GreyReview.com » brand http://www.greyreview.com the eastern journal of technology and business Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:41:19 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Most Liked Asian Airline on Facebook, Surpasses 1 Million Fans mark http://www.greyreview.com/2011/06/01/the-most-liked-asian-airline-on-facebook-surpasses-1-million-fans-mark/ http://www.greyreview.com/2011/06/01/the-most-liked-asian-airline-on-facebook-surpasses-1-million-fans-mark/#comments Tue, 31 May 2011 19:24:54 +0000 LIM YUNG HUI http://www.greyreview.com/?p=11392 Asia’s largest low-cost airline AirAsia has recently surpassed the 1 million fans mark on Facebook. Globally, AirAsia is one of the world’s most famous airline brands on Facebook; it is only second to Southwest Airline, in terms of total fans. The US largest airline hit 1 million fans in December last year and today, its Facebook Page with over 1.4 million fans. Here are the Likes tally of some other airlines:

  • JetBlue Airways, US-based low-cost carrier, with over 494k fans.
  • Air France, touted the European airline with the highest number of fans on Facebook, with over 368k fans.
  • Malaysia Airlines, the national carrier of Malaysia, with over 311k fans.
  • Lufthansa, the German carrier, with over 208k fans.
  • Onur Air, the Turkish airline, with over 193k fans.
  • American Airlines, the world’s fourth-largest airline, with over 175k fans.
  • Firefly Airlines, budget airline based in Malaysia, with over 149k fans.
  • Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kong-based airline, with over 104k fans.
  • Garuda Indonesia, the national carrier of Indonesia, with over 100k fans.

The Runway to 1 Million

AirAsia started to leverage Facebook towards the end of 2008 and began to actively promote the Page in April 2009. By early 2009, its Page already has over 13,000 fans. Then, in the age of pre-Vanity URL, fans accessed the Page via URL www.new.facebook.com/pages/AirAsia/18801397386.

AirAsia Facebook Page circa 2009
AirAsia Facebook Page 2009

On December 09 2009, AirAsia became the first airline in the world to obtain over 100,000 Likes on Facebook. By September 15 2010, total fans on its Facebook Page exceeded 500,000 and reached 800,000 on December 29 2010.

By last Friday (May 27, 2011), Facebook Page of AirAsia exceed the 1 MILLION fans mark.

  • It took AirAsia roughly 12 months to reach 100,000 fans.
  • ..8.5 months to increase fivefold from 100,000 to 500,000.
  • ..8.5 months to double from 500,000 to 1,000,000.

AirAsia exceed 1 Million Fans

Here’s a peek at some of the metrics of the AirAsia’s Facebook Page:

  • Average daily Likes: 1,500 to 2,000 fans
  • Average daily active users: 150,000 fans
  • Average Wall posts per day: 60 – 80 posts (reaching over 600 posts a day during promotion / sales)
  • Average Page views a day: 5,000 to 8,000 (over 250,000 views a day during promotion / sales)

According to Karen Chan, Interactive Marketing Manager of AirAsia, the success of AirAsia on Facebook can be attributed to strong commitment and support from the top management, combined with diligent, enthusiastic efforts of its social media team.

AirAsia Facebook Page circa 2011

airasia facebook page 1 million 2011

AirAsia also has country-centric Facebook Pages to enable more localized engagements:

  • Indonesia
  • Thailand
  • Australia
  • India
  • Taiwan
  • Hong Kong
  • France
  • Singapore
  • United Kingdom
  • Philippines
  • New Zealand

The Most Liked Asian Airline on Facebook, Surpasses 1 Million Fans mark originally appeared on GreyReview.com on June 1, 2011.

]]> http://www.greyreview.com/2011/06/01/the-most-liked-asian-airline-on-facebook-surpasses-1-million-fans-mark/feed/ 0 Social Media and The Evolution Towards Simply Marketing http://www.greyreview.com/2009/03/17/social-media-and-the-evolution-towards-simply-marketing/ http://www.greyreview.com/2009/03/17/social-media-and-the-evolution-towards-simply-marketing/#comments Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:31:44 +0000 LIM YUNG HUI http://www.greyreview.com/?p=2929 When it comes to social media for marketing, different companies have different degree of adoption. This article is an attempt to shed some light on the path of social media adoption, in terms of sophistication in usage. The path can be segmented into five stages, as illustrated in the following diagram.

Evolution of Social Media

Stages Description
Silly Media The Age of Ignorance. At this stage, social media is a vague concept (“Surreal Media”) and perceived as hard to tame (“Scary Media”). Mainly, lack of knowledge and willingness to understand its application to business leads to various misperceptions and many think this is just another technology hype (and this too shall pass). However, the groundswell in social media usage among customers will likely to lower adoption resistance.
Spectator Media The Age of Silence. Companies begin to dip their toes into the social media streams. They setup presence on social networks BUT then, shut-up. The mindset here is ‘build and they will come”. Many still lock-in to traditional media mindset and treat social media as a medium for uni-lateral broadcast of marketing message. There is simply no overt and consistent efforts to build a community around its brands and actively nurturing a vibrant community to evangelize its brands.
Sponsored Media The Age of Sponsored Conversations. Probably, the first pro-active step towards engaging the social media community. Companies begin to engage influential voices in the social media ecosystem. Here, the control over marketing messages are slowly loosen. The idea is to lead credence to the product, gain brand exposure and hopefully, the message will go viral. Its a form of advertisements, disguised as conversations in social media universe.
Social Media The Age of Social Web. Here, things are getting fluid and dynamic. If sponsored media is countryside river rafting, social media is whitewater rafting. Getting into the act of direct conversations with the market and the medium becomes participatory. There’s a tectonic shifts from company-generated contents to user-generated contents. At this stage, companies are actively experimenting with various concepts to ‘socialize’ their brands. The ultimate aim is to engage customers creatively and encourage them to evangelize brands in the social web. However, at this stage, social media initiative is still isolated and remain within a silo in organization.
Simply Marketing The Age of Normalization. At this stage, social media becomes a widely accepted way of branding. Social media tools are perceived as just another tool in corporation’s branding arsenal. The concepts, ideas and technologies radically enrich company-market interfaces, as they become fully ingrained and embedded in marketing strategies and brand building infrastructure. Only then, we will see social media reaches its potential as the game-changer in the business world.

Let’s Continue the Discourse on Twitter

Social media is not an endgame but just a means to an end. It simply has be embedded within a company culture for it to realize its full potential. Do you agree with the above social media evolutionary path? At which stage is your company at now? Let’s chat on Twitter; find me @limyh.

Social Media and The Evolution Towards Simply Marketing originally appeared on GreyReview.com on March 17, 2009.

]]> http://www.greyreview.com/2009/03/17/social-media-and-the-evolution-towards-simply-marketing/feed/ 14 Social Media Marketing and Malaysia’s Biggest Brands http://www.greyreview.com/2008/10/20/social-media-marketing-and-malaysias-biggest-brands/ http://www.greyreview.com/2008/10/20/social-media-marketing-and-malaysias-biggest-brands/#comments Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:15:54 +0000 LIM YUNG HUI http://www.greyreview.com/?p=1044 Social technologies enable the creation of conversational platform for businesses to engage in richer interactions with customers. Traditional mass media lacks interactivity and information flow is dominantly unidirectional, from brand owners to consumer.

However, the new social media enables consumers to connect with one another and brand owners to co-create brand experience. Global corporations like Procter & Gamble, Dell, Coca Cola and many others are already adopting social media as part of their brand building infrastructure.

What about Malaysia’s biggest brands? Are they using social technologies? How are they using the conversational media to listen and interact with their customers?

To answer the questions, I’ve investigated social media plays of companies listed in Malaysia’s Most Valuable Brands (MMVB) 2007, created by the Malaysian Association of Accredited Advertising Agents, in collaboration with Interbrand. This exercise involves searching for the brand names in social networks (Facebook, Friendster, MySpace), video-sharing site (YouTube), online photo-sharing site (Flickr) and microblogging (Twitter, FriendFeed). The results are presented in the “Social-ize the Brands” table below.

Notes to the table:

  • “Rank” is the actual ranking in MMVB 2007.
  • Giant and Dutch Lady, which appeared in MMVB 2007, were omitted as both are non-Malaysian brands.
  • Only initiatives created by brand owners are considered to provide a better indication on the importance of social media marketing to the brand owners.
  • For more on how MMVB’s Brand Value is calculated, read here.

Social-ize the Brands: How Malaysia’s Most Valuable Brands are Embracing Social Media

Rank Brand Industry Brand Value, US$ Million Social Media Marketing
1 Maybank Financial 2,764 All You, All New Maybank2U.com Blog
2 Public Bank Financial 1,967 None
3 Maxis Telecoms 1,521 Maxis Facebook Group | Maxis Communications Facebook Fan | Hotlink Facebook Group
4 Genting Leisure 1,315 Genting City of Entertainment Facebook Group | Genting WorldCard Facebook Group
5 Celcom Telecoms 1,167 Celcom Facebook Fan
6 CIMB Financial 981 None
7 Astro Media 946 AstroTV on Twitter | StadiumAstro on Twitter | AstroFootball on Twitter | Stadium Astro Facebook Fan Page | Astro Chinese Programmes Channel on YouTube | Astromalaysia’s Channel on YouTube
8 Hong Leong Financial 888 Hong Leong Bank, HLLB Facebook Group
9 Perodua Automobile 700 Perusahaan Otomobil Kedua Sdn Bhd Facebook Fan
10 DiGi Telecoms 600 DiGi Facebook Group Page | DiGi Telecommunications Facebook Fan | DiGi’s Open Hearts Open Mind Program | DiGi D’podCast | DiGi Yellow Coverage on YouTube | DiGi Desktop Agent
12 Malaysia Airlines Airline 493 Living Malaysian Hospitability Blog | Malaysia Airlines Facebook Fan | MASwings Facebook Fan | MASwings Facebook Group | MAS Charter Flight Attendants Facebook Group | MH = Malaysian Hospitality Channel on YouTube
13 Sime Darby Property 437 Sime Darby Facebook Group
14 TV3 Media 315 MyTV3 Roverz Facebook Group
15 Petronas Oil and Gas 264 Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) Facebook Group | Galeri Petronas Facebook Group | Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra Facebook Page
16 YTL Property 210 YTL Climate Change Week Facebook Fan | YTL Community Channel on YouTube
17 RHB Bank Financial 187 RHB Bank Facebook Group
18 Ambank Financial 187 None
19 AirAsia Airline 95 Just Plane Thoughts AirAsia Blog | Tony Fernandes CEO Blog | “AirAsia.com Travel Wish List” Facebook Application | AirAsia Facebook Fan Page | AirAsia Air Crew Facebook Group | AirAsiaGroup Enthusiasts Facebook Group | AirAsiaGroup Channel on YouTube | AirAsia Vista Gadget
20 The Star Media 91 Citizen’s Blog
22 Kurnia Financial 83 None
23 Proton Automobile 68 Corporate Comm @Proton Facebook Group | Corporate Comm Proton Facebook Fan
24 MAA Financial 67 None
25 Affin Bank Financial 65 None
26 Padini Fashion 61 None
27 Parkson Retail 36 None
28 Sunway Property 25 None
29 Mamee-Double Decker Food and Beverage 25 None
30 Bonia Fashion 22 None

Some Observations

  1. Big brands adopting social media marketing
    • About 60% of Malaysia’s most valuable brands are leveraging social utilities like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
  2. Conversations with AirAsia
    • The budget airline has the most interesting and purposeful usage social media marketing tools and are ‘designed’ to engage with its target audience.
  3. User-generated content
    • AirAsia is tapping into the power of bloggers with its blog, “Just Plane Thoughts.” Besides contents posted by 16 AirAsia bloggers, the site also encourages its readers to post their travel stories and comments. Although the blog is moderated, negative customer comments also get posted. Newspaper The Star also allows its readers to post up contents on its Citizen’s Blog site.
  4. Conversational vs Informational
    • AirAsia’s blog is more conversational than its competitor Malaysia Airlines’ Living Malaysian Hospitality, which is geared towards providing corporate news.
  5. Facebook rules
    • The fast-growing social network is by far the most used social utility among the biggest brands in Malaysia, followed by YouTube. Facebook ranked 8th in Malaysia’s Alexa Top 100 Sites; YouTube ranked 4th (as of Oct 19 2008).
  6. Tweet with Astro
    • The use of Twitter is gaining popularity among enterprises. Astro, the subscription-based satellite TV provider, is the one and only Malaysia’s big brand on Twitter.
  7. Bank with blog
    • Malaysia’s largest bank, Maybank, is the first Malaysian bank with a blog; uses its “AllYou” blog to complement its online banking site, Maybank2u.com.
  8. Blogging CEO
    • Tony Fernandes of AirAsia is the only Most Valuable Brand’s CEO with a blog.
  9. Not-so-social lifestyle
    • Consumer-oriented retail brand, Parkson and apparel brands – Bonia and Padini – are notably missing in the social media sphere.
  10. Financial-ly not social-able
    • Financial institutions dominated the MMVB list, with 32% representation. However, out of the eleven big brands that are not using social media, six of them (or 54%) are from the financial industry.

Social Media Marketing and Malaysia’s Biggest Brands originally appeared on GreyReview.com on October 20, 2008.

]]> http://www.greyreview.com/2008/10/20/social-media-marketing-and-malaysias-biggest-brands/feed/ 10 Brand Tags of Social Apps http://www.greyreview.com/2008/06/06/brand-tags-web-apps/ http://www.greyreview.com/2008/06/06/brand-tags-web-apps/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:08:22 +0000 LIM YUNG HUI http://www.greyreview.com/?p=75 Some interesting brand tags of interesting social apps:

  1. Tap the Collective Fluther, Questions and answers via social networking
  2. We’re here to help Mahalo, people-powered search engine
  3. The people you know. The places they go. Whrrl, location-based social-networking site
  4. Your Social Compass. Loopt, another location-based social-networking site
  5. The Location-based social network. Brightkite (self-explanatory brand tag)
  6. Tags that make sense Faviki, a social bookmarking site.
  7. Your Life, on the line Plurk, a nano-blogging site
  8. Read webpages later on your phone or anywhere Looplinks, a bookmarking site
  9. The social web browser Flock
  10. Share your inspiration ScrnShots, site for sharing screenshots
  11. Send stuff to your friends Pownce, converse & send links, files, events
  12. Funky ways to express yourself BeFunky, apps to create visual expressions
  13. What are you listening to? Blip, a Twitter for music
  14. Say it Ping.fm tool to post updates to multiple social networks and blogs at once
  15. Why surf alone when you can web together Slingpage, for sharing web page with friends and followers
  16. Get feedback on your project Backboard, a utility to get comments and feedbacks on your docs, etc.

Brand Tags of Social Apps originally appeared on GreyReview.com on June 6, 2008.

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