4. Case Studies
4.4. Case 3: Family Mart
4.4.3. Review Results
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By Google Trend
3. Bought media comparison
4.4.3. Review Results
1. Observation for external digital environment
The external environment is covered in detail in Chapter 2.
2. Owned Media Comparison
Two 3rd party tools were used for the data analysis. One is Insighxplorer, which is panel-based and employed to observe the panel’s 24hour digital life and media usage, the results of which are presented as statistics in the tool’s database. This is similar to the Nielsen Life Index Research. The other tool we used was Google Trends, used to find the relevant connections among the websites we wanted to review.
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i) Comparison between 7-11 and Family Mart’s owned media by InsightXplorer
Table 12: Comparison between 7-11 and Family Mart’s Owned Media by InsightXplorer
7-11 built up its shopping site, which has been achieved the same number of unique users since 1 ago, an impression result. Meanwhile, it also separates its promotion events and e-service into 2 sub-domains: event.7-11.com.tw and eservice.7-11.com.tw. According to the data provided in March 2011, www.7-11.com.tw is slightly weaker than last year. But the main reason could be due to the diversified sub-websites.
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ii) Comparison between 7-11 and Family Mart’s owned media by Google Trend
Table 13: Comparison between 7-11 and Family Mart’s Owned Media by Google Trend
7-11 website: Family Mart website:
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iii) Comparison between 7-11 / Family Mart’s owned media by observation
Owned media 7-11 Family Mart
Impressions for videos:
2,062,573
7-11 built up its owned media strategically. At first, invested enough budget for producing content and stories for a series of characters and then allocated media buying budget to direct potential consumers to see the content. Because of interesting stories for the characters, the visitors were easily transformed into 7-11 members.
Family Mart was less strategic in its allocation of budget on content creation. The media budget allocation was mainly for exposure. But because Family Mart finally
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realized the importance of owned media management, the new KPI drove them to allocate more budget on owned media development – Mobile APP, Fan page, etc.
3. Bought Media
7-11 put almost 90% of budget on its Portal site. Family Mart is not so Portal site focused.
Community and Video Streaming sites are also in their list.
7-11投資曲線 (2010/01-2011/04)
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr
Figure 24: 7–11 Online Budget Spend, Jan 2010 – Apr 2011
Figure 25: Family Mart Online Budget Spend, Jan 2010 – Apr 2011
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4. Summary and Strategy suggestion for Family Mart
Owned media: content and service enhancement, and continue using bought media to bring in new users.
Social media marketing : acquire more fans through each campaign.
Bought media: marketing budget is already limited, so the better way is to sign an annual contract with Yahoo! for better buying discount.
New media application- mobile device - a) App downloads
b) Ad application on iPad
c) Keep abreast of new functions and technology
Check Details of required condition
V Commitment to develop the brand / the product
V Having self-owned communication platforms with consumers
V Ecommerce and/or CRM system is available on self-owned communication platforms
V Confirmed target audience profile and description V Clear development of KPIs (short/ mid/ long term)
V Concrete market analysis (Scale/Competitors/Strengths/Weakness) V Certain level of investment on digital marketing (budget, human resources,
technology support)
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68 4.5. Case 4: Asus
4.5.1. Introduction to the Project
Background:
Asus recently launched a new tablet computer – Eee PC Transformer. Meanwhile, apart from the well-known iPad2, there are many other tablet products in the market, such as like Acer Iconia Tab A500, Motorola Xoom, HTC Flyer, ViewSonic ViewPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Huawei IDEOS S7 and Korean KT Telecom Black O. The competition is getting fierce.
The challenge:
Utilizing Google Trends to identify which brand would be the key competitor for Asus, and determine the correct direction for Asus’ marketing strategy based on the findings from mining the search database. For the first round of competitor research, it is decided to focus Acer, HTC and Samsung.
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69 4.5.2. Review of Brand’s Owned Media
1. Brand comparison (global)
Figure 26: Global Brand Search Traffic for Asus and Key Competitors, 2004-2011
Based on the volume of brand name search, Samsung is still the most internationally well known brand but with the popularity of HTC mobile phone, HTC is getting stronger now.
Asus seems be more competitive than Acer in terms of brand search globally.
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70 2. Product comparison (global)
Figure 27: Global Product Search Traffic for Asus & Competitors, Jun 2010 – May 2011
In this product category, iPad is definitely the No.1 product brand and Samsung Galaxy Tab takes 2nd position. However, Asus Eee Pad Transformer also grows steadily in its search volume after launch, so there is still great potential for growth.
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71 3. Brand comparison (Taiwan)
Figure 28: Taiwan Brand Search Traffic for Asus and Key Competitors, 2004-2011
In Taiwan, HTC is the strongest among the 4 brands. The next popular brand is Asus, followed by Acer and the last one is Samsung.
4. Product comparison (Taiwan)
Figure 29: Taiwan Product Search Traffic for Asus & Competitors, Jun 2010 – May 2011
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According to current search data, if we exclude Apple iPad, Galaxy Tab is the major competitor to Eee Pad Transformer.
5. Website Traffic Comparison (global access)
Figure 30: Global Traffic for Asus, Acer and Samsung Websites, Jan2009 – Apr 2011
Although Asus has better brand awareness globally, Acer website has been receiving more access than Asus in the past year. Based on data in Figure 30 above, Asus’ 2nd biggest market would be in Russia and Acer’s 2nd big market would be in China.
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73 6. Website Traffic Comparison (within Taiwan)
Figure 31: Taiwan Traffic for Asus, Acer and Samsung Websites, Jan2009 – Apr 2011
Compared to the previous “global” chart (Figure 30), we can find that the difference between Asus and Acer website becomes slightly bigger when the scope is limited to within Taiwan. So we can assume Asus’ website access would be more from regions outside Taiwan.
7. User Profile for Apple Website
Although not a Taiwan or Asian brand, when examining the user profiles, it can also be useful to take a look at the user profiles of Apple, makers of the popular iPhone and iPad.
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Table 14: Apple Websites’ Visit Statistics
Table 15: Apple Websites’ User Segmentations by Gender, Age and Occupation
Apple have around 745,000 total users accessing the official site and online shopping site.
Apple TW official site segmentation:
a) By age: popular for the young generation (15-34).
b) By occupation: except for white-collar workers and students, SME owners and artistic industry workers visit Apple’s sites more than average.
Apple TW online shopping site segmentation:
a) By gender: More female users, when compared to official site.
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b) By age: 20-24 and 35-49 are the major groups.
c) By occupation: SME owners have a strong willingness to shop online.
8. User Profile for Asus Website
Table 16: Asus Website’s User Segmentations by Gender, Age and Occupation
Asus Taiwan official site segmentation:
a) By gender: almost 80% male users.
b) By age: the sample data size appears a little small to give an accurate analysis, but based on current data, Asus has 2 distinct groups of users in the 20-24 and 40-49 age groups.
c) Occupation: senior management users would be more interested in Asus products.
Asus seems to be the preference from salary men and students. That’s quite a good advantage to have, but on the other hand, Asus also needs to think about how to diversify their consumer base.
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76 9. User Profile for Acer Website
Table 17: Acer Website’s User Segmentations by Gender, Age and Occupation
Acer Taiwan official website segmentation:
a) By gender: male to female ratio is 6:4, more balanced compared with Asus.
b) By age: more popular for the 30-39 and 45-49 groups.
c) By occupation: Acer is also a popular brand for senior managers and is more focused on the white-collar group, but less popular for the student group.
10. Web traffic and user profile summary
Apple customer distribution figures seem to be healthier.
Asus has more senior managers, white collar customers and students but the customer base is not as diversified as Apple.
Asus has more common characteristics with Acer, so they would compete head to head, rather than expanding their market by grabbing Apple’s customers.
Suggestion: it’s may be better to try different marketing and brand events to
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distinguish Asus from Acer and try to find another way to stand out from its close competitor.
11. Analysis for different age groups
Purpose: to understand different age group’s specific interest on the internet in order to propose customized marketing events or content to interact with users.
Table 18: Type of Websites Visited by Various Age Groups
Different age groups are interested in different categories of websites:
18-24 ALL: more engaged in internet world and they tend to focus on entertainment and game related content. They are also active in forum discussions.
25-29 ALL: more focused on blog and community sites.
30-34 ALL: less active than other age groups but more concentrated at specific sites.
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Table 19: Top 20 Websites Visited by Taiwan Users of Various Age Groups
Different age groups are interested in specific sites, the most popular for each group are:
18-24 ALL: Plurk, Baidu and Wiki.
25-29 ALL: Mobile01, 104, i-Part.
30-34 ALL: Mobile01, Momoshop, Babyhome, APPLE-Daily, i-Part.
12. Age group analysis summary
For 18-24 ALL:
a) This group might not be able to afford to buy expensive electronic products, but they can definitely become brand advocates as long as the concept and creativity could draw their attention and make them feel valued.
b) Game-like expressions could make it easier to interact and engage with them.
For 25-29 ALL & 30-34 ALL:
a) These groups are more practical and more likely to compare specifications, share messages among community sites and search for friends’ and web users’ personal reviews for reference.
b) Innovative, insightful, smart ideas/concepts can draw their attention and encourage sharing.
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79 4.5.3. Strategy for Asus Transformer
Figure 32: Suggested 3-Point Approach for Asus Transformer
For general: a “movie” connected campaign could easily attract many people’s attention and the movie Transformer 3 is going to be on air in Summer so it’s a good time to start a co-op event with the movie.
a) Place an introduction commercial film before the movie starts.
b) Outdoor product road show outside the theater.
c) Promote an Eee Pad Transformer Special Version with the full length Transformer 3 movie clip pre-recorded inside.
For 18-24: Online game competition to win an Eee Pad Transformer.
For 25-34: “Your grand tour partner”, a scheme to give intrepid travelers who are planning to go on a 100-day grand trip the chance to take with them an Eee Pad Transformer to record their journey, and the opportunity to own the machine at the end.
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80 Check Details of required condition
V Commitment to develop the brand / the product
N/A Having self-owned communication platforms with consumers
N/A Ecommerce and/or CRM system is available on self-owned communication platforms
V Confirmed target audience profile and description N/A Clear development of KPIs (short/ mid/ long term)
V Concrete market analysis (Scale/Competitors/Strengths/Weakness) N/A Certain level of investment on digital marketing (budget, human resources,
technology support)
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5.1. The Application of the Methodology
This methodology is based on the thinking structure of OBE. It utilizes free and paid analysis tools in the digital world, the understanding of changes in digital usage behavior, together with data derived from owned media and digital services, to conduct an analysis report of the overall digital assets. The level of depth and completeness of this strategic analysis report relies on how much data can be collected and which digital development stage the brand is currently in.
Scenarios for usage:
Analysis for brand overall digital assets (Case: Family Mart)
Analysis for competitors’ digital assets and estimates for future direction (Case: Asus)
Current status and future direction of a brand’s owned media, relevant to digital revenue (Case: Pizza Hut)
The brand preference and digital media selection strategy in different markets (Case:
Trend Micro)
Different brand admirers’ online behavior in specific industry (example: car industry)
People who need to apply the methodology:
Trend observer
Brand marketer
Digital brand marketer
CXOs (CEO, COO, CTO, etc.)
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82 5.2. The Value of the Methodology
The methodology could be applied in any stage of digital development. No matter how much data is collected, the analyst can still analyze the situation based on the current information available. The important point is that the analysis should still stick with the concept of OBE to review results from the past marketing campaigns to see if all of the results align with corporate long term goals and whether these results could be accumulated to make owned media stronger.
If the digital marketing plan is proposed, executed and reviewed using the methodology, it would guided to use the same language to maintain a consistent communication for the brand.
Hence, irrespective of the executor, the required KPIs and results should be clear, logical and in line with the long term goals.
For the brand owner or management team, the methodology makes it easy to understand the current status of the brand’s digital development and external digital environment trends. It becomes invaluable for producing a strategic plan for future digital development.
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The digital world has come a long way since the early days the World Wide Web. It has been barely 20 years since the web’s inception, but it could be the most influential change for human beings after the industrial revolution in the 18th century. We are fortunate to be part of it and to witness and experience the change in life gradually. Innovative services, new applications and content appear unexpectedly all the time and those that fit our needs change people’s behavior slowly. The best examples are MSN Messenger, Google and Facebook.
The digital world we are in now is more fragmented and a complicated environment than the physical world. The method of building up brand and marketing is different from what marketers do in real world. Moreover, there’s no proven or complete way to develop the brand and get real-time understanding of its digital assets.
The methodology is not perfect, but the core concept in evaluating digital development is consistent from the past to the present. The aim of digital marketing development is to build up brand visibility and asset in the digital world. So called “owned media” means owned official website, Facebook fan page, Twitter account, etc, where content and service is 100%
controlled by the brand for now. But when the channels to communicate with consumers become more diversified, the only controllable owned media would be business generated content and service, and user generated content, service or word of mouth will be “earned media”. In the end, “bought media” will be responsible for supporting business generated content and service to make initial noise in the market. But successful arrangement for bought media might not necessarily guarantee success. The key successful factor is whether the
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content or service created by the brand could strike a chord with consumer needs.
The methodology allows the brand to identify with where it is and where it should go in line with the trend. Meanwhile, understanding the brand’s target audience’s preference can help the brand to propose the proper content and service to the brand admirers and potential customers.
6.2. Strength and Weakness
The strengths:
1. Aids understanding of current trends and conditions through the data collected.
2. Collecting data from different analysis platforms allows the cross-validation of data.
3. Different analysis methods give findings from different angles.
4. The core concept stays the same, but the data could be used to review OBE status before cross validation.
5. More data can make the analysis more accurate and closer to the real picture. Any kind of new digital analysis method can be used as a tool and data source to implement the methodology.
The shortcomings:
1. Experienced digital marketers are needed to derive more accurate analysis.
2. After consolidating data from different sources, there might be no direct relationship among data. But the indirect related conditions should be carefully examined and considered.
3. A bias exists for every analysis method that might affect the final result. The analyst must be aware of the bias and the possible side effects.
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85 6.3. Future Use
The internet makes the world smaller. In the past, it’s not easy to build up a global brand because it would take huge investments in marketing and channel development. For expanding more aggressively, it would take even more investment to set up a branch office and hire locally.
The main reason that Taiwan corporations are not able to build up their own global brands is because the market size is not big enough to support and grow a global brand. With globalization, if we could utilize the methodology to expand our battlefield from “Taiwan” to
“global” then we can deliver messages to certain groups to help develop our own global brand.
The value of brand in the future is not necessary about “reach” but more about “engagement”
and “loyalty”. Client relationship management will be even more important than ever.
The methodology is for intended to help Taiwan brand owners gain their position and visibility step by step, and adjust their strategy to become more efficient according to changes in the digital world.
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1. World Internet Usage Statistics http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm 2. Joe Tripodi. 2011. “Coca-Cola Marketing Shifts from Impressions to Expressions”
Harvard business review.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/04/coca-colas_marketing_shift_fro.html. Aug 27,2011.
3. Dentsu media. 2006. “A-I-S-A-S in digital planning”
http://www.dentsumedia-network.com/digital/index.html
4. Sarah Kessler.2011. “ The influence of Facebook on top news sites.” Mashable.
http://mashable.com/2011/05/09/for-top-news-sites-facebook-drives-more-traffic-than-tw itter-stats/
5. Matt Murphy / Mary Meeker. 2011. “ Top Mobile Internet Trends”
http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/kpcb-top-10-mobile-trends-feb-2011.February 2011.
6. Daniel Goodall. 2009. “ Owned,Bought and Earned Media.”
http://danielgoodall.com/2009/03/02/owned-bought-and-earned-media/. March 2,2009.
7. Sean Corcoran. 2009. “ Defining Earned, Owned And Paid Media.”
http://blogs.forrester.com/interactive_marketing/2009/12/defining-earned-owned-and-pai d-media.html . Dec 16,2009.
8. Daniel Goodall. 2009. “ Owned,Bought and Earned Media(redux).”
http://danielgoodall.com/2009/05/20/owned-bought-and-earned-redux/. March 20,2009.
9. Insightxplorer. http://www.insightxplorer.com/index.html 10. Google Trends http://www.google.com.tw/trends
11. Stat Counter http://gs.statcounter.com/
12. Google Ad Planner http://www.google.com/adplanner/