Month: January 2022

Brand Audit

Where do we even begin when trying to define Apple? Gleaming white surfaces. Black turtlenecks. A rags-to-riches origin story. Apple is a world-famous electronics company and a major Silicon Valley power. They produce a wide variety of electronic products, from the practical (laptops) to the didn’t-know-you-needed-it (iPad, Apple watch). In our brand film, we promote AirPods Pro, Bluetooth-enabled headphones.

When analyzing Apple via the 5C model discussed in our brand audit workshop, we found:

• Company: Apple is one of the most creative technology companies in the world, and its key word is innovation. At the same time, it also has a strong humanistic concern, emphasizing communication with consumers in its advertising.
• Competitors: Some earphone brands such as Beats, Sony, B&O, and Senheiser, but Apple customers are pretty loyal.
• Context: During the pandemic, people were kept apart from their loved ones and could not meet new people. It’s normal to feel lonely in these circumstances, and Apple’s products helped provide connection during this time.
• Customers: AirPods are primarily aimed at young and middle-aged smartphone users. Designed as a companion product to the iPhone, AirPods are designed to inspire all iPhone users to buy, and to enhance the user experience by using this specific accessory.
• Culture: Airpods is the first Bluetooth headset exclusively for a mobile phone on the market. It can be said that it started the innovation culture of Bluetooth headset.

From the very beginning, Apple has been a brand that promotes creativity, ingenuity, and connection. Our film, which promotes their product AirPods Pro tells a story about a girl who gets to know a boy online by getting creative – sharing music, video, and even physical items, all facilitated by a pair of AirPods Pro. Since, during COVID-19, many people experienced loneliness, the tagline “Hear With You” expresses that AirPods Pro are also something that will always listen to you, be there with you, and know what you want before you need it. This promotes Apple’s humanistic values and deep meaning to consumers (the fact that an Apple product helped the protagonists make their way through a challenging year also vaguely ties into the brand’s fabled history of DIY-ing itself from a garage in Northern California to a global economic power). Our complex storyline, packed into two minutes, gives viewers a sense of what they can accomplish with Apple products.

We use social media as an essential part of our daily lives – we use it for news, entertainment, knowledge, expressing ideas, sharing our lives, interacting with friends and so on. But what we may have overlooked is the fact that the browsing, clicking and posting of content on social media are generating profit for the platform – it’s like ‘working’ for it. In the Internet age, audiences have made the transition from consumers to prosumers, not only consuming content but also producing it.

This is me, a regular social media user, recording my primary social media usage during the day. I will use this as an example to analyse what I get out of my “work” and what I contribute to the benefit of the platform.

Instagram

It was an ordinary day during the holidays. I woke up and first opened Instagram to check out Stories and Posts posted by my friends, and inevitably, while browsing, I saw an ad with the sponsored label – but since it was for a clothing style I was interested in and showed a sale, I didn’t exit. Instead, I swiped up the screen to go to the brand’s official website to continue browsing.

As I continued to use Instagram, I found that it suggested more ads from clothing brands with similar styles – because I had been in the last ad for a long time, the big data and algorithms made it possible for me to keep receiving similar messages. So my browsing is equivalent to selling my ‘attention’ and ‘preferences’ to the platform, and I gain more insight into the brands I like for my clothing style.

Taobao

The next thing I want to focus on is the ‘work’ I do on Taobao, China’s most famous shopping app.

So, how can I get fertiliser? This requires the user to complete tasks, including answering questions, and browsing product pages (the products presented on the browsing page are usually of the user’s preferred style or the types they have searched for).

Since I have left a history of clicks and searches in my daily use of Taobao, when I complete tasks in Baba Farm, it suggests product pages that are of interest to me, and I don’t feel the pain of ‘working’ while browsing, but rather enjoy it.

I “work” on this farm because my parents think it’s fun and they can get the fruit for a perfect bargain. Taobao has also introduced ‘family trees’, where families can plant a tree jointly, making farming a tree faster, usually taking around 45 days to complete. This format allows more people to participate as a family, increasing the number of users.

I get good value fruit from my’ work’ on the farm, and I may ‘accidentally’ make a purchase when I see something I like as I click through the products to complete a task. The platform cooperates with suppliers to help them promote their products for profit; my clicks and browsing preferences are used to predict my preferences, thus improving the platform’s big data and algorithms. The suppliers, in turn, can increase their popularity and sales.

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With this diary, I see every click I make in my use of social media as a record of my preferences. Clicks are a form of labour. The value is the preferences embedded in them – something that advertisers are particularly interested in – and this preference information is a valuable commodity that can add up to considerable commercial benefits.

Waking up in the morning and opening Instagram to check my friends’ Stories – no exaggeration, this is the first thing I do every day.

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With over 500 million daily active users, Instagram Stories has very distinctive features and advantages.

• Concise format, easy to make, share, anytime and anywhere to record life moment;
• Sharing content is mainly short videos, which are lively and more engaging.
• Content that automatically disappears 24 hours after it is posted.
• Full-screen viewing with an immersive browsing experience.
• Users can freely play with the production with rich customisation settings and interaction design.

Instagram officially reports that a third of the most viewed Instagram Stories are from business, making it the best choice for connecting with potential consumers.

Instagram Story Ads is based on Instagram’s Stories feature, a form of Native Advertising that is hidden in the accounts that users follow and is presented in the same way as stories posted by friends. As a result, users are always “incidentally” viewing ads while browsing Stories – often without even realising it myself.

Let’s take a look at this example:

SKIN CEUTICALS’ Instagram Story Ads, with the label “Sponsored” in the top left corner under the user name to differentiate between advertising and non-advertising content. It also uses a dynamic design, with a 5-second vertical video showing a multidimensional image of the product and the brand tagline, introducing its main selling points, “ANTIOXIDANT” and “ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION. “At the end, the user can click on “Learn More” to open the purchase page directly – or, of course, swipe up at any time during the video to start your shopping experience.

Typically, when using Instagram Story, users will scroll the daily videos posted by their friends. SKIN CEUTICALS’ dynamic ads, therefore, fit into the user’s experience, appearing seamlessly in the user’s process. If they don’t specifically notice the ‘Sponsored’ label, they are likely to watch the ad before they realise: that’s not my friend!

Furthermore, if they are interested, they may even make a purchase. It’s worth noting that with Instagram Story Ads, you can swipe up to purchase without exiting the app. Obviously, this saves the step and time of switching and makes it easier for consumers to do shopping.

The Instagram Story Ads capture the trend of fast-paced media usage, represented by short vertical videos, which is now becoming mainstream. At the same time, Instagram can use algorithms to help advertisers accurately target consumers based on their type of followers and browsing preferences to maximise reaching customers and turn traffic into conversions – users can receive a brand ad without having to follow the advertiser.

The seamless watching experience that Instagram Story Ads give users can, on the one hand, make them become potential consumers of a brand, reducing their ‘ad avoidance‘ behaviour to a certain extent. Still, on the other hand, if they find that they are inadvertently ‘forced’ to watch an ad – the erosion of the firewall between ad and non-advertising by native ads – it is likely to trigger even more anger!

Laboratory-style décor, minimalist labels and fragrances named for the main ingredients – this is Le Labo, a niche fragrance brand founded in New York in 2006.

In addition to an official Instagram, Le Labo also runs a special account @overheardlelabo.

“Spoken words from our Labs. Recorded on one of our pretentious vintage typewriters.”

As the account’s profile says, the content it publishes comes exclusively from conversations that take place in the shops. Le Labo is not part of their conversation, and it is just an “overhearer” and a “bystander “.

So Le Labo became a listening set, allowing customers to tell their life stories. Of course, there is also the option of printing it on the perfume label they buy. Le Labo has also made a newspaper from these conversations with the launch of Le Journal – an original-content broadsheet combining nostalgia for newspaper culture with the magic of Le Labo. As also noted on its official introduction page,

“It’s a cultural commentary with an elevated sense of smell.”

– For the brand: Let the story be the soul

Since its creation, Le Labo has always been about handmade and natural ingredients and keeping the externals simple.

It is also highly significant that it insists on no advertising. Thus @overheardlelabo is the closest thing to an advertising account, with 70 thousand followers, which has been updated since 2016. In fact, it does the best advertising for Le Labo.

These conversations, recorded by “overhearing “, are posted in @overheardlelabo with their location. Each narrator has their own unique life story, but they have all dropped by Le Labo’s shop and moved on to their next destination. Their unintentional conversations must have been tinged with personal feelings, empowering the niche fragrance brand with incredible creativity and deeper storytelling. This storytelling is mysterious, engaging, and can add to the brand’s tonality; simultaneously, these stories can inspire the perfumers for new creations in their products.

– For the creators of UGC: Some unique personal moments

Every customer who has left a word on @overheard without a second thought is the creator of UGC. Unlike ordinary UGC creators who can reap likes and attention, they may not be aware that this quirky brand will record their unintentional conversations as valuable material.

As creators, they leave behind a conversation in the Le Labo shop, but also a memory and a story. This written record means that the connection between the creator and the brand is invisibly reinforced, and perhaps when they look through this ins account one day, they will suddenly be surprised to discover that this story seems to be my story!

– For the consumers: Shopping in Le Labo is not a chore but an experience

The conversations posted by @overheadlelabo are a mix of grievances and anecdotes, and the casual and unadorned colloquial expressions add a sense of reality – they are indeed the living memories of every purchase.

These stories add a sense of mystery and interest to the purchase for the Le Labo consumer. Thus, Shopping at Le Labo is thus an experience, more like wandering through a myriad of stories and finally leaving your own story on the vintage white label – the scent of a perfume is an expression of individuality and privacy, as well as a symbol of personal identity and experience.

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All in all, these overheard conversations benefit Le Labo as a brand more than anything else: not in the traditional sense of advertising, but in a much better way. It gives the brand a sense of storytelling and unique tonality and inspires new products. At the same time, @overheardlelabo, as an online community, gathers the brand’s followers, who are storytellers, creators and consumers – maybe not now, but in the future!

People seem to be more lenient with men than with women.

Men can go out unkempt and have a beer belly, while women diet and lose weight and need to match everything from their hair and makeup to their clothes. Of course, many times, focusing on the differences between men and women to have discussions is in itself a form of confinement.

It’s not about men and women, and it’s not about you and me. NEIWAI, a women’s lingerie brand, offers its own insights on the topic of figure and beauty. With a short film, the brand explains the core concept of NO BODY IS NOBODY: every woman should ignore the shackles of her body and allow herself to exist as such, pleasing herself rather than others.

In the light and shade, women’s bodies are presented to the public in their most natural state. At the same time, the camera is faithful to each woman’s body itself, capturing their natural features while not shying away from their acquired body markings, such as tattoos, belly button rings or the bulging belly of pregnancy.

The women photographed by NEIWAI are faithful to their bodies and follow their hearts. This truthfulness shows the female body itself without imposing external aesthetic standards on women. The models stretch their bodies on camera, conveying the attitude that “women are unique in a thousand ways”.

The video is accompanied by a series of posters that clearly communicate the brand’s values.

“I enjoy. I consume. I indulge in my body with such a gratitude.”

“We are born to be infinite.”

“You are more powerful and more amazing than you could ever imagine.”

These sentences are short, but they have the power to shake people. The body should be its own unique gesture, regardless of gender, regardless of you or me.

Girl’s power has empowered NEIWAI

As a lingerie brand, we can feel the brand values of NEIWAI. Its camera language tells us that it is neither shy nor flashy, and that this is perhaps what lingerie should look like.

Globally, a few years ago, a debate on Body Positivity led directly to more women raising their self-awareness of their figure: sexiness is not one standard, but diverse. It is more relevant to the current market for women’s lingerie that “I” feel good and comfortable than “others” feel sexy. It is only then that the discourse on women’s lingerie returns from the “other” to the women themselves.

Body Neutrality, which was born out of the critical thinking about Body Positivity, adds to the consideration of health standards and is also a reflection and explanation of the body: Your body is a vessel that gets you through life, and what it looks like is neither positive nor a negative. A body is just that – a body.

Chelsea Kronengold, the manager of communications at the National Eating Disorders Association, explains:

“Body positivity urges people to love their bodies no matter what they look like, whereas body neutrality focuses on what your body can do for you rather than what it looks like”

NEIWAI’s proposition of ‘self-pleasure’ aligns with mainstream trends, thus reaping higher commercial benefits and deepening its brand value. Using the camera language, NEIWAI makes feminism visible, and feminism empowers the brand’s values. It reinforces the emotional resonance with female consumers through the hot topic of body-shaming resistance, encouraging more women to understand better, know and accept themselves.

In my home country China, under the influence of socialism, the media are mainly managed by official organisations, and the media are the ‘eyes, ears, tongue and throat’ of the government. The study of the media organisation in China, therefore, needs to start from the perspective of the ‘government-media’ relationship, where the Chinese media in transition plays the role of a ‘coordinator’ between the party-state and the market, bridging the political and economic interests of both, and realising the integration of the party-state and the market. 

In general, China’s media organisation is dominated by public ownership, with multiple ownership systems developing together. The media’s financing channels have been widened, private and foreign capital can enter the media capital market, and the media’s space for development is gradually increasing.

How do government microblogs work?

By establishing channels on Weibo from the grassroots to the top, people’s voices, no matter how small, have the potential to be heard, and together, thousands of voices can create a huge push. So we can say that this is the age of the ‘micro’ voice. And McChesney’s definition of the democratisation of society means that “create mechanisms that make the rules of many possible”. Government microblogs have become a bridge between government and citizens.

The government collects public opinion through official government microblogs to inform the formulation of policies and regulations. For example, citizens suggest ideas through the government microblogs, making it possible for even minor suggestions to be seen. At the same time, people also spontaneously speak out about injustice, and a stream of voices comes together for the government to hear and offer solutions. For instance, following the famous #Metoo movement, China has introduced laws and regulations that have made women’s rights better protected. We can say that Weibo has reduced social inequality.

But it is still restricted…

However, we have to admit that this will always be a restricted democracy under the influence of Chinese policies. Because of the strict censorship established by the Communist Party, Weibo is also the subject of censorship and does not count as a free public sphere. The hand of the government, in some cases, squashes the tide of voices as if nothing is happening. The interrelationship between government, the market, citizens and the media is thus specifically characterised by games and compromise, confrontation and control, in other words, ‘cooperation in conflict, conflict in cooperation’. Although Weibo has given ordinary citizens a way to make their voices heard, it remains subject to strict government censorship. There is still considerable uncertainty as to whether the voices will spread.

However, today, we must recognise the position and role of the media, especially market-based media, in presenting and constructing new dominant social power relations. In a particular political, economic, social and cultural context, the Chinese media as a platform for ideology, economic industry and public opinion has gradually begun to construct identities and form its own interests as a market-oriented institution. At the same time, the Chinese media has become deeply involved in the political process of reform, in which multiple interests are played out and coordinated.

In short, government microblogs have played an important role as a platform for the democratisation of society. It is a restricted democracy, but it is still an effective way for citizens to participate in politics.