How the Cultural and Creative Industries in Domestic Museums Receive a Contemporary Revive?

Luo Zhaohui (1155084240)

Inspired by architect Ieoh Ming Pei, a unique shape of the wooden seat has finally launched in the Taobao store of Suzhou Museum. The product was created by Suzhou Museum and independent designers, and then promoted by Taobao crowdfunding.

Converting static artifacts into popular designs, has become a trend of cultural and creative industries in domestic museums, but this was developed in the last two or three years. Regarded as a tourist souvenirs, the cultural and creative industries were not taken seriously in the past decades.

Dismal Past

Many people may have such an experience when visiting the the Forbidden City: the most popular items in the shop are instant noodles or beverage, souvenirs are lack of texture like Yiwu commodity, or too high to be afforded like cultural relic. 

The dismal business of cultural and creative industries are lead by the system to a large extent. As a public institution, the museum's operating funds are depend on financial support, then all income in the musemu should be paid. Over time, no one is willing to studying cultural and creative industries.

While under the background of "New Museology movement" in the 1980s, museums in Europe and America opened the historical tide of the revolution. Cultural relics are no longer the center of museums, instead, they began to emphasize the feelings of visitors. For example, Paris Le Louvre Museum opened up the underground shopping malls, converting the museum into a public space of art and commerce.

With many museums open for free, designing art derivatives has become a common mode of operation. British Museum has cooperated with many manufacturers, forming a complete set of mature industries from design, manufacturing to marketing. For example, when you search “Rosetta Stone（罗塞塔石碑）”on the official website, there will be more than 60 kinds of derivatives covering a variety of price and types.

The New York Museum of modern art (MoMA), on the other side of the ocean, has built a souvenir shop into a brand of design and art. Although it would take Van Gogh's "Star" printed on the umbrella and mugs, MoMA souvenir shop looks more like a fashion buyers shop, you can get many cross-border products here such as the stationery designed by Chanel Karl Lagerfeld, or the vase designed by Japan's famous porcelain masters Komatsu Cheng.

Change from the Forbidden City

A scotch tape called “朕知道了” in Taipei Palace Museum began to explode on social network in 2013. The inspiration of “朕知道了” can traced back to a Zhupi memorials exhibition （朱批奏折展） in 2005. It is this special scotch tape inadvertently witnessed the beginning of an era.

“朕知道了”made the Forbidden City really aware of the huge market of cultural and creative industry. In the same year, the Forbidden City began to roll out a wave of creative products, the popular weibo and wechat public account “故宫淘宝” also entered into the public view that time. 

In the next few years, the 600-year-old Forbidden City began to become youth in an unprecedented gesture along with the Internet. People began to exclame that the past solemn palace has become“萌萌哒”, the products like “朝珠耳机”,“奉旨旅行”luggage tag, and “朕就是这样汉子”folding fan were in favour. 

The new look presented by the Forbidden City are much more from the details of the changes in the stack. Essentially, all changes can be derived from its selt-location: it starts from the viewpoint of the market, aiming to improve the audience experience and enhance the brand value of the museumas well as the way of cultural communication.

New inspirations

Driven by the Forbidden City, more and more domestic museums began to launch the cultural and creative industries. Also, there are external cooperation in most of the museums, the combination of social media and e-commerce become a marketing standard for most of the museums.

For example, the National Museum opened a Tmall flagship store last year, launching its own brand “国博衍艺”as well as the weibo account of the same brand. Also, Suzhou Museum and 聚划算 jointly held a cross-border fashion show based on the theme of "Walking History". 

While developing a really cultural connotation and well-recognized product is not easy. From the current situation, the domestic museum is still at the primary stage: although the number of cultural and creative museum has benn increased, the quality is not satisfactory. Many products are just to simply copy the elements of cultural relics, or malicious or simply do not adorable and practical.

Like British Museum cultural and creative development director John Robert said, "we follow the principles of avoiding the cheap consumer texture lead by the fashion design. 

Limited by talent, ability and capital, many domestic museums and cultural development still need a long way to go. When the opportunity comes, the challenge has just begun. 

Special Train with Music Reviews: Seeing the Power of Music – An Integrated Marketing Campaign of Netease Cloud Music

April, XU Xin, 1155089254

On March 20, a special train in red color, decorated with a large collection of touching music reviews at Hangzhou subway station caught thousands of passersby’ attention, instantly becoming a hit in social networks. It’s a marketing campaign called seeing the power of music conducted by Netease Cloud Music, which contracted ads of line 1 as well as Jiangling Road Station with high-quality music reviews selected from the platform.

Figure 1. Photos of the Campaign.

However, it’s not uncommon to advertise on subway, and there are several successful precedents, from Headline Today, Particle News to recent Peach Blossom Train implemented by a popular TV drama. Nevertheless, what makes this campaign outstanding is that it doesn’t promote through size and quantity of ads or empathizing slogan, but from a product perspective, and importantly, it widely spreads on the internet, leading to a mania of sharing and discussing on social media.

With no doubt, multiple highlights are presented from this campaign. Firstly, it’s the sensitive insights of user psychology and the choice of advertising place. Apparently, subway is a common transport carrying people together with their hopes and dreams, also loneliness on the struggling way. Because of confined space, it’s easier for people to concentrate, think and to recall the past. Thus, people will be easily struck if the ad copy shares the same emotion.

Besides, empathetic music reviews is another highlight of this campaign. Specially, music reviews is one of unique features of Netease Cloud Music. It’s said that approximately 640,000 reviews are produced by users everyday and over 400,000,000 reviews are stimulated on the app up to now. Just like seeing shoots on video websites, looking through music reviews to find comforts has become a habit for majority of users. Focused on this, the marketing team selected top hot 5000 pieces of reviews through computer and according to its specific content, they picked up 85 reviews which are simple but touching, understandable and empathetic, covering the popular topics of dream, life, friendship and love. And taking them as advertisements in the combination of review, user ID and song, which reflects the feature of product and matches the brand position – a warmhearted music society.

For example, @Culiu writes that I want to be the one who describe you at your funeral, after listening to the song Palpitation. Thank you for accompanying me from wearing school uniform to wedding dress, which is written by @Nanguobeidao below the song Duandian of Hins Cheung. And @Ney_S writes the review under the song Long Lost Pen Pal that when I was young, I hoped to be everyone except myself.

Figure 2. Music Reviews of the Campaign.

More reviews can be seen from the last link of references.

It’s admitted that user generated content and real people stories can bring audience unexpected surprise with touching power. When people see these reviews, they feel like talking to an ordinary person about his simple but unforgettable stories rather than a speech with high-sounding words. In this equal way, people may find some same experience and resonate with what they say. And then, they probably become interested in the song that brings such feelings, download the app, enjoy the song and find some like-minded people. Just as the vice president of Netease Cloud Music, Li Yin, said that they applied the product strategy to do social marketing and provided what users what to know, digging out content and guiding users to share same emotions, instead of traditional one-way information delivery of brand.

For this campaign, the biggest success is the transformation from offline to online, creating secondary spread on the internet. People who came across this campaign took pictures of these reviews, posted on the social media and wrote down their opinions and feelings. In addition to these personal content sharing from experiencer, official media platforms like Wechat subscription and other media or KOL reported this activity, which attracted plenty of people share and express a deep sense of identity on social media.

Figure 3. Screenshots of official media platform posts.

Consequently, the campaign report on Wechat subscription has been viewed more than 100,000, which was 5 times the number of reading in normal times. Several songs related to splendid reviews ranked high on the music list and Netease Cloud Music has gone straight to number one in the music category of app store.

Figure 4. Ranking trend of Netease Cloud Music's Download.

In a word, the campaign of Netease Cloud Music build emotional similarity with public through presenting user generated music reviews and successfully transform to online marketing by widely sharing and discussion, attracting people download the app and experience the music society. The logic of this marketing campaign can be concluded in the picture as below.

Figure 5. Logic of this Marketing Campaign.

Obviously, through this activity, Netease Cloud Music completed the objective to increase the brand awareness and attract potential users, showing the unique distinction from other music app – a music society with emotions from a product perspective.

References:

网易云音乐是如何用产品思路做营销的？http://www.managershare.com/post/328167

用评论击碎万颗心，这是网易云音乐独享的胜利 | 营销观察http://36kr.com/p/5067823.html

那些让人拍案叫绝的网易云音乐神评论（最全版本）http://mt.sohu.com/20170325/n484759361.shtml

How did Nike Promote Women's Sports in the Middle East

Luo Zhaohui (1155084240)

In many parts of the world, Nike's tagline, "Just Do It" is a lot easier said that done. 

In the Middle East, a place with powerful traditional religious culture that always discriminate against women, it is hard to see how women take part in sports no matter what others might think. While Nike Middle East spot aiming to inspire by spotlighting women who have carried on despite criticism.  

A new spot, which dropped via Nike Middle East’s Twitter account over the weekend, takes a regional slant on the brand’s recent "Equality" work. 

Showing women running, doing parkour, ice skating, riding motorcycles and even boxing, all in what appear to be Middle Eastern settings, a voice-over says, "What will they say about you?" Along those lines, at one point, an older man looks on, seemingly disapprovingly, as a woman in a hijab skateboards through the middle of town.

But later in the video, the voice-over suggests, "Maybe they'll say you're the next big thing." 

Yes, the company is trying to sell shoes, but staking out positions on touchy subjects is noteworthy, and not without risks. In Saudi Arabia, physical education is prohibited in all-girls public schools and women's gyms remain illegal in the kingdom because female athleticism is deemed un-Islamic.

Looking at the comments on the tweet from the official Nike Middle East account, not everyone is happy with the video. However, there are enough positive comments attached to the tweet to indicate that Nike may have struck the right balance between suggesting an approach to its Middle Eastern customers regarding women in sports and simply saying "just do it." 

Anyway, love it or hate, it's another example of Nike running where other sports brands are too timid to tread. It is crucial for Nike to capture the Middle East women's sports market and cultivate brand awareness at an early stage.

This is not the first time Nike has focused on Middle East women. In January 2016, it has launched three Nike+ Training Club series for Muslim women's playing tennis, mountaineering, and doing exercise in the gym.

Obviously it is an unusual choice for Nike to regard Middle East Women as inspirational role model. Since most of the competitors have focused on women's sport, searching a suitable role model is becoming harder. There would be limited acceptance in the Middle East when regarding Middle East Women as role model, while in the global perspective, Nike 's bold brand spirit can also be emphasized.

From the beginning of 2014, Nike gradually moved to the field of women's sports. In Nike's global investor conference on October 2015, Mark Park, president and CEO of Nike announced the next five year's plan until 2020:  the revenue target in 2020 would be $50 billion, in which the female product revenues would reach $11 billion, accounting for 1/5 of total business.

References

http://mashable.com/2017/02/18/nike-middle-east-women/#JltM8i4M8EqD

https://www.fastcompany.com/3068372/quick-hit/nike-celebrates-pioneering-middle-eastern-women-with-bold-new-spot?show_rev_content

http://www.refinery29.com/2017/02/142453/nike-ad-hijab-women-sports-muslim-athletes

When high-end fashion goes digital: How Burberry takes over others?

Fashion week seems to be a be a big festival in the world of luxury but too far away from most of the people. Burberry steps forward to show the brand's flexibility in the digital world and bring fashion week closer to everybody.

Live broadcast on social media platform

In fashion week only fashion editors and celebrities are invited to join the show to preview the fashion items for the coming season. People can only get the second-hand information from media previously, but this mode falls behind from recent standard of "instant update" required by social media users.

Burberry broadcasts the fashion show through different social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Kakao and WeChat, allowing followers to view the latest collection

"See Now Buy Now"

In the past, people have to wait for weeks after the fashion show before they can buy the items in the shops, but in the digital world everything could happen instantly. Burberry launches a collection called "See Now Buy Now", which allow people to purchase online right after the fashion show.


Link to online shop is attached in the Facebook Live, so that people can buy the "See Now Buy Now" collection. WeChat users are allowed to purchase direct from the livestream. This can increase the chance to turn interest to sales in very short period. This encourages people to buy fast and shortens the consumer decision-making process and probably generate more sales comparing with traditional way.

While Burberry is one of the luxury brands starts to launch official Facebook page in the earliest, the brand tried many new ways in digital marketing, e.g. being the first brand to cooperate with Apple Music to provide a customised brand channel. When more and more luxury brands start to utilise the digital marketing and e-commerce platforms, the new move of Burberry to maintain its leading position would be the big challenge.

Reference:
https://digiday.com/marketing/burberry-became-top-digital-luxury-brand/
https://www.socialbakers.com/blog/detail/?id=2662

by Cynthia Liu Tung Mei (1006601593)

Improper Content Alienates Your Customers: Lessons from Failed Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Improper Content Alienates Your Customers: Lessons from Failed Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Su Tong (1155082126)

Every marketer dreams of conducting a successful social media campaign with the innovative and unique marketing content that precisely resonates their target customers, in order to hit the goals like boosting brand awareness or increasing sales. However, there are always chances when the content strategy makes some mistakes and the result can be reversely disastrous that will alienate your loyal customers. How are those failed social media campaigns like? What common characteristics do they have, and how can we avoid them? Reviewing several previous failures in 2016 may help us learn better.

A Person’s Death[i]

As the legendary rock singer and musician David Bowie had died in January 2016, his name became a hit on social media. While people were sharing the grief of his passing away, a number of brands made use of the trend and embed the marketing information into the postings. Apple’s vice president Philip Schiller was one of them, who posted a brief tribute plus a link to the shopping page of David Bowie’s works on iTunes. 

The tweet obviously annoyed some followers with some comments blaming him on touting products with people’s death. It would be better not to involve people’s death in the social media campaign, because which would indicate the lack of respect to the dead person and undermine the brand recognition.

The tragedy

Similarly, another failure is caused by making use of a tragedy, in the campaign of Miracle Mattress, a mattress manufacturer in the United States. In order to promote their latest product “twin towers”, the official account of Miracle Mattress on Facebook posted a video before the 15^th anniversary of the 911 terrorist attack, in which the cast encouraged audiences to “remember the 911” and get any size mattress for a twin price. They even fell backward into two stacks of mattresses in the symbol of the two towers of the World Trade Center. 

The video was soon removed from the Facebook page because of the outrage of viewers, and the company later posted an apology letter. Up to date, the search predictive words for Miracle Mattress on Google is “Miracle Mattress 9/11”, which demonstrates the disastrous consequence this campaign brought to the brand.

The political controversy[ii]

At the beginning of 2016, Coca cola proposed a campaign on social media with a snowy map of Russia, to express their new year’s message, which eventually upset audiences in both Russia and Ukraine. The map was firstly condemned by Russian social media users that it didn’t include Crimea region which had been annexed by Russia from Ukraine since the end of 2014. 

Under the great pressure, Coca Cola made changes to the map to include Crimea and other politically sensitive regions, which triggered another firestorm in Ukraine, where the demand of boycott Coca Cola got heated. The initial goal was to convey a greeting to audiences but ended up with a controversy over the political issue and bad impression of the brand. Any involvement in politics-relevant issues should be carefully taken care of, while a general suggestion for social media marketing strategy is to stay away from stirring different political voices.

The value proposition[iii]

An American accessories and handbag brand Vera Bradley launched the “It’s good to be a girl” campaign in September 2016 both offline and on social media, which instead of being liked by feminism people, ended up being labelled as “sexism”. As part of the campaign, several answers were promoted to describe how good to be a girl in the society, which are, unfortunately, mostly viewed as stereotyped ones and upset its audiences. 

Such as “being able to hang out with the boys but still be treated like a lady,” or “because there are so many ways to accessorize your wardrobe.” A campaign that was designed to celebrate the independent woman image eventually missed the shared value with its target customers.

The core of social media marketing campaign is to build connections with the audiences on the online community, which means that marketers have to learn the target customers better in terms of their daily lives, topic preference, personality and value proposition, utilize proper content to actually gain their empathy.

References:

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[i] https://www.thememo.com/2016/01/11/david-bowie-dead-advertising-marketing-office-shoes/

[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/05/new-year-coca-cola-upsets-russia-ukraine

[iii] http://www.campaignlive.com/article/vera-bradley-changes-course-ads-labeled-sexist-fail/1411269

Mobile Marketing: A Case Study of Starbucks Mobile Order & Pay

Poon Lok Yi, Joyce

Student ID: 1155082158

Social Media Marketing (SMM) refers to the process of gaining traffic and audience’ attention on a brand’s website, product or service through the social media platforms in various digital devices such as smartphones, tablets and desktop. By gaining the audience’ attention or awareness on a brand through different social media platforms, the ultimate goal of SMM is to drive conversion such as increase the sales volume, lead generation as well as brand awareness.  Recently, most of the research show that social media networks are increasingly being accessed through mobile devices. According to a research, over 4 billion of the populations are the smartphones users while there are over 5.6 million of the users are in Hong Kong, accounting 64% of the total population among the city. (Statista, 2015)

Smartphones become an everyday tool for citizens in Hong Kong. A study found that nearly 7 in 10 Hong Kong citizens use smartphones while 83% went online using a smartphone at least once a day. A high level of mobile internet usage is also emerged in Hong Kong. It found that 48% of internet users used smartphones more often than computers or tablets to access the internet. (eMarketer, 2017) Due to the incredible amount of mobile subscribers, many companies tend to leverage mobile marketing to promote their products or even let the customers to place their orders in the mobile platforms in order to encourage the customers to act and response instantly via their mobile devices.  In 2015, over HK$17.8 billion of sales has been generated via m-commerce in Hong Kong. (Go-Globe, 2015) The incredible of sales volume has led the mobile marketing become more crucial in the social media networks.

In the following sections, I will use Starbucks Mobile Order & Pay as a case study to portray its success in the mobile marketing.

Starbucks “Mobile Order & Pay”:

Currently, over 240,000 active users in Hong Kong are the loyalty member of the Starbucks apps, whereas among 60% of the users pay the food and beverage via the cashless payment with the app. In this month, Starbucks has rolled out the new app features called “Mobile Order & Pay” across its 176 physical stores among Hong Kong and Macau in the early of March whereas this new feature has already launched in US in September 2015. This new function mainly allows customers to place their coffee and food order and choose the store nearby to pick up their coffee via the location-based service before reaching the store.

Goal:

Most of the people are likely to grab a coffee before they go to work. But what makes they feel desperate is when they see a long line, sometimes they turned around and walked back out the door.  Some of them will even just go away because of the long queue. To tackle this problem, Starbucks has rolled out this Mobile Order & Pay feature in their app.  The main objectives of developing this feature is to increase customer traffic through quicker service and avoid instances of customers walking away without placing an order due to long lines and wait times. It is estimated that this new feature of the app can able to save the average coffee drinker 10 to 15 minutes a day to wait for their drinks.

Result:

The Mobile Order & Pay has boosted the company’s sales growth among the European countries as well as in Hong Kong. There are over one million of customers made a mobile order-ahead payment in 2016 and it has comprised 6% of the total sales in the quarter and 7% in September 2016. Besides, some store locations also recorded a 20% of orders during the peak hours via the mobile order-ahead. The result also shown that customers made an average of five purchases via the mobile order payment per month. (Geekwire, 2016)

In Hong Kong, 2% of all orders are not being placed via the mobile ordering, with its busiest store clicking in 6% of all transactions via the new feature. (SCMP, 2015)

This implies that customers are feel comfortable and willing to place the order in-app. Starbucks also noted that mobile order-ahead leads to increased productivity in stores, which helps improve the efficiency.

Challenge:

However, the new system has encountered another challenge in which it has created a new queue. Since there are many customers are using this new features to order in advance and pick up their drinks directly in the stores. It has led many customers pick up their drinks in the pick-up counters and cause congestion in the stores especially during the peak hours. In my opinion, I suggest Starbucks should add-in a function in the system in which text the customers when the drinks are ready and also staffing barista counters with additional employees during rush hours. One of the aims of the Mobile Order & Pay is to save customers’ waiting time. Hence, Starbucks should take an immediate actions to tackle this problem of congestion in the pick-up counter.

Recommendations:

As personalization is also one of the important marketing tactics to promote a company’s brand and let the customers to be more loyal to the brand. Hence,  I suggest Starbucks can add the personalization elements that allow the app to recall and save the customers’ favorite order and suggest what might pair well with it. For example, if a customer like to drink Espresso, the app can recommend him to also have a piece of lemon tart. 

Besides, as chat bot is becoming more popular in the social platforms, I suggest the the app can also include the chatbot with A.I. technology in which customers can tell about their needs and the bot can suggest some foods and beverage based on the customers’ preference in the chatbox in order to make it more personalized and increase customers’ interaction within the app. Starbucks has proposed this feature and plan to roll out in this summer and I think this new feature might bring a significant breakthrough among the mobile marketing.  

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Reference:

·       eMarketer (2017). Nearly Seven in 10 Hong Kong Residents Use Smartphones. Retrieved from: https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Nearly-Seven-10-Hong-Kong-Residents-Use-Smartphones/1014941.

·       Go-Globe (2015). E-Commece in Hong Kong – Statistics and Trends. Retrieved from: http://www.go-globe.hk/blog/ecommerce-hong-kong/

·       Geekwire (2016). Coffee from a chatbot: Starbucks unveils ‘My Starbucks Barista’ AI technology for mobile order. Retrieved from http://www.geekwire.com/2016/coffee-chatbot-starbucks-unveil-starbucks-barista-ai-technology-placing-mobile-orders/

·       Statista (2015). Number of smartphone users in Hong Kong from 2015 to 2021 (in millions)*. Retrieved from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494594/smartphone-users-in-hong-kong/

·       SCMP (2015). Starbucks promises coffee delivered to your doorstep. Retrieved from: http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2080274/starbucks-promises-coffee-delivered-your-doorstep

·       Social Media Usage in Hong Kong – Statistics and Trends (May, 2015). Retrieved from: http://www.go-globe.hk/blog/social-media-hong-kong/