Recently, I found it strange that "eating fried chicken and drinking beer in snow days" suddenly became a hot topic in Asia. McDonalds and KFC, as well as beer retailers in Asia area, are enjoying the sales increasement of fried chicken and beer. More surprisingly, not only fried chicken and beer, but also certain brands of cosmetics and clothes have their sales enhanced within last two months. So what brought to this phenomenon? The answer is, a famous Korean drama, "My love from another star," draws the attention of Asian people.
"My love from another star" is so clever to make good use of the powerful influence of social media to help advertise the drama and embrace the groundswell. After the drama came out, it took no more than a week to become a hot issue in various social media. After a couple of weeks , almost everyone is talking about the scenes and lines in the drama, no matter whether he/she is afan of it. This is the influence of word of mouth. Just as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff explain in the Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies, "[word of mouth] is self-reinforcing. Hear it from one person, and it's intriguing. Hear it from five or ten, even if you didn't know them before, and it has to be true." Now, no one can stop the drama from going viral.
The drama mainly talks about an alien landed on earth from another star 400 years ago in the Joseon Dynasty and had fallen in love with a Korean top star in the modern society. In one of the episodes, the actress mentioned that it was the most enjoyable thing that having chicken and bear when it snows in winter. Right after this episode came out, having chicken and bear in snow days became the No. 1 topic in Weibo, having over 3,500,000 posts related to chicken and beer. People were talking about this "fashion" crazily. Under this circumstance, more and more people became aware of My love from another star, even though some people were not interested in Korean drama at all!
As a Korea drama fan, I am also addicted to this drama since it first launched. Let's see what My love from another starhas done in social media to increase its fame. Firstly, it applies a variety of social media tools in order to gain the popularity. The drama creates topics that attracts people's attention on Facebook, Twitter, Line, Youtube, Weibo, Instagramand Wikipedia. Impressively, the director was so smart to use scenes to emphasize the importance of using social media. The actors and actress in the drama always use different social media to contact each other. This definitely helps catch audiences' attention.
Secondly, The staffs of the drama established an official page on Facebook, and updated the news of the drama everyday. We can see there are nearly ten thousand fans following that page. Compared to many other dramas, this number is not impressive though, you have to notice that the major target audiences are not able to log in to Facebook. Besides that, the staffs also applies "Line" to increase the fame of the drama. Line invested the drama without knowing the rapid increasement of the drama's popularity. Now, Line is one of the most famous and frequently used social media in Asia.
The leading actress is using "Line" Twitter is another social media that all the fans discuss about this drama. Among these fans, they do not only come from Asia, but also from other areas in the world. It is Twitter that connects these fans with each other, providing the platform for them to exchange their thoughts on this Korean drama.
In this case, we can find how important it is to utilize social media tools in publication. I will keep on following this drama and see what social media applications can bring to increase the reputation of "My love from another star".
Last Friday was Valentine's Day, many kinds of skincare products were on sale on Neiman Marcus. Me and my roommates were attracted by a Kiehl's set, so we decided to buy 4 sets together. Everything seemed to go smoothly. We placed our order successfully, and the order was confirmed. We were delighted and looking forward to receiving the package. However, three days later, I got an email saying that our order was cancelled, for no reason. I immediately contacted Neiman Marcus's customer service online, he told me that the company had the right to limit quantities a customer might buy. I told him I totally understood if the company had this rule, but I preferred to know this
rule before I placed the order, and Neiman Marcusshould have shown this rule to customers on the website, instead of canceling orders later on. Then, I got nothing useful to solve my problem but apologies. I was so disappointed. Well,Neiman Marcus, to some degree, "listened" to me, and "talked" to me. However, I didn't think our chat could be deemed as an effective conversation because they did not understand what I was thinking; even after I told them my thought, they still didn't get me. What's worse, it was just reported days ago that "over 1 million credit cards' data were stolen" in Neiman Marcus. Some friends of mine got in trouble in this Hackers attack, and they had warned me not to buy things in Neiman Marcus. Now, having this dissatisfied shopping experience on Neiman Marcus, do you think I will "spread the word" of this shopping mall to my other friends in a positive way? No. Definitely not.
From my point of view, the purpose to start a conversation between groundswell and company is to understand "what people are thinking" (p. 80) and build a friendly, trustworthy relationship with each other, then the groundswell will help "advertise" the company in certain way. According to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's "Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)" theory in Part Two of Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies, "word of mouth 'is the honest form of marketing, building upon people's natural desire to share their experiences with family, friends, and colleagues.'" (p. 131) Li and Bernoff believe the importance of energizing the groundswell. So do I.
Lancôme is one
of the companies that do a great job in energizing the groundswell. The
video below is posted on Lancôme's official website; it tries to tell customers some
beauty tips.
You don't have to finish the video, because what I want to talk about is not the video, but the girl in it. Who is she? Well, I would like to tell you, she, Michelle Phan, is originally just one of Lancôme's customers. But her videos are now on
the official websites of Lancôme's
products, and she becomes very famous in social media. As many other Lancôme's ordinary customers, Michelle Phan loved Lancôme's products, so she wrote her reviews on various social media, and put videos on YouTube to share her personal experience with others. In her makeup videos, she introduced many Lancôme's products, and more and more people followed her on Facebook and YouTube.
Just like Jim Noble, who is an example in Groundswellas a fan of eBags,Michelle Phan is an enthusiast customer of Lancôme. Lancômeunderstands the importance of word-of-mouth and the power of energizing the groundswell, so the company put her videos on its websites and attract people to believe that Lancôme's products are as good as advertised. As stated in Groundswell, "it's energizing -- finding enthusiast customers and turning them into word-of-mouth machines." (p. 130) Now, Michelle Phan is hired by Lancôme, being a professional makeup girl, sharing her feelings and experiences of usingLancôme's products. If you type "Lancôme" on YouTube, there are about 330,000 results shown on the screen, and MOST OF THEM are reviews from ordinary customers.
Compared to itsstrongest competitor, Estée Lauder, Lancôme is almost three times search results greater than Estée Lauder. To Lancôme, Groundswell is energized, and customers are encouraged to give feedbacks. As Li and Bernoff say in the book, "Energizing the base is a powerful way to use the groundswell to boost your business." (p. 130) I believe Lancômewill benefit a lot from the groundswell in the future.
