Mediaboss Marketing

Astro has launched its digital marketing arm Blaze Digital to offer integrated digital-first solutions for marketers across Astros 21 digital brands. These brands include Malay entertainment portal Astro Gempak, news portal Astro Awani, Chinese lifestyle portal Xuan, Rojak Daily which offers entertainment and lifestyle updates, as well as 11 independent digital publications.

The team from Blaze Digital will comprise creative directors, producers and digital marketing experts and aims to provide digital marketing solutions via branded content, videos, social marketing, programmatic ads, display, as well as bespoke packages. Astro said Blaze Digital enables it to deliver digital first marketing solutions, offering personalised customer engagement and better value for marketers. It will also leverage on its advantage across TV, radio and digital.

On social media front, Astro said Blaze Digital has an average of 20 million users and a reach of over 100 million people on Facebook monthly, in which itll help marketers connect directly with a growing socially-connected and tech-savvy population.

We will continue to introduce new and innovative digital content that can travel regionally to both users in Malaysia and Southeast Asia to ensure that Blaze Digital stays ahead of the curve, said Astro, in a press statement.

Jayaram Nagaraj (pictured), general manager of Blaze Digital said, We saw an opportunity in the market to create an independent media solution to provide better value to brands by leveraging all of Astros strength.

Blaze Digital, Nagaraj said, is a local platform designed for local brands, and it has signed up popular local publishers such asSiakap Keli, Siakap Keli TV, Makchic, Nak Bebel, Tongue in Chic, Islam ItuIndah, Poskod.my, and Amanz.my, enabling these independent publishers to connect with marketers. The partnership between Blaze Digital and the 11 independent digital publishers coupled with Astros own digital brands, is expected to enhance content and technology opportunities as well.

We aspire to be a key player in the digital space, as digital is currently the fastest growing category,TH Chong, group director at Astros media sales said, adding that the local digital ADEX is dominated by global players at present.

On that, Chong said the company has every intention to rise to the challenge and put together a strong Malaysian digital offering, to grow faster than the industry norm and see the local digital offering gain a significant share.

Astro also said, as a mobile and cloud-first organisation, it has also put in place a robust data analytics system to provide marketers with the ability to match the right audience to the right content.

The launch comes hot in the heels of Astros financial reports where total ad spend (Adex) fell 5% year-on-year for its first quarter of its financial year, ending January 2018 (Q12018), against the backdrop of a broader market decline of 10%.

In a statement, Astro said its currently operating in a very challenging environment. This has also impacted revenues which fell 3% on-year to RM1.33billion in 1Q2018, due to lower licensing income with its B2B sports channel sub-licensing also ended. This was on top of lower subscription and home shopping revenue.

Astro said, it will continue to invest for future revenue growth by embracing three key imperatives under its digital transformation programme namely. These are digitalising its dominant legacy businesses, scaling digital start-ups and deepening its strength in verticals and building a robust innovation pipeline.

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Astro launches digital marketing arm Blaze Digital - Marketing Interactive

Kristina: What trends are you watching in social media now?

Ben Cockerell, Director, Global Marketing, Crimson Hexagon: More and more people are including images in their social media posts and this could be attributed to the fact that tweets with images are noticed more. A recent report found social posts that include a picture receive 150 percent more retweets than those that don't and marketers definitely shouldn't overlook this. Brands may not always be mentioned in the text portion of a tweet, but their logos or products may be featured. Without image analysis, brands may miss a huge part of the conversation - and marketing opportunity. Marketers are also able to capture deeper sentiment and context by looking at more than just the text.

Kristina: We're still hearing a lot of buzz about the importance of influencer marketing. Part of the influencer trend is knowing what is "hot" at a given moment. How can brands better use social as a barometer for these trending issues/products?

Ben: When it comes to social media, most marketers focus on the numbers. They're typically trying to figure out things like, "How many people interacted with this social post about our product?" and "Which demographic did this message resonate with most?" Yet, they often forget they can uncover much deeper and qualitative insights beyond volume data by looking at emotions and sentiments referenced in social posts. It's important to remember people aren't making buying choices based on how many of their friends mention a certain product or company. Instead, it's based on what their friends actually say. Sorting through individual posts based on specific emotions can provide much more context to help determine what's trending - and what's not.

Kristina: Could you give us an example?

Ben: For example, my company Crimson Hexagon recently released a report on most discussed consumer trends. One finding that we found interesting was that, while a hot topic in the media, autonomous vehicles actually evoke a lot of fear in consumers. Brands should use this detailed information (not just the fact that people are talking about self-driving cars) to better shape their messaging and address consumers' concerns.

More from Ben and Crimson Hexagon later this week, including his top 3 tips for a better social strategy.

Tags: advertising, Crimson Hexagon, ecommerce, Social marketing, social marketing tips, social marketing trends

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Trends to watch in social - BizReport

Social media marketing is a rapidly changing landscape, but perhaps nothing these days changes faster than video. As I wrote a few months ago, video is the medium for social in 2017. Internally, weve given a lot of thought this year to the best ways to approach video and execute for a wide range of formats, from Facebook Live to Snapchat.

So, when I came across this new high-level infographic about marketing in a video-first world, I knew Id have to share. In a world where over 500 million people watch Facebook videos every day, video marketing is too important to be glossed over. This new infographic looks at video from every angle through the lens of a survey of 1,000 consumers and 500 marketers.

Weve reposted the entire infographic below, as well as some key insights for those of you who just want the highlights (because this infographic is a long one!).

Nearly two-thirds of consumers say theyve bought something in the last month as a direct result of watching a marketing video on Facebook.

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When do they watch?

Approximately 84% watch on mobile devices. Mobile is huge. For video creators, this is important. Heres what you can do to better serve this audience:

The majority of your videos should be 60 seconds or less and have a strong hook as early as possible. As far as what types of videos you should create, heres how consumers are likely to respond:

Check out the full infographic below, and let us know in the comments: are you using video for your marketing?

Bob Hutchins (Franklin, TN) runs Buzzplant (www.buzzplant.com), A 12+ year old Internet marketing agency targeting the faith/family market. His team was an integral part of the online campaign for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, The Chronicles of Narnia, Soul Surfer, and many other movies, books, music releases, and Viewfullprofile

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Everything You Need to Know NOW About Social Video Marketing - Business 2 Community

Influencer marketing sprang from the idea that social platform stars with loyal followings would be able to market more effectively to their fans. But now, like all marketing, the area is becoming more standardized.

Brands are taking advantage of a growing number of self-serve ad tools in the market. Heres how it works: An advertiser creates a list of influencers, usually about 20 that it wants to work with. Theyre determined by a host of attributes, from whether they speak to a market the company wants to reach, to brand-safety issues, to, of course, price. Most of the time, these influencers are so-called micro-influencers, who have smaller followings and theoretically more engagement.

Then, the advertiser provides creative assets to the influencers so theyll post it on their own social platforms. Its closer to a publisher relationship than a creator one and a far cry from the beginnings of the influencer marketing industry.

This is the most cost-effective way for us, said Jane Tattersall, vp of marketing at LottoGopher, a lottery ticket e-commerce advertiser, which is using engage:BDRs IconicReach self-serve platform for its advertising. The company has an in-house creative agency, so it didnt want to hire influencers for long-term relationships to make creative. Ive been using influencers a long time. When you need many of them, it takes a long time. Then, you have to negotiate a bunch of contracts.

The self-serve ad method is closer to a platform-style relationship: Brands only need to choose where to spend their money. At LottoGopher, the company has a program running with 20 influencers, and its hoping to add up to 20 more. It wants to reach more luxury and aspirational customers people who like expensive stuff and may play the lottery to get it and is supplying creative. This is much more cost-effective for us, said Tattersall.

There are other benefits: Brands have long bought into the wisdom that influencers with giant numbers of followers see less engagement. A survey of 2 million social media influencers by influencer marketing platform Markerly showed that for unpaid posts, Instagram influencers with fewer than 1,000 followers have a like rate of about 8 percent, while those with 1,000 to 10,000 followers have a like rate of 4 percent.

But working with small influencers sacrifices on reach. Combine the two, and it works out. Its like media. We cant afford or have aspiration to go with the No. 1 TV network. We get a cross-section of people who have a total audience across the broad base.

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The biggest volume of things on Instagram are actually advertiser-supplied creative now, said engage:BDR CEO Ted Dhanik. That already exists. All we did was automate the process. An advertiser uploads a creative, and an influencer posts it.

Prices are determined mostly by time. Influencers can leave posts up for between one and 12 hours. If its a big influencer, brands will pay a fee upfront. Others most influencers under 100,000 followers get performance-based coupon codes. If the post performs, they get paid.

Its notable because its in some ways the inverse model of brands using influencers like agencies. As Digiday reported earlier, major brands have begun going straight to social stars to make their creative for them. It marked a sea change: Cheaper and faster, influencers are essentially replacing agencies as content arms, a far cry from the early days when influencers entered into creator relationships or at least endorsement contracts with brands.

At Urban Floor, a national flooring company, the brand wanted to reach more luxury customers to break into the luxury homes and luxury living space. The company now supplies content to 10 influencers, each of whom has 500,000 followers, and they post them on their Instagrams, according to marketing head Jordan Sandoval. Its a very new concept right now, said Sandoval. But well try it out and see if it works.

Read more here:
Influencer marketing is becoming more standardized - Digiday

Francis Bea General Manager and Marketing Director Zero Zero Robotics

Lean startups often need to get creative to stretch their marketing budgets. Francis Bea, marketing director of China-based Zero Zero Roboticswhich created the flying Hover Cameraspoke with eMarketers Man-Chung Cheung about the companys global marketing approach, which leans on content created with the worldwide market in mind and then localized through messaging tweaks and strategic media channel selection.

eMarketer: How did Zero Zero Robotics get started?

Francis Bea: Meng Qiu, our co-founder and CEO, noticed that in a lot of photos taken of his family, someone was always left out of the picture. He conceived the idea of a flying camera that not only brings the picture taker into the photo, but also captures some unique perspectives.

eMarketer: Zero Zero Robotics is based in China and is 3 years old. How did you build your international audience?

Bea: Weve focused a lot on digital to help grow our audience in a short amount of time. For the amount of ad spending we put into digital, the awareness we got was exponential. We doubled down specifically on the markets in the US and China at the same time. By targeting the US market, which is a thought leader in innovation, our marketing efforts trickle down to the rest of the world.

By targeting the US market ... our marketing efforts trickle down to the rest of the world.

Facebook in particular has given us the capability to reach a vast network of people. For instance, when we promoted a video in October by working with some Facebook channels, we got 60-plus million views.

Weve also worked with pop-up shops to generate awareness for our products, and get a feel for how people are receiving them.

eMarketer: When marketing the Hover Camera, do you use local social media channels in Chinalike WeChat and Weibodifferently than you use Facebook?

Bea: Weve tinkered with our social strategy, for both English-speaking and Chinese-speaking markets, by going local in China with country-specific content on WeChat and Weibo. This content may never make it to our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages.

Given the task of introducing a brand new product and becoming a more global brand, we found the most success in our social and content strategy by unifying how customers perceive our brand, while localizing the channels and making adjustments to the messaging. As a startup, this approach suits us at our current size. Our strategy will change as the organization evolves.

We try to resonate with the innate desires of customers and what they want from a product, regardless of their origin.

eMarketer: How much overlap is there between the content used in each market you target?

Bea: We publish content globally that is not just China-specific or US-specific. We try to resonate with the innate desires of customers and what they want from a product, regardless of their origin.

This is exemplified in our product videos, which we produce in-house. The localization of this content happens at the language and channel levelwe adjust the messaging depending on the region. While our media can be used in any market, the language that frames or gives context to the content is localized.

eMarketer: Is there anything that especially resonates with audiences in your home market?

Bea: While were a Chinese company, we have a strong global presence. As a result, we can attract customers in China who demand quality products, because our global presence gives us a badge of authority. Among [China-based] hardware brands, were seeing more and more of this as in-house marketing teams become savvier.

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Marketing in China: To Stretch Budgets, Take Global Content and Localize It - eMarketer