Tag: Thailand

Hong Kong – Travel and leisure booking platform Klook officially unveils the newest feature on its app, an interactive livestream called Klook Live!.

While users on Klook have only been enticed of new food and travel offerings via images and text on the app, users will now be able to view up-close the offerings through interactive and instant video content on Klook Live!. 

The feature has been formally launched in August in five APAC markets Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines.

During this period, Klook released a series of hyper-localized content on Klook Live!, featuring offerings from food and dining to hotel staycation packages, where the five markets have reported a 4 times average uplift in conversion rates. This is compared to in-app conversion rates on an average day.

According to the brand’s data, in Thailand, a staycation surprise deal has been sold out in just eight minutes, while in Singapore, two out of three staycation bookings made within 24 hours were direct conversions as a result of the livestream. Both countries also experienced about a two times uplift in revenue compared to an average day. 

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, a number of food and dining exclusive deals were snapped up in less than five minutes. 

With the new feature, the brand aims to introduce traveltainment, to which it refers to as a new form of immersive content that elevates users’ ways of discovering and booking both local and overseas hospitality offerings.

“The pandemic has made users even more critical and discerning when making a purchase. With Klook Live!, we enable users to gain a more authentic look at our offerings, as well as directly ask questions in real-time before buying,” said Marcus Yong, vice president of APAC marketing. 

“Our early success demonstrates that users are increasingly demanding a new way to discover things-to-do, starting from their backyard. It also signals that users prefer a more entertaining, social, and personalized customer experience,” added Yong. 

During the livestream on Klook Live!, customers can interact directly with merchants, express their feelings through emoji and polls, redeem exclusive promo codes and check-out; all while watching a live episode.

According to the company, Klook Live! is designed to cater to the region’s growing demand for online video content on mobile devices. It refers to a study by digital research brand eMarketer, that over 1.2 billion Asia-Pacific users consume video content on their mobile devices in 2019, and that this is expected to increase by over 75% to 1.6 billion by 2023. 

The company also looks to leverage the forecast that video content is expected to be a norm post-pandemic as people consume more video content. According to a study by market research firm Globalwebindex, Gen Z respondents said that they expect their increased levels of consumption of social media, videos, and streaming services to continue even after the outbreak. 

On the merchant side, Klook is confident that the new feature will aid vendors in targeting their audience reach which has proven trickier amid the pandemic. 

“With international travel restrictions in place, merchants require creative platforms to showcase their offerings to local audiences and encourage them to support local businesses that depend on tourism. With Klook Live!, merchants of all sizes can bridge that gap and build stronger connections with local users, boosting brand awareness and sales,” the company said in a press statement.

In the coming weeks, Klook Live! will be rolling out more content and products, including episodic programs to unveil a new local carnival in Taiwan and indoor recreational parks in Malaysia among others

Klook Live! can be accessed by downloading the Klook app on Google Play or the App Store. 

If you’re in the business of social media marketing, whether independently or as a profession where you are one of the people responsible for a company’s online marketing, it is imperative that you dig deep into what your customers are thinking, where they gather to converse online and what they are talking about because knowing such insights will help build up your social media game and in turn, create a competitive following that could drives sales for your brand.

The thing with extracting audience insights online is that they are only made possible and efficient with the presence of sophisticated martech or social tools. The good news is, a lot of free and affordable analytic tools have continuously been on the rise, making it a sin not to utilize and maximize such tools that are just waiting to be used for the best of your brand. Here are a few reasons why you should start finding the tool of your choice and start leveraging:

1. No technical skills required
This is by far the biggest advantage offered by analytical tools available. You do not need to be a data wizard to use social analytics tools. Commercially-marketed social tools are created to garner buy-ins, thus they are made to become user-friendly.

2. Budget friendly – won’t break the bank
Whether you are a brand marketer just launching a campaign or an agency about to go into a pitch, you don’t need to spend a hefty amount to get the best of analytics tech. Most of the introductory packages of marketing tech provide you with the base level of data for a fraction of the cost. The good thing about the variety of subscriber packages, one can opt to upgrade to more sophisticated versions of tools as one further becomes seasoned on the basics of social data.

Social marketing tools

3. Relevant sentiment trendline
The best social tools are built on hyperlocal infrastructures with enhanced machine learning to more precisely capture sentiments. Mass market tools that are not optimized for local sources and context will provide you a higher rate of inaccuracy which compromises the quality of your data, so it is important to find a localized source if accuracy is important to you.

4. Trend tracking made easy
Brands can observe trends, track hashtag movement, and measure performance based on interest of the social chatter, engagements and sentiments. Apart from hashtags, keywords are also trackable to measure the popularity of brands and products. Using social tools, you are able to identify the most active channels related to specific brands, products or topics of interest and craft marketing strategies that resonate.

5. Identify your brand’s advocates, influencers and micro-KOL
Correctly identifying top users based on the channels is a nifty feature in some social listening tools. It is an undeniable fact that influencers will make use of their platforms to share thoughts and opinions. When an influencer mentions your brand, don’t gloss over the fact that they’ve mentioned your brand, instead, take some notes and study them. Collaborating with the right influencers or micro KOLs can greatly boost your brand image and reputation.

6. Heat map
Some tools also have heat maps which helps you to visualize which geographical area gets the most attention from users using channels with location tracking enabled such as Twitter. It highlights the areas and locations to display contents relevant to your searched keywords or hashtags. Heat maps enable brands to expand the market by inferring analysis on audience based on geographic segmentation which helps to identify potential locations for new outlets

7. Knowing which third party pages you can leverage amplifies your marketing
Most social tools can assist in identifying top websites that have been promoted and advertised in relation to the topic of your query. Since audiences already engage with these third party channels, you may collaborate for beneficial growth and advertise to leverage them for more exposure. For this purpose, having the local sources where natives are active will improve your results even more.

This article is brought to you by Wisesight. 

Singapore – Leading tech company Microsoft fortifies its diversity & inclusion advocacy through its latest initiative across APAC, the Microsoft Enabler Program.

Said to be the first of its kind, the program partners non-profit organizations (NPOs) who will provide training to organizations to become inclusive employers, who in turn will provide job shadowing, internships, mentoring, and opportunities in tech jobs for PWDs identified by the NPOs.

The program will be piloted in five markets: Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, before expanding to the rest of the region by the end of 2020.

Within the program, Microsoft will also see the direct training to PWDs themselves, where sessions will circle engineering and programming and cloud computing on Microsoft Azure as well as application development in GitHub. 

For the employer partners, alongside offering inputs on workplace modifications, workshops by NPOs will teach inclusive design and assistive technologies enabled through artificial intelligence on Microsoft Azure.

Chief partner officer of Microsoft for APAC Vivek Puthucode said that as 2020 has been a difficult year for everyone, tech roles and digital skills will be the backbone of the economic recovery in every country.

“In today’s workplace, it is imperative that we include everyone, and accessibility is the vehicle to inclusion. It is a responsibility and an opportunity. There are no limits to what people can achieve when technology reflects the diversity of everyone who uses it,” said Puthucode.

He says of the program, “At the heart of the Microsoft Enabler Program is a comprehensive accessibility model that will not only improve inclusion of people with disabilities across Asia Pacific for years to come but [also] connects local talent from underrepresented communities and improves our society.”

Microsoft said that in addition, it will be providing a platform for all three parties to better collaborate on the program.

There are a total of Six NPOs, all dedicated to promoting inclusion in the workplace, and 14 tech organizations that are part of the program.

To expand the talent pipeline for employer partners and connect job-seeking PWDs to tech roles, the program will also feature a virtual job fair, which will be held at the end of the second quarter of 2021.

Singapore – Following a multi-agency pitch, Omnicom Media Group-owned agency OMD has successfully won F&B company Danone’s account, officially becoming its media agency for the Malaysia and Thailand business. 

The appointment is inked to span a three-year partnership. OMD will be charged with overseeing the media planning and buying duties for the company across traditional and digital channels. 

Both OMD’s Thailand and Malaysia leg will be handling the company’s Growing up milk brands such as Dumex and Hi-Q. Anca Everts, marketing director of Danone Malaysia said, “When we partner with a media agency, we look out for that one team who can work as an extension of our own to naturally co-build winning campaigns for our Growing up milk brands in Malaysia.”

OMD believes that their display of a strategic approach via digital and data-led expertise is what ultimately led them to clinching the account. Marketing Director of Danone Thailand Korakot Vuthihirunthamrong said that they were impressed by the agency’s level of commitment and enthusiasm which the Thailand team had demonstrated throughout the pitch process.

OMD APAC CEO Stephen Li commented, “When coupled with our demonstrated commitment to Danone, strategic and data-driven solutions forge a cutting-edge partnership that make every media dollar work harder, resulting in better business outcomes.”

Manila, Philippines – Southeast Asia-focused tech organization True Digital Group steers its regional presence by expanding to the Philippine market, starting off with the launch of TrueID platform.

First introduced in Thailand, TrueID is a new all-in-one digital lifestyle platform that offers free curated content that’s available in the Philippines starting today. It is set to provide a hub for premium content and will feature top-tier Filipino creators and international-renowned producers such as Cignal TV, GMA Network, Philstar, and Mediacorp among others.

“TrueID addresses the needs of the modern viewer by providing engaging content, covering news, entertainment, food, travel, technology, sports, and learning,” said the company in a press statement. 

TDG is a subsidiary of True Corporation, a communications conglomerate that was first established in Thailand. TDG’s local arm in the country is True Digital Philippines, which assists the group in catering to the Filipino market