Case LinksCMP SMU Website link:
https://cmp.smu.edu.sg/case/4236Case Centre link:
https://www.thecasecentre.org/products/view?id=168092
Harvard Business Publishing link:
https://store.hbr.org/product/kobe-influencer-marketing-building-brand-awareness-via-social-media/smu551?sku=SMU551-HCB-ENG
Case Synopsis
In July 2019, Evangeline
Leong, co-founder and CEO of Kobe (a Singapore based start-up providing
Influencer Marketing services) had a challenging task ahead of her. Her company
was preparing for a campaign to build brand awareness of Jia Jia herbal tea amongst
millennial consumers in Singapore.
At Kobe, Leong
and her team provided end-to-end influencer marketing services for clients
including consultation on marketing strategies for realising brand objectives,
assisting clients in identifying KPIs, execution and monitoring of campaigns,
analysis of campaign results and providing recommendations. In addition, Kobe’s
AI driven influencer platform allowed clients to choose the most suitable
influencers from a database of over 5000 influencers.
Millennials in
Singapore were social media savvy and often-brought products based on
recommendations of influencers they trusted. Targeting this customer segment
through social media was therefore a viable option. However, the Jia Jia
campaign had a few limitations including a small budget and a short timeframe.
Another constraint was that herbal tea was not popular with millennials.
Historically Chinese herbal tea was synonymous with Singapore’s
culture and dated back to its history as a British settlement. However, over
the past decade, bubble tea had become the preferred drink of the millennials. Leong
knew she was being ambitious in trying to “sell bell-bottoms to Millennials”,
and she wondered if her influencer marketing campaign to rebrand Jia Jia herbal
tea in Singapore could be as successful as the Levi’s Jeans’ 501 campaign.
Could Leong turn the clock back and make Jia Jia the most talked about beverage
brand in Singapore?
The case focuses on Influencer Marketing
and will allow students to understand how social media influencers can help
organisations build brand awareness. Students also learn about some of the
critical challenges faced by Influencer Marketing campaigns, how AI
capabilities of an influencer platform can help measure and track campaigns
more effectively and various influencer tactics used by organisations. Features
of other influencer marketing models are also presented to make comparisons.