A STUDY ON CONNECTED MARKETING AND THE CASE OF FPT CORPORATION’S PROJECT VICONGDONG

Recently, there are many new marketing terms such as: digital marketing, word of mouth marketing, viral marketing, buzz marketing, stealth marketing, passion marketing, connected marketi

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

TRAN THI CHIEN

A STUDY ON CONNECTED MARKETING AND THE CASE OF FPT

CORPORATION’S PROJECT VICONGDONG

Major: Business Administration

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

TÓM T T Ắ iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii

LIST OF TABLES ix

LIST OF FIGURES ix

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW– CONNECTED MARKETING 4

1.1 Definition: Connected Marketing 4

1.1.1 Marketing 4

1.1.2 Connected Marketing 4

1.2 Types of Connected Marketing 8

1.2.1 Word of mouth marketing 8

1.2.2 Buzz marketing 12

1.2.3 Viral marketing 15

1.3 The power of Connected marketing in digital age 18

1.3.1 Widely connection between the company/organization and customer 18

1.3.2 Building customer’s trust 18

1.3.3 Cutting marketing cost 19

1.3.4 Measuring communication result 20

1.4 Marketing model 20

1.4.1 Ways of transferring information 20

1.4.2 Marketing model 22

1.5 The process to practice a Connected Marketing Campaign 24

1.5.1 Customer investigation and choosing Opinion leaders (OL) 24

1.5.2 Creating transferred messages 27

1.5.3 Seeding trials 28

1.5.4 Spreading a Connected Marketing Campaign 32

1.5.4.1 Transferring information principles 32

1.5.4.2 Method of transferring information 33

1.6 Measurement of transferring information 37

CHAPTER 2: EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS AND CONNECTED MARKETING ACTIVITY OF VICONGDONG 39

2.1 External environment analysis 39

2.1.1 Conditions for the application of Connected Marketing activity in Vietnam 39

2.1.2 Analysis on charity activities in Vietnam 50

2.2 Connected Marketing activity at Vicongdong 53

2.2.1 Introduction about Vicongdong project 53

2.2.2 Condition for Vicongdong doing Connected Marketing 60

2.2.3 Analysis on Connected Marketing activities in Vicongdong project 62

2.3 Some comments on the efficiency of Connected Marketing Campaign at Vicongdong project

85

CHAPTER 3: RECOMMENDATIONS 91

3.1 Developing direction of business and Marketing strategy of Visky – FPT 91

3.2 Developing new marketing solution 93

3.3 Some other proposals 106

CONCLUSION 107

REFERENCES 109

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.3: The comparison between Buzz marketing and Traditional

Figure 2.7: Website visited in 4 weeks from October to November

Figure 2.17: Message for communication campaign in “Mầm Nhân

ái 2008” contest

Page 58

Figure 2.24: Alexa statistics – Up stream sites of Vicongdong.vn Page 84

Figure 2.26: Alexa Statistic - Daily pageviews per user of

vicongdong.vn

Page 88

Figure 3.2: Topology model - Source: Marketing Department, Visky

FPT

Page 96

Figure 3.8: A sample of a new campaign - Supporter chooses

Colgate as your sponsor

Page 105

INTRODUCTIONThe problem

Firstly, Vicongdong has no clear and long time marketing plan There are only some separate activities which have not related tightly to FPT Corporation Whereas FPT fund is a fund used to implement FPT’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Vicongdong plays the most important role to its CSR

Secondly, Vicongdong.vn is only a website used Web technology 2.0 Its propagation or distribution may reach much more than geometrical progression It means that the connection will be certainly crucial

Finally, FPT’s managers wish to create a result of much more than 1 $ when they invest 1 $ for donation (1.x effect) and no longer want to use traditional way

to do CSR However, the results that Vicongdong has harnessed have not shown the expectation There has not yet had any fundraising solution

Objectives

The thesis has been much spent time on it with the objective of studying the theory of connected marketing and then study the case of Vicongdong in marketing field Vicongdong is a for-runner project of Visky –FPT in plemeting CSR So the author would like to study how it can contribute the most important part in FPT’s CSR Similarly, other objective is to study whether connected marketing theory is suitable for Vicongdong’s marketing plan and how to apply The last one is in the case of prospect, the author try to build a marketing plan for Vicongdong based on connected marketing theory

Scope

In the name of field, the thesis belongs to marketing topic which is theory of connected marketing In the name of space, the thesis studies the real status and problem within the project Vicongdong.vn of FPT Corporation Time for studying the content of thesis is about one year from the establishment of the project

Data source:

The thesis takes many secondary data from FPT Corporation, books, internet The primary data is directly collected from the website because the high interactive factors of web 2.0 The author has many advantages in collecting this kind of data which is online comment of website’s member stead of implementing a small survey Besides that, the data has been collected by interviewing some important people such as head of the project, Mr Do Huu Hung, marketing expert of some companies such as ETC center, Sunhouse company, FPT Corporation, members of the website…

Method/ Approach

The method of the thesis includes interviewing experts, theory access from executive books, Internet search, observation

Research question

Why the project hasn’t had a clear marketing plan?

How Vicongdong can help FPT Corporation doing CSR and then help FPT build great image?

How will connected marketing theory be more suitable for building marketing plan for Vicongdong?

Which disadvantages will affect the feasibility of marketing plan for Vicongdong?

The author respect it to apply connected marketing theory on the case of Vicongdong and build a marketing plan based on this theory.

The content includes three parts:

Chapter 1: Literature review – Connected marketing

Chapter 2: External environment analysis and connected marketing activity of Vicongdong

Chapter 3: Recommendations

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW– CONNECTED MARKETING

Chapter I of the thesis will explore the literature of a recently marketing term – connected marketing including the definition, types of connected marketing and how to process a connected marketing campaign

1.1 Definition: Connected Marketing

1.1.1 Marketing

The term of marketing is very popular to all of organizations and businesses

It relates to a crucial industry that affects on many other activities and plays a huge role for the development of a business or non-business unit Especially, it has a special effect on the image of an organization However, up to now there has no consolidated point of view about this concept

According to American Association – AMA, “Marketing is a business activity which drives products and service from the manufacturer to customer”

Philip Kotler, a leading marketing expert said: “Marketing is to work with the market to exchange with the purpose of satisfying demand and need of people identifying and meeting human and social needs.”

According to Peter Drucker, “the purpose of Marketing is not to promote consumption Its purpose is to realize and penetrate customer so thoroughly that goods or service will fill the right demand of customer and it will be consumed automatically”

Therefore, in general, marketing is all activities of researching, recovering demand on goods or service of people and satisfying them best

1.1.2 Connected Marketing

Nowadays, the development of information technology as well as digital technology has opened new trends in society It seems that the world is really flat as the theory about globalization of Thomas L Friedman, the author of an international bestselling book “The World is flat” Globalization also means all parts of the world have the similar concerns and the ability of connecting together

more and more easily If Nokia, for example of a mobile brand has helped us

“connecting people” for such a long time, we can visibly realize that nowadays, the connection is very, very, very huge The author not only connects in a small space, short time and domestically but also connects together in global level and with no limitation So, it is not speaking with exaggeration when we say that: connect or die! And I think that it is really true with economic organizations

Marketing industry responds very quickly with the development of the age

We easily understand because it always focuses on people, everything around human beings to serve the research on people’s demand, bring satisfaction and even suggestion of product choices for people’s needs Marketing itself no longer appears

as before The traditional marketing efforts reveal their weakness We can take the following famous quotes for reference:

“The traditional marketing model we all grew up with is obsolete”- Jim

Figure 1.1: An example of a social network diagram The node with the highest

centrality is marked in symbol that the arrow goes into

Source: Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

“Mass marketing today is a mass mistake” - Larry Light, Chief Marketing

“For the first time the consumer is boss, which is fascinatingly frightening, scary and terrifying, because everything we used to do, everything we used to know, will no longer work” - Kevin Roberts, Chief Executive, Saatchi & Saatchi,

2005 [49]

Recently, there are many new marketing terms such as: digital marketing, word of mouth marketing, viral marketing, buzz marketing, stealth marketing, passion marketing, connected marketing… In this study the author explores the term connected marketing Very easily to quick understand the term, it relates to connection

According to Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden, authors of the book

“Connected Marketing, The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution”: one, face-to-face, live buzz, live viral marketing, gossip marketing, word of mouth marketing, stealth marketing, ambush marketing, guerrilla marketing, tremor marketing, sneeze marketing, theatrical marketing, live point-of-sale, underground

Blythe Mason, Worldwide Marketing Program manager on the website Connectedmarketing.com said that: “Connected Marketing provides a comprehensive suite of marketing services, specializing in the development of

Mobile technology and Internet network has played special role in helping people connect together Nowadays, they become more and more popular, more convenient, cheaper and more flexible Therefore, marketers have many methods to create their mass marketing campaign to right people The term “online social network” also appears in many performances such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog, FriendFeed, Friendster, Hi5, MySpace, Orkut, Tagged The connection becomes very quickly at geometric progression level If a hot message is given out through the Internet, it will be intermediately transferred via social networks within

only a second! It doesn’t unlike a virus, even “more intelligent and dangerous” than

a real kind of virus It means that marketers can design marketing messages and get the customer’s attention much more than before

Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden defined the term Connected Marketing in their work that it is a marketing term relating to new marketing techniques that

“using word of mouth connections as marketing media to drive growth It covers

three emerging techniques in marketing: viral marketing, buzz marketing and word

of mouth marketing” [53]

Viral Marketing: “Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages

individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions [69]

Buzz Marketing: “A marketing technique that makes use of an actual event

or performance to create word of mouth” [44]

Word of mouth marketing: “Oral, person-to-person communication between

a receiver and a communicator whom the receiver perceives as non-commercial, concerning a brand, a product or a service” [6]

Viral, buzz and word of mouth marketing are included in the main concept

“connected marketing” They also show us the way to divide connected marketing into three main activities or three marketing techniques to develop a connected marketing plan

According to my individual point of view, the concept Connected marketing

is also understood that:

Connected marketing is marketing efforts that we make use of the community’s connection to transfer marketing messages, aiming to create brand realization and increase the interest for a brand There are three types of connected marketing: Viral marketing, buzz marketing and word of mouth marketing

Reference: Hawthorne effect

Hawthorne Effect [55]

Back in the 1930s, a team of researchers from the Harvard Business School were commissioned to run some research for the telecom giant Western Electric (now Lucent Technologies) They implemented the research at the company’s production plant in Hawthorne, near Chicago They invited small groups of employees to trial various new working conditions before rolling them out to the general workforce The participants seemed to like whatever was trialed, their productivity increased in almost situations Taking all trial cases together, researchers found out that whatever the researchers asked participants to discuss and trial resulted in an increase in productivity The team of Harvard researchers, led by Elton Mayo, realized that their results had nothing to do with what was being trialed and everything to do with running research trials By participating in an exclusive

trial, participants felt valued, special and important The special attention they

received satisfied their ego and created a positive emotional relationship with what

they were trialing The practical final result was that the research trials effectively

transformed the research participants into advocates for whatever it was they were trialing A series of further trials found this phenomenon to be more or less

systematic, and the research team call the term “The Hawthorne Effect” to describe the goodwill and advocacy that research trials generate among research participants Studying the Hawthorne Effect will also help us in conducting connected marketing campaign

1.2 Types of Connected Marketing

1.2.1 Word of mouth marketing

There exists a reality, maybe, from the beginning age of goods exchange that people often purchase what they see, listen and follow from the others’ behavior, suggestion It is very easily to understand According to the theory of behavior of Maslow, people have five levels of demand Out of them, it is the demand of safety Imitating the others’ behavior or trying something the others use, it seems likely

safer than trying with a strange thing In a broaden extent, we say “schooling behavior” or “herd behavior” It can be understood more deeply when viewing Vietnamese stock market in recent years People do not respond to the seller, the company … but respond to what they hear from other independent sources A survey brings an useful information: average person has 11 to 12 intimate contacts,

150 social contacts and from 500 to 1,500 weak ties So, the only true currency in this world is what individuals share with someone else There is a large body of research shows that people gather information from marketing materials, experts, famous people, professional magazines … then talk it over with their friends They buy in response to what other people say about the product In fact, “the world of marketing really revolves around word of mouth” – George Silverman, President and Founder of Market Navigation, Inc One talk, people listen Then they talk it over with their friends, family and trusted advisors Then they purchase, but not before talking about the product So getting people to talk often, favorably, to the right people in the right way about a brand or a product is by far the most important thing that a marketer has to do

The open library Wikipedia defines: “Word of mouth is a reference to the passing of information from person to person Originally the term referred

includes any type of human communication, such as face-to-face, telephone, email and text messaging”

Word of mouth Marketing is techniques to improve communication between people to people (in this scope, it relates information sender and information receiver) that receiver comprehends information about a trademark or a product, service non-commercially

According to George Silverman, President and Founder of Market

Navigation Inc., “Word- of- mouth Marketing is communication about products and

services between people who are perceived to be independent of the company

providing the product or service, in a medium perceived to be independent of the company” [59]

Word of mouth marketing is not only non-commercially but also very effective A named MediaEdge survey of over 10,000 was conducted by Consulting Company CIA in 2004 showed that 76% out of participants consider word of mouth reference as main factor affecting their buying decision and only 15% of them like traditional advertising According to a research of Koen Pauwels, business school of Dartmouth, Word of mouth generates the twenty - time efficiency in comparison with traditional marketing such as printed newspaper and television Besides that, this research also affirmed that social relationship in society brings in thirty-time efficiency in comparison with other marketing events In a study of Havard Business School, we find out some facts: 91% likely to buy on recommendation, 92% prefer WOM recommendation The author also comes across a law of few: 10% of influence purchasing behavior of other 90% Therefore, word of mouth marketing is nothing different from marketing attempts to make C2C (customer-to-customer) conversation

Figure 1.2: Ordering Icecards process Source: Icemedia Company

The principle of Word of mouth is that there are no ads or no seller can make customers believe in advantage of a product more credibly than a friend, a relative, old customer or an independent expert Suppose that a person are intending to purchase a laptop and he has seen ads of Palm, HP and Sony; even that he saw them

at laptop supermarket and heard many information from seller, he has not still decided to take it Then a friend told him about a Palm laptop and how this friend changed his life or he read information on a famous newspaper about the examination about it Immediately, it affected this person and he decided to take one Palm

Philip Kotler said that “word- of- mouth marketing is developing naturally base on Internet development and mobile phone, it is more credible than advertising

Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden, authors of the book “Connected Marketing, The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution” gave us a useful summary of an early research on word of mouth offered the following definition:

“Oral, person-to-person communication between a receiver and a communicator whom the receiver perceives as non-commercial, concerning a brand, a product or a service” [30]

In the other word, let’s say, word of mouth marketing is marketing techniques making people become natural brand advocates It is the actual sharing

of an opinion about a product or service between two or more consumers In word

of mouth marketing, finding out right people (the influencer of community) and giving them necessary information about a product/service are very important They are called Leading Opinion who attracts many fans or gets much interest from a community Their concerns about anything immediately pick up many attentions from the others

1.2.2 Buzz marketing

In order to understand exactly what buzz marketing is, it’s useful to break the term down and here the author borrows some definitions Longman dictionary of contemporary English defines:

Buzz (v): 1 Make a sound, to make a continuous sound like the sound of a bee; 2 Move around, to move quickly and busily around a place; 3 Excitement, if a place or a group of people is buzzing, people are making a lot of noise because they are excited [50]

Buzz (n): 1 a strong feeling of excitement, pleasure or success; 2 unofficial

So, buzz marketing means making marketing attempts to create “buzz” around a product, service or brand … Buzz here like positive rumors, echoes or comments

Justin Foxton, Founding Partner and CEO of Comment UK in his book of

connected marketing has had a definition of live buzz marketing as following: “A

marketing technique that makes use of an actual event or performance to create word of mouth” [45]

Thomas Jr, Greg (2006), author of "Building the buzz in the hive mind" in

Journal of Consumer Behaviour : “Marketing buzz or simply buzz is a term used in

word-of-mouth marketing The interaction of consumers and users of a product or service serves to amplify the original marketing message.” [60]

Emakina, a leading independent Belgian web agency, suggests about this

term as following: Buzz marketing is “excitement Buildup via Word of Mouth” The

objective is “a type of PR whereby you engage in either publicity stunts or plant content (Blogs, articles, message board postings) hoping to get a "buzz" generated about your brand.”

Figure 1.3: The comparison between Buzz marketing and Traditional marketing [67]

The marketing pattern here is let outsiders say, instead of you The author realize that rumor will be triggered out when it is worth to make people transfer the information Buzz marketing takes a role of creating people excitement to tell to others about their memorable and good experiences Buzz marketing appears mostly

in offline patterns and simultaneously or immediately initiated by e.g online campaign So, it can be implemented in the form of an event, an entertainment, an exciting activity, shock advertising, big exclusive panels, sexy ads or taboo clips … that generates publicity, excitement, controversy and information to people However, it requires great product or service

Buzz marketing is often used as part of the "seeding" campaign to help get the word out about a new viral ad” It is known that if buzz is done right, people will write about it, so it essentially becomes a great PR vehicle Marketing executive has to give people a reason to talk about our brand Therefore, an effective buzz marketing campaign will create an effect of an epidemic, we can say

as “everywhere you go, you hear people talking about it"

The power of buzz marketing may be included in the statement of Philip

2007 as: “ Buzz marketing is a really vehicle that marketers can use to increase the popularity, the hormone about some information of product and service”.

Marketers have many tactics to implement buzz marketing And then the conservation among community starts Taking some buzz marketing activities from past company, we recruit 6 main signs of buzz:

- The taboo (sex, lies, bathroom humor)

2007 has made “buzz” conversation Basing on consumers’ expectation on a perfect product similar to Ipod Mp3, Apple has stimulated the demand of the market up to maximum with a hope of owning the most excellent mobile phone having perfect characteristics Marketers of Apple revealed some important information about the product for several important influencers who would transfer information for others The curiousness has helped word of mouth trigger out and brought very amazing results

Some other examples: Vinh Hao pure water has a slogan: “Why do you have

to drink pure water by the price of mineral water?” X-Men shampoo: “If loving your husband, give him his own shampoo” Tiger beer with a promotion program printed under the bottle’s cover: “Disputing the official owner of Land Cruiser” Benetton Fashion in America has posters with an image of a parish priest embracing and kissing a girl, a white baby nursing absorbedly at a black mother’s breast, a girl being hopeless of AIDS…

1.2.3 Viral marketing

The term “Viral Marketing” was first mentioned by Professor Jeffrey F Rayport at Harvard School of Business on December 1996 on an article of Fast Company Magazine, named “The Virus of Marketing” Then, this term has been disseminated widely by Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson, founders of Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 The venture capitalist company, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) financed the first free e-mail service Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith of Java Soft Incorporation approached DFJ with the idea and Tim Draper suggested adding an advertising message at the bottom of each outgoing Hotmail Each sent free Hotmail message spurred the receiver of such a message to

In 1997 Hotmail reached ten million users Microsoft bought Hotmail for $400 million that same year [61] Jurvetson and Draper defined viral marketing as

e-mail at Hote-mail”, at the bottom of every sent e-e-mail, was not constrained locally since the users connected with other Web users outside their hometown Hotmail spread at first nation wide, then world wide making Hotmail the single most

Hotmail was a mere $50.000 Within 18 months, 12 million users became subscribers, an unheard of record The innovators of Hotmail were equally surprised with the rapid spread

When the author uses the word viral (adj) or virus (n) in marketing, the author aims that it has a large, large scope of transferring The author can imagine it

as an epidemic with a very swiftly speed of spreading

According to Wikipedia, “viral refer to marketing techniques that use existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to market or sell analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses”

pre-Brice Le Blévennec, President of Emakina web agency commented on the term of viral marketing as: “An attempt to deliver a marketing message that spreads

quickly and exponentially among consumers Contrary to alarmists' fear, viral isn't evil It is not dishonest or unnatural At its best, it is word of mouth enabled, and at its worst, it is just another interruptive marketing message”

Dr Ralph F Wilson – one of the famous online marketing authors in the

world stated: “Viral Marketing describes any strategy of encouraging an individual

to spread a marketing content and ad to others, creating an exponential potentiality

of development This exponential increase and spreading message are critical factors of these definitions”.

Some people say that viral marketing is any marketing activity aimed to increase and magnifying the rumor in digital environment

The author can understand that viral marketing is online promotional campaigns that hopefully spread "like a virus." One minute nobody has heard of it, next minute, it is everywhere Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly breaks down If successful, it spreads like a “virus” and grows exponentially

Studies figured out some critical factors If we show the speed of increasing number of people receiving information through viral marketing as a line, it will be likely to forward and amounts of friends will forward the message They also reveal that 25% of people sometimes forward messages and 75% never does – this is the group the author considers deeply And the exponential growth-rate: likeliness to forward * number of destines > 1

Examples [58]:

– 25% * 4 friends = 1 = status quo effect

– 10% * 8 friends = 0, 8 = no exponential

– 15% * 10 friends = 1.5 = exponential effect

– 5% * 20 friends = 0.8 = not exponential

When the author mentions this concept, I refer to a marketing method based

on the technology of mobile phone and Internet Marketers often use some vehicles

as following to apply on viral marketing, branded material, websites, blogs, advergames, interactive flash, ebooks, widgets, bligets, videos, utilities, collaboration tools, etc that generate spread

An online survey revealed the following reasons to forward:

1 Make people laugh

2 Recommend something

3 Competition (joins or helps you win)

4 Earn you some money / reduction

5 Call for charity, noble cause

A “viral” product often includes the following factors:

1 The product must have a true value to the sender as well as the receiver Uninteresting information is not passed on The content of the product can be a service, a game, entertainment, greeting cards, monetary incentive, sweepstake etc

2 The service or product is free

3 The product is easily reproducible

4 The product or service is exclusively distributed over the Internet

In conclusion, when organization has a passionate fan base for a brand, the Internet is especially vital for going viral The key is communicating to a small but powerful group of fans first online to enlist their support is a smart way to ensure positive coverage in the mainstream press The power of the Internet makes it easier for people to fall in love with us faster But we have to be conscious—it also makes

it easier for them to fall out of love with us faster It’s a double-edged sword

From analyzing three types of Connected marketing, the author concludes that word of mouth focuses on person to person communication about a brand, product or service, whereas buzz marketing widen the role of mass media in creating excitement buildup on product, service or brand and viral marketing focuses on transforming the information through online world (internet, weblog, instant message, web review, RSS, social network …) Making a connected marketing plan needs combine above three types to get highest efficiency.

1.3 The power of Connected marketing in digital age

1.3.1 Widely connection between the company/organization and customer

A connected marketing plan in digital age as nowadays makes the full use of Internet and interactive technology in mobilephone such as SMS, Bluetooth, Web

so the market penetration becomes easier The number of target customer it can access is much higher At the average level, an individual will transfer the information he/she know to 12 – 14 others whereas the influencer (or Opinion leader) can affect 10-20 times vs a normal person The propagation is unlike an epidemic caused by a kind of “online virus” Because the connected marketing term includes three types (word of mouth marketing, buzz marketing and viral marketing), so it is conducted by both offline marketing activities (word of mouth, excitement build up) and online marketing activities (viral via embedded link location, social online network, “digg” or “like” action …) The cover of internet is global; hence the effect of connected marketing will be very large if it is done correctly

1.3.2 Building customer’s trust

In the booming age as now, customers face with huge amount of information They become more difficult to select information And much of them don’t believe in what they get from Internet Therefore, they tend to find out believable source such as famous websites, trusted web pages, famous people,

family, friends, colleges, experts … When they read information from these sources, they will send or share it for their friends, family, colleges or update for their fan in social online network Much of them will consult with their trust sources Connected marketing explores this characteristic to select the suitable influencer or opinion leaders Opinion leaders surround them a huge number of fans, friends and their ideas often heavily affect on the peers They are people who lead public opinion, share information about what they know about an upcoming event, a new product, service and especially share their experiences about the product, service They are also the company’s target customers The message from opinion leader has strong effect on the others that generates the faith of the other customers on the product, service Amongst thousands of message that customers receive daily, which of them gets the interest and then establish the customer’s trust meaning that it promotes its marketing role.

On the other word, in Connected marketing theory, customers not only share the information but also their faith

1.3.3 Cutting marketing cost

Previously, marketers have used Television, radio, print papers, magazine, newspaper, leaflets … to communicate messages about product/service We all know that companies have to give out tremendous amount of money for those marketing costs And how we know how many people receive their message? Out

of them, how many people are really interested in and target customers of the company/organization? If the result is 10 -20% of receivers who are target customer, it means that 80-90% of communication cost which is actually inefficient How Connected marketing deal with this problem? Through information channel to investigate the customer, marketers have a database set on target customer divided into age, gender, interest … Many websites require information on membership with visitors so easily to statistic these figures When customers want to know more about product/service, they will share together, post comments on forum, social

online networks The company can quietly choose the suitable websites, form or social network to access their target customer For example, the website http://ttvnol.com is a large social online network, much of members and visitors are young people The website is divided into many forums that cover many fields that the young people take interest such as: Science, Education, Entertainment, Vietnam ICT, Sport, Economic, Club with 108642 members (on 4th August 2010) and above

3000 daily online visitors Therefore, broadcasting message via online channel will generate suitability and efficiency because it narrows and focuses on right people with right message Besides that, using communication tool in digital age such as email, instant message, ebook, banner, RSS, widget … with low cost really attract marketers

1.3.4 Measuring communication result

In traditional marketing, marketers find hard to measure exactly how many people read a commercial ads on newspaper, watch TV ads, listen to radio ad … However in digital age, Connected marketing can measure the number exactly and quickly Technical tools such as Visit, Click, Page view, Impression, Cost per mile, Bounce rate, Time on site ….help marketers total up and control communication efficiency Marketers now can know how many visitors on a video clip, on website,

on every web page and how many people link to other website, reading time and activities on webpage and share their friend the information…

1.4 Marketing model

1.4.1 Ways of transferring information

Previously, people transferred and received information mainly by face to face However, in digital life now, human’s communication habit has changed dramatically We not only directly communicate together but also via online, Internet, websites, social online networks From that changed habit, companies/organizations’ target customers receive thousands of information about

different products and services per day Selecting information and making decision

of purchasing has become more and more difficult Hence, how does the big change

in communication habit affect on marketing activities of business and organization?

Figure 1.4: Ways of transferring and receiving information before and now

It seems more easily to transfer advertising information from companies, organization to consumers in previous time Getting trust in products and service of consumer is also easier Companies or marketing agency use many media channel such as: advertising, radio, television, public relation, word of mouth marketing Messages transferred are likely to be used to advertise for product and service Traditional marketing uses direct marketing methods like direct selling, advertisement, telecom, radio, television, films, and books, street selling … The method of transferring information in traditional way also makes the marketing model more simply

Online

Social network

InternetWebsite

Ways of transferring and receiving information

now

Face to face

Face to face

Hard to select information, require credible source

1.4.2 Marketing model

* Traditional marketing model

The traditional marketing model is very simple, mainly from the company to target customer but very waste of money

Figure 1.5: Traditional marketing modelRecently, this old model has no longer showed its efficiency The numbers

we collect from various data sources of US companies figure out some truths about marketing [62]

 18%: Proportion of TV advertising campaigns generating positive ROI

 54 cents: Average return in sales for every $1 spent on advertising

 256%: The increase in TV advertising costs (CPM) in the past decade

 84%: Proportion of B2B marketing campaigns resulting in falling sales

 100%: The increase needed in advertising spend to add 1–2% in sales

 14%: Proportion of people who trust advertising information

 90%: Proportion of people who can skip TV ads who do skip TV ads

 80%: Market share of video recorders with ad skipping technology in 2008

 95%: The failure rate for new product introductions

 117: The number of prime time TV spots in 2002 needed to reach 80% of adult population – up from just 3 in 1965

Message to transferAdvertising about product/service

Company or

organization Advertisemen

TargetCustomerMedia Methods

 3000: Number of advertising messages people are exposed to per day

 56%: Proportion of people who avoid buying products from companies who they think advertise too much

 65%: Proportion of people who believe that they are constantly bombarded with too much advertising

 69%: Proportion of people interested in technology or devices that would enable them to skip or block advertising

* Connected marketing model:

In the booming age of information as these days whether the traditional marketing model is the most suitable way to practice any more or not? Why should

we change the marketing behavior to practice? The following sentence is very short and credible statement but it shows that the currently marketing model is quite

different, it is a new trend to practice: “The traditional marketing model we all grew

up with is obsolete”- Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer, Procter & Gamble,

mass media advertising, are not working anymore A century ago, the founder of consumer packaged goods giant Unilever, Lord Leverhulme, lamented: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; I just don’t know which half.” Today, if a company manages to waste only half of its advertising budget then quite likely it is doing better than many of its competitors

The marketing model base on this concept now is presented by this figure:

Figure 1.6: The connected marketing model

In this marketing model, there are many methods as well as tactics to transfer the information from company to target customer The way of transferring marketing method is more complicated than the traditional marketing model Firstly, the company or organization base on selling points (outstanding factors) which include new, better, unique factors to select ways to transfer The method may be both advertising and relationship or one of two method Next step, they will combine the effect of connected marketing concept (Viral, WOMM, Buzz marketing) to create tactics The target customer will receive information in the highest effect manner

1.5 The process to practice a Connected Marketing Campaign

1.5.1 Customer investigation and choosing Opinion leaders (OL)

Customer investigation

Firstly, basing on specific characteristics of product/service, company/organization will drive its target customers Through information sharing channels of target customers, the author builds up database of them including: age, sex, habit, and hobby, what they’re interested in product/service And via those channel, company/organization will find out from target customers who will send

information positively to crowds and their thought, idea will have impact on the rest’s thought, behavior, and assessment They are Opinion Leaders – who can drive public opinion.

Choosing Opinion leaders

“Simply by finding and reaching those few special people who hold so much social power, we can shape the course of social epidemics Look at the world around you With the slightest push – in the right place – it can be tipped ”

According to the research “Law of the Few”, was first produced in a 1940 landmark study on media influence conducted by Columbia University that mass-media messages do not directly influence the mass market but instead influence a small minority of individuals who then influence their peers through word of mouth The discovery has found that the opinions of an opinion-leading 10% do indeed tend to shape the opinions and purchases of the opinion-following 90%

Opinion leaders are simply defined as target buyers who frequently offer or are elicited for category-related advice by their peers, can include high-profile industry experts, journalists, famous people, media celebrities, hot bloggers However, the vast majority of opinion leaders in any target market are simply regular clients, customers, or consumers who are respected by their peers They have a large network of relationship; usually connect with many people and their idea effect on public opinion

When receiving information, normal one will send to 17 people in average, while Opinion Leaders will send to the amount of 10-20 times Beside that, they can build up their individual prestige in a group or a community In their community, they usually act as an advisor for their peers Information they transfer will be under the form of advice, experience sharing, individual life, individual thinking which are highly persuasive to the peers in their community The members in the community tends to talk about product/service in accordance with or around which opinion leaders are interested in and bring out Not only stopping at the point of

transferring information, driving public opinion Opinion leaders also expose information which is simulative, dynamical Thus, the influence of opinion leaders derives not from media appearances but from what sociometricians call “network centrality” – they are word of mouth hubs, who connect everybody to everybody, and in doing so connect businesses to their target markets

How to find opinion leaders in your target market

To identify the opinion-leading 10% who drive sales in your target market, a number of practical solutions have been developed: “self-designation”,

“professional activity”, “digital trace”, “key informants” and “sociometry”

1 Self-designation: Asking existing or prospective buyers to fill out a short self-completion questionnaire that screens them for opinion leadership status For example, Procter & Gamble use a self-designation questionnaire on their website at www.tremor.com to recruit opinion leading teens into seeding trials Although this technique is open to self-reporting bias (people tend to overestimate their opinion leadership), it has been validated and found to be reliable

2 Professional activity: Using the job title of target clients, customers, or consumers as an indicator of opinion leadership status Jobs that suggest category involvement, a capacity to spread the word and to influence peers by word of mouth are predictive of opinion leader status For example, just as 3M identified secretaries to CEOs as opinion leaders in office stationary products, Ford identified opinion leaders for its new Focus model as PAs to celebrities Although this approach may be less scientific than the self designation approach, it is a quick, easy and cost-effective solution to identifying opinion leaders

3 Digital trace: Identifying opinion leaders through an online search on category-relevant blogs, websites, discussion lists, newsgroups and web forums For example, Siemens mobile identified opinion leaders to participate in a seeding trial

of one of its new phones using an Internet search of popular online user review forums In an era where opinions are increasingly shared online, the digital trace left

by that activity provides businesses with a fast and smart method for opinion leader identification.

4 Key informants: Asking a limited number of people assumed to be knowledgeable about the patterns of word of mouth influence that they would designate as opinion leaders Although this technique is ideally suited to identifying opinion leaders in small markets or in individual organizations, it was used by games manufacturer Hasbro to identify young opinion leaders for its handheld electronic game POX, in 2001 Market researchers headed off to video arcades, skate parks and playgrounds and went up to young boys aged 8–13 asking ‘Who’s the coolest kid you know?’ When they got a name from the young ‘informant’, the researchers went in search of this cool kid to ask him the same question, in order to continue up the local hierarchy of kid-cool until someone finally answered ‘Me!’ Once they had identified an opinion leader, the researchers invited the ‘Alpha Pup’(as they called them) to participate in an exclusive seeding trial for which they would be rewarded with 10 new pre-release POX units to share with friends

5 Sociometry: Actually mapping the patterns of word of mouth influence in

a target market in order to identify hubs of influence Costly and time intensive, the use of sociometric techniques is mostly limited to mapping influence networks in organizations for change management purposes

1.5.2 Creating transferred messages

Opinion leaders are very prestigious in the community, likely to drive public opinion However if the information which are transferred by opinion leader is not righteous or widely taken care of the community, it will not create any waves of information anymore

So, the most important thing is the content transferred – high quality or honest The information they bring out will be expanded quickly due to the prestige they establish among the community day to day The information has to be credible,

other wise it cannot be sent during a very short time By that way, the information will be more and more existent in the form of word of mouth

Secondly, the content of the messages must be consistent during the transferring process Opinion leaders bring out some information about the product, service to different objects by different expressions However the content of the messages requires the consistence that all of them in any way will understand the same meaning, the same messages If not, the receiver will misunderstand and incorrectly transfer the messages about product, service It reduces to opposite effect in a Connect marketing campaign

Thirdly, the content of the massage shows the selling points – what will be charming to customers Selling point includes some specific characteristics including: new, better, unique Different groups will differ from each others in the form of habit, time, opinion, comprehension, community, living style, hobby Hence, to make a better picture for the transferring information, it is essential to build up the content suitable for each object group Selling point is the key for the content It will reveal the secret for the innovation of messages And to point out important selling points, we should base on the survey on the receiver group

Lastly, the content transferred is selective Not much, not less is the best one

If overloading of information, the receiver cannot remember all, if lack of information, the receiver cannot understand about the messages The transferring process needs to keep the outstanding point of the product, service It will leave the impression on the mindset of target customer and create the topic to discuss among the community, and then affect positively on the sales

seeding trial, the brand provides potential opinion leaders with the product for free, aiming to gain valuable pre-market feedback and also to build support among the testers, creating influential word-of-mouth advocates for the product By involving the opinion leaders as testers, effectively inviting them to be an extension of the marketing department, companies can create "a powerful sense of ownership among the clients, customers or consumers that count" by offering engaging the testers in a

enable businesses to connect and collaborate with opinion leaders, market with them, rather than at them And by creating a volunteer sales force, seeding trials are

a scalable, predictable and measurable solution for driving the one thing known to drive business growth: word of mouth advocacy

To conduct a connected marketing plan successfully, we have to follow these principles:

* The right product “Right product” means that it is new, better and

unique The Hawthorne Effect theory showed the fact that by participating in an exclusive trial, participants felt valued, special and important Opinion leader is the most typical evidence They are always people leading in new, special, worthy, updated things Therefore, the product in connected marketing must be new, better and unique The opinion leader has to have something to say in his/her community New and better do not mean the product or service has to be groundbreaking, outrageous, or revolutionary for seeding trials to optimize a product launch – some

of the most successful seeding trials have involved frozen pizza, canned soda and bath soap What you do need however is a unique selling point that clients, customers and consumers can articulate to each other

* The right people: “Right people” means that the company/organization

has to find out the target customer and who will be influencers of them Remind that opinion leaders are also target customer Identifying them by a brainstorming session to generate a list of people in target market is very essential for a successful connected marketing campaign Think in term of individual profile – jobs, place of

work, leisure activities and club membership – and in terms of networks – what are the big and visible organizational and social networks in the target market, such as employers, associations, interest groups, etc.? The important thing is to be creative, and non- stop at the usual suspects when looking for opinion-leading target buyers: experts, celebrities, journalists, bloggers and reviewers The other object can be effective word of mouth hubs in the company’s market, for example: club secretaries, beauty therapists, health and fitness instructors, bar staff and hairdressers are popular choices for seeding consumer goods Investors, employees and satisfied clients, customers or consumers can also make for opinion-leading advocates because they have product experience or a stake in the success.

Besides that we have to determine how many opinion leaders are enough for

a connected marketing campaign or whether we are seeding to enough opinion

leaders or not Opinion leaders make up 10% of your target market, and successful seeding trials will seed up to 10% of these opinion leaders, i.e up to 1% of the entire target market Seeding trials on such a scale may be prohibitively expensive, especially in the consumer packaged goods markets, but a minimum critical mass of Hawthorne-Effect is a must to enhance opinion leaders advocating the product or service for an appreciable sales uplift Justin Kirby and Paul Masden showed that:

“While this number will vary according to the size of your market, a useful rule of thumb is to seed to a minimum of 250 opinion leaders per major urban centre.”

* The right action: “Right action” in Seeding trial program means that

marketers have to deal with OLs and then increase the word of mouth

First of all, marketers should know how to get the product or service into OLs’ hands as cost-effectively as possible Downloading via the Internet, by post,

by courier, by hand, or by pick-up from a convenient location such as a store, hotel,

or mall are common way But the most cost-effective and logistically simple approach is crying for advice on what OLs would recommend

Secondly, it is a must for seeding trial work best that it enables OLs to get their hands on new products and services first – before everyone else As the next

result, marketer can get the word of mouth effect base on the network that OLs create by chance It is what we call “get it first” The more trial participants feel like VIPs, with exclusive and priority access to what we have to offer, the more they will advocate Then, think of participants as the means to getting more clients, customers, or consumers There are many things we can seed that make OLs spread the information are discounts, vouchers, promotional gifts, branded merchandise, or special invitations to share with friends, or even further samples to hand out.

Thirdly, we should give the OLs the chances to have a say in our marketing

It will be simple online vote on options a campaign poster, logo, display stand, advertising concept or promotion, even the packaging and design of the product or service itself For example, the Australian beer Blowfly was built ground-up by research participants through online voting – on all aspects of the product ranging from bottle design to brand logo The key is to keep everything as simple as possible in order to minimize the work for the trial participants The goal is to make opinion leaders feel they have contributed to our innovation or how it is marketed – without them having to do anything more than a couple of mouse clicks, which is why simple voting between options works better than lengthy discussions, questionnaires, or surveys

feel like “insiders”, they have the “inside story” or something like “behind the scenes” experience, insider guides, gossip or stories, privileged access to company’s discussions, blogs or marketing materials Some companies, such as Unilever, go so far as to print personal branded contact cards for seeding trial participants to reinforce the impression that they are indeed insiders

* Measurement: Ultimately, we have to measure the efficiency that a

seeding trial program brings in We have to know where the trial is not run Measuring offline-sales requires us measure differential sales performance For measuring the effect on online sales it might need to provide trial participants with a pass-it-on promotional discount code to forward to friends, who forward it to

friends, etc., enabling us to track the number of online sales the seeding trial generates Some websites provide us the technical tools to find out the statistic on number of visitors on each page, column, web traffic ….

1.5.4 Spreading a Connected Marketing Campaign

1.5.4.1 Transferring information principles

Honesty is the most important principle in transferring information through OLs Honesty in this process means honesty in providing information for OLs, sending information for community by them

Don’t use money to pay for OLs’ transferring information or any word of mouth action Even though the content of word of mouth communication is commercial, the communicators are not motivated commercially, or at least they are perceived not to be They don’t talk about brands because they are employees of the company, or receive any incentives from it They talk at their own will It’s important to emphasize that this principle is phrased in perceptual terms It’s enough that the communicator is perceived to be unbiased – he/she does not necessarily have to be so In this case, perception about the messages is reality

OLs are who first to try, touch and check new products, service (ahead in the diffusion of innovations’ curve) and sometimes (but not necessarily) talking about these products Then OLs contribute ideas for the developing process of product/service When he/she participates in this process, real and first feeling will trigger the Hawthorne effect that makes the OLs inspiration to talk about the product/service to other peers Besides that, OLs are also target customers Their feeling, behavior will help the company/organization know more about customers’ feedback to finalize products/services

Method of transferring information via Opinion Leaders

Figure 1.7: Models of media influence [47]

A Connected Marketing campaign uses some factors such as: surprising, humor, excitement, curiousness These

products/services that are being promoted become topics to be discussed and these ones stimulate community to share

By that way, they put selling points imprinted in target customers’ mindset and create hot topics to be talked about Then, the products/services are more and more paid attention to and these behaviors are positive, sales will be highly promoted Connected Marketing Campaign uses media channel including Viral Marketing, Word- of- mouth Marketing and Buzz Marketing

1.5.4.2 Method of transferring information

* In Viral Marketing: Marketers use many different ways to create a Viral

Marketing Campaign Messages are sent under many forms such as offline messages, email, e-cards or ebook, blogs; or a contest, a song or first sent from a website, even interactive games

Yahoo Messager: This is the simplest and most popular of Viral Marketing

in which the information is interested enough that make receivers want to send to their frendlist

Email: with a small “P.S” message makes receivers should forward to their

friends or access the product/service For example, in the case of Hot mail (1996):

“Get your free email at Hotmail”

Ecards: often used in special holiday or anniversary such as Tet holiday,

Independent day, Woman day…For example: Hakuhodo Inc with Tet holiday ecards

Blog: stimulate public opinion to discuss and created spreading effect on

Internet For example: Blog of Coca Cola chose 9 hot bloggers, customizing their

websites with the purpose of advertising and gave them mini refrigerators.

Websites and forums: in these channels, we can create conservation among

customers For example: MobiFone was the unique sponsor for "Rock Storm 2009" Vnrock.com is a website of Vietnamese rock lover that Mobifone created Cost paid for communication campaign on this number one website on roack in Vietnam is very very low From this website, Viet Rock lovers spreaded many images, topics

on many website such as photobucket.com, flickr.com, xomnhiepanh.com, vinaanh.com, picasaweb.google.com), forums on rock, websites on music (vnrock.com, rockpassion.vn, rockviet.com.vn, hehemetal.com, yeuamnhac.com, ttvnol.com, rocktn.com), video clip on social networks (clip.vn, tamtay.vn, youtube.com)

An online contest: Spreading effect maybe created via a contest For

example, “I different” on the website kenh14.vn which was hold to advertise the BBA program of Education and Technology Center, VNU – GaBBA And GaBBA plays the role as the sponsor for the contest “I different” is a contest on fashion field for the young born from 1992 – 1987 The participants will be grouped in 4 talented groups: Manager, Stylist, Photographer and Model The main pattern of the contest is under the form of voting and the message about GaBBA would be transferred through each message that audiences voted

* In Word- of- mouth Marketing

Word- of- mouth Marketing emphasizes on traditional communication method from person – to – person Method of transferring information in Word- of- mouth Marketing is direct communication through interesting topics In fact, word

of mouth behavior is very natural of customer, they believe in rumor news So, to