IMC-PLAN

Lotus social networkwas researched and developed by VCCorp in the last year with the desire to bring a socialnetwork for Vietnamese people..  Analyzing the reason, there is an opinion t

MINISTRY OF FINANCE

THE UNIVERSITY OF FINANCE AND MARKETING

FINAL REPORT

Major: Intergrated Marketing Communications

Subject: International Marketing

Teacher:

Group 4 Member: Le Hoang Phuong Loan

Tran Quang Vinh Duong Kim Phuong Nguyen Hoang Thuc Doan

Tran Tuyet Nhi

Vu Le Minh Phuong

Le Binh Phuong Trang Bui Thi Xuan Nga

Table of Contents

1 Excutive sumarry 3

2 Introduction 4

3 Vietnamese Social Media market 6

4 Lotus Target Market 8

5 SWOT Analysis 9

6 CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 10

7 CREATIVE STRATEGY 11

8 Communications Mix 11

9 Recommended Campaign 15

10 Media Strategy 15

11 Timing and budgets 16

12 Post campaign Testing 17

13 Summary 21

14 Appendix 22

1 EXCUTIVE SUMARRY

Lotus is a new cross-platform social network released by VCCorp Lotus social networkwas researched and developed by VCCorp in the last year with the desire to bring a socialnetwork for Vietnamese people Visit Lotus now and get ready to join the social networkdeveloped by Vietnamese people

What isLotus

means?

 Analyzing the reason, there is an opinion that Lotus is a social network owned byVietnamese and for Vietnamese people Perhaps this is the reason why thedeveloper chose Lotus as a name What is more meaningful when the country'snational flower is used as a name for a social network full of spirit and desire forVietnam?

 In another analysis, the lotus always creates relaxation and peace for those around,also a symbol for what is most quintessential This is consistent with the feeling ofusers participating in a social network promoting positive values, quality content.Lotus was introduced to revolve around content and enhance the user experience

 This will be the reason why Lotus can create a positive and civilized space whereusers and creators can connect with each other with quality content

Lotus focuses on the main market segment, Y generation and Z generation Strategieswill use PR, advertising, direct mail, Internet will be the main means of communication.Currently, Lotus has just been launched using powerful communication strategies, buthas not received enthusiastic support from consumers Therefore, Lotus will plan morebreakthrough to win the trust of consumers

2 INTRODUCTION

The main feature of Lotus social network:

 Post photos as a photo thanks to the Photo Status feature

 Blog, Quote, take notes on social networks with Rich Media feature

 Express your feelings through Reaction

 The fastest news update with more than 50 leading newspapers in Vietnam

 Stay up to date with the latest news, weather forecasts, football rankings, goldrates, foreign exchange rates, gasoline prices through Trending News

 Only 1 minute can catch all the news thanks to the feature

 Watch news in Mutex Video format, help you stay informed in 1 minute

 Collaborate with more than 500 content creators and 30 political sources

 Buy and sell on Lotus Shopping, help interact directly with sellers, save products

of interest quickly

 Interact, cheer on your idol

 Stardom with content creation tools

 Lotus is the first social network in Vietnam However, the trend of Vietnamesepeople still does not believe in domestic products Therefore, communicationstrategy will focus on changing consumer tastes

3 VIETNAMESE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKET

In a population of about 96 million, 64 million Vietnamese are online, which adds up to aremarkable Internet penetration rate of 67%, according to the new 2018 Global Digitalsuite of reports from We Are Social and Hootsuite

57 million of them are active social media users, a penetration rate of 57% To put this inperspective there were 204,125 Vietnamese online in 2000 and nearly 21 million in justeight years

In 2017, Viet Nam catapulted into 7th place worldwide for the number of Facebookusers, surpassing Thailand and Turkey, with a 40% increase in six months

Besides Facebook, Vietnamese people are using other social network platforms butFacebook is still the major ones

Figure 1 Statistic of users per social network platform in VietNam

Since Facebook entered Vietnam in 2007, Vietnam has granted 300 licenses for domesticsocial networks by 2017, but very few of them are still active Very few of the made-in-Vietnam known social networks including Zing me, Yume.vn, Tamtay.vn (now closed),Zalo.vn and Go.vn survived more than a year The fate of the recently introduced Biztime

and Gapo remains uncertain, the local media quoted Nguyen Trung Kien, director ofInstitute of Information Technology and Communication, as saying After Biztime, Gapomade headlines with its debut in July 2019 with the ambition to attract 50 million usersafter three years However, its network crash right on the day of the launch, coupled withsome vague features such as sharing income for users based on views is shutting it down.Gapo is only available on smartphones while its web-based version has remainedinaccessible The latest made-in-Vietnam social network named Lotus by VCCorp withtotal investment of VND1,200 billion (US$51.6 million) has allowed beta downloadsfrom mid-September.

As we can see from the figure 1, Vietnamese citizens prefer using foreign social network

to local ones, this is because of some significant reasons:

·

Outstanding features of foreign social market

4 LOTUS TARGET MARKET

 Geographic:

Area: Vietnam and Vietnamese people who live abroad

Main target audience of Lotus:

Generation Y ( 1980 – 1994) Z ( 1995- 2010)

Demo Income Stable money flow Oscillation income

Occupation Employees, College

student Student,Student, EmployeesCollege

Behavioral Demanding official

news Communaholic

Self-express

Usage rate Frequently use social

network Fast pace of life,leading to mass

consumption

Concern Earn money

Knowledge EntertainmentFame

Lifestyle Workaholic

Resolute Esily catch and followthe trend

 Factual news and open creativity network: Lotus is cooperating with ample ofcontent creators, KOLs, specialists to create quality content on this socialnetwork, hence reducing fake news which is a pressing issue in this day and age.Lotus also have means to protect the identity of its users so that the contentcreators, communities from all fields can have the foundation to create contentsand strenghten their influnences on the Internet

 Strong foundation: Lotus social network is designed by users experience specialistand developed by more than 200 technology engineer of VCCorp in the fields ofmobile apps, AI, Big Data, …

 2019 is called “the year of made in Vietnam social networks”, with the emergence

of Hahalolo and Gapo which really catch the attention of Vietnamese people,Lotus can take advantage of the trend

 Vietnamese people are patriotic and with the quote : “ Vietnamese use Vietnameseproducts”, with the releasing of Lotus, it can gain the trust of Vietnamese users ifthe executions are done correctly.

6 CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES

Objectives exist on two levels: marketing and communication

Marketing objectives are the successful of bringing new user into Lotus with the number

of 4 million active Lotus user in the early stage

Marketing communication objectives:

 Educating people about the distinctions and beneficial features of Lotus in order tochange their behavior toward considering Lotus as an option beside existing socialnetworks

 Marketing communication activities should catch the attention of the target marketand spread the buzz

 Communications should:

 Reach 90% of target customer

 Coverage 70% of Vietnamese citizens

 Fluency: Every target customer of Lotus will see our advertises twice timesper day on ubiquitos social media such as Facebook, Instagram,…

7 CREATIVE STRATEGY

Lotus offers two distinct features which is not available on other competitors: positiveand factual news and Token These unique selling points should be emphasized in thecampaign The messages should be changed over time since Token is in the early stage ofdevelopment and need the time to have the influence In the early promotion, Lotus canconcentrate on the aspects of factual news and the positive energy to the users, whereaslater execution should focus more on the financial benefits of Token which it can changeinto coupon, gifts,etc

The appeal should be emotional, which highlights the fundamental factor which is thepositive energy Lotus can bring to its users In the context of existing social networks

with lots of clone account, fake news which create negative effects in the society, Lotus

is founded to combat the situation by offering factual and quality information to its userswhich can help them positively in their daily basis The campaign can emphasize the factthat Lotus has a system of AI which can be filter to eliminate the fake news,unappropriated information

8 COMMUNICATIONS MIX

Advertising:

To increase brand awareness, Lotus can put up billboards on electronic boards in the citycenter, at big roundabouts on the road, put up posters at the bus stop, run video clips ontelevision, organize press conferences, launch live on television

Youtuber is one of the most popular social networking tools in the world Lotus willpromote the use of this medium to communicate with the brand Lotus appears on adswith eye-catching effects creating places where customers can click and see the shine inthe lotus effect In addition, businesses will make short promotional clips within 10 to 20seconds of advertising at the top of the YouTube homepage In order not to makeconsumers feel time consuming when viewing ads

Lotus will not miss any opportunity to bring the product to the whole country Lotus willcorporate with the cinema, namely CGV Lotus media in waiting time for movies incinemas and in addition, after movie tickets will be lotus's incentives when consumersuse the product

Public Relations:

On September 16, 2019, Lotus held a premiere at the Viet Xo Palace exhibition This is aceremony to launch technology products with a monumental scale, 3D stageoverwhelmed unprecedented in Vietnam With an array of guests such as actors NinhDuong Lan Ngoc, players Quang Hai, runner-up Huyen My, runner-up Tu Anh, journalistMai Anh and many other actors and journalists, the launch was a great success andmonumental, marking the moment Lotus officially came into operation

Previously, Lotus also held many press conferences to introduce to Lotus users theoutstanding purposes and features that will be targeted and served to Vietnamese people.Lotus finds and addresses the large, unmet need in the market that's content Lotus alsoasserted that it does not beat anyone because the goal is different, but will compete withFacebook and Youtube for consumers' usage time

In the coming time, in order to increase the level of brand recognition and advertising,Lotus should create more activities with the public such as organizing direct meetings toinvite experts in the fields of education and business International, photography, storywriting, blog, lifestyle, entertainment, music sharing stories about their fields; Writingdaily inspirational stories on Lotus's exclusive column, the more stories of life shared, the

more attention will be drawn from readers Besides, sponsoring programs or events,setting up charities will also help Lotus bring the image closer to the community.

Direct marketing - Internet marketing

Because Lotus targets young customers with high creative thinking, the first step is to beable to spread the image of Lotus, encourage consumers to use Lotus applications, Lotusshould have incentive programs to give gifts directly to customers at school facilities,companies, clubs or cultural houses Those gifts are small gifts with the Lotus logoprinted on the message to customers such as keychains, hats, notebooks, etc

Besides, creating crowd effects is also a way for Lotus to promote its brand For example, when there are special events such as the recent Vietnamese football team

participating in the World Cup qualifiers, responding to the excitement of Vietnamese

fans across the country, Lotus should create appearances New, diverse interface suitablefor events to attract the attention of customers; or on holidays such as Christmas, NewYear, National Day, Halloween is also an opportunity for Lotus to change its appearance,creating special effects that are interesting to consumers

Online advertising channels are also an indispensable medium Lotus has done greatadvertising on social networking sites Facebook and YouTube In addition, in order toincrease the level of brand awareness and coverage, Lotus can invest in music videos of

singers, run ads on websites about life, health, beauty, etc to report on video gameapplications.

Sponsorship related to Public Relation, we sponsor for workshops, conferences whichhave content about the information in this generation and analogy

As a whole, we use predominantly Internet marketing to approach target audience,advertising will go through different stages to aware, educate and interest the targetaudience and then hopefully result in network sign up

 We want not only to increase the consumption of a particular product/service butalso create brand awareness among customers, not only look for new users butalso look after old ones by direct marketing (by email and Lotus network tocommunicate with user) to complete and develop our brand

10.MEDIA STRATEGY

Social network is a favourite medium because it has wide reach to users Young peoplewho are using others social network (Facebook, Instagram, ) is target Lotus has to

reach The volume of Facebook ads, for example, is not limited, the cost is reasonablealso This medium can reach a large number of Lotus’ target customers However, it isnot recommended to take too many advertisements on it.

PR activities will concentrate on target audience print publications by activities such asActivations at places that has high traffic (supermarket, university, building, )

Outdoor billboards should be placed in urban areas to reach the broad audience of users

at a low cost Besides, posters on car or bus/taxi will help audience receive message Placing these at busy junctions will make people familiar with the image of Lotus

Online newspapers is also a suitable medium There are many people read onlinenewspaper instead of traditional one Reputable online newspaper that post news aboutLotus will increase users’ belief, impulse them use on the first time

We use cinema as a medium to communicate with customers, too Because it can be saidthat the cinema’s target customer and the one of Lotus are the same

Radio advertising might be useful but we feel that radio will not be able to exert thenecessary impact to convince; Lotus should be visible to make sure the audienceunderstands that it is a convenience and eye-catching app

11.TIMING AND BUDGETS

Marketing communications should start before the product is actually launched, forlaunch activities to unfold their full potential Even long before that all departments thatcontribute to the product and communication will have to meet regularly to tune into anintegrated strategy