire and learn about products, different competing brands and retail outlets online. As the generations and technologies evolve, consumerism only going to further entrench itself, as an online or tech-dependent activity. Growing up during the advent or after the advent of Information Technology, information is the key driver for the new generations of consumers, now or ahead. Content therefore, is at the central core of any marketing strategy effort therefore, for it to be effective, towards the two latest generations. Marketing to the New Generations To market the products to the iGen and Millennial consumers, the marketer needs to deliver information that they require for decision making,

Digital Digest

the way they want that information, where they want it and when they want it. To successfully make such delivery, marketers need to employ the right mix of technology, information and creativity, to produce tailored content to effectively engage and reach out to the consumers. Particularly, the Internet of Things will play the greatest role in facilitating such a mix ahead. Through technology, Marketers are gaining increasing access to individualised consumer information at an ever accelerating pace and right down to the precise location of a consumer at any particular time. Also, along with the opportunity to present live or interactive individualised content to each consumer, where that consumer is, through the communication platform or channel that best reaches that consumer. The best part about this whole process, is that it can be fully automated.

Through electronic or smart devices that are connected to the network, information about consumers is gathered through applications or platforms that the consumers use, before being fed to Marketing Information Systems (MIS). MIS then automatically process that information based on pre-set algorithms, to determine the most suitable automated response, in the form of content relay, which is then executed, as in content is relayed to the consumer without the consumer having to look for it.

To appeal and engage to consumers ahead, the content will need to both be responsive to information about the consumers targeted as well as laden with information the targeted consumers will desire, presented in creative ways to hold their attentions without boring them. In short, relative to all other things they deal with, Marketers will have to deal with content, as King.

As hi-tech as the process of marketing to the new generations may sound and as important as the role of the technologists supporting that process will be ahead, content still does and will hold the pivotal role, for a simple reason; all the technological evolution, integration and automation will be worthless, if the content does not appeal to and engage the consumers.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Harish Shah is a Singaporean Professional Futurist and Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting include Strategic Foresight, Marketing and Branding.

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Learning Site

The Art of Personalisation & Content Marketing

Content personalisation and behavioural targeting Âť By Ankur Bagga

Marketing today is made to answer a two sided question. On one side you have customers who expect to see offers and content that mirrors their interest when they visit an E-commerce website. On the flip side, we have the merchants who seek to understand the mechanisms of how users engage with their website in real-time and be able to modify content tailored to them based on the user behaviour. It is estimated that about 90% of websites are abandoned during the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;searchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; phase i.e. the user tries to look for a product on the website and do not go past the first landing page. This is a colossal loss to most E-commerce websites that do not take their content strategy seriously in terms of personalising the offer that is aimed specifically at each user.

This calls for identifying the user on a personal level before they make a purchase or even during the searching a product phase of right after landing on your website. In my opinion, all E-commerce websites must optimise the website content to show their visitors on the next logical step to take in real time by being able to make modifications to the sites in a short span of time. There is a sudden surge of interest in understanding the user behaviour and being able to offer the website users a piece of personalised content, rather than irrelevant offers around the website that the user do not want to know about!

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What do customers expect? Now let’s take a step back and think about: what do my customers want or even better, what do you want as a customer. We log on to a particular website expecting to see what we’ve come for. Customers today demand content that can mirror their interest. They want to be served the Right Deals, at the Right Time and the Right Price. Having stated that, let’s take a look at the seller’s perspective! From figure 1, Amazon is a perfect example that hits the nail in this situation. It is not uncommon to see ‘recommended deals or new for you, results based on your searches popping on your page, etc. This is personalisation based on customer behaviour.

Figure 1: Printscreen example of ‘Amazon recommended deals’

What do merchants expect? It will be an ideal world if both customers and the sellers can see and show the expected content. With the way marketing is going, I do expect this to come true. Sellers today are more inclined towards visibility into data and understanding the behaviour of each visitor who lands on their website.

Figure 2: Targeted content based on users’ real-time behaviour (Image source: www.slideshare.net)

Online retailers must work around the mechanics of how the user engages with their website and understand users’ needs even before they make a purchase. By doing this, E-commerce websites can effectively show highly personalised content that is relevant to each user. As illustrated in figure 2, we can also target a specific group of visitors in real-time and recommend personalised offering, based on their geographical location, type of device used, where they’ve come from, etc.

Learning Site How do we personalise content on a website? Well, this is largely based on users’ behaviour and visitor segments. Once the information is gathered, online retailers must then think about what can be offered to visitors under each segment. A website can have multiple versions to cater to individual preferences, as demonstrated in figure 3. Retailers can then use ‘users specific’ pricing models in drafting their messages catered to the specific segments, also known as ‘profile based selling’. With different versions of a website landing page, different engagement elements can be used to reach out to the specific segments. This is where A/B split testing comes in handy in understanding which version of the website managed to engage the user better! How do we understand users’ behaviour? Clearly, before mastering the art of personalisation, we must always monitor users’ behaviour, interests and intent by identifying triggers such as: • Search terms used • Past session behaviour • Offer advert clicks by user • Logins and Tracking re-visits • Time spent on a page/product • Mouse over and ‘add to cart’ events

Figure 3: One site with multiple messages Image source: www.storify.com

In the fast-paced world of E-commerce, it becomes imperative for all serious online retailers to invest their time and efforts in understanding the behavioural aspect of their customers. This has an impact on how you market your product or service online. Personalisation with a Marketing Perspective? We have now entered an era of offering the same experience to all users and providing an ‘omni channel’ approach in a multi-channel environment, whether it is via an application or a website. Customers

might want to pick up from the same point they left a retailer’s website, irrespective of a channel or a device used. From a merchant’s perspective, it might prove helpful in showing personalised results if you are able to track websites and social channels that your users come from. After which, determine which channels are sending the most traffic and conversion. Also, activate your content marketing strategy by using user-specific landing page results, relevant and action provoking calls to action buttons, to maximise conversion.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Ankur Bagga spent last couple of years in Singapore, although most of his work experience comes from the UK. He has extensive experience in E-Commerce operations management and digital marketing with strong hold in partnership & client relations, PR and digital communication.

the singapore marketer jul-sep’16

Interview with

Virginia Lim

Vice President & Head, Content and Marketing Sony Pictures Television Networks, Asia Virginia Lim lives and breathes content. She is a story teller who believes in giving her stories a ‘soul’ that can capture hearts and minds. The Singapore Marketer is proud to have some words with Virginia in getting a scoop of her life as a content marketer!

42 Can you share more about your role at Sony and what you enjoy most about it? I oversee the content, production and marketing for Sony Pictures Television Networks, Asia which comprises five leading channels AXN, Sony Channel, ONE, Gem and Animax. We’re in the business of storytelling so what I love about my role is how we bring the very best of premium entertainment to our viewers across Asia. I feel very fortunate to be among the first to sneak peek the latest shows and celebrity talent coming out of North Asia and the U.S and then decide if

they will resonate with our respective channel audiences. Some would say it’s a dream role, and it really is, although it’s a lot of hard work too!

viewers. This fosters a closer affinity between our channels and their audiences as they truly feel a part of the action.

With so much content saturating the marketplace, how can brands make their content stand out?

What are some of Sony’s content marketing examples that you’re proudest of?

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to promotional success but marketers have a higher chance if they leverage the power of storytelling; creating content that is relevant and meaningful to their target audience.

I have two examples that encapsulate the power of engaging marketing:

At Sony, we strive to go beyond the screen, taking our content and talent into the daily lives of our

Imagine never missing an episode of The Gang Doctor on ONE starring Korean heart throb Joo Won and then discovering during the ad break that he will be appearing live at Suntec City.

Marketer @ Work

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Tapping the power of influencers not only extends the reach of a brand into new audiences; it also allows existing fans to see the brand through a different lens.

Five thousand die-hard fans turned up to this fan meet with many of them stepping on stage to hug him. That’s a money-can’t-buy experience that fans will remember forever. We captured this moment, packaged it into an on-air spot and shared it across our social platforms. The response was great as we made a real connection between a superstar and his fans because all of a sudden someone who seemed inaccessible was now within in their reach. Each year we organise the Animax Carnival, which is a festive celebration of all things Japanese anime. This year in Kuala Lumpur over 20,000 fans attended with the majority turning up full cosplay costumes.

The carnival offered a completely immersive entertainment experience with fun activities, prizes and special performances by some of Japan’s hottest talent. This year, we were able to offer fans in Asia a ‘virtual attendance’ experience via Facebook’s live streaming application. Why is it valuable to make influencer relationships a part of your content strategy? Tapping the power of influencers not only extends the reach of a brand into new audiences; it also allows existing fans to see the brand through a different lens. For example, as part of the AXN brand refresh last year, we created

a campaign called ‘AXN Attitude’ which celebrated individuals in South East Asia who reflected the channel values of determination, passion, intensity and the unexpected. We engaged three influencers in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia who are shaking up their respective corners of the world and had them tell their captivating stories in 60 seconds. The response was tremendous across social and earned media as fans responded to the aspirational stories of their local compatriots.

Marketer @ Work

Do you have any advice for marketers who feel overwhelmed by the challenge of consistently producing a variety of engaging content? Stay true to your brand, have a purpose for creating the content as that will give it a soul. A strong story set within a context that is relevant, clever and unexpected will capture hearts and minds. What is the most overlooked tactic for distributing and promoting content to target audiences? Not carving out enough time in the day for quality thinking. Marketers can get so caught up in ‘pushing out’ the next project that sometimes we forget to pause and ask ourselves, “what if?” So take a moment, reflect on the business, the objectives and most of all, your audience. Understand what makes them tick, what excites them and ultimately, why they should care about your brand and content.

Once you’ve created a piece of content, what’s the best way to gauge its success? Rating performance is a key indicator for our channels, as well as how well the content has been amplified via social platforms. I love it when digital watercooler conversations are ignited and take on a life of their own! Social buzz is an integral part of content consumption so we are very focused on producing exclusive content just for digital platforms. What kind of content marketer would you call yourself? I was a producer in the early part of my career, so at heart I am a storyteller; one that thrives on creating branded experiences where our viewers feel like they have stepped inside the world of their favourite series.

WEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;RE GOING DIGITAL! You may download a digital copy of The Singapore Marketer on www.magzter.com.

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