Kobe Influencer PDF

SMU551
KOBE INFLUENCER MARKETING: BUILDING BRAND

AWARENESS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA
It was May 2019. Evangeline Leong, co-founder of Kobe was having lunch at a restaurant located in
a newly reopened shopping mall in the centre of town. The restaurant had quirky interiors, and a
view of Singapore’s skyline. Leong was already aware of this information prior to her visit to the
restaurant. She had read a post of an influencer friend on her Instagram account. In fact, her
inquisitiveness to see what she had read about the restaurant first-hand had drawn her to the place.
She skimmed through the menu and quickly decided upon an order. Work was at the back of her
mind. She was under a lot of pressure to chart out an innovative strategy for Kobe’s new influencer
marketing project - to promote Jia Jia herbal tea. Although herbal tea had a long-standing history and
was synonymous with Singapore’s culture, the younger generation in the country were smitten by
bubble tea, which was the new “in” thing.
Leong knew she was being ambitious in trying to “sell bell-bottoms to Millennials”, and she
wondered if her influencer marketing campaign to rebrand Jia Jia herbal tea in Singapore would be
as successful as Levi’s Jeans’ 501 campaign. Could Leong turn the clock back and make Jia Jia the
most talked about beverage brand in Singapore?
Starting Kobe
Starting Kobe had been an enthralling journey for Leong. After graduating from Nanyang Technical
University, Singapore, with a business degree, Leong had taken up a job with a multinational bank,
hoping to fulfil her parents’ aspirations. But she had soon realised that her work at the bank was not
very relevant to what she had studied, and decided to switch her career to digital marketing. She
found a start-up, which interested her, and began working with the firm, helping it grow over the
years. After working in the digital marketing industry for 10 years, Leong mused about venturing
into entrepreneurship.
Coincidentally, around the same time, she met a friend, Cha Lin, who had several years of experience
in the influencer marketing industry and wanted to start her own venture. The two women exchanged
their ideas on solutions that could potentially introduce innovations to the market. Leong had done
some research and noted that no one in Singapore was involved in influencer marketing for SME
businesses. She was convinced that her prospective start-up could fill the existing market gap (refer
to Exhibit 1 for a picture of the Kobe Founders).
This case was written by Dr Patricia Lui and Lipika Bhattacharya at the Singapore Management University. The case was
prepared solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective
handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect
confidentiality.
Copyright © 2020, Singapore Management University Version: 2020-01-03
This document is authorized for use only in Prof. M. Geetha's Consumer Behavior,. at Indian Institute of Management - Kozhikode from Jul 2020 to Jan 2021.
SMU-19-0037 Kobe Influencer Marketing: Building Brand Awareness via Social Media
Leong and Cha set up Kobe in Singapore in 2016. The start-up drew its inspiration from a humble
wanton noodle stall in MacPherson hawker center in Singapore. Cha’s father ‘Uncle Danny’
owned the hawker stall. The standard wanton noodle bowl at the stall was priced at US$ 1.84.1 Eating
out was a way of life in Singapore and most people, irrespective of their income, dined out at least
once every day. People liked hawker centre food, preferring to go to a nearby hawker centre for their
everyday meals. However, it was unlikely for people to travel from other neighbourhoods to a hawker
centre, specifically for a cheap and simple noodle bowl.2 That meant that ‘Uncle Danny’s’ stall was
more or less destined to have a fixed number of customers. However, Leong was of the opinion that
if people were convinced that the noodle bowl was delicious, they would not mind travelling to the
hawker centre from other neighbourhoods. Leong and Cha decided to test their gut feeling through
an influencer-marketing programme. The results were very positive. When Leong had asked ‘Uncle
Danny’ how he attracted more customers to his food stall, he had replied,
When I have reputation, credibility and do my work with sincerity, good things should follow me.
My business works through Koǔ bē i (口碑).
Koǔ bēi in Chinese meant word-of-mouth. This piqued Leong’s interest and got her thinking on
how she could scale word-of-mouth marketing for businesses out there in the world. Soon Leong
and Cha started to brainstorm on a model that they could use for their start-up. Leong explained,
We had noted that digital marketing was increasingly mistrusted by consumers and reaching a
phase of fatigue. For example, a 2016 survey had found that 46% of respondents unfollowed
brands for posting too many promotional messages, 41% unfollowed brands because of
irrelevant information, and almost 35% unfollowed brands that tweeted too much. 3
Our objective was to overcome this tell-tale sign through influencer marketing, as we found that
people in Singapore liked to follow influencers. They liked to do research on the Internet before
a purchase. More specifically, people liked to follow who they knew, who they trusted. We also
observed that in the existing market, there was not much data on influencers, and no science or
analytics behind influencer marketing. We realised that there was a need to introduce some
metrics to measure the success of influencers. Our aim was to help the influencer tell a story, and
in the process help companies create more brand awareness. We initially targeted SMEs. They
understood the concept of word of mouth… We knew that influencer marketing had the potential
to break through the education barrier prevalent amongst SMEs very quickly, and could help
them grow.
Shortening the traditional spelling of Koǔ bēi as a word play, Leong named her startup Kobe. In its
first year, Kobe targeted SME’s, but thereafter, the company broadened its horizon to target bigger
companies. The company started to grow from one customer to another. Leong and Cha built a simple
market segmentation structure consisting of two segments – marketing agencies and direct clients.
Marketing agencies often hired influencer marketing experts, and were different from the latter in
that they catered to the whole gamut of digital marketing including online advertisements, search
engine marketing, e-commerce marketing, influencer marketing etc. Direct clients could range from
small start-ups to large organisations like Samsung, MacDonald’s, Pepsi, etc.
1
SG$ 1 = US$ 0.73, XE Currency Convertor, https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=SGD&To=USD,
accessed 18 November 2019.
2 Singaporeans spend most on food and beverages: Poll, Yahoo News Singapore, Oct 8 2018, https://sg.news.yahoo.com/singaporeans-
spend-food-beverages-poll-060223904.html, accessed September 2019.
3 The Sprout Social Index, Edition VIII: Turned Off, https://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/q3-
2016/?utm_source=adroll_blog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=daretogrowio&ar_clx=yes&ar_channel=adroll_blog&ar_campaig
n=daretogrowio, accessed September 2019.
2/15
Business Process
Leong and Cha used a business model that was based on revenue from clients (individual companies
and agencies)4. Clients paid an upfront fee to Kobe, and this fee was used to kick-start the influencer
programme. Kobe guaranteed KPIs in outreach and social media engagements and ensured that
clients received both qualitative and quantitative assurance. Fees (revenue from campaign) was
outcome driven (i.e. how successful the campaign was in achieving specific goals and objectives)
and advertisers were presented with influencers that best aligned with their brand story and objectives.
Campaigns were charged based on a cost per engagement pricing model.5 Leong elaborated,
Our fees are tied to the outcome we can drive on social media. For example, if we manage to get
10,000 likes or comments and that is our set KPI for the project, we have reached our target. So
we have various KPIs on which we base our programmes. This model suits our advertisers,
especially those who are new to this concept.
Campaigns were executed through a platform internal to Kobe. The platform comprised of an
Artificial Intelligence (AI) based engine that was able to understand social media feeds through the
analysis of data points.
Influencer Type
From the beginning of their startup journey, Leong and Cha tried to aggressively build their
influencer numbers. By 2019, Kobe had over 5000 influencers on its platform, with an outreach of
over 45 million followers and over one million engagements.6
Leong and her team defined an influencer as “any voice that was able to influence through social
media”. There were a wide range of influencers available on the platform – some had a collective
voice (a group) while others were considered individual sachets (individuals). Individual influencers
comprised of three kinds - macro-influencers, micro/nano-influencers and celebrities. Leong added,
We also manage pets, influencers that are cartoons, puppets and even kids whose accounts are
managed by their parents. 80% of our influencers are in Singapore, 20% are across Thailand,
the Philippines and Indonesia.
The influencers were further categorised under different sub-sections based on their engagement
capabilities in particular industries like beauty, travel, wellness, fitness, fashion, food, electronics,
etc. There were also experts in niche categories on topics like eczema, hawker food, kid’s events, etc.
Each influencer catered to a different type of content. For instance, fitness influencers at Kobe shared
sports events, exercise tips and wellness products they thought could be beneficial to their followers
(refer to Exhibit 2 for Influencer Types). In an article on its website, Kobe highlighted,
Engagement and relevance of topics of conversation are far more important metrics when
determining who would make a useful influencer for your brand. There is a common internet
culture rule, known as the 1-9-90 Rule. This states that 90% of internet users simply consume
content without contributing, 9% of internet users edit, modify and amplify existing content,
4 Advertisers were companies who directly approached Kobe for their influencer marketing needs. Agencies were digital marketing
agencies who outsourced influencer-marketing campaigns to Kobe. Such campaigns were typically run alongside other campaigns for
the company run by the agency.
5 Team Kobe, How Much Does Social Media Influencer Marketing Cost On Instagram And Youtube?, 29 Jul, 2018,
https://www.getkobe.com/how-much-does-social-media-influencer-marketing-cost-on-instagram-and-youtube/ , accessed September
2019.
6 Brands, Kobe, https://www.getkobe.com/brands/, accessed September 2019.
3/15
leaving only 1% to create new, original content. In terms of your social media following, most
followers make up the 90%. The 1% is predominantly your macro influencers (less about .001%
who are your celebrity influencers). This leaves the remaining 9% to be your micro influencers,
who amplify social content to the masses.7
Campaign Process
Once Kobe had a client on board, Leong would organise a conversation to understand the
requirements. The first step was a pre-preparation phase, which would involve finding out the brand’s
needs as well as the marketing direction of the campaign. Using its trademarked Kobe Influence
Canvas (a strategy tool for designing customised influencer marketing strategy), a team of content
specialists at Kobe would then try to understand the brand’s story, the target customer and the brand’s
campaign objective.8
The next step was to design a campaign for the brand through storytelling to capture the attention of
the target audience. Kobe provided an end-to-end package from designing campaign content that was
tailored to the marketing objectives of the brand to influencer management and after-campaign
analysis for its client. Identifying the right influencer was done through its proprietary platform (refer
to Exhibit 3 for Kobe platform AI capabilities). Leong elaborated on the processes of influencer
campaigns at Kobe,
In our pre-assessment workshop, we focus on four key areas of assessment for influencers:
relevance and engagement, reach and frequency, quality of content and authenticity, and traffic
generated through direct content. We assess how much does each influencer cost. How much do
I pay based on outcome? We crawl through all the data points for each influencer, anonymously.
We then synthesise that information with extreme accuracy and rank the influencers. Then we
proceed with the pairing process to find the right influencer. We look for a few key qualities in
the influencer. First, they must know and understand the product and have a genuine interest in
it. Second, they must be an expert opinion holder in their field. Third, they must be willing to
participate in the campaign and provide full cooperation. Lastly, they must have significant
following in the identified social media channels. Also, they must agree to our payment terms for
the campaign. Ensuring that the costs of hiring the influencers are controlled helps in predicting
the outcome of the campaign more accurately.
After the right influencers were identified, they were briefed on the campaign. The influencers were
also provided with an orientation of the product, brand, company values, etc., so that they had a good
idea of what content to design for their posts. Sometimes factory tours for influencers were arranged
as well. Additionally, influencers were encouraged to try the various products/product versions prior
to a campaign so that they had sufficient understanding of the product.
Kobe worked closely with the client to ensure that posts were live at the most optimal date and time.
Monitoring social media response and influencer posts were key activities during the campaign. A
team of specialists at Kobe would collect all the data and reactions and generate weekly reports that
were shared with the clients. If the reports were not as per expectations, adjustments were made to
the campaign as and when required. If the campaign was longer than a few weeks, reports were
generated more frequently. At the end of the campaign, polls were conducted (for both clients and
influencers), and overall campaign results were analysed.
Clients were provided with an after-sales service, where Kobe would collate and share all the results
7 Team Kobe, The Problem with Influencer Marketing, August 19, 2018, https://www.getkobe.com/the-problem-with-influencer-
marketing/, accessed September 2019.
8 Kobe, How Kobe works, https://www.getkobe.com/brands/, accessed September 2019.
4/15
as well as its recommendations with the client. Leong explained,
Our platform enables us to closely monitor an influencer’s performance. It allows us to track and
analyse every piece of content generated based on various engagement metrics. This, in turn,
helps us determine the success of the campaign.
Challenges
In any given project, the influencer marketing team at Kobe would typically list down the challenges
at the beginning of the project, and build coping tactics and strategies from the start.
The first known challenge was to identify the ‘right’ influencers for a marketing campaign.
Companies could have blind spots, in terms of who they wanted to market to. “For example, Pepsi
may rule out Coke fans as target audience”, Leong pointed. Brand owners could have their own blind
spots as well. For example, an online fashion retailer could focus on certain customer segments only
(spotlight on customers who place large orders but ignore frequent customers with smaller orders).
Moreover, as influencers could be of several types, distinct strategies for each influencer type was
required to ensure that they contributed to a campaign.
The second challenge was to determine the return on investment (ROI) and manage client
expectations. Surveys had shown that 76% of marketers indicated the measure of ROI as a major
challenge for influencer marketing. 9 Kobe relied on KPI’s as a measurement tool for its
campaigns. Setting bespoke KPIs and a cost per engagement pricing helped the firm counteract
this challenge to an extent. Determining KPIs upfront and monitoring the campaign closely also
ensured that the campaign produced the intended results, and helped identify future marketing
patterns. KPIs could include audience reach, impressions, engagement (comments, likes, shares),
quality of content, cost per lead (how much each lead and customer was costing in terms of
advertising budget), etc.
During the planning phase, influencers would often come up with their own preferences as to how
the programme should be executed. Content artists could have their own ideas. Clients had their own
set of beliefs as well. The team at Kobe coordinated the development of content for each post to
ensure that it was carefully developed. Leong explained,
Some clients ask what volume of products I can sell through this campaign. We have to manage
our client’s expectations and explain the objectives - influencer campaigns are meant for building
conversations with customers; so the focus is on engagements rather than sales. If the influencer
content is too sales oriented, storytelling will be lost in the process. Eventually, followers would
stop following.
The Herbal Tea Project
Jia Jia (a ready to drink herbal tea manufacturer in Singapore) had approached Kobe to work on
developing an influencer marketing campaign for its products. The Jia Jia herbal tea was a traditional
drink made from the finest green tea leaves and a combination of eleven natural herbs. Other than
the original flavour, Jia Jia also produced herbal teas in other flavours like rose, jasmine and lemon.
There were sweetened (with less sugar and regular sugar) and non-sweetened varieties of the herbal
9 How To Ace Influencer Marketing This Year, Influencer Marketing 2019, get Kobe, July 12, 2019,
https://www.getkobe.com/influencer-marketing-2019/, accessed September 2019.
5/15
tea as well. Jia Jia had also launched a brand new product – Siracha White tea with an attractive
packaging to entice millennial consumers. The new product came in three flavours – Jasmine, Sakura
and Rose.
The existing consumer base of the Jia Jia tea products numbered around 100,000 in Singapore, and
the goal was to double the consumer base by the end of the year 2019. The products experienced
peak sales during the Chinese New Year period, when consumers liked to gift Jia Jia herbal tea
celebration packs to family and friends during the festive season. Sales were typically also higher
during Singapore’s National Day on August 9, and end of the year, around Christmas.10 Tea drinking
in Singapore was synonymous with the country’s culture; tea was to Singapore as Coke was to
America. A closer look at the tea drinking culture in Singapore presented a historic connection to
herbal tea (refer to Exhibit 4 for the Tea drinking background in Singapore).
Move towards influencer marketing
Jia Jia wanted the marketing message for the campaign to be along the lines of “keeping the tradition
of providing consumers healthy, authentic, all-natural brewed beverages while being conveniently
available for all ages”. The company had used traditional marketing methods to promote its products
(both new launches and existing products) but such efforts had proved fruitless. It had noticed a trend
among the purchasing patterns of millennials and determined that in order to reach out to a younger
target audience; influencer marketing was the way to go (refer to Exhibit 5 for Jia Jia Products).
Jia Jia wanted to launch a two to three week campaign to build its brand awareness, reaching the
largest possible audience in the short timeframe. The target customer age group was the millennial
consumer in Singapore. The company was looking to engage both macro and micro influencers, but
its budget was on the medium- to low-end for a two-week campaign.
Singaporean Consumer
Singapore had a population of almost 6 million people as of July 2018, growing at a rate of 1.79%
per year. 74.3% of the inhabitants were Chinese, 13.4% were Malay and 9% were Indian. The median
age was 34.9 years. Millennials constituted 22% of the population. Majority of the millennials were
validators – who conducted their own research but validated decisions with advisors.11
The Singapore millennial consumers were unique in many aspects. They were very active on social
media. They were culturally acclimatised to drinking tea. Social media was considered an ideal
platform for brand exposure, as more than 83% of Singapore’s population was active on social media.
Social media was especially relevant for brands who had yet to gain sufficient exposure.12 Moreover,
80% of millennials in Singapore owned smartphones and spent a significant part of their day
accessing social media.13 Singaporeans were most active on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and
YouTube. 38% of Singaporeans used Instagram daily, ranking the country third in the highest no. of
Instagram users worldwide.14
10 Jia Jia Drinks, Home, https://jjdrinks.com.sg/, accessed September 2019.

11 Monitor Deloitte, Millenials and the future of financial planning, March 3, 2017,
https://www.ibf.org.sg/event/Documents/Millennials%20and%20the%20Future%20of%20Financial%20Planning.pdf , accessed
November 2019.
12 Gwen Tiew, 15 Key Social Media Statistics for Singapore Digital Marketers, Equinet Academy, July 26, 2018,
https://www.equinetacademy.com/15-key-social-media-statistics-for-singapore-digital-marketers-with-analysis-equinet-academy/ ,
accessed September 2019.
13 Tom Koh, How To Market To Millennials In Singapore, MediaOne, Dec 18, 2018, https://mediaonemarketing.com.sg/how-to-
market-to-millennials-in-singapore/, accessed September 2019.
14 Ibid.
6/15
Understanding the Singaporean millennial consumer was a key aspect of the initial research for the
Jia Jia campaign. Another consideration for the project was to identify accurate influencer tactics that
could ensure hitting the target KPI’s set for the campaign.
Influencer Tactics
Influencer tactics were determined by Kobe in discussion with the client and influencer based on the
product type or service that was being marketed. As a ready to drink product Jia Jia was competing
with other non-alcoholic beverages in the market. There were several beverage brands in the
Singapore market; Coca-Cola was arguably the leader. Understanding Singapore’s affinity to tea, the
brand had launched a few tea-based products in the market, which were hugely popular.15
Beverage brands globally, including tea-based products, had used influencer-marketing methods
effectively in the past. Many major beverage brands had successfully incorporated influencer
marketing as part of their marketing strategy. Coca-Cola had a chronology of successful influencer
programmes to its credit. To reach out to its Belgian consumers, and promote its signature brand,
Coca-Cola had collaborated with 12 Belgian Instagram influencers on Instagram. Ten out of those
influencers were micro-influencers with less than 100,000 followers. They created 19 sponsored
posts to promote the Coca-Cola brand name and its signature beverage - Coke. The campaign was
able to garner over 46,000 likes and 500 comments with an average engagement rate of 9.1% over a
few months period. Emotional connection with followers, paired with authentic posts were key to
the success of the campaign.
One of the influencers for the Coca-Cola Belgium campaign was Yannick Merckx, a traveller with
nearly 48,000 followers on Instagram. His posts included a picture of him taking a swig of Coke, or
holding recycled Coke can objects, donned in his Coca-Cola sweater.16 In each post, the micro-
influencer tried to incorporate the brand into his lively adventures abroad. In his posts, he also added
interesting notes from his travels on Coca Cola’s popularity in various countries. For example, in his
anecdote post of his travels in Mexico, he posted a picture of himself in front of a wall of a local
cyber café with a painted ad of Coca-Cola. He added further details to the post and mentioned, “A
local family even told us that they drink Coca-Cola during breakfast –“The three litre bottle is always
on the table”. To make the post accessible to a wider audience, he added hashtags -
#hetisdemereckxinmexico, #cokeambassador, #cocacola, #tastethefeeling.17
Although some tactics in influencer marketing could be generalised across programmes, there were
tactics specific to the product genre as well. Bigelow Tea, an American company producing fine
quality tea, wanted to promote its products as part of a healthy lifestyle. The company launched a
marketing campaign with influencers, who could highlight the health benefits of drinking tea, and
appeal to consumers who were attracted to content related to healthy lifestyle. Influencers tried to
incorporate Bigelow tea into their content in various creative ways to make the right emotional
connection with consumers. Some shared original recipes using the product - in a post an influencer
posted the picture of a refreshing drink recipe using Bigelow tea, and elaborated the reason of using
the tea for her recipe, stating that she loved it for its fresh flavour and clean taste. In another post, a
blogger posted DIY tips on making Christmas gifts at home for friends and family and shared pictures
15 Rezwana Manjur, Coca-Cola enlists Dragon Rouge to create brand identity for new tea brand, Dec 11, 2018, https://www.marketing-
interactive.com/coca-cola-enlists-dragon-rouge-to-create-brand-identity-for-new-tea-brand/ , accessed September 2019.
16 Coca Cola’s Marketing Strategy: How The Beverage Giant Raises Brand Awareness With Influencers, Mediakix,
https://mediakix.com/blog/coca-cola-marketing-strategy-influencers-ambassadors/, accessed September 2019.
17 Ibid.
7/15
of the gifts - cute handmade buckets with spa items and a few packets of Bigelow tea. 18 The
campaign went on to generate more than 32,000 blog engagements with 44 million impressions and
boosted Bigelow Tea sales by 18.5%.19
A detox tea called Fit Tea used celebrity influencers to promote its product quality. Celebrity
influencer Kim Kardashian endorsed the product in her Twitter and Instagram posts and wrote, “It
tastes amazing and the ingredients are all natural.” She also added a photo of herself consuming a
cup of Fit Tea. As at 1st September 2019, the post had generated about 971,000 likes and 8,243
comments. Despite the engagement, the post had garnered a lot of social media backlash, as many
followers felt that Kim Kardashian was merely posing for the product rather than drinking it,
implying that she probably never used it in reality.20
Although media posts by celebrities could garner a lot of attention, most industry experts advised
against using celebrity influencers for building brand awareness. A research report had suggested
that influencer marketing’s primary benefit came from its ability of creating authentic content.21
Facebook vs Instagram vs YouTube
Leong and her project team brainstormed to identify the social media platform that would suit the
requirements of their Jia Jia herbal tea campaign. In terms of outreach, Facebook was by far the
largest platform with over 2.38 billion users across the globe. Instagram had comparatively lower
outreach of about one billion users worldwide.22 However, according to a Forrester study, Facebook
had lower engagement rate (0.7%) compared to Instagram (4.21%). Moreover, only 32% of
Facebook users regularly interacted with brands, compared to 68% of Instagram users. The study had
also concluded that Instagram generated 58 times more engagement per follower for brands
compared to Facebook.23 Notably, compared to other social media platforms, Instagram was more
visual based.24
YouTube was a close contender as well and was the second most visited webpage in the world and
with over 1.9 billion monthly active users. Sponsored videos could be posted both on YouTube and
Instagram. However, on Instagram, they were shortened and consumed quickly. Stories and live
videos on Instagram were great for consumers who did not have the time to watch long informative
videos on YouTube.25 All in all, each social media platform had its own pros and cons, although
Instagram had over the years become the tool of choice for more influencer marketing programmes
than any other platform.
18 Shane Barker, 10 Influencer Marketing Case Studies with Insane Results, January 24, 2017, shanebarker.com,
https://shanebarker.com/blog/influencer-marketing-case-studies/ , accessed September 2019.
19 Ten American Brands Using Influencer Marketing Strategies, CrowdMedia, https://crowdmedia.com/blog/2018/10/1/ten-american-
brands-using-influencer-marketing-strategies , accessed September 2019.
20 Amy O'Connor, Why in God's name is Kim Kardashian still promoting 'fitness teas'? The Daily Edge, Mar 27, 2017,
https://www.dailyedge.ie/kim-kardashian-fit-tea-3309798-Mar2017/, accessed September 2019.
21 Jean Sarhadar, TeaTox with the Kardashians, Medium.com, Jul 8, 2017, https://medium.com/@jeansarhadar/teatox-with-the-
kardashians-e228a7f735f9 , accessed September 2019.
22 Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 2nd quarter 2019 (in millions), Statistica,
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/, accessed September 2019.
23 Kobe, Company Website, http://shop.getkobe.com/influencermarketingplatform/, accessed September 2019.
24 Kobe, Company Website, https://www.getkobe.com/best-instagram-aesthetics/, accessed September 2019.
25 Shane Barker, “Instagram vs. YouTube: Which Platform is Best for Your Influencer Marketing Campaign?” April 4, 2019,
https://shanebarker.com/blog/instagram-vs-youtube-influencer-marketing-campaign/, accessed September 2019.
8/15
Action Points
“Influencer marketing is still a relatively new phenomenon and firms are working out strategies to
utilise the method efficiently”, noted Leong. The challenges were accentuated as social media
audiences, especially millennials, were relatively sophisticated internet users who could easily
distinguish branded content posts from marketing propaganda.
To promote Jia Jia herbal tea, Leong and Cha had to make a few strategic decisions. They had to
understand the herbal tea brand and its vision. They also had to understand the target consumers and
their psychographics. Leong reiterated,
We need to understand who they are trying to market to and why people don’t want to drink Jia
Jia herbal tea. Addressing this right at the start allows us to predict potential feedback. It also
helps us to do effective content direction, achieve the right pairing and get the right influencers.
Content angles for the campaign
One of the main goals for Jia Jia was to refresh the brand image into something that was more
synchronised with the millennial target audience. Seeing a shift in how younger consumers liked to
be engaged, the team brainstormed on several ideas. One idea was to provide a sporty angle to the
campaign and promote Jia Jia as a preferred choice of drinks for fitness enthusiasts as it was great
for hydration during or post workout. Some common post workout drinks amongst the target
consumers were isotonic drinks like 100plus and Pocari Sweat.
The influencer personalities also needed to tie in with Jia Jia’s new product packaging, which tried
to present the drinks as fun, trendy and cheerful to attract younger consumers. Influencers with a
profile of fitness instructor, wellness coach were assessed to be good fits as they could share their
experiences of the health benefits of Jia Jia herbal tea, and how it was a great alternative to some post
workout drinks, which were often high in sugar content. Influencers who talked about local food
were also shortlisted, as they were good candidates to share how Jia Jia paired well with local Chinese
food.
Keywords used to pair influencers
The Kobe team tried to ensure that the influencers selected had target audiences falling within the
millennial age range. They also shortlisted the influencers using keywords such as “cocktail makers,
bartenders, local food lovers, local delights, hawker food”, such that they could focus their search for
personalities who were aligned to the brand story and persona portrayal.
Would it pay off?
Leong and Cha had built a significant influencer base for Kobe since its inception. However, many
new influencer-marketing firms had cropped up over the last few years. Although, some of them
offered similar services, most had niche offerings and a varied range of tools to enable efficient
selection of influencers (refer to Exhibit 6 for some Influencer Marketing models).
Choosing the right influencers was just a small but significant part of the Jia Jia campaign. There
were other considerations as well. Determining the right KPI’s was one; helping create the right
content was key as well. Could Leong make Jia Jia herbal tea the new trend in Singapore? Could she
and her colleagues identify the right influencers for their campaign, in a market proliferated by tea
9/15
drink products and the millennial preferred bubble tea drink? What could be Kobe’s influencer
marketing strategy for Jia Jia and the most appropriate social media platform for the campaign?
10/15
EXHIBIT 1: KOBE FOUNDERS
Source: Company data
EXHIBIT 2: TYPES OF INFLUENCERS
There were primarily three categories of influencers in the influencer marketing industry categorised
on the base of their following. Some companies however liked to categorise their influencers on
several other parameters as well. At Kobe, there were primarily three kinds of influencers – celebrity,
macro and micro influencers. Celebrity influencers typically had more than one million followers on
their social media accounts and were more likely to promote their talent than a brand’s message.
Their charges for participating in promotions were very high.
Macro influencers were considered the second category with more than 100,000 followers. They
engaged between 0.5 to 2% on their posts, and had high level of influence on topical areas. Examples
of macro influencers could be a fashion blogger or a journalist for a technical website. A macro
influencer would have a special bond with their network and often liked to promote positive personal
experiences.
Micro influencers had an average of 500 to 100,000 followers and could generate 5 to 25%
engagement per post. Authenticity of the influencer was important; people posting their experiences
eating burgers and fried food would not be the right candidates to promote health drinks for example.
Originality of content and high quality images were welcomed by the social media fraternity as well.
Source: Company Data
EXHIBIT 3: AI CAPABILITIES OF KOBE PLATFORM
Kobe had built an intelligent AI based platform which helped identify influencers quickly and
efficiently. The Kobe platform was an end-to-end influencer marketing solution that included
functionalities for enabling influencer discovery, relationship building, campaign management and
reporting analytics. The pending patent AI driven platform could match the brand with the most
11/15
relevant and relatable influencers by analysing millions of unique data points based on relevancy.
The relevancy of an influencer could come in various categories such as interests, demographic
profile, or even a medical condition.26
Often, contextual content (text and captions) was not sufficient to fully understand an influencer’s
relevance for a campaign. Kobe tackled this challenge with the help of its platform, which had built-
in image recognition capabilities that gathered insights from the images that influencers shared to
gain an accurate understanding of their content.
The platform also used natural language processing algorithms to extract insights such as keywords,
categories and concepts from contextual content - even if they were not explicitly mentioned in the
content posted by the influencers. For example, a millennial would not explicitly say that he or she
was a millennial but would express him/herself using words such as "YOLO", "Study Hard Play
Hard" etc.
In addition, the platform had built-in capabilities to help forecast content performance and deliver
KPI-driven campaigns with weekly tracking reports. The platform was further able to scan and
provide analytic data of social media content in a matter of seconds. Leong explained, “Our AI based
platform is able to filter what you want and what you don’t want, for a particular social media post.
Our platform’s pricing algorithm matches the influencer to his/her relevance. Our platform can also
breakdown an images posted on social media; sometimes words do not tally with the images. The
process allows us to identify the right influencers by segregating the ones which do not satisfy all
our criteria. For example, some advertisers ask us to reject posts with tattoos, alcohol, drug content,
or abusive language. Our platform also has a pricing algorithm which is developed to match the
influencer rates. During the campaign our platform tracks the influencers and their posts. Key
information about the audience, conversations, and the influence of the campaign is also tracked.”
EXHIBIT 4: TEA DRINKING BACKGROUND IN SINGAPORE
The history of tea in Singapore went back to its beginnings. When the British East India Company
in 1819 established its settlement in Singapore, tea became one of the most lucrative products traded
by the company. Singapore had been chosen as the region’s premier tea trading port due to its ideal
location along China’s tea routes. Notwithstanding the above fact, the settlement had mainly Chinese
and Indian immigrants, and both communities were fervent tea drinkers, shaping the tea drinking
culture of Singapore over the years.
Tea in Singapore had many popular versions. Two of the most popular versions were the ‘Teh Tarik’
tea that was made with condensed or evaporated milk, and Chinese tea, which was tea appreciated in
its original flavor and involved a lot of preparation steps ranging from adding the hot water to the
ground up leaves in the pot to pouring the tea into several smaller cups. Chinese immigrants to
Singapore had also brought with them traditional tea recipes like herbal tea.
Herbal tea was known for its medicinal properties; the most common herbal tea preparation was
called ‘Leung Teh’ or ‘Leung Cha’, which was a ‘cooling’ drink used to treat a range of health
problems. A quick-fix remedy, ‘Leung Cha’ was thought to cool "internal heat" and was used to treat
26
Vivien Shiao, Influenced by tech, The Business Times, July 04, 2018, https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/magazines/the-sme-
magazine-julyaugust-2018/influenced-by-tech , accessed November 2019.
12/15
a range of health problems - an affordable alternative to doctors for poor immigrants in the late 19th
century.27
After Singapore became an independent republic in 1965, many versions of tea drinks were
introduced in the country over the decades. Bubble tea was a Taiwanese invention which was
introduced in Singapore in 1992. The drink phased out in the city a decade later, but regained its fan
base a few years after that. Slowly growing in popularity, bubble tea became the drink of choice for
Singapore millennials. Trends in bubble tea drinking had risen in other parts of the world as well.28
The global bubble tea market was predicted to jump from US$1.96 billion in 2016 to reach US$3.21
billion by 2023.29 In all its forms, tea continued to be a popular drink in Singapore. In 2019, the
average per capita consumption of tea in Singapore was 1.3 kg, whereas revenue from the tea segment
was US$664.9 million.
Coca-Cola, F&N Foods, Malaysia Dairy Industries, Nestle, PepsiCo, Pokka, and Yeo Hiap Seng
were the major players in the ready to drink beverage market in Singapore, accounting for over 70%
of the total market share. 30 Coca Cola had introduced tea drinks specifically designed for the
Singaporean consumer in the market. It’s Heaven on Earth tea drinks were widely popular in the
country. Pokka – a Japanese beverage company specialised in flavored teas, bottled coffee and an
assortment of other beverages. Ready to drink tea was an expansive market in the country, with many
new players trying to create a niche amidst an oligopoly of a few large players.31 Jia Jia was one of
the few beverage brands specialising in ready to drink herbal teas.
Source: Author’s from various sources
EXHIBIT 5: JIA JIA PRODUCTS
27 Alice Tse, Marcelo Dohalde, Chinese herbal tea: history, health and how to make it, 01 Sep, 2018,
https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/2162156/herbal-tea/index.html , accessed September 2019.
28 Claudia Chong, Far from game over: From boom to bust to boom again, bubble tea is back in business, The Business Times, June 01,
2019, https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/brunch/far-from-game-over-from-boom-to-bust-to-boom-again-bubble-tea-is-back-in-business,
29 Lydia Tan, The Great Singapore Bubble Tea Mania, Campus.sg, October 23, 2019, https://www.campus.sg/the-great-singapore-
bubble-tea-mania-campus-sg/, accessed September 2019.
30 Linette Lai, Seven drink companies pledge to reduce sugar in beverages to 12% or less by 2020, The Straits Times, February 6,
2018, https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/seven-drink-companies-pledge-to-reduce-sugar-in-beverages-to-12-or-less-by-2020 ,
31 Euromonitor International, RTD Tea in Singapore, December 2019, https://www.euromonitor.com/rtd-tea-in-singapore/report,
accessed December 2019.
13/15
Existing Jia Jia tea products
New Jia Jia Products
EXHIBIT 6: OTHER INFLUENCER MARKETING MODELS
There were a plethora of influencer marketing tools available in the market. Each platform had its
own share of features. Although Kobe was not just a platform, but a full-fledged influencer marketing
service provider, it had competition from other influencer models in the market.
Upfluence was one such influencer platform. It had a data driven search engine and a large database
of over 3 million influencer profiles. The platform updated and indexed profiles on a real time basis.
Users could send automated bulk emails, streamline campaign workflow and measure ROI using the
14/15
platform. It also comprised of algorithms to analysed content for reach and engagement. Users could
search through Upfluence to find influencers using as many keywords as necessary.
Post for Rent was an influencer tool which allowed brands and influencers to leave reviews for each
other. Hence there was a reference point for both brands and influencers. Star rating of influencers
could be seen by brands searching for new influencers for their campaigns. Likewise, influencers
could also assess whether they wanted to work for a brand by looking at the brands star ratings.
HypeAuditor was another influencer platform offering tools for advertisers, influencers and agencies.
It identified top Instagram influencers based on the number of quality and engaged followers. Clients
could discover influencers using 25 filters including audience location, age & gender, engagement
rate. HypeAuditor’s AI algorithms helped rank bloggers by quality followers and authentic
engagement. Raw data was gathered from different sources, and then depersonalised and grouped.
Only real followers and likes from them were taken into consideration. The algorithm then ranked
influencers to form the global top influencers’ lists, which was updated daily.
Discover.ly was a chrome plugin that helped influencers with their networking. Users could track
their email recipients, LinkedIn and Facebook connections’ on social media, and make updates
through a sidebar. A user could see mutual Facebook friends of a connection in Linkedin for example.
Tweetdeck was an offering on Twitter. The tool had a free social media dashboard to help users
manage their tweets. Users could set it to display Twitter timeline items, mentions, direct messages,
lists, trends, favourites, search results, or hashtags. Users could control up to 200 Twitter accounts
on the Tweetdeck dashboard.
Social Crawlytics was an influencer tool that allowed users to track content and competitors. Users
could discover which posts were the most popular and most shared on specific websites. Reports
could be generated based on particular domains and helped monitor social influence. For example,
users could use the reporting features to analyse which had been their most successful content, and
how many people had shared it.32
Source: 17 Free Influencer Marketing Tools to Find Influencers, Influencer Marketing Hub,
https://influencermarketinghub.com/free-influencer-marketing-tools/, accessed September 2019.
32 17 Free Influencer Marketing Tools to Find Influencers, Influencer Marketing Hub, https://influencermarketinghub.com/free-
influencer-marketing-tools/, accessed September 2019.
15/15

Kobe Influencer PDF

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Оригинальное название

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Kobe Influencer PDF

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

SMU551

KOBE INFLUENCER MARKETING: BUILDING BRAND

Copyright © 2020, Singapore Management University Version: 2020-01-03

as well as its recommendations with the client. Leong explained,

The Herbal Tea Project

Move towards influencer marketing

10 Jia Jia Drinks, Home, https://jjdrinks.com.sg/, accessed September 2019.

Facebook vs Instagram vs YouTube

Content angles for the campaign

Keywords used to pair influencers

Would it pay off?

EXHIBIT 1: KOBE FOUNDERS

Source: Company data

EXHIBIT 2: TYPES OF INFLUENCERS

Source: Company Data

EXHIBIT 3: AI CAPABILITIES OF KOBE PLATFORM

Source: Company Data

EXHIBIT 4: TEA DRINKING BACKGROUND IN SINGAPORE

Source: Author’s from various sources

EXHIBIT 5: JIA JIA PRODUCTS

Existing Jia Jia tea products

New Jia Jia Products

Source: Company Data

EXHIBIT 6: OTHER INFLUENCER MARKETING MODELS

Вам также может понравиться