McDonald's Purchasing with Free Coca Cola Glass Promotions 2009/2010. Which year achieved greater impact on the market?

McDonald's launched purchasing with free Coca Cola Glass Promotions in 2009 and 2010 respectively. We will compare these two years' marketing strategies, online exposure and achieved results in terms of online advertising, website traffics and e-buzz.

A. Comparison on Online Advertising

2009/10 Campaign Creative

The scale of 2010's promotion is comparatively larger than the previous one in 2009 in terms of number of creative and number of publishers. Both 2009's and 2010's strategies focused on the mass market that revealed in the selections of publishers. In comparison, 2009's marketing strategy also targeted on the young generation that included some online games and sports related websites like NBA, HK RGOAL and Sun Zone in the media plan. In 2010, it extended the focus on the mass market by adding Discuss.com.hk and ON.CC on the publisher list.

B. Comparison on Website Traffic

After launching 2009's campaign, Alexa's statistics shown that the promotion triggered a peak of daily reach in the official website. Compared to the one in 2010, there was no significant change on website traffic during the promotion period.

C. Comparison on E-Buzz

2009's campaign aroused a tremendous e-buzz on the campaign launch day. It recorded 750 posts in one single day in numerous forums and blogs. During the campaign period, 576 topics and 3,586 posts were shown in 37 portals. There were totally 1,877 visitors involved in the discussions and 940,000 people who read the posts. In the period of the two campaigns in 2010, online posts cannot even reach one-fourth of the previous promotion whenever compared to the number of related topics, number of posts and people who involved in discussions. In terms of online coverage, although it is better than 2009's one that related posts were traced in more forums, 40 in total. Only 150,000 people recorded who read the related posts and it greatly decreased by 84%.

Conclusion

It is no doubt that the scale of 2010's campaign is relatively larger than 2009's. However, in terms of website traffic and e-buzz, the result of campaign does not perform as well as 2009's. McDonald's re-launched “Purchase with free Coca Cola Glass” campaign, yet it cannot alter the fact in lack of freshness and excitement even when repackaging as 2010 FIFA Coca Cola Glass. Utilising the boom of FIFA as strategy, but it ultimately resulted in a competition on gaining market interests and disperses mass focus on the campaigns.

(Source by Admomo & K-matrix)

傳統品牌 創新營銷（二）

傳統品牌在網上廣告的資源投放上仍有待進一步的開發。以嘉頓為例，在2010首季度的營銷活動中，都未有作網上宣傳。然而在傳統品牌的營銷項目中，網上渠道的運用正逐漸增加，除了網上廣告外，它們更利用網上遊戲作銷售推廣。

圖一：2010年嘉頓的網上廣告概況

案例二：嘉頓「Roll唔停贏巨奬」活動

活動日期：2010年5月至6月

活動內容：活動期內每購買一件指定產品，可憑發票資料參加一次「Roll唔停贏巨奬」網上遊戲，數量不限。每週得分最高及累計得分最高的參加者可獲電子產品奬賞。

網上宣傳：

1) 橫額宣傳 – 2010/05/24至2010/07/01

2) 活動網頁

3) 網上遊戲

活動短評：

這個營銷活動反映了網上宣傳，除可增加品牌/ 產品的知名度外，亦可以做到刺激消售的目的，並加強商戶與顧客之間的互動。網上遊戲可令營銷活動內容更豐富，增加活動的趣味性，從而帶動大眾的討論，吸引市場目光。相對從前寄回發票/吉包參加大抽奬等的推廣模式，網上推廣為營銷活動帶來了更多各式各樣的可能性。然而，是次活動的推廣宣傳，橫額廣告只在Uwants及YahooHK刋登、宣傳未有使用社交媒體、電視廣告以產品為焦點等……或未有足夠渠道讓大眾接觸相關活動的資訊。建議可加強在討論區或社交媒體的宣傳，以吸引更多人參與活動。

Social Media Marketing – A Boom of Facebook Campaigns in Hong Kong

A statistics announced in 2010 June that there are 3.4M Facebook users in Hong Kong. Facebook is considered as a platform for timely information exchanges. Marketers keep an eye on this new channel, use it to enhance customer engagement to brands and deliver promotion messages.

For the first 6 months in 2010, there were 64 online display ad campaigns related to advertisers’ Facebook fan pages or Facebook games; while that was only 33 in 2009 the whole year. The total ad spend of these display ad campaigns amounted to HKD 5.8M in 2010, which was 1.5 times of that in 2009 full year, and it is still counting.

Chart 1: Statistics of Facebook-Related Online Display Ads

Among these display ad campaigns in 2009, they were mostly Facebook fan page promotions, intended to recruit fans with some free gifts/ trial products as incentives. However, the campaign content had been changed a lot in 2010. There were more interesting and insightful Facebook-related campaigns, e.g. interactive games or activities. It is suggested that those games/ activities strengthen customer engagements to the brands, and boost up the fan page visit frequency.

Chart 2: Industry of Facebook-related Campaign Advertisers

Shopping/ Retail advertisers involved the most in Facebook-related campaigns. It fit their needs of rapid market response to their promotions and high brand exposure to the mass market.

Chart 3: Ad Spend Forecast on Online Advertising of Facebook-Related Campaigns

It is expected that there will be increasing number of Facebook-related display ad campaigns launched this year, as well as an increase in total display ad spend those campaigns to HKD10M at the end of 2010.

Personal Care Sector – Disposable Contact Lenses

Disposable contact lenses advertisers are major market participants in personal care sector in Hong Kong digital marketing since 2008. Acuvue, Bausch & Lomb and CIBA Vision were the top 3 advertisers in the sector; in which they had 13, 11 and 5 campaigns launched respectively in 2009. The 3 brands spent totally 3.6M on display ad campaigns in the year. It increased by 30% when comparing with that in 2008; while Acuvue and Cooper Vision were the first and third top advertisers in the sector of the year according to both number of campaigns and total adspent. In 2010Q1, Acuvue and Fresh Look had spent 1.2M already, and it is suggested that the market will become more and more competitive.

Bausch & Lomb spent more on display ad campaigns than Acuvue; while Acuvue had more campaigns launched in 2009. Free trial, sales promotion and user feedback sharing were the main tactics of those campaigns. Acuvue had fewer campaigns in 2009 than 2008, from 24 to 13 campaigns, and the total adspent had decreased by 30%. There was a significant change of their strategy from female market to a more mass and also youth market. The budget spent on lady portals had decreased from 15% to 6% of the total adspent in 2009. Some publishers, such as 881903.com, TVB.com, My903.com and Uwants were newly imposed in their media selection. One of their promotion themes in 2010Q1, ‘Child-ready-for-contacts’, might also explain the change of their strategy. They are trying to expand their market to children and teenager users recently. Comparing with Acuvue, Bausch & Lomb was much less active in display ad campaigns in 2008. In fact, after a year, it became the top advertiser in terms of adspent in the sector. Sales promotions, e.g. cash coupons and bulk discounts, were commonly found in their banner ads. They were more focus on mass and female markets. Yahoo!HK, MSN Buddy List, Jessica and Lisa were widely engaged in their media plans.

As there are more and more function and styles of disposable contact lenses, it becomes part of fashion and apparel. It leads to more participants and keener competition in the market. CIBA Vision had increased their adspent 5 times in 2009 and Fresh Look had spent half million in the first quarter of 2010. It is believed that personal care, or disposable contact lenses advertisers, will be one of the focus for Hong Kong digital marketers in this year.

Chart 1: 2009 Top 15 Advertisers in Personal Care Sector (no. of campaigns)

Chart 2: 2009 Disposable Contact Lenses Advertisers Comparison

Overseas Luxury Brands in China 2009

Overseas luxury brand advertisers spent totally around RMB$55 million with more than 50 campaigns in China online advertising in 2009.

Chart 1: Overseas Luxury Brand Advertisers Comparison

Christian Dior and Chanel were the top advertisers among the brands in terms of both total ad spends and number of campaigns, followed by Armani, Hermes and Burberry.

The main product promoted by these luxury brand advertisers was Cosmetics; meanwhile Skin Care Product and Fashion were the second focus of the brands in China online advertising.

Chart 2: Number of Campaigns by Month 2009

In terms of advertising period, luxury brand advertisers had the highest number of campaigns in Dec during the year.

On the media planning strategy front, luxury brands were using 3-10 publishers each to advertise their products during 2009, where most of them are portal sites or sites targeted to ladies, e.g. MSN, Yoka, Sina, Only Lady , Elle and etc.