Tag: Social listening

ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) efforts and corporate practices have gained momentum in recent years, with businesses and consumers becoming more conscious about the impact of their investments and purchases on the environment and society. A PwC report says that institutional investors plan to increase ESG allocation in the next 2 years whilst Hong Kong and Singapore take the lead in Asia-Pacific – backed by financial regulatory authorities moving towards stronger ESG risk and reporting practices. 

From 1 Jan 2023 to 8 Mar 2023, there have been 638 mentions on ESG topics and a 12% lift in engagements across news sources in APAC compared to the previous period, according to Meltwater’s Explore solution.

Based on Edelman Trust Barometer 2022, societal leadership is now a core function of businesses. 88% of institutional investors subject ESG to the same level of scrutiny as financial and operational considerations. Meanwhile, 81% expect CEOs and Founders to be visible in public policy discourse and work their companies have done that has benefited society.

Strong sentiments amongst institutional investors in rejecting or stopping investment with an asset manager due to shortcomings in corporate ESG efforts or strategies, according to the PwC report, show how critical is sustainability in the decision-making process for stakeholders.

As the ESG journey is unique to each business and requires a tailored approach, meaningful reporting with full transparency is crucial to measuring and communicating the progress of a business’s ESG journey. 

However, effective communication, tracking, and measuring the impact of ESG strategies can seem like uncharted waters to some. Investing in such tools opens up a huge potential in driving relevance in communications strategy towards the public and stakeholders. By doing so, businesses can position themselves positively and authentically in the eyes of their stakeholders.

Multinational financial services company Western Union faced a challenge when it sought to assess its reputation and progress in meeting ESG standards. The company’s Social Listening, Analytics, and Insight department found it challenging to access and interpret the large volume of relevant data being generated daily. A tool that enables companies to track and evaluate their reputation across multiple channels, including broadcast news, digital news, blog forums, review sites, and social media platforms is much needed.

Technology of examining millions of posts each day from social media platforms, blogs, and news sites have enormous potential to help businesses make better-informed decisions based on insights and manage their ESG communications and company’s reputation on a global scale more effectively whilst staying up to date on industry changes or initiatives.

With comprehensive and integrated data, it’s easier to keep abreast of how your brand and industry are stacking up in the ESG space – which in turn enables your team to craft impactful initiatives or content strategies in the future.

Watch Meltwater’s on-demand webinar on “Measuring the Impact of ESG Strategies in APAC” to find out how you can track, measure, and optimise the effectiveness of your ESG communications. Get access to the content here.

This feature is done in collaboration with Meltwater.

The article above is written by Weldon Fung, Area Director for Southeast Asia at Meltwater.

Singapore – Global action star Jackie Chan was recently announced as top e-commerce Shopee’s newest ambassador in August which was launched as part of the platform’s 9.9 campaign. Shortly after, Chan makes a comeback to viewers’ screens for the platform’s 11.11 campaign. 

In light of the backlash from some advertising and creative professionals on Shopee’s current ad for 11.11, MARKETECH APAC reached out to social listening platform Digimind to learn about how the mass audience perceives the latest campaign. 

On October 25, just a few days after Shopee released its 11.11 ad with the international star, Singapore-based marketing expert Richard Bleasdale stirred quite a conversation on LinkedIn by sharing a post about the ad, describing it as the “worst ad ever made.” Soon, the post drew quite traction, serving as an invitation for other creative and marketing leaders to share their verdict on the ad–which was a unanimous disappointment over Shopee’s chosen creative direction.

The general audience, meanwhile, had been split on their perception of the ad. According to Digimind’s analysis, some had found the 11.11 campaign endearing, while a fraction showed displeasure over the latest campaign mixed with some neutral liking.

The main narrative of the ad in question was Jackie Chan fighting off bad guys ‘magically’ through the power of Shopee’s ‘big discounts’. For every press of the actor on his phone, discount bubbles pop up such as “$60 CASHBACK ALL DAY,” sending an enemy down and defeated. 

Shopee
Screenshots from Shopee’s latest 11.11 ad

Apparently, the negative sentiment by the mass audience drew some parallel with professional opinion, which is Shopee’s seeming failure to leverage Chan’s martial arts prowess. Following Bleasdale’s post, MARKETECH APAC formally reached out to some of the advertising professionals that commented on the post.

A consensus among the creative leaders was Shopee’s perceived faulty decision to favor a fictional story of ‘powerful’ discounts rather than spotlighting the ambassador’s renowned action-comedy branding. 

A leader from ad agency Cheil Singapore described the ad as an “orange mess,” while an advisory board member from martech DAIVID said the ad could have been an opportunity to have “some whacky martial-arts impossibility” performed by the ambassador. 

Digimind had rounded up some definitive comments which had been in agreement with the said professional flak. 

Digimind_ social mentions
Negative and neutral comments on Shopee’s 11.11 ad gathered by Digimind

One tweet said, “I guess Jackie Chan beating up people with a tap of a button is all [we’re] going to get in a Shopee ad.” 

While another wrote on Twitter, “[Jackie Chan] did a [Shopee] ad, my life is ruined.”

Other hostile comments pointed out other ‘less-than-perfect’ elements of the ad such as Chan’s seeming wrinkle-free appearance and how the ad looked like a ‘deepfake’, which is the digital alter of a person’s face. 

“I’m laughing, they [airbrushed] Jackie Chan’s wrinkles…,” one netizen tweeted.

While another one said, “Tell me why I’m so convinced that the Shopee ads with ‘Jackie Chan’ [are] [deepfakes]…” 

According to the report, there were a total of 309 mentions in Southeast Asia, excluding promotional content, about Shopee’s 11.11 ad from the period of October 17 – 31 across leading social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. 

Digimind social mentions

The study found that Malaysia conversed the most around the campaign with 40% of the mentions coming from the market, followed by the Philippines (30%) and Indonesia (20%).

Digimind top countries

Information from the study also showed that the inaugural Shopee ambassadorship of Chan for 9.9 in August garnered higher traction on social media than the sophomore campaign of the star for 11.11. There had been a 4530% fall in the total volume of mentions for the newer campaign compared to the previous 9.9 over the same period from August 19 – 31.

Shopee’s 11.11 ad was released on YouTube on October 18 across its covered markets in Southeast Asia. Thai viewership of the ad eclipsed the platform’s other markets, registering over 39 million views as of writing.

Digimind’s analysis covered the markets of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and India.

Singapore – To accompany its existing Consumer Intelligence Acceleration Platform™, consumer intelligence company Talkwalker has launched new products to deliver brands actionable consumer intelligence to drive business impact, as well as to accelerate growth of Talkwalker’s social listening capabilities.

The new products include Market Intelligence that provides consumer trends analysis and real-time industry datasets, with an app per category, to fast-track innovation; Customer Intelligence which creates a unique single customer view by combining customer and consumer data, social, ratings, and reviews; and Social Intelligence which is an expansion of Talkwalker’s deep social listening capabilities at scale, to help companies protect, measure, and promote their brands.

“Our new products and platform expand our deep listening capabilities into new areas, arming brands with insights that they can benefit from immediately. Only Talkwalker can help them get closer to their customers than ever before, and enable them to shape products, campaigns, and services to meet the market’s ever-growing demands,” said Tod Nielsen, CEO at Talkwalker.

In addition to their recently-launched products, Talkwalker has also launched its new professional services called the Talkwalker Activate team, which offers a broad range of customer services, including training, onboarding and insights, to help clients accelerate their time to value with Talkwalker technologies, from investment to real-world results.

Furthermore, Talkwalker has also announced that the company has been recognized as a Twitter Official Partner, where they demonstrated during their recent Talkwalker ‘Dare to Accelerate’ event that the social media platform can be used by businesses social listening, market research, customer intelligence, and product development.

“We will continue to listen forward and ensure our technologies and solutions are fit for purpose. This will enable brands to profit from actionable consumer intelligence to drive business impact,” Nielsen concluded.

Singapore – Word-of-mouth and genuine love for a brand continue to be one of the most powerful sources of brand promotion and marketing, and this is on top of micro-marketers or online influencers, who, even though arguably relatable, still patronize brands under a sponsorship or a deal. We go much deeper into the user-generated brand love phenomenon – and that is through our close network on social media. With less outside influence, and trust that laden with more truthful opinion, word-of-mouth is now digitized online buzz. 

Asia-Pacific is a region with strong collective values and beliefs and when it comes to well-loved brands on social media, consumers bound by this region seem to gravitate the same towards conversations on the same types of brands.

According to a quarterly study by Digimind, a social listening and market intelligence platform, the top most discussed brands for the second quarter of the year have taken up quite a lot of changes since the previous quarter. 

The study notes why consumers, more than experiencing brands, love to ‘talk’ about them on social media – it’s because the simple act of it has become some kind of self-actualization.

“There is a gratifying feeling to express how they feel about a product or service, or simply have an opinion,” notes the study. 

The top 10 in Digimind’s Top 50 most discussed brands in APAC

For starters, the title of the most-discussed brand in APAC has been retained from the first quarter of the year, and it is none other than Singapore-born e-commerce platform Shopee. A lot of brands have fluctuated among consumers’ radar, but not Shopee, which isn’t surprising. 

E-commerce has been the go-to shopping ‘destination’ for most since a brunt of physical establishments has been, for the meantime, closed down. With almost everyone accomplishing their purchases on e-commerce platforms such as Shopee, similarly Singaporean platform Lazada, and Indonesia’s Tokopedia, the next impulsive step is to share them on social media and boast of them, as doing so enables consumers to feel an even greater sense of elation and self-worth. 

This has been evident with the latter, with Lazada pushed two places up from Q1, and then Tokopedia an inch closer from the previous period, for both to enter in the top 10 most discussed brands. 

Meanwhile, the holy grail brands and platforms that are at consumers’ immediate disposal, continue to dominate conversations on social media. These are Spotify, Google, Netflix, Apple, and Zoom, with all falling under the top 10 most discussed.

Massive celebrity collaborations have also made way for consumers’ interest to be supercharged towards certain brands, and we’re speaking specifically of the global stardom of K-pop group BTS, which has amplified brand love for McDonald’s and even luxury brand Louis Vuitton. 

The study notes that while much of the commotion is directly from its passionate fan base, a part of the social buzz is also affected by those whose curiosity has been stirred, and therefore, channeling their recent ‘discoveries’ on social media as well. 

A social media post from a BTS fan in the Philippines

With McDonald’s releasing the ‘BTS meal’ across its global markets, the fast-food label jumped to the top 10 of the APAC rankings in Q2 by 34 places. 

Meanwhile, global fashion brand Louis Vuitton which has recently ridden the BTS bandwagon, allowed for it to amass significant social buzz within a relatively short frame of time, putting them within the top 20 rankings by an upturn of 32 spots. 

Another more surprising movement in social buzz based on the study is one with TikTok, which from being part of the top 10, is now nowhere in sight of the top 50. Maybe, the short-video platform, despite its popularity, enjoys much more viewership and usage of the app itself, more than being talked about as it is from afar. 

The top 20 in Digimind’s Top 50 most discussed brands in APAC

Meanwhile, popular super apps and delivery platforms in the region – Grab, foodpanda, and Gojek – which have been looked to with much more dependence from users, have all landed in the top 20. 

“For brands, resonating with the right community is as good as leaving them to handle your marketing with every individual promotion helping to populate your brand’s campaign further,” noted the report.

Data presented were collected by Digimind Historical Search and based on social mentions in APAC between April to June 2021 on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even from Pinterest, Reddit, and Tumblr, and YouTube, among others.