Making sense of 'social' effectiveness: FAME 2013

Ong's FAME 2013 presentation touched on advice for brands including turning data into actionable intelligence, unleashing emotions to earn advocacy, seizing mobile moments to be top-of-mind, and converting the power of social to drive sales.

"People often say advertising is dead, but social ads are like revivals, as the ad is talking directly to you," Ong said. For example, Nike tailor-makes and automatically changes its branded social ads according to the users' interests and their search keyword inputs.

Ong also pointed out that half of Chinese online users log on to social networks like Weibo to search for e-commerce websites, 77 per cent of them believe that having a social media presence makes a brand more attractive, and 23 per cent of Chinese users say that when they do research for a purchasing decision, social-networking sites are the first place they look.

Ong highlighted the importance of social video, which has gathered 74 per cent consumer penetration in China. Wathcing online video is one of the most popular online activities among Chinese netizens, "as they like to share contents that they like with their friends, which makes online video more social." 

However, brands should focus on optimising their engagement with their online users and not just on posting their TV ads online.

Ong also suggested ways brands can use WeChat effectively since smartphone users are spending more and more time using mobiles instead of PCs for their online activities. VW China use location-based services, COFCO's womai B2C site use social gaming.

Even luxury brands, which tend to be more conservative in their marketing approach, such as LV, Coach and Clarins, have created official WeChat accounts and are using the platform to send eDMs much faster to their online customers.

Finally, Ong reminded brands that in the case of digital marketing, measuring the effectiveness of their social campaigns is not limited to impressions, clicks, time spent, but to follow different stages of the consumers' journey and their social conversations on how they feel about brands. "Interaction is no long one or two ways but multiple ways, and creating a unique experience for each user is very important," she said.