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Comms leaders discuss how companies and agencies can revolutionize the way brands interact with their stakeholders on the road to the point of sale

UNLEASHING THE POWER OF SOCIAL COMMERCE

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There’s an old saying that is vari-ously attributed to Lord Lever-hulme and Henry Ford, but was actually first said by John Wana-maker, a department store mag-

nate from the late-19th century, that he knew “half of my advertising is wasted, but I just don’t know which half.”

That adage propped up an industry reliant on expensive broadcast TV adver-tising for decades, but the old walls are tumbling down as consumers move on-line, favor catch-up viewing, and deploy ad blockers.

Modern marketing is based as much on technology, social media, data, and ana-lytics that drive the consumer through the decision-making process. It can now even lead them to the end of the purchase funnel and real sales — it’s called social commerce.

Kelly Vanasse, VP, communications at Procter & Gamble’s global business units, says: “P&G wrote the book on TV adver-

tising, but we’re seeing more and more interest and uptake in brand communica-tions, what we used to call brand PR, or influencer advocacy and marketing, than we’ve ever seen before. We’ve come into our moment as communicators.”

Power of social commerceShe believes Wanamaker’s ratio has changed fundamentally, and an important factor in that is a rise in the power of ele-ments such as social commerce: “We now know 70% of our communications works, as opposed to the old 50/50 ratio.”

Social commerce is a compelling mix of data, insight, and creativity, often acted out within social media and e-commerce environments that enable brands to prove increased sales, which Vanasse describes as the “Holy Grail.”

Social commerce involves a new line-up of business and technology partners, illustrated well by P&G’s Change Destiny

On June 20, PRWeek and BlueFocus convened a panel discussion in Cannes to debate social commerce and the impact it can have on communications and marketing

The Panel

Steve BarrettEditor-in-chief, PRWeek U.S., and editorial director, PRWeek Global

KellyVanasseVP, comms, Procter & Gamble’s glob-al business units

Ching LawVice general manager, social and perfor-mance ads, Tencent

Holly ZhengCEO and president, BlueFocus International

Joey BianHead of ad tech strategy and innovation JD.com

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campaign in Asia for its luxury skincare brand SK-II (see p.4).

P&G worked with Chinese social me-dia and e-commerce players Tencent and JD.com, as well as agencies including BlueFocus, to target consumers. One part of the campaign that performed particu-larly well was Marriage Market Takeover, which won several Lions in Cannes across different disciplines.

“It was an iteration of Change Destiny borne from a deep insight,” notes Vanasse. “We mined data to understand Chinese women in their late-20s who are not mar-ried are considered ‘forgotten women’ and bring shame to their families.”

Because the underlying theme of Change Destiny is “owning yourself and the change you can be,” SK-II wanted these women to change their outcome.

BlueFocus International CEO and president Holly Zheng says the activation proved it is possible to be genuinely cre-ative in a data-driven environment.

“Creativity is about human beings and emotion, the true essence of storytelling,” she adds. “This had a huge impact, even outside China, because it implies emotion.”

JD.com’s head of ad tech strategy and innovation Joey Bian says the genesis of social commerce came from the market-ing of his own company, where the con-cept was tested.

“JD.com has a lot of merchandising cat-egories so we need to utilize social traffic to improve conversion rates,” Bian ex-plains. “That is where social commerce came from.”

Before the panel discussion in Cannes, JD.com had executed 50 campaigns, the most famous of which was SK-II.

“We used data analytics during the cus-tomer journey, looking at people who pur-chased SK-II, and found three different groups: loyal customers, those trying SK-II, and those interested and considering this category,” he says.

Different campaign methodologies and creative were used for each group and us-ers were exposed to it on Tencent’s social messaging WeChat platform.

Following the campaign’s success, the same techniques were tried in different categories, including electronics, home appliances, fashion, and retail.

Increasing role of AIWhile it may be too soon to envisage artificial intelligence playing a big role in marketing, the role of machines and data-crunching are increasing.

“Deep machine learning comes from aligning purchase and social networking data,” says Bian. “With data analytics, data mining, and machine learning, the best way to improve results is to increase data size or expand the categories you un-derstand — that’s the only way to improve machine learning.”

For the other player in the SK-II social commerce matrix, Tencent, the process evolves and improves with each activation.

“We help agencies and brands analyze their audiences and give them insights into the best customers to target,” says the WeChat and QQ owner’s vice GM of social and performance ads Ching Law. “Afterward, we help them analyze and improve the next activation.”

BlueFocus’ Zheng concludes by not-ing that the topic was top of mind at this year’s International Festival of Creativity.

“People in Cannes have been talking about three big topics: data, insight, and creativity,” she explains. “In the new e-commerce environment, we’ve put new social and commerce data together using the biggest players in China: Tencent, with its social data; and e-commerce sites such as Alibaba and JD.com, with its transac-tion data.”

Tencent helps agencies and brands analyze their audiences so they can target consumers better

JD.com uses social traffic to improve conversion rates

P&G’s Marriage Market Takeover won several Lions

AI in marketing is a hot topic, explains Zheng

“Creativity is about human beings and emotion, the true essence of storytelling”

— Holly Zheng, BlueFocus International

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Procter & Gamble SK-II, WECHAT, AND JD.COM

Procter & Gamble has already had success in partnership with technology companies in the Chinese market. Last year, it became the first CPG company to advertise on Tencent’s social messaging app WeChat with its Head & Shoulders shampoo brand.

This year, P&G doubled down on social commerce with its SK-II brand, this time in partnership with e-commerce site JD.com and WeChat again.

“Social commerce is an integral part of our brand-building across P&G,” says Kelly Vanasse, P&G’s VP, communications for the behemoth’s global business units. “One great case is the SK-II Change Destiny example.”

Leveraging data effectivelyThe first phase was data collection, which is where WeChat and JD.com came in.

“It enables us to develop creative that goes beyond the single key visual or one video asset to be tailored to what they want, need, and

expect from a company like us,” adds Vanasse. “What do they want when it comes to skincare; what are they searching for?”

The key is to use data to produce insights that result in compelling content that is rele-vant to the consumer and resonates with her, reaching her at a moment when she’s thinking about her skin and changes in her regimen, or coming into skincare for the first time.

New influencersIn this case, the creative revolved around KOLs (key opinion leaders, or new influencers) including SK-II’s influencers including act- resses Kaori Momoi and Haruka Ayase, bal-lerina Misa Kuranaga, and dancer Lin Ching Lan. They all told stories of how they changed their destiny.

Joey Bian, JD.com’s head of ad tech strategy and innovation, says: “First you look at the data, but that’s not everything. The second step is to come up with insight and use that data to identify different groups of customers. You’ve got attention, then you evaluate, then you purchase. If the experience is good, you enter a loyalty loop.”

Interest in Change Destiny was stimulated by Moments ads on WeChat, which allowed

friends to discuss the issue in a closed loop environment. Tencent’s vice GM of social and performance ads Ching Law adds: “That’s the first principle of our platform. When a user sees an ad, they don’t see it as intrusive — it’s being shared by friends. Because of the early data targeting work, you only see the ad when you are in the right target audience group.”

The final click through to commerce clos-es the social commerce loop and the SK-II campaign boosted overall performance by five to six times. “That ability to click to buy is invaluable,” adds Vanasse. “It works espe-cially well for SK-II and we’ve seen it work in other areas, such as Head & Shoulders and Safeguard, so it’s not just because SK-II is a gorgeous premium product — it can work in the everyday too.”

“First, you look at data, but that’s not everything. The second step is to come up with insight”

— Joey Bian, JD.com

CASE STUDY

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What is unique about the Chinese market?

How important is data and will it lead to the destruction of agencies?

Explain the value of partnership working for social commerce.

The evolution of social commerce exists differently in every market. Tencent and JD.com provide a richness of data to help us understand the customer, what they are look- ing for, when they are looking for it, and what they are ex- pecting all the way through the decision-making journey and help close the sale.

It’s the ingenuity of the Chinese and their ability to see what’s working in other markets and kind of mash it up to take it above and be- yond what the other markets are doing. It’s unique to the market.

The SK-II campaign went beyond our expectations, well into the double digits in terms of what we’ve seen on any- thing else. We feel we have a winning proposition, a winning partnership [with our technology and agency partners], and we’re looking forward to continuing to explode that.

Tencent is the largest internet company in China and one of the top five in the world. We reach virtually every internet user in China. By collaborat-ing with JD.com, we can work in an integrated way and see correlations on things such as demographics and online purchase behavior.

Tencent’s users are real users, not cookies or device IDs. We know some have been with us for 10 years. All the campaigns on WeChat and QQ are login environments, so you need to log in as a real user before you can see the ad.

We have 20 senior engineers working on fraud detection to make sure all the traffic on JD.com, but also from across the Chinese web from pre- mium or long-tail publishers, is verified as real people.

Verification is a big challenge for marketers across the globe. In the U.S., 14% of all traffic is machine-generated, including bots and web crawlers. In China, about 20% is machine-generated. The key is how you identify those and not push your ad to them.

People worry about the data coming from China, but it is a universal problem. China has the highest volume of traffic [in the world] and you need a sufficient base there to test it out and do the analytics — that’s one of the advantages of the Chinese market.

Data on its own is just numbers. When you turn it into insight, knowledge, and customer experience, that’s when it really shines. So agencies aren’t going to disappear any time soon.

We own the two largest social networks in China — WeChat and QQ — with combined users of 800 million a month. We have a close relationship and an interesting collabora-tion with JD.com that is unique, not just a business transaction — we pull our teams together and have integrated products.

We have around 180 million active e-commerce users. We combined JD.com user data with Tencent’s social data to improve conversion rates. We then moved that technology to improve conversion rates for clients as well. We started with JD.com and then pushed it further for clients.

At least three or four different teams were involved in the SK-II campaign from the technology, creative, and e-commerce sides to put the whole thing together.

Kelly VanasseVP, communications, Procter & Gamble’s global business units

Ching LawVice general manager, social and performance ads, Tencent

Joey BianHead of ad tech strategy and innovation, JD.com

Holly ZhengCEO and president, BlueFocus International

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Can you achieve great creativity within the confines of data?

It’s actually a creativity unleasher. The more you know about the consumer and what he or she wants, the better able you are to create awesome content. It’s obviously much better because it’s more relevant to them, but it also unleashes our creatives to have fun.

“Walking around Cannes, there are several buzzwords, especially data, insight, and creative. Putting those three together actually becomes social plus commerce — it’s a subset of e-commerce. “You use data from the social side and transaction data from the e-commerce side. We combine these to generate insight, which can help lift the branding campaign, as well as convert the branding campaign to real sales: That’s the social plus commerce side.”

“It’s the Holy Grail for us, and any marketer, to be able to get great insights based on big data, to be able to understand that target con- sumer better than ever, and then to be able to create creative that resonates with them, drives sales immediately, and know what’s working and what’s not in real time. It’s really only happening holisti- cally in China for us. There are other pockets where it’s being tested, but the richness of real-time data results is happening in China.”

Social commerce is revolutioniz-ing business and the way brands interact with their stakeholders on the road to the point of sale.

It integrates key opinion leaders, video, celebrities, new influencers, and bloggers to encourage social interaction and smooth the path to online buying and selling of products and services.

This ability to scale activations across multiple platforms, especial-ly mobile, proves the value of social media and PR more than ever.

Our algorithms adjust the priority to users with a higher conversion rate in real time. The entire campaign is only two or three days, so we do the optimization in real time. This is a huge factor in the ROI at the end.

[The agency] comes in with the creative. Based on the data, insight, and segment they come up with different messaging and strategy so the creative resonates with each group. We increased overall performance [on SK-II] by five to six times by the end of the campaign.

We’re able to put the data together, generate insights out of it, and launch much better branding and commu-nications campaigns that much better identify the target audience and tailor creative content for that.

Kelly VanasseVP, communications, Procter & Gamble’s global business units

Ching LawVice general manager, social and performance ads, Tencent

Joey BianHead of ad tech strategy and innovation, JD.com

Holly ZhengCEO and president, BlueFocus International

What is social commerce?

Holly ZhengCEO and president, BlueFocus International

Kelly VanasseVP, comms, Procter & Gamble’s global business units

DEFINITION

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TARGETINGSocial commerce enables Procter & Gamble to target the consumer based on behavior. The data means companies can build their brands by knowing what their consumers are doing, when they’re doing it, and why they’re doing it.

DATA VERIFICATIONYou can’t just rely on ad clicking and impression data, because machines can click. You have to work with platforms and publishers to ensure deeper funnel data verification and check that purchase and social networking data is real.

CLOSED LOOP A closed-loop system such as Tencent’s and JD.com’s results in an engaged audience and means companies can tailor creative to link directly to sales and see the immediate and direct benefits of their brand building.

SALES FUNNEL Mass communication no longer works as well as performance marketing, which requires well-tailored data within content. Digitized platforms allow marketers to analyze data and provide true insights into markets, lift existing brands, and convert branding into real sales.

CREATIVITYIt’s much more fun to have several different iterations of a creative activation tailored to specific sub-groups within your audience rather than just having one hero version of a campaign.

THREE STEPSThe three essential steps to effective social commerce are: looking at the data; coming up with the insight; and construct-ing different creative messaging and strategy to resonate with different customer groups.

Where does PR fit in?It’s no longer clear what is comms and what is advertising. Clients want integrat-ed marketing, but it’s more complicated than five or 10 years ago. All firms have big challenges — everybody knows we should change but few people can see clearly. And there are new global competitors such as Facebook and Google, Oracle and Adobe, and compared with these guys, we lack capital and technology.

How do you encourage integration?We did a lot of acquisitions, now we want to combine. We have a Facebook adver-tising and distribution business in China and bought a company that helps clients perform better on Facebook. We also have We Are Social, which does social media communications. If we com-bine these services for a single client, they can save money and prove the efficiency of their marketing.

What are the most important digital platforms in 2016?We can’t see Facebook in China, but it’s the most efficient way to expand business globally. More and more Chinese clients want to promote themselves globally, so they really should invest in Facebook and Google.

Does BlueFocus Communication Group aspire to be a Chinese WPP?When we launched our IPO six years ago, we wanted to copy WPP to expand quick-ly in China, but also globally. But media and communications is changing and technology and data is more important than ever — we want to combine that with creative content and services for a new competitive advantage.

“It’s not clear what is comms and what is advertising. Clients want integrated marketing”

— Oscar Zhao, BlueFocus Comms Group

Will Facebook ever be allowed in China?Maybe. But Facebook will develop a real business in China, perhaps in a slightly different form. In China, we have similar social media platforms — WeChat and Weibo — but they’re not the same as Facebook. They’re bigger: nearly 800 million people in China use WeChat.

What’s next for BlueFocus?We still want to make some acquisitions, especially in North America. Our overseas revenue is around $300 million and we want that to be $5 billion within six years.

TAKEAWAYS

Global growth fueled by mix of services

Oscar ZhaoCofounder, chairman, and CEO, BlueFocus Communication Group

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