A Marketer's Look at Social Media in Vietnam Circa 2011 - Digital Influence Mapping Project GOOD

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June 13, 201 1

A Makee' Look a Social Media in Vienam cica 2011

I met up with Thu An Nguyen Ha at our Hong Kong Summit. She leads strategy for c lients out of from o ur

Vietnam 360 Digital Influence team. I was struck from her by how fast social media is b eing adopted in

Vietnam. Combine that with the ec onomic enthusiasm in the country and I would guess we will se e big leapsforward there.

I asked her abo ut what is hot and happening there now in relation to brands and social media.

Q: Wha old o a ae 1-2 defining chaaceiic of h e ocial m edia old in Vienam

oda?

A: The soc ial media world in Vietnam to day is go ing through an experimental phrase for all those who

embrac e it: users, dev elopers, and brands. Adaptation from successful global entities kicks off with some

interesting platforms like soc ial network ZingMe (facebook inspired), linkhay microb log equiv alent of twitter,

two.v n answer to foursquare, and recently in the last 6 months we saw an aggressive dev elopment of group

buy ing sites such as nhommua (similar to groupon).

Vietnamese social media users are lo y al to their platforms. This might so und obv ious as were community

cre atures but this basically means individual blogs, bloggers and influencers dont exist or stand out without

being attached to a mass and popular c ommunity . And y es its true, to be fair, Fac eboo k has replaced the

Y aho o!360 phenomenon and 'faceboo kers,' any one really , who has more than 2,000 fans c an be c onsidered

an influencer .

Social media in the ey es of brands and marketers in Vietnam today is starting to be noticed with the same

mentality o f discov ering what platforms c an bring to their integrated digital communication plan. Theres a

feeling of almost testing the water and try ing out different way s to engage in social media effectiv ely .

The majority o f social media pro brands are the FMCGs or c onsumer goo ds companies such as Unilever, Dell

(technology & communication industry), Coca-cola, etc. All the dev elopment seem to be in-sync together:

platforms are setting up while brands are also still figuring out which are the best and where audienc es and


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users are also cho osing to base their own social graphs. Although I must admit Facebo ok in most cases still

wins over the mentality of the current best preferable platform. If we didnt suffer the limited access, I hav e

total confidence that Faceboo k would have grown well beyo nd the current limited 1.4mill users.

Q: Moe and m oe band ae epeim ening ih ocial media fo macom ppoe. Fo a

pical B2C makee ha old o op hee ecom m endaion be?

A: I can't stress enough the importanc e o f dev eloping a strategic approach to social media. Some brands

consider its just production, an add on to their digital communication plan. Most dont have a c lue what the

role o f their Facebook page should be, while others c an't think of anything else but c reating a Faceboo k page.

The normal pattern we see would be brands jumping straight onto the soc ial media wave without

understanding the nature o f it. So I would say think hard on a strategy and the objectiv es that would help a

brand driv e their total brand goals o r c ommunication goals.

Secondly , content. Brands, by large, are still thinking of one-way communication and not really thinking

from a consumer perspectiv e. The standard behavior o f wanting to push out messages, campaign and

programs without having a good story or asking the basic questions like how can I involve my audiences,

what v alue do I br ing to them, and how can I be a part of my consumers' conversations. Conv ersations in

soc ial media require solid, interesting, relev ant and almost unique ty pe of communication where co ntent isat the core o f ev ery thing. Dev elop a social media conv ersation/c ontent plan to tie in with your audienc e's

behav ior and preferences and the n marry these with y our brande d content. Alternativ ely , create c ontent

uniquely for soc ial media as those are actually quite co st effective .

Be Brave I would say . Brands should at least start to realize and take up the belief that social media is

changing the way they re operating, do business and communicate with their audiences and customers.

Companies who are already doing digital work, especially great work, need to mov e fast into the area of

soc ial media, get a good adv isor/agency and embark on the social media path.

Typically PR managers who would normally v iew digital as a brand manager or marketer job, should hav e

the co urage to do social. The social territory might seem v ague and mysterious, probably due to the fact

that PR managers are not familiar with the possibility of having proper, effectiv e measurement for social

media programs. In addition, brand managers can start to v enture into the area of applying social media to

drive business impact that goes beyond brand awareness.

Q: Which band() i doing om ehing ineeing in ocial media in Vienam and h ?

A: I would say Coca-cola (Coke). Instead of using the globally aligned Facebook platform, Coke in Vietnam

has identified its target audience locally : targeting a yo unger cro wd, focus on a teen to the first-jobbers

market that is also the biggest internet users segment in Vietnam.

Coke connected with the y oung spirit of online users and most of the population who lov ed to be e ntertained,v ia the most popular SNS platform ZingMe. Using the alre ady massiv e user database and network, Coke built

a site that sits within the c ommunity . With the new direction of ZingMe go ing less gaming and mov ing into

more c ommunication, it would be interesting to see how the Coke community within ZingMe grows.

A few international brands in V ietnam have started to plug-in their global/regional pro gram of establishing

Facebo ok counts despite the difficulty in access. We see Dell, Adidas, HTC, Ford, V ietnam Airlines etc

operating here. Hence the q uestion very soon would be which brands have the successful Facebook c ases

and doing great things in this platform.

Q: An ne echnolog/plafom ha ecie o?

A: To be fair, ZingMe dev elo pment kinda excites me a bit as they will b e growing mo re towar ds the direc tio n

of communication rather than just games. ZingMe has a perc eived perc eption as a very young, teen-like

platform where nothing serious is going on there, this will soon c hange. We already see a few big brands


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taking the interest in building brand presence within the community and I would be keen to see.

Geo-location based is another one that I keep my ey es on. Since Foursquare we now see serv ices that mimic

this global trend being adopted here. Brands have not been brav e enough to invest in this, but Vietnamese

users favor location & activ ities sharing and the mobile co mmunications, and this will push these platforms

forward. I do hope to see great mobile campaigns!

(Se lec ted fo r ou b our spo ns or ) 2 more rec ommended posts

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A Marketer's Look at Social Media in Vietnam Circa 2011 - Digital Influence Mapping Project GOOD