The MarketingPulse, an integrated and branding marketing conference organised by Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), came to an end last week. This year, the conference migrated online with 46 speakers from all over the world sharing the latest marketing trend. The MarketingPulse provided a platform for global marketers, brands, advertising agencies, media, enterprises and innovation professionals to exchange marketing insights and explore new collaborations in Asia. In this blog, we highlighted some key insights of this year’s MarketingPulse that you need to know.
The online conference took place from 30th-31st March. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Marketing for GOOD’. Speakers coming from brands such as Google, Alibaba Group, Mastercard, Nike, etc. have shared their business challenges throughout the pandemic, as well as giving out inspirational advice on helping businesses recover for the post-pandemic era.
We have selected 4 key insights from the conference: doing good in marketing with creativity, empowering your business and brand, live streaming commerce and short video marketing in China and the 5G in marketing.
‘Doing Good’ in Marketing with Creativity
Dove’s ‘Not Just One Brand of Real Beauty’ Advert, Photo from arra
‘Marketing for good’ is not a slogan but a call to action and a reminder for marketers to deliver meaningful social impacts through the power of advertising. Stephen Chung, the Co-founder of Secret Tour, shared one of his successful marketing campaigns with Dove that created authentic values for the customers.
Dove had been advocating the diversity of ‘Real Beauty’ is not about being slim or the typical beauty stereotype that portrayed by society, instead, the ‘Real Beauty’ is defined by the confidence an individual has. In 2019, Dove’s Real Beauty campaign in Hong Kong localised the global creative concept to challenge Hong Kong’s beauty standard by launching the marketing campaign called ‘Not Just One Brand of Real Beauty’. It is the first co-branding campaign in Hong Kong between Dove and other 12 local and international brands, such as Expedia, Lululemon, Canon, etc. The idea of this campaign was to create 12 crossover activations that delivered the same message - “There is more than one definition for beauty”.
The Not Just One Brand of Real Beauty campaign challenged the beauty norm in Hong Kong with numerous positive impressions and ROI. Instead of doing tactical campaigns, brands and marketers can amplify voices with the passion to have a real impact on the world.
Dialogue with Guy Kawasaki - Surviving the Pandemic, Photo From MarketingPulse
Business and Brand Empowerment: Building an Unbreakable Relationship with Customers
While it is unpredictable whether a business would be able to resume to ‘the normal’ anytime soon, Guy Kawasaki, the Chief Evangelist at Apple during the 1980s to 1990s, pointed out that it is essential for businesses not only to choose the right strategies but also to have robust capabilities to be marketing resilient during uncertainty.
We all know that understanding customers’ brand preferences and choices are important to brand strategy. Greg Hoffman, the Vice President of Global Brand Innovation at Nike, shared it’s critical for brands to build and strengthen the support and emotional bonds with the local community during the difficult time. The ‘Play for the World’ campaign reinforced the social distancing message with the slogan ‘Play Inside, Play for the World’ to encourage audiences to keep exercising indoors. To comply with this core message, digital solutions including the Nike Training Club app, the Nike’s Run Club app and Nike’s membership program have provided opportunities for users to improve their sports performance during the lockdown. It is recorded with more than a million downloads of the Training app at the beginning of the pandemic and a 60% sharp increase in active users of the membership programme.
Nike’s core aspect of authenticity in the marketing strategy has strengthened its impacts when such a difficult time has constrained creative collaboration with consumers. A business must remember that it is all about sensing the demands of customers and challenging the risks innovatively.
Rethinking Marketing Strategies: Live Streaming Commerce and Short Video Marketing
During the first half of 2020, there were 880 million netizens in China using short video and live streaming platforms, accounting for 87% of total netizens in China. The short video became one of the most important media among the Chinese netizens, with evidence of spending 110 minutes on watching or producing short videos per day. Besides, 40% of live streaming users in China is Gen Z, who is a key consumer base with extraordinary purchasing power.
Eray Li, the General Manager at Kuaishou, shared his insights of how Kuaishou has elevated a live streaming and short video sharing platform into a content strategy hub for the brand. 97% of the app users in China purchased products mentioned in the short videos and 84% of them preferred recommendations from the live streamers. Alves Huang, the CEO of Qianxun, has also addressed the importance of influencers transforming traditional offline marketing into innovative e-commerce platforms, for example, 20 luxury cars were sold during a live streaming collaboration between a car brand and KOL.
To resonate with the theme 'Marketing for Good', Chris Tung, the CMO of Alibaba, has shared its innovative programmes to support the vulnerable by integrating philanthropy in its business with live streaming technology. The company has provided live streaming training to farmers in China and Rwanda. This programme empowered farmers to sell their agricultural goods through live streaming platforms during the pandemic. More than 800millions of Chinese netizens purchased ¥100 billion worth of goods from the farmers in China and 1 ton of coffee beans from Rwanda’s.
The transformation of marketing strategies with live streaming and short video platforms solves business challenges like a weak brand or product value, lack of customers data, etc. post-pandemic, brands could start rethinking their marketing strategies by considering a more interactive platform to communicate with audiences and upgrade the brand values.
Hybrid Marketing: 5G and XR
In the digital future, hybrid marketing is becoming more common. Mark Melling from Verizon Media, highlighted that in late 2020, 79% of European respondents expressed interests in having the option to attend live events that they would normally engage in persons, via online. Among which, there is an increase of 88% in Gen Z. Brands need to understand the advantages of adopting hybrid marketing emerging with the 5G technology.
The advantages of 5G are the incredible network speed and hyper-connectivity. 5G is more than just a speedy network. The development of the 5G network allows Extended Reality (XR) such as Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) to become more ubiquitous and accessible for individuals.
Mark’s team organised a virtual fashion show - The Fabric of Reality, during the pandemic. It showcased designers’ works to audiences in 3D in real-time with VR. 90% of the audiences felt that they understood the designers better and 78% of them have added positive values to the garment through the VR experiences. The increasing consumer awareness of 5G’s potential has resulted in the shift of demand in higher vitality experiences. In the post-COVID era, perhaps it’s time for businesses to start integrating hybrid marketing with the latest 5G technologies to provide an OTOTO (Online to offline to online) experience for customers.
At Comms8, we believe marketing plays a vital role in shaping the trends and sentiments in our society, and therefore we are devoted to working with brands to deliver campaigns that have a positive impact on society. We help businesses build purpose in their brands and drive long-term impact on the business and society. We are a game-changer that thinks beyond short term profit. We take pride in our integrity and purpose-led business model, and we work with partners who share the same belief. After attending the MarketingPulse, we hope to see the industry will truly embrace the notion of 'Marketing for Good' for a sustainable future.
