Speaker 1: Good morning, everyone. Hi and welcome to, um to Executive
Speaker 1: Insights by Media Corp. We're really excited today to talk
Speaker 1: about a topic of harnessing AI, community, and authenticity to
Speaker 1: unlock influence. I'm Chris. I'm from Media Corp, the lead
Speaker 1: of Social hub.
Speaker 1: And today I'm really, really thankful and excited to be
Speaker 1: talking and sharing together with Alex and Evangeline. Um, I'll
Speaker 1: leave the two of them to actually share a bit
Speaker 1: more about themselves. Alex, you first.
Speaker 1: Thanks, Chris. So I'm a marketing strategy consultant. I work
Speaker 1: with agencies, uh, and brands directly to help them decide
Speaker 1: the right strategy, uh, with a specific expertise in social,
Speaker 1: and I've been doing that for the last 20 years, uh,
Speaker 1: in various different markets around the world, currently based in Singapore.
Speaker 1: And I'm also an investor and advisor to a couple
Speaker 1: of companies, including.
Speaker 1: Um, roster, which is actually a recruitment platform, uh, for
Speaker 1: the social first, um, world. So you can hire strategists
Speaker 1: and creatives, and podcast editors, etc. etc. uh, for specific jobs, uh,
Speaker 1: on social media. So that's joint roster, if you want
Speaker 1: to check it out online.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Alex. I will uh go on next to introduce myself. Um,
Speaker 2: so I run Kobe. The most common question we get
Speaker 2: is if Kobe is a beef or like it's um,
Speaker 2: am I from Japan? Pardon the haircut, but uh, nope,
Speaker 2: we are not a restaurant either. Uh, actually.
Speaker 2: stands for the Chinese word, word of mouth, um, Kobe,
Speaker 2: uh and loosely translated, you kind of call it Kobe.
Speaker 2: So essentially that's what we do, um, finding the right
Speaker 2: person to say the right thing at the right time
Speaker 2: for brands, uh, modern term, we call it influencer marketing.
Speaker 2: I really, really glad to be here, uh, this discussion
Speaker 2: with with Alex and Chris.
Speaker 1: Cool. Thanks, Alex and Evangeline again for joining us this morning.
Speaker 1: You know what, Evangeline, you've got a fan, Ricky Riley
Speaker 1: is like Ricky is all here to listen to your ideas, uh,
Speaker 1: cute hairstyle, and I totally agree. In fact, um, eventually
Speaker 1: just came back for a good break, that's why she
Speaker 1: just looks so fresh and excited.
Speaker 1: Anyway, thanks again. I mean, we have like 112 uh
Speaker 1: participants today. I really thankful that you guys are with us.
Speaker 1: To warm us up today, um, love to do a
Speaker 1: quick poll. The big question here is, which business challenges
Speaker 1: are most critical to your brand in 2025?
Speaker 1: And you know, I was just reading an article yesterday
Speaker 1: on Business Insider, CMOs are now really, well, they are
Speaker 1: trying to keep themselves eye focused on long-term planning, but
Speaker 1: with all the things about tariffs and geopolitical issues, budgets
Speaker 1: are tied, there are so many concerns that everybody's thinking about, um,
Speaker 1: and we gave you some four options here. If you
Speaker 1: have others, you could always type in a chat.
Speaker 1: But Alex and Evangeline, I mean, love to hear from you. What, what,
Speaker 1: what you've been hearing from the market and people you've
Speaker 1: been working with? These are all challenges, right? But I think, uh,
Speaker 1: the biggest one is not whether to use AI, it's
Speaker 1: how to use AI. I think everyone's using it, and, um,
Speaker 1: it's just that question of, if everyone's using the same tools,
Speaker 1: are you really getting, uh, an advantage? And.
Speaker 1: Where do you use it in in in the marketing process?
Speaker 1: Do you, uh, just use it for research, do you
Speaker 1: actually use it for the end product of marketing and advertising, um,
Speaker 1: do consumers.
Speaker 1: Realize that you're using it, do they care? I think
Speaker 1: it's all those sort of questions that are top of
Speaker 1: mind right now and if I knew all the answers
Speaker 1: to those questions, then I would be uh very well off,
Speaker 1: but yeah, still figuring it out like everyone else, uh, Evangeline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh definitely all challenges. I saw the poll result,
Speaker 2: but um, well, I was gonna say, uh, optimizing marketing
Speaker 2: spend on uh especially in today's climate, um, and in
Speaker 2: any other climate actually, um, we all want to make
Speaker 2: sure that uh we have that maximum ROI, um, and
Speaker 2: the channels and the consumer behavior keep changing, so that
Speaker 2: I think is always an ongoing challenge, um, and, and
Speaker 2: especially critical for 2025.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm not sure whether it's from the polls
Speaker 1: or really genuinely, you had the idea in your head,
Speaker 1: but it's true, right? At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: whatever tools that we have is always a question as marketers,
Speaker 1: how do I make best use of that dollar? Every
Speaker 1: single dollar must return the best impact, whether it is
Speaker 1: organic content you create, social media content you create with influencers,
Speaker 1: content partners, and it's particularly challenging and, and this comes
Speaker 1: from the
Speaker 1: Um, uh, background of us really finding it critical for
Speaker 1: us to understand audience, who we're trying to target in
Speaker 1: this climate where consumers are skeptical? Is it a fake,
Speaker 1: is it an AI generated ad that I'm just looking at?
Speaker 1: Is it for real? Um, authenticity, uh, whether, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's expecting things to be authentic, to be relatable, to
Speaker 1: be real, personalized, because technology is supposed to allow for that.
Speaker 1: But as marketers, it's like we only have finite budget,
Speaker 1: finite resources. How do we really do, uh, make the
Speaker 1: best use of the money we have with the strategies
Speaker 1: that we can have? And here's the conversation today. Uh,
Speaker 1: we just finished a very, very detailed um survey among
Speaker 1: Singaporeans about how, what impact do influencers have on them.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna share with you some insights and with
Speaker 1: that we can kick off the different discussions with Alex
Speaker 1: and Benin today.
Speaker 1: Yep, so let's go. Um, first insight.
Speaker 1: No surprise, but also surprise. Attention is fragmented. I mean,
Speaker 1: in Singapore today, the average Singaporean is following 5 types
Speaker 1: of influence. I'm not talking 5 influences, but 5 types.
Speaker 1: So you have say foodies, you have uh health enthusiasts or,
Speaker 1: you know, different types of influences across 6 different social
Speaker 1: media platforms.
Speaker 1: You, you have your usual suspects, your YouTube, your, your
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram, but there's a lot more up and coming, right?
Speaker 1: Xiaohongshu, the Red Note, um, all these new platforms are
Speaker 1: constantly starting and getting the attention and fragmentizing how we
Speaker 1: can engage them. And your brand, the brands that we
Speaker 1: work with, the brand that you're owning or creating content
Speaker 1: from is like this, just one of the many accounts
Speaker 1: that is popping up on the feed.
Speaker 1: And, and the thing is that all the different platforms are,
Speaker 1: are having different engagements. Um, one fun fact which we
Speaker 1: realized from the, the survey is that TikTok, um, sorry,
Speaker 1: among the young people today, Instagram is actually the one
Speaker 1: where they're following the most influencers.
Speaker 1: We always thought TikTok is the one, but actually TikTok,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is the one where people are
Speaker 1: really passively engaging and watching the content. So it's like
Speaker 1: this whole different type of platform, different ways of engagement.
Speaker 1: It's, it's, I don't know, it's, it's really complicated. I mean, Alex,
Speaker 1: what do you think? Yeah, I think people still of
Speaker 1: course do do pay attention to longer forms of content.
Speaker 1: You can see that on all the streaming platforms and,
Speaker 1: and YouTube, of course, has lots of long form content,
Speaker 1: as do other platforms, but there has been a fundamental shift, uh,
Speaker 1: and I think it's even more true every day that
Speaker 1: people are paying attention in these.
Speaker 1: They're paying kind of half attention in in these handful
Speaker 1: of seconds, and not always actually absorbing what they're looking at.
Speaker 1: I think that's the key as well, is that just
Speaker 1: because someone, um, scrolled through and may have briefly paused
Speaker 1: on the content that you created as a marketer, doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that the message has been absorbed. Um, so
Speaker 1: it's really, really important to make sure that you've got
Speaker 1: other measures in place, uh, that means that people have
Speaker 1: done more than just flick their thumb past the content, uh,
Speaker 1: because we've all been in that.
Speaker 1: Kind of zombie mode at times where we're second screening
Speaker 1: or we're just checking out and we're we're not really
Speaker 1: um paying proper attention. Uh, Evangeline, what do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted to chime in on that part where
Speaker 2: people are following influencers more on Instagram than on TikTok.
Speaker 2: So because I think um Instagram, I mean, coming from Mehta, right,
Speaker 2: it's primarily very relational based. I mean, we used to
Speaker 2: add our friends on Facebook and reconnect with our uncles,
Speaker 2: aunties and our our schoolmates, right? And then um and
Speaker 2: Instagram having, you know, from that era, uh, people on
Speaker 2: Instagram are generally people we kind of are connected relationally.
Speaker 2: Um, and hence the relationship with influencers and whoever we
Speaker 2: like and we click on the follow button just to
Speaker 2: stay updated is a more natural um consumer behavior. Whereas
Speaker 2: on TikTok, you realize the moment you switch it on.
Speaker 2: You get discovery, you get entertainment and faces that you
Speaker 2: see are likely people you do not know, and it's
Speaker 2: something trendy, right? Labubu or whatnot.
Speaker 2: And you, you may actually use TikTok, say for example,
Speaker 2: to follow travel content, you save it, you go to
Speaker 2: the trip, follow the itinerary, you come back and you
Speaker 2: still don't know who the influencer is. Right. Also, the
Speaker 2: consumer behavior is really different, but I definitely echo that
Speaker 2: that one is that is one of the fundamental reasons
Speaker 2: why Instagram is still very strong for building that relationship
Speaker 2: with people and hence influencer marketing is really prevalent over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and, and, you know, in the midst of all this, uh,
Speaker 1: one of the things that Alex was sharing with me
Speaker 1: just earlier on is that, what, there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as the internet in this fragmented world. Yeah, absolutely. So,
Speaker 1: of course, this headline's been written to grab attention a
Speaker 1: little bit. There is, there is the internet, but what
Speaker 1: I mean by this is, we, we've now all got
Speaker 1: our own versions of the internet on our individual devices.
Speaker 1: And it, I think everyone will agree there are moments
Speaker 1: now where
Speaker 1: You think, right, I, I saw this video on TikTok
Speaker 1: or on Instagram, or I watched this show on Netflix
Speaker 1: or Amazon Prime, or wherever it may be, and you think,
Speaker 1: all my friends and family must have also seen the
Speaker 1: same content. So we'll talk about it. And they look
Speaker 1: at you like,
Speaker 1: You're talking in a different language, and they've completely missed
Speaker 1: what's happened. And I think that, that, that's a regular
Speaker 1: occurrence now, that there are hardly, there, there are hardly
Speaker 1: any singular moments of culture that we all experience in
Speaker 1: the same way, like they used to be, because of
Speaker 1: that attention being so fragmented. And this is really true across, um,
Speaker 1: the different age groups, as well as different mindsets. You
Speaker 1: can see that visual on the right hand side. There's.
Speaker 1: Increasingly there's even more of a difference between what different
Speaker 1: demographics are are consuming uh through their media channels. And now,
Speaker 1: the way that we have to respond as marketers is
Speaker 1: to take those broad audience groups, uh, that we all
Speaker 1: have and make sure that we are, as much as possible,
Speaker 1: creating content for niche communities within those groups, right, so
Speaker 1: to give an example.
Speaker 1: I worked with Burger King in Malaysia. They've of course
Speaker 1: got a broad target audience, like every, almost every brand,
Speaker 1: or two target audiences in this instance. But then underneath
Speaker 1: those audience groups, the great thing about social is you
Speaker 1: can target for specific mindsets and demographics. Um, for example,
Speaker 1: bang for buckers. It doesn't mean you necessarily use that
Speaker 1: language in the actual content, but these are behind the scenes, um.
Speaker 1: Subgroups within those broader audiences. There might be another group
Speaker 1: called Food hackers, and you might sometimes find the same
Speaker 1: people occupy different groups and different mindsets under, uh, within those.
Speaker 1: So you can create the content to target those subgroups,
Speaker 1: rather than just always going really broad with kind of
Speaker 1: a spray and prey approach. Uh, Evangeline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was really hoping you would say that because
Speaker 2: we get requests from people saying like, I would like
Speaker 2: food bloggers or food reviewers. I'm like, wow, the world
Speaker 2: is so large right now, the, the, the, you know,
Speaker 2: generic food bloggers, but you can split it into bang
Speaker 2: for buckers, food hackers, and the list goes on.
Speaker 2: On home, even the home cooks, you have the different kinds.
Speaker 2: You have to cook for wife at home because she
Speaker 2: wants a very good treat. We all know who we're
Speaker 2: talking about. You have that, you know, stay at home
Speaker 2: and really cook for the kids, respecting all the nutrition,
Speaker 2: that kind of cook, and the list goes on.
Speaker 1: And you know, the beauty today is if used correctly
Speaker 1: with all the data signals and AI, at least from
Speaker 1: my end, I found it really useful to use it
Speaker 1: to help me understand how a second segment of audience, say, foodies,
Speaker 1: can be broken down to subgroups, right? Alex, do you
Speaker 1: think that should be that that's a good way? Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 1: They're almost, whether you call them subgroups, or you call them, uh,
Speaker 1: niche audiences, or you call them cohorts, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing, right? Um, there, there are almost
Speaker 1: limitless groups underneath, say, foodies, or mums, or 16 to
Speaker 1: 34 year old singles, as shown here. And my, my,
Speaker 1: one of my top tips would be only create as
Speaker 1: many subgroups as you can for within the scope of
Speaker 1: your team, because.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, like I said, it can go on forever in
Speaker 1: terms of the subgroups you can create, and for a
Speaker 1: small marketing team, it might not be possible to create
Speaker 1: content for all of those groups, but do as many
Speaker 1: as you can.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I'd say is, yes, you can
Speaker 1: use targeting levers on the different social platforms, but really
Speaker 1: the content itself is the targeting. So the, the metaro
Speaker 1: platforms have slightly better levers in terms of paid media targeting. TikTok,
Speaker 1: not so much. But really, the content, if it's targeted
Speaker 1: to a specific subgroup, it will and it's good content,
Speaker 1: it will find those groups. And if you think to yourself,
Speaker 1: oh hang on a minute, I don't want.
Speaker 1: My whole audience to see bang for buck content. Don't
Speaker 1: worry because they won't see it. The algorithm will ensure
Speaker 1: that 99% of the time, uh, the people it's not
Speaker 1: relevant for will not see the content. That's how it works.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the things that we've done recently, I'm,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure anybody has seen this, if you're part
Speaker 1: of the Silver generation, which none of us here are,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure anybody from the audience, uh, we, we
Speaker 1: launched this, this, uh, this social channel called OG Gangs.
Speaker 1: Um, with the intention of engaging with the silver generation
Speaker 1: in Singapore. Uh, it will, you know, traditionally you would think, oh,
Speaker 1: let's just
Speaker 1: In very broadcaster mindset. Let's just think of people aged
Speaker 1: 45 and above, but to us, we started to break
Speaker 1: it down. 45 to 5055 years old, who are they?
Speaker 1: What are their concerns? How can we break them into
Speaker 1: smaller subgroups? We didn't go into like a massive list
Speaker 1: of them, but we actually went into certain concerns and
Speaker 1: certain subgroups like people looking for healthy living and healthy eating,
Speaker 1: people who are into uh traditional food, um.
Speaker 1: And even those who are just trying to bridge the
Speaker 1: intergenerationally and this strategy really helped us to garner really
Speaker 1: good reach and and like what Evangeline was talking about
Speaker 1: just now, right, um, what you see on TikTok is
Speaker 1: often not who you follow and 80% of the content
Speaker 1: that we watched was actually hitting the for you page,
Speaker 1: meaning it's not based on people who follows us. Average
Speaker 1: video views is 2 times that of the number of
Speaker 1: followers we have.
Speaker 1: And, and that's the whole different dynamics that, that, that
Speaker 1: um TikTok brings and, and all this is how also
Speaker 1: kind of like how we start to understand audience. So
Speaker 1: there's a part about demographically, how we understand them, but
Speaker 1: psychographically right here in this case.
Speaker 1: Original generation, Ricky. So travel audience, what are the content
Speaker 1: that travelers are looking for? If I'm today going on
Speaker 1: TikTok to look at travel, like, for example, eventually just
Speaker 1: came back from Bhutan, what kind of content will engage
Speaker 1: her as someone who's traveling, right? And, and, and, and
Speaker 1: actually data signals can help us to deep dive further
Speaker 1: into the specific type of content angles and niche angles
Speaker 1: that we can use to
Speaker 1: Appreciate and engage with travelers today. So, really, really uh
Speaker 1: think that the, the, the way of using AI, using
Speaker 1: data to understand our audience is really tying together really
Speaker 1: nicely nowadays for strategies. And talking about how things are shifting,
Speaker 1: I mean, eventually I saw you on podcast recently, clearly
Speaker 1: this is not the one, but were you dating this
Speaker 1: rich boy?
Speaker 1: Excuse
Speaker 2: me.
Speaker 2: Absolutely not, but uh it was fun having a podcast
Speaker 2: with him. So I think a lot of people will
Speaker 2: be familiar with this rich boy, so he, it is
Speaker 2: a personality, right? He's not the real billionaire.
Speaker 2: So, um, but yeah, he's a quite an influencer now,
Speaker 2: so he may be getting um quite rich in that sense.
Speaker 2: So I think chiming in from what Chris has shared, right,
Speaker 2: about how um the the content and what um Alex
Speaker 2: has shared about how content tailors to your audience in
Speaker 2: a very fragmented way, right? I wanted to share this
Speaker 2: very
Speaker 2: Um, lighthearted one because we're talking about social media, right?
Speaker 2: It's sometimes on social media, it's about entertainment, it's about
Speaker 2: fun and I think this really echoes how actually having
Speaker 2: fun can also give us very good success. So maybe
Speaker 2: we can take a look at what this Bobby says.
Speaker 2: And we don't reach a million people every week, I'm
Speaker 2: firing every single person on that team. This yacht company
Speaker 2: hired me to do one video, just one.
Speaker 2: We got 7 buyers for the yacht, $2 million purchase.
Speaker 2: You create a character that is a billionaire's son and
Speaker 2: there are real rich people who bought the yacht that
Speaker 2: is following you. You make fun of people and yet
Speaker 2: people want to take a photo of you. What kind
Speaker 2: of phenomenon do you call this? What is it that
Speaker 2: brands should learn from what you have been able to do?
Speaker 2: I went to acting school and what you have to
Speaker 2: do is you have to.
Speaker 2: What do you think would be certain key elements that
Speaker 2: if they were to collaborate with you, could potentially help
Speaker 2: them create content that can go viral? I think the
Speaker 2: consumer market is going to be led by influencers in
Speaker 2: the future and it already has, but I think brands
Speaker 2: are not smart about the influencers they choose. The best
Speaker 2: form of marketing is not what you say about yourself,
Speaker 2: but it's what others say about you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think a lot of us would have
Speaker 2: seen um his content about really being sarcastic, his kind
Speaker 2: of humor, and yet the word gets out there. Um,
Speaker 2: so about content targeting, right, even though he's a a
Speaker 2: fictitious character that he.
Speaker 2: That he created to be able to resonate with the rich.
Speaker 2: The people that are following actually are the real rich people.
Speaker 2: They want to maybe just check out like, hm, what
Speaker 2: is this guy doing? Do I resonate with him? Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I do. Or maybe no, I don't, right? So it's
Speaker 2: fun and that's why he was able to deliver that
Speaker 2: kind of results. So.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sending out a signal out there that,
Speaker 2: you know, in in 2024 we've seen a lot of chaos, geopolitical,
Speaker 2: that's extending to this year. It's creating a lot of
Speaker 2: stress amongst a lot of people. And sometimes people just
Speaker 2: retreat to social media for for some relax and um
Speaker 2: content like that can can deliver quite good success.
Speaker 2: And I also want to talk about the tailored targeting
Speaker 2: that uh Chris and Alex has been talking about. Um,
Speaker 2: we can use content, we can use age groups, we
Speaker 2: can use that very niche categories. And in fact, when
Speaker 2: we are doing campaigns for even the government bodies, it
Speaker 2: may be quite straightforward. OK, I want to target all Singapore.
Speaker 2: Because all Singaporeans need to get healthy. But different Singaporeans
Speaker 2: get healthier in receiving different messages, right, from the intergenerational
Speaker 2: ones where we can bring people and bring their grandparents
Speaker 2: to create a very lifestyle content to how you actually
Speaker 2: want to talk a little bit more about the mental health.
Speaker 2: To parents wanting to take care of their kids better,
Speaker 2: to even very niche community in this case, right, the individual,
Speaker 2: be it the Muslim community, the Indian community, and in
Speaker 2: this case, we actually were getting the Muslims who had
Speaker 2: once quit smoking and don't mind sharing it online because
Speaker 2: it can be a taboo.
Speaker 2: Right? And being able to find such relevant creators, influencers
Speaker 2: to talk about it online, it raises the authenticity a lot,
Speaker 2: the relevance as well, that people can feel that, oh, OK,
Speaker 2: you're talking about something that is related to yourself. But
Speaker 2: the story format or the content format also needs to
Speaker 2: be different, right? If you're getting
Speaker 2: People to share about their thoughts about how they feel
Speaker 2: about quitting smoking. And putting out a post out there
Speaker 2: asking everybody to comment publicly. Trust me, nobody's going to
Speaker 2: do that, because maybe it's a taboo to tell people that,
Speaker 2: you know, I was once smoking. So if you put
Speaker 2: it out as a public comment, it may not work
Speaker 2: as well. We switch it around, put it as an anonymous, um,
Speaker 2: question where people can answer it on an IG story.
Speaker 2: The response was, you know, was, was overwhelming. And with
Speaker 2: that response, it was very intimate, very authentic, and the
Speaker 2: creator could create content very relevant to each and every
Speaker 2: comment that was received and the engagement rates blew the roof.
Speaker 2: So targeting individual communities can work very well. It just
Speaker 2: needs a little bit more of a technique, some thoughts
Speaker 2: around it, and it can be fun as well. And
Speaker 2: of course, there are other ways. I'm going to share
Speaker 2: with you more fun ways that you can do tailored
Speaker 2: targeting with not just the um age group or the
Speaker 2: content format.
Speaker 2: In this case, it's business owners influencing other business owners. OK,
Speaker 2: this was a campaign by ByteDance, TikTok shop, wanting to
Speaker 2: encourage business owners to take their, uh, products from the
Speaker 2: offline to the online using TikTok Shop. So imagine this,
Speaker 2: if you're in Chuck to chuck as a a brand seller,
Speaker 2: withstanding the heat and going through, you can actually go
Speaker 2: on TikTok shop.
Speaker 2: And reach the world with the products that you sell.
Speaker 2: So this was a similar, uh, kind of, uh, campaign
Speaker 2: that we ran for, for, for ByteDance, uh, encouraging the
Speaker 2: adoption of TikTokho. And we, we, we, we delivered 9000
Speaker 2: of our conversions, double than what people actually were thinking about.
Speaker 2: So that in itself can be a B2B influencer kind
Speaker 2: of influence kind of campaign.
Speaker 2: And um when you talk about individual tailored targeting right,
Speaker 2: you can even do fun things like using content that
Speaker 2: ranks well on TikTok, especially now that people actually search
Speaker 2: a lot on TikTok, um.
Speaker 2: Not versus other platforms, but maybe on top of other platforms.
Speaker 2: People search on TikTok, people search on Chat GPT, you
Speaker 2: search on Google Maps, you know, it's not just a
Speaker 2: single search engine for everything now. So you can actually
Speaker 2: also try to optimize the content, the influencer content, your
Speaker 2: own content, and it can have that peripheral kind of benefits.
Speaker 2: Um, and you can, uh, people haven't really thought about this,
Speaker 2: but you can actually do influencer marketing on, on Spotify.
Speaker 2: I'm sure Mediacorp has thought about it and has actually
Speaker 2: done it very well because I attended your last webinar
Speaker 2: about audio marketing. I thought that was very brilliant. And, and,
Speaker 2: and this way of doing, actually, even though people are saying.
Speaker 2: Yes, the attention span can be less than 30 seconds.
Speaker 2: Nowadays we don't have that time for that long form content.
Speaker 2: But look, this content is a 39 minute podcast, but
Speaker 2: it worked really well. See, this campaign was MSF trying
Speaker 2: to encourage people to, you know, uh, take marriage seriously,
Speaker 2: not think about divorce so easily. The easy way to
Speaker 2: run such a campaign would be to put up an
Speaker 2: Instagram post, a beautiful wedding vow.
Speaker 2: A couple photo, right, and just say that, you know,
Speaker 2: I love you, you love me, let's, you know, treasure
Speaker 2: each other. Yes, impression check, engagement, I'm not sure. But
Speaker 2: when we go on Spotify, the topic changed to conversations
Speaker 2: with a young divorcee.
Speaker 2: The whole conversation changed altogether and people actually tune in, listen, impressions, check, engagement,
Speaker 2: double check. So sometimes we want to go very in
Speaker 2: depth to influence, not just on, you know, checking off
Speaker 2: the impressions. And the last one over here is that
Speaker 2: the common, uh, ask that I have is that, oh,
Speaker 2: social media is for Gen Z, you know, spending power
Speaker 2: is not very high. Maybe that is going away slowly.
Speaker 2: I hope faster. But we've also done longevity campaigns, not
Speaker 2: just for the
Speaker 2: Silver hair generation, OK, because nowadays, even if you have
Speaker 2: black hair, you might also want to look for health, fitness, longevity,
Speaker 2: and sometimes people think that, oh, social media is for
Speaker 2: the low ticket items, but over here we're actually targeting
Speaker 2: the luxury affluent individuals and staying at landed homes that
Speaker 2: people can resonate. I mean, apart from Bobby, there is
Speaker 2: a lot more of such characters. So I just like
Speaker 2: to inspire everyone with these real life cases on how
Speaker 2: the very customized targeting can be done.
Speaker 2: Back to you, Chris, or Alex.
Speaker 1: You know, I, I personally love the example you gave
Speaker 1: earlier on about the, the Muslim mummy who quit smoking. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, this, the fact of that the real story
Speaker 1: that came out.
Speaker 1: Uh, this really resonates as a parent, right? Me personally
Speaker 1: as parents with three kids, not that I smoke, but
Speaker 1: the story just just catches you as opposed to someone
Speaker 1: who may not be a parent, right? Hence all this
Speaker 1: targeting and all of us engage with different ways of
Speaker 1: the media, whether it's audio or whether it's TikTok or
Speaker 1: what have you, but just keeping in mind who we're
Speaker 1: trying to reach out to and what's in it for
Speaker 1: them at the end of the day, whether it's to
Speaker 1: give them a bit more entertainment, a good laugh, like
Speaker 1: the
Speaker 1: Billionaire, I think this really will drive us really far.
Speaker 1: Just switching gear a bit. I mean, um, as we
Speaker 1: think about all this micro very niche or subgroups or sub-communities, um,
Speaker 1: does this mean, I mean, I like love to hear
Speaker 1: from you, whether uh social media that is just very micro, you, you,
Speaker 1: there's no scale behind it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this connects to the point around paid media, uh, for,
Speaker 1: for starters, so.
Speaker 1: For me, social media is a mass media channel, and I,
Speaker 1: and I kind of wish it wasn't called social anymore
Speaker 1: because it's not uh it's a bit misleading in some ways, and.
Speaker 1: I, I think a lot of marketers, especially in this region,
Speaker 1: are still treating social media as an afterthought to the
Speaker 1: other channels that they're working with. And that's a problem
Speaker 1: because actually globally, uh, just recently, social media advertising spend,
Speaker 1: so promoting the posts that we create, uh, has finally
Speaker 1: overtaken search and video. And by video we mean linear
Speaker 1: TV and connected TV.
Speaker 1: So for a long time, the eyeballs have all been.
Speaker 1: On social, uh, more than they have been, um, on
Speaker 1: search and certainly more than they have been on video,
Speaker 1: in particular, some forms of TV, but only recently has
Speaker 1: the advertising spend caught up with that shift in culture.
Speaker 1: And look, um.
Speaker 1: For me, connected to this point is that, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you can use social um.
Speaker 1: To try and
Speaker 1: To try and sell products through the whole marketing funnel,
Speaker 1: but really these days social media platforms are very similar
Speaker 1: to what traditional TV or out of home was like
Speaker 1: and are much more suited to for most brands in
Speaker 1: most categories as awareness and consideration uh drivers.
Speaker 1: Uh, the products that tend to sell on social tend
Speaker 1: to be at the lower value, um, in the lower
Speaker 1: value range. So don't think of social as an afterthought,
Speaker 1: don't think of social as just there to perhaps convert,
Speaker 1: which some people think of it as. Uh, it needs
Speaker 1: to be backed with proper media spend and it needs
Speaker 1: to be considered more at the start of the marketing funnel.
Speaker 1: And in terms of that, so what's also happened over
Speaker 1: the years is that occasionally we see a post go viral.
Speaker 1: That post might be by an influencer, it might be
Speaker 1: by a normal person, it might be by a brand.
Speaker 1: It happens and we see that, and we think, well, that,
Speaker 1: that must happen that quite easily, it happens all the time.
Speaker 1: And it really doesn't, right? So generally what happens is
Speaker 1: the most successful brands create quite a lot of content
Speaker 1: themselves and via influencers.
Speaker 1: And they monitor that content very closely, and then, so
Speaker 1: that those blue dots on the right hand side are
Speaker 1: the different audience groups, the subgroups we talked about earlier.
Speaker 1: The green dots below them are the is the content
Speaker 1: performing under under the average, and the content above the
Speaker 1: blue dots is the is performing above average, right? So
Speaker 1: you post the content.
Speaker 1: And if you see within the first hour that organically
Speaker 1: it's performing above average or with a small amount of
Speaker 1: paid media spend, you then need to just put as
Speaker 1: much paid media spend behind it as you can until
Speaker 1: it stops performing well. And that first hour is critical.
Speaker 1: Because after that, the algorithm starts to think that the
Speaker 1: content is not as important and starts to deprioritize it
Speaker 1: in general, right? So it's not a set and forget, unfortunately.
Speaker 1: It's really time intensive, uh, unlike other channels, but that's
Speaker 1: just the way it is.
Speaker 1: you know, I could imagine if not on the questions already,
Speaker 1: everybody's asking like how on earth are you able to
Speaker 1: respond so quickly within an hour, because that, that's, that's
Speaker 1: really intensive. I mean, just imagine how many pieces of
Speaker 1: content we generally will push out. Yeah, well then, depending
Speaker 1: on the the size of your team, right, I think,
Speaker 1: I think there's a few things to consider. One is,
Speaker 1: if your team is not that big.
Speaker 1: Then it doesn't mean you have to create an insane
Speaker 1: amount of con, the same amount of content as a
Speaker 1: multinational corporation. I would, I, I, if I had the choice,
Speaker 1: I would rather pay close attention to a small amount
Speaker 1: of content and boost it really quickly than create loads
Speaker 1: of content and not be able to pay attention to
Speaker 1: how it's performing. If I had to make a choice, obviously,
Speaker 1: ideally you do, you do both.
Speaker 1: Um, another thing I'd, I'd consider is, do you have
Speaker 1: to be on all, on all the channels? Probably not.
Speaker 1: Too many brands are, are on all the channels because
Speaker 1: initially it's free, but, apart from the people you're paying
Speaker 1: to do it, but it's free to set, set yourselves
Speaker 1: up on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, etc. But just because
Speaker 1: you can be in all the channels doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: necessarily should be. And I would advise probably choose less
Speaker 1: platforms and be better at them.
Speaker 1: Um, and then the other thing is, set aside money
Speaker 1: for paid media spend for that quarter or for that year,
Speaker 1: have that approved, have it good to go, and put
Speaker 1: someone in charge of it who knows what they're doing.
Speaker 1: So make sure that's not, there's not too many people
Speaker 1: that need to approve a post getting boosted with some
Speaker 1: paid media spend for a few $1000 and then you
Speaker 1: miss your window of opportunity.
Speaker 1: Actually that's true, um, and more and more we've seen
Speaker 1: whether you do it in-house or partner with the likes
Speaker 1: of Kobe or ourselves at Mediacorp, like you just handle
Speaker 1: everything quite turnkey, right, both working influencer, creating content and
Speaker 1: just maximizing and scaling it up. In fact, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of like how we've been doing for some of
Speaker 1: the clients we've been working with.
Speaker 1: Um, you have a very nice content in this case, uh,
Speaker 1: Asian mom or Minnie Muchi on the left hand side.
Speaker 1: She did a piece of content talking about financial wellness,
Speaker 1: how you manage your money, some financial tools, and it
Speaker 1: did really well.
Speaker 1: And we amplified it, we, we saw it, we amplified
Speaker 1: it across different platforms, with outdoor TV, digital, and we
Speaker 1: even got her to write an article that runs on
Speaker 1: our digital platforms. It's kind of like just maximizing whether
Speaker 1: to pay media on social or whether paid media through
Speaker 1: other forms to maximizing the piece of content and driving
Speaker 1: that ROI.
Speaker 1: But for the first hour, can't do it on all
Speaker 1: these other platforms, but the first hour first on social
Speaker 1: media and then how you transcend to all the other platforms. And,
Speaker 1: and it does require investment of time, it doesn't require
Speaker 1: investment of resources, whether internally or with the right partners, uh,
Speaker 1: which I think talking about investment, I mean, Evangeline, you
Speaker 1: do have clients who invest quite a lot to have
Speaker 1: that kind of mass media platform effects through influencers, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love this example. Um, it's a, you know,
Speaker 2: using a single asset or a single phase, um, in
Speaker 2: your case for saline, right, and multiply it on all
Speaker 2: the different areas, outdoor, and I think that's the kind
Speaker 2: of reach and the power, um, amazingly that Mediacorp covers
Speaker 2: up to like the the podcast and all that, right.
Speaker 2: Um, an alternative treatment would be using multiple people to
Speaker 2: reach multiple, uh, uh, multiple communities, and in this case,
Speaker 2: we did around 6000 of the contents, uh, within 4
Speaker 2: to 6 months for a brand called Arao.
Speaker 2: Um, I think now people are not so strange to eSIM.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't have to take out your needle
Speaker 2: thingy to, you know, put your SIM card to take
Speaker 2: out the old SIM card and then replace with the
Speaker 2: new SIM card, which was an old technology, but um
Speaker 2: now eSIM is a lot more convenient. But when this
Speaker 2: whole eSIM came about like uh 1 or 2 years ago,
Speaker 2: um and when it was becoming very trendy, right, people
Speaker 2: actually didn't know there was such thing.
Speaker 2: So there was a lot of education, awareness, uh uh
Speaker 2: at the at at the volume right from the start,
Speaker 2: and we use multiple creators um in 6 different countries, uh.
Speaker 2: To achieve this effect, right? So they were able to
Speaker 2: speak to their very um individual communities using different contents.
Speaker 2: In this case, there were people that like to talk
Speaker 2: about the eSIM using itinerary blogs, uh, they talk about how.
Speaker 2: You can do all sorts of things at Chiang Mai
Speaker 2: when you travel and one of the tips you must
Speaker 2: remember is using the AC right? Uh, some people talk
Speaker 2: about travel must-haves. It's kind of like a like a
Speaker 2: functional um value given to their, their consumers, right? Some
Speaker 2: of them, they like to use animation, um, trend jacking,
Speaker 2: very popular. Uh, if the campaign is now, maybe we'll
Speaker 2: see some morning routines happening.
Speaker 2: Um, or that coffee with a younger self, I don't know, right? Um, so,
Speaker 2: so that one requires a lot of, uh, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of social media time to know what's trending
Speaker 2: and then using.
Speaker 2: And then uh role play is quite evergreen. Today we're
Speaker 2: talking a lot about micro dramas on TikTok, uh, and,
Speaker 2: and how these little role plays actually get people quite, uh,
Speaker 2: attentive into watching a longer form video. When I say longer,
Speaker 2: it means like one minute, lah. OK. OK, and then
Speaker 2: you have your very typical aesthetic travel one touch, right? Uh, that,
Speaker 2: you know, throwback and stuff. And then you've got your
Speaker 2: green screen demos where people can, you know, share how
Speaker 2: do you do it.
Speaker 2: Um, the list goes on as the social media world
Speaker 2: continues to unravel, but he is giving you a flavor
Speaker 2: about uh amplification in the different format beyond just taking
Speaker 2: a single um creator everywhere, but any creators everywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Back to you, Chris.
Speaker 1: You know, all this ties in very nicely to one
Speaker 1: of the other insights that we've been, we observed from
Speaker 1: survey is that social media content is now part of
Speaker 1: every consumer's attention feed.
Speaker 1: Um, the content, getting it right, and scaling what is
Speaker 1: right is so important. Um, that of course there's a
Speaker 1: part about it running on your own social media channels, uh,
Speaker 1: organic content, but I think regardless of whether it's your,
Speaker 1: your own self or with others, um, it's important to
Speaker 1: just really see how important content is, making sure it
Speaker 1: works right and scaling it up. I think there are
Speaker 1: a lot of questions actually um.
Speaker 1: You know, love to just pause here for a while,
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about AI generated content. There's this
Speaker 1: question about AI generated content that can be done fast
Speaker 1: versus real influences coming from the example you just gave, Vanin.
Speaker 1: But it does take longer to to find the right
Speaker 1: influences compared to just creating something from AI. So which
Speaker 1: is better if you want to reach multiple communities at
Speaker 1: once if time is of essence. What do you guys think?
Speaker 1: Do you think AI influences, I mean, their platforms just
Speaker 1: driven by AI influences today, right? So what what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts?
Speaker 2: Um, I can, I can check in first if you
Speaker 2: don't mind, Alex, um, on this, um, actually it, it's
Speaker 2: a very timely thing that I have testify next because
Speaker 2: we have 12,000 influencers that we engage on a continuous basis,
Speaker 2: every month, uh, 200 every per country, so 6 countries,
Speaker 2: that's 1200, so 10 months will be around 12,000 creators
Speaker 2: that we engage.
Speaker 2: And yes, it is possible to do that manually.
Speaker 2: Mhm.
Speaker 2: So, uh, we use, uh, our, our, our in-house tool
Speaker 2: to do it a lot more efficiently and at scale
Speaker 2: and definitely our tool will require a lot of, uh, AI.
Speaker 2: So your, your question might be, OK, then how do
Speaker 2: you use AI? Do you use AI to talk to
Speaker 2: the influencers or what? OK, so AI will help us
Speaker 2: to actually study and profile the influencers a lot faster
Speaker 2: and more accurate and better because every influencer, they are humans,
Speaker 2: you know, at the end of the day they are
Speaker 2: not like they are not a media placement that you
Speaker 2: can just.
Speaker 2: Put the ad on you. They're humans that you need
Speaker 2: to build a relationship with, and hence, they're going to
Speaker 2: tell you that, oh, actually I can do this, I
Speaker 2: can do that. But AI actually helps us to profile
Speaker 2: their social media personality a lot faster. So number one
Speaker 2: is cost discovery, profiling, um, that, that AI portion. And
Speaker 2: then every influencer costs differently if you have done influencer
Speaker 2: marketing before. But with AI, you can do a, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, your LLM and then you can study.
Speaker 2: got this pricing and it can give you a rough
Speaker 2: guess about how much potentially or, or, you know, predictably
Speaker 2: this this content piece should cost. So, it actually helps
Speaker 2: a lot in all these efforts. But making a relationship
Speaker 2: with a human influencer, it still has to take, you know,
Speaker 2: a human connection, I feel. After doing this for 9
Speaker 2: years and talking to 300 to 50,000 influencers, that's my conclusion.
Speaker 2: You still need a lot of human relationships.
Speaker 2: Then the next question is, A, if I don't use
Speaker 2: human influencers, I use all the AI influences instead. Is
Speaker 2: it better? I don't have to deal with, you know,
Speaker 2: people being late or like not submitting the draft on time, on, on,
Speaker 2: on brief or like, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So actually, 4 years ago, we were involved in this, uh,
Speaker 2: virtual influencer development project. Uh, she's one of the, I
Speaker 2: think #1, if not one of the #1 in Singapore.
Speaker 2: You may have heard of her before. Her Instagram handle
Speaker 2: is Here is free.
Speaker 2: Right, RAE, right? OK. So we have a project team
Speaker 2: and it's very fun giving birth to, uh, giving birth
Speaker 2: to a virtual influencer because like, OK, works, this hairstyle works,
Speaker 2: that eyebrow le works, imperfection works. And we did a
Speaker 2: lot of experiments, right? But one of the key conclusions,
Speaker 2: you see, if I were to talk about a skin
Speaker 2: cream and I put it on my skin and see,
Speaker 2: see how it goes into my very imperfect big pores
Speaker 2: over here, right?
Speaker 2: But it, you know, close up my course, you're gonna
Speaker 2: believe it. But if the virtual influencer were to do
Speaker 2: the same thing, I think the outcome be very different, correct?
Speaker 2: Virtual influencers are followed for a very different reason.
Speaker 2: And the brands that they can talk about are also
Speaker 2: for very different reasons. People follow them for entertainment, for
Speaker 2: novelty and for checking out the latest technology and how
Speaker 2: actually this works or the latest trends, that's going to
Speaker 2: be dropped, the latest sneakers and stuff like that. But
Speaker 2: if talking about an authentic connection, human to human, about
Speaker 2: how the life unfolds unpredictably, a virtual influencer will be
Speaker 2: slightly different in that sense. Of course, you can read
Speaker 2: the influencer to a low McKellar standard.
Speaker 2: That the most popular number one in the world, where
Speaker 2: you can start to have that connection, but that connection
Speaker 2: is going to be a little bit different versus a
Speaker 2: human connection.
Speaker 2: We've seen a lot of TikTok accounts. I think they
Speaker 2: will be coming and more on Instagram as well. Those
Speaker 2: AI accounts which it's entirely powered by a virtual avatar
Speaker 2: telling a story of the past or just delivering content.
Speaker 2: All these accounts, they actually sprout to fame and is
Speaker 2: doing multiple tests. I can create 100 a day, show
Speaker 2: it out there, see who grows, 2 of them grows,
Speaker 2: load content on them, and then after it gets sponsors.
Speaker 2: That can work.
Speaker 2: However, if you're a brand looking to market your brand
Speaker 2: and engaging with influencers, then the consideration goes back to
Speaker 2: the basic.
Speaker 2: Who is my target audience? What are the platforms, what
Speaker 2: are the content that resonates? Will AI influencers actually resonate
Speaker 2: with your final consumers will be the questions that need
Speaker 2: to be asked. So it can deliver some efficiency if
Speaker 2: it works for your objective, and that's my take for
Speaker 2: um AI. Happy to chime in more, but um over
Speaker 2: to
Speaker 1: Chris. Thanks. You know, Alex, I know we're chatting on
Speaker 1: the side while Evangeline was really sharing really insightful stuff, um.
Speaker 1: Uh, I think the, the, the, the key point here is, um,
Speaker 1: Do people want to have a relationship, and I think
Speaker 1: Alex you brought a very good point. Do people want
Speaker 1: to relate to an AI person or do people want
Speaker 1: to relate to a human being and by and large, um,
Speaker 1: Like what, by and large we want to relate to
Speaker 1: a human being and I eventuallyline you were mentioning that.
Speaker 1: Um, uh, that AI influences, AI artificial identities tend to
Speaker 1: engage a certain niche group of communities and they tend
Speaker 1: to be people who are into gaming, into cosplay, into tech, and,
Speaker 1: and things like that, and, and I think because this
Speaker 1: is how the interaction with games. So that's one part
Speaker 1: of it, but the other part which I just want
Speaker 1: to add on to that is that.
Speaker 1: Um, yeah, and there's a novelty factor. Then the other
Speaker 1: part of it is, however, if let's say it's blatantly
Speaker 1: an advertisement, AI for advertisement, right, that you know it
Speaker 1: is not about me relating to this person, I'm not
Speaker 1: here to interact with this person. I think there's a
Speaker 1: bit more receptivity towards that.
Speaker 1: And there are, there's a growing number of luxury brands
Speaker 1: even going into the space of creating digital doubles and
Speaker 1: things like that to really just drive out efficiencies and scale.
Speaker 1: So there's two parts to it. It's the influencing part,
Speaker 1: the engagement, the relationship, and the other part which is
Speaker 1: really pure advertisement that could run at social media ads, right,
Speaker 1: because social media can also be an ad platform.
Speaker 1: And all this actually brings me to the third insight, um, and,
Speaker 1: and which is that ultimately, what moves the needle is the,
Speaker 1: the authenticity and trust factor that people can have. So
Speaker 1: even if you do use AI, my people expect you
Speaker 1: to declare, if it's sponsored, expect you to declare and
Speaker 1: not just hide the fact that actually
Speaker 1: I, I never use this product and just talk a
Speaker 1: lot about it, right? People do want the authenticity and
Speaker 1: the trust with influencers and anything that they see today
Speaker 1: and on that note, I think eventually you some examples
Speaker 1: about authenticity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do and I'm seeing so many questions. This
Speaker 2: is making me very excited. um but I was just
Speaker 2: chime in on this authenticity part. So I think one
Speaker 2: of the questions is like will a virtual influencer come
Speaker 2: across as authentic as a real human influencer? I think
Speaker 2: this actually kind of answers that and maybe some others
Speaker 2: as well. Cause um see a huge influencer, you see
Speaker 2: I also got filter on a little bit lah, like right.
Speaker 2: So this sounds a bit.
Speaker 2: Fake, right? I'm not 100%, 100% authentic. And, and, and,
Speaker 2: and I guess a lot of us use filters, right? So,
Speaker 2: so how authentic can authentic be? versus an AI that's
Speaker 2: in your face, I am inauthentic. People actually like it, right?
Speaker 2: That you declare to me. So like what Chris says,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of times it's about whether or
Speaker 2: not people feel like they cheated or not, you know.
Speaker 2: Because human that you will, is it true or not, right?
Speaker 2: So anyway, back to this, uh, examples of authenticity and
Speaker 2: how you can be radical about it, right? The first
Speaker 2: one is uh by UOB, um, you know, finance Font,
Speaker 2: it's always quite a headache on, on social media because
Speaker 2: everybody would just skip it, right? Um, but this one
Speaker 2: has 11,000 savings and 3000 of shares. How did we
Speaker 2: do it, right? Number one.
Speaker 2: Get an authentic creator. She, there she is a real
Speaker 2: super fan of UOB. Don't ask me why they are
Speaker 2: super fans, but she used to work at UOB and
Speaker 2: she really, really loves the brand, right? And getting her
Speaker 2: to talk about the content, #2, get a content concept
Speaker 2: that actually, uh, sink in, sinks in very well with
Speaker 2: the campaign. In this case, we use the trend get
Speaker 2: ready with me.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a bit outdated right now. But finance content
Speaker 2: generally gives people that, you know, I, uh, what is
Speaker 2: behind the estuaries, there's so many other terms and conditions
Speaker 2: that I will never know, right? But this get ready
Speaker 2: with me actually makes someone go like that into the
Speaker 2: screen and looks a bit ugly and then it's vulnerable
Speaker 2: and it's authentic. And that tied in with the finance content.
Speaker 2: In with being a super fan advocate actually delivers this
Speaker 2: kind of results. So radical authenticity can work very well.
Speaker 2: Second example, this guy actually travels back and fro from
Speaker 2: Johor Bahru to Singapore every day and use DBS as
Speaker 2: a bank. And him talking about his story about how
Speaker 2: he actually does it can resonate with a lot of
Speaker 2: people in that specific community and people feel that authentic relevance,
Speaker 2: rather than getting just someone popular to talk about a
Speaker 2: shout out about the latest promotion, this works very well.
Speaker 2: The third one is a very daring try that we
Speaker 2: did with Tata, because we went on the streets to
Speaker 2: ask people, grab or tata, right? And people, there will
Speaker 2: be people, I mean, obviously, we know who is the, the, the, the,
Speaker 2: you know, the more common brand over here. But Tata
Speaker 2: wasn't asking much. They were asking for a good comparison,
Speaker 2: that's all. And we went on the streets, we got
Speaker 2: that authentic sentiment, and we put it out, even when
Speaker 2: people say, uh, Tata, what is that?
Speaker 2: Right? That was authentic and it actually got people talking, right?
Speaker 2: And the last example, also a very daring one, rather
Speaker 2: than just selling supplements and because my, my, my promotion
Speaker 2: is such, my objective is to push this particular promotion,
Speaker 2: we actually went out there to ask people, what are
Speaker 2: your health problems? Is it weight loss? Is it sleep?
Speaker 2: Is it exercise?
Speaker 2: And from that, we created content and promote the right
Speaker 2: products to what people were asking for, right? And this
Speaker 2: authentic and very courageous owned by the marketing team, um,
Speaker 2: that we enjoyed working with, was actually able to cut
Speaker 2: through a clutter and get to people's hearts. So authenticity
Speaker 2: can can work in this sense. back to you, Chris.
Speaker 1: You know, all this is so much to talk to
Speaker 1: talk about content and authenticity and stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: I think the next big question, which I think popped
Speaker 1: up here as well is.
Speaker 1: Then how do we measure, how do we measure, what
Speaker 1: do we measure? Do we, because you're talking about relationships,
Speaker 1: is it talking about comments, is it about sharing? Alex,
Speaker 1: you have some thoughts about this, right? Yeah, so for,
Speaker 1: for me, social isn't really that social anymore, we've talked
Speaker 1: about this quite a bit already, right? Um, it's just another, it,
Speaker 1: it's just a mass media, um, feed that happens to
Speaker 1: sit in your hand, um.
Speaker 1: So, let's move to the next slide, just conscious of
Speaker 1: time here. Like, yes, some brands have really strong engagement, uh,
Speaker 1: but most of them, for most of them, strong engagement
Speaker 1: in terms of lots of comments, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: wore off a long time ago. Why? Novel novelty factor
Speaker 1: that I mentioned already, um.
Speaker 1: And there's other, other points as well, like there are some,
Speaker 1: there are some people who are always just more chatty
Speaker 1: and talkative, right, even in quote unquote real life. Uh,
Speaker 1: those tend to be the ones who, who maybe jump
Speaker 1: into the comments more often. The comments are spread across
Speaker 1: more posts now because there just are more posts from brands, um,
Speaker 1: and influencers as well, of course, and some real people.
Speaker 1: And I've got a quote here from the Financial Times,
Speaker 1: Social media networks are not very sociable these days. Feeds
Speaker 1: are algorithmic, which means you see whatever the apps want
Speaker 1: to show you. Threads is, which of course is the
Speaker 1: um sort of rival to um X or Twitter, is
Speaker 1: more stage than public town square, and I think that's
Speaker 1: absolutely bang on for what we've been talking about. And
Speaker 1: in terms of measurement, which was asked in, in, in,
Speaker 1: in the, in the questions, measure what matters, right? So.
Speaker 1: I personally would prioritize metrics like video completion rate, 1
Speaker 1: to 1 messaging, if relevant, and also uh shares. I
Speaker 1: think it's really interesting if people are sharing it, uh,
Speaker 1: with others. And also dark social community growth. So dark
Speaker 1: social is things like WhatsApp or Telegram. Um, growing communities
Speaker 1: on those platforms can be, can be really, a really
Speaker 1: great idea.
Speaker 1: Check out brands like Tasty, which is the food platform
Speaker 1: owned by BuzzFeed. They've got over a million people on
Speaker 1: their WhatsApp for Business channel. And there's also Absolute Vodka
Speaker 1: doing a good job there as well. And then finally,
Speaker 1: regularly review your benchmark because the platforms are constantly changing
Speaker 1: how they define their metrics. Like for example, YouTube, the
Speaker 1: last few weeks changed how it defines a view on
Speaker 1: its platform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Instagram just scraped away impressions, right? They're all
Speaker 1: views right now. And, and, and to the question, I
Speaker 1: think some of them were asking was that can AI
Speaker 1: then help us to understand results and all this and
Speaker 1: I believe, I mean, eventuallyline on your end, copay, you
Speaker 1: were sharing how proprietary tools you're building, you're building to
Speaker 1: help analyze and find the right influences and benchmark results.
Speaker 1: Same thing here at Social hub, we do a lot
Speaker 1: of constantly benchmarking using AI machine learning.
Speaker 1: And, and I think the other, the key takeaway I
Speaker 1: have from whatever Alex was sharing was also that things
Speaker 1: are constantly evolving, understanding where your content is going to run,
Speaker 1: eventually maybe you want to give one or two examples here.
Speaker 1: About how we need to really understand how platforms are
Speaker 1: changing and what platforms is used for all. You can't
Speaker 1: be in everywhere, but you just need to know what
Speaker 1: is critical for you to, what, what the different platforms
Speaker 1: and nuances are so you can create the right content, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I think this is quite self-explanatory. I don't
Speaker 2: know if if the attendees usually get a get a format, get,
Speaker 2: get a copy of the slide, but if not, you know,
Speaker 2: feel free to just take a screen grab, I think,
Speaker 2: if it's OK, right? So, um, so many different platforms,
Speaker 2: it's not just Instagram or TikTok, you know, um, Lemonade, Xiaohongshu, um, LinkedIn,
Speaker 2: you know, and everyone has a different purposes and different usages.
Speaker 2: Um, so I think that's that's something that definitely we
Speaker 2: can play around with. Um, and people were asking, will
Speaker 2: you get fatigue, right? I think one of the questions
Speaker 2: that just popped up, um, I think this is the
Speaker 2: exact way how you can do it, because if you
Speaker 2: keep doing Instagram product seeding, you're just going to get
Speaker 2: IG stories. But if you see it on a laminader,
Speaker 2: you're gonna get a long form infographic that.
Speaker 2: Actually gives you a lot of content. So there are
Speaker 2: a lot of fun ways to do it. And I
Speaker 2: think this is precisely the reason why I think tying
Speaker 2: up with the, you know, the, the, the famous, um,
Speaker 2: influencer or the overpopularized influencer, that has a lot of, um,
Speaker 2: sponsorships could sometimes deliver a little bit of fatigue.
Speaker 2: And you are uncovering the, the, the different niche communities,
Speaker 2: be someone that's traveling from JB to Singapore or whatsoever
Speaker 2: a business person in in Singapore or something like that,
Speaker 2: it's going to be a lot more um interesting over there, right? Um,
Speaker 2: someone was just asking about blacklist and measurement metrics just
Speaker 2: to chime in a little bit on that, um.
Speaker 2: Our platform, yes, all the metrics that Alex was suggesting
Speaker 2: video completion rates, save rates, and everything, they should all
Speaker 2: be tracked and measured across each influencer across each campaign.
Speaker 2: Something a little bit fun that we do is that
Speaker 2: we have a kind of like a grab 5 star
Speaker 2: rating for each of the content that each of our
Speaker 2: influencers creates. So you can imagine we have done 10s
Speaker 2: of thousands of hundreds of thousands of content over 9 years.
Speaker 2: So each one has a 5 star rating.
Speaker 2: So with that kind of volume, we would roughly know
Speaker 2: what kind of influencers can deliver, what kind of campaigns,
Speaker 2: content formats on time, on brief, right? So this is
Speaker 2: a little bit more qualitative, but quantitative in a sense,
Speaker 2: because it's what the advertisers gives us. This is something
Speaker 2: very um.
Speaker 2: You know, think about is the influencer putting enough effort,
Speaker 2: is the content good quality, but it's so subjective, but
Speaker 2: I find that using this rating actually gives us really
Speaker 2: good indication of who actually consistently delivers. So that's something
Speaker 2: uh food for
Speaker 2: thought.
Speaker 1: And talking about different platforms, different types of engaging audience
Speaker 1: and content types. We recently also worked with um a
Speaker 1: very
Speaker 1: I would say traditional local brand, um, Daikin about how
Speaker 1: they really engage the next generation of audiences through multiple
Speaker 1: formats which is skits, interviews, pranks, street interviews and all this,
Speaker 1: because ultimately I think um
Speaker 1: What is it in for your, your, your audience when
Speaker 1: it comes to the content that we push out through
Speaker 1: influences or your own content across the different platforms? Is
Speaker 1: it to, I mean, there's a simple way we we
Speaker 1: we summarize it, is it to entertain them, is it
Speaker 1: empower them, is it to educate them, or is it
Speaker 1: to create a uh a whole.
Speaker 1: For more effect, right, through all this when we educate
Speaker 1: and empower them.
Speaker 1: If we sum it all up, all the different things
Speaker 1: we covered today, and I know we didn't cover everything, um.
Speaker 1: There are, there are the few things that we hope
Speaker 1: everybody can take away from today. Number one, we talk
Speaker 1: about how fragmented social media has become, or media consumption
Speaker 1: has become. Um, one of the things is that let's
Speaker 1: look into niche communities, one community at a time. You
Speaker 1: may not have the time and capacity and resources, work
Speaker 1: with partners, work with different agencies, but look at one
Speaker 1: community at a time as much as it's better that
Speaker 1: you do each community well than you do too many
Speaker 1: and you fail at them.
Speaker 1: The other part is invest in social media and content
Speaker 1: as you would as a mass media channel. I think
Speaker 1: social media has not presented a way that we can
Speaker 1: be used, but it's peak media, where amplification, where the
Speaker 1: content and scaling it up. It have become a really
Speaker 1: massive platform for us to influence and engage with our audiences.
Speaker 1: And as the scale grows, it's critical for us to
Speaker 1: learn how to evolve. There were really a lot of
Speaker 1: much better, really, really good examples that Evangeline shared today
Speaker 1: and some of which we didn't have a chance and
Speaker 1: time for. We will send the deck across, but importantly
Speaker 1: as social media evolves, um, stay true to yourself, the authenticity.
Speaker 1: The relationship that you have as a brand or as
Speaker 1: a personality with your audience is so important. What is
Speaker 1: your content formats, what is the way you talk, what
Speaker 1: is your get ready with me with the eyes close
Speaker 1: to the screen. I think all this is so important
Speaker 1: as we continue to move and evolve with social media.
Speaker 1: Thanks everybody. Uh, I know there are a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, we will answer, address them and like what
Speaker 1: you eventually said and Alex would love to say is
Speaker 1: reach out to us and be in touch and we'd
Speaker 1: love to have coffee together. All right, so take care, everybody.
Speaker 1: Have a good morning. Bye-bye.