HK Marketers find new marketing tool to reinforce viral power

HONG KONG, Nov 23 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Ocean Park Hong Kong recently launched a Viral Personalized Video Campaign for its Halloween Bash 2009. Without additional media spending, the Halloween Viral Video has reached record high with more than 470,000 views and the video mini-site has attracted 230,000 unique visitors within just two months. It has adopted an innovative Variable Data Publishing (VDP) marketing solution to make greater user engagement. The Campaign result has proven that viral marketing, by combining personalization, user-participation and social media networking, is a new trend in the marketplace.

(Logo: http://www.prnasia.com/sa/2009/07/17/200907171729.jpg )

"We've done it on purpose in order to explore the potential power of viral marketing and experiment how far the viral power can reach," said Willy Lai, Business Manager of Focus Imaging. "We did not make much media spending to publicize the Halloween's video. By relying on mainly personalization and social media networks, the Campaign is so far performing more than satisfactory in a relatively high traffic. The Variable Data Publishing (VDP) technique has created a sweeping viral marketing effect. We are very excited to see users in Hong Kong respond so positively to this personalized online campaign."

Ocean Park is the first entertainment company in Hong Kong to depend upon viral video for promotion via email vehicle and social media. It is truly surprising that Ocean Park would have made such a bold attempt to run this viral video campaign. In fact, viral campaign does not always end up successful in Hong Kong. Even though HK people frequently watch video online, they do not have a habit to forward advertising video or share with others. Moreover, viral video of business nature is not that welcoming in the market. HK people also tend to resist traditional online offerings because of the overwhelming JUNK emails. A study showed that HK ranks second on the global chart with 76.7% of spam messages. It explained why one-to-many email promotions always receive poor performance in both open and click-thru rate.

The Ocean Park's viral video campaign contains three factors, which are found to be the keys to overcome the above constraints and to get the viral campaign highly responsive:

1. Personalization: All email, video and mini-site involved in the Campaign are highly personalized. Each email contains the name, photo and personal message of that specific receiver. These personalized elements drive one's curiosity to open the email and click at the Halloween's video unique to that receiver. The Campaign has made a good use of CRM system to turn factual data into meaningful personal message to customers. The personalized email, personalized video and personalized mini-site provide a fun and customized experience to every user. As a result, this one-to-one Campaign's email open rate and click-thru rate are about 5 times higher than those traditional one- to-many emails.

2. User participation: Another reason for the success is the highly interactive video which draws user engagement to the Campaign. Every personalized video can be made unique to a specific user. Each time when the video finished playing, it followed by a personalized mini-site, where allows user to produce another video unique to their friends. The Campaign so far recorded more than 20,000 users who have participated in the production. More user involvement in marketing campaign can build up a closer customer's relationship.

3. Social media power: Apart from sending email to Ocean Park's own members, the Halloween's video gains additional free publicity and exposures through social media networks. Users can share their own personalized video on Facebook, blogs, and other online forums. At least 6,000 users from the Campaign have already done the sharing. The promotion of such online activities with a comprehensive social media marketing plan can further strengthen the 'snowball effect'.

The integration of personalized (one-to-one) communication, high user- participation and social media networking has gradually developed into a new trend in digital marketing. Besides, Focus Imaging is planning to include the latest Augmented Reality (AR) technology to intensify personalization and interactivity of viral campaign.

Visit http://www.pvideo.com.hk/opdemo to understand the whole campaign of Ocean Park Halloween Bash 2009's Viral Video. For more information on personalized media tools, click at http://www.focus-vdp.com .

ABOUT FOCUS IMAGING

Focus Imaging Limited is a pioneer in the VDP industry and a leading Digital Marketing expert in the Greater China. Since 1995, the company has grown and evolved through incessant technical investments and advancements. Focus Imaging is now developed into a full-service Digital Marketing specialist with its self-developed workable imaging engine to provide personalized Variable Data Publishing (VDP) services. Visit http://www.focus-global.com for more details.

    For Press Enquires:

     Carol Lui
     Marketing Communications Officer
     Focus Imaging Limited
     Tel:   +852-3622-5233
     Email: carollui@focus-global.com

SOURCE Focus Imaging

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http://www.pvideo.com.hk/opdemo
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