Case Study: Kobe Influencer Marketing - Building Brand Awareness via Social Media

Case Links

CMP SMU Website link: https://cmp.smu.edu.sg/case/4236
Case 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.