Ascendas is Asia’s leading provider of business space solutions. Renowned for quality infrastructure and lifestyle environments catering to business, Ascendas has an excellent track record as Asia’s premier developer and manager of business space.

Ascendas’s real estate portfolio includes award-winning science, business and industrial parks, and customized developments for a host of industries. The company is present in more than 30 cities in 10 countries, across key markets such as Singapore, India, China, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Ascendas wanted to increase their online traffic with the objective of getting more leads. SEO was a natural tool for this task as it was something Ascendas had not looked at in the past. When Interakt assessed their website it needed quite a bit of work to bring it up to an acceptable level of optimization.

Objective

Ascendas has several commercial properties available for rental across several countries and cities in the region. Its online visitors, who were the potential leads, originated from around the world, especially the developed economies trying to setup operations in the high growth region.

Making it easier for the target audience to locate the right rental properties and funneling the search intent into actionable leads was thus the key objective of this initiative.

Execution

Interakt proposed a 3 phased approach to Ascendas –

• On-page optimization
• Off-page optimization
• Social media optimization

A combination of Interakt’s proprietary tools and methodology were deployed in the process. Apart from standard methods like meta tagging, link building, content optimization etc. Interakt focused on implementing “long tail” keyphrase techniques to get substantially better results in a short time frame.

The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is established in collaboration with MIT, with the mission to advance knowledge and nurture technically grounded leaders and innovators to serve societal needs. This will be accomplished, with a focus on Design, through an integrated multi-disciplinary curriculum.

SUTD, the newest University in Singapore had a challenging task of setting up and commencing operations within a year. They were looking for strategic partners who can think on their feet and deliver in a situation that was constantly changing.

Solution

Interakt was chosen as the digital partner and was tasked with implementing solutions across all touch points – web, email, social media and online media. A CMS based on open source technology was implemented that supported their job and admissions portal.

Web – a website framework was developed such that addition of new content could be done in a smooth fashion as and when new content was developed by the university

Email – Interakt deployed its email marketing solution – Resultiks – to support the internal and external communication needs or SUTD. Resultiks’ ability to track respondent’s behaviour was useful in closed-loop-marketing and thus accomplished better a conversion rate.

Social Media – Social media was deployed across platforms like YouTube, Facebook & Flickr. A branded presence was created on these tools that reflected SUTD’s brand positioning. All the tools were integrated with each other and to the website

Online Media – Interakt designed and developed online banner advertisements to promote SUTD among the student cohort applying in this academic year. These banners were run on Google & Yahoo ad networks as well as sites like AsiaOne and ESPN.

In addition, Interakt also developed applications like the admission portal and the RSVP system for event registration.

HP’s storage media division, a market leader across the world, aims to help businesses streamline their data protection processes. The storage media market is one where the underlying technology used for the production of storage media remaining the same, across all players. As a result, large sections of HP’s own sales force, particularly partners, had little awareness of how HP storage media products are better and more cost-effective than those from most other competitors, resulting in most sales being heavily dependent on pricing, rather than the true value of the product.

HP realized that an effective channel to communicate the ‘HP advantage’ was essential to ensure that it maintained and increased its market leadership in the region.

Aim

HP’s stringent quality measures are what differentiate its brand from all others. Its rigorous testing procedures have resulted in its tapes registering one of the industry’s lowest bit error rates. This in turn translates to better reliability, quality resulting in cost-effectiveness.

Making partners aware of these advantages and encouraging retention in an engaging manner, is what formed the crux of the online training strategy, to meet HP’s objectives.

Execution

Besides covering factual information on the market landscape, HP’s product range and competitive analysis, Interakt demonstrated its originality in incorporating the practical application of this knowledge in sales pitches via two short interactive videos, all of which was delivered as Engaged Learning modules online.

The videos were enactments of a sales pitch, by two salesmen with contrasting styles for different verticals, interspersed with moments of comedy and serious facts, engaging the audiences while imparting the technique of selling HP storage media. They also had interactive functions through which the audiences could gather ‘notes’ on important information used as part of the video, for printing.

The Nanyang Business School (NBS), part of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), is a leading business school committed to educating tomorrow’s strategic leaders, through cutting-edge rigorous curricula that are relevant to business practice. NBS provides an outstanding learning environment, with the full range of undergraduate and graduate programmes, state-of-the-art facilities and world-class research centres. The Nanyang MBA is ranked 25th in world and one of the best in Asia that offers that offers global perspective with an Asian focus.

NBS wanted to differentiate itself and connect with its web-savvy audience worldwide, leveraging on the power of social media.

Aim

In line with the Nanyang Business School’s (NBS) and NTU’s strategic directions to reach out and stay connected to its external community, it was thought that a rich and an attractive social extranet will act as a common portal across the school for interaction, knowledge dissemination, and engagement with relevant external stakeholders.

The social extranet would support the NBS functions of marketing, careers and alumni. The extranet was to be designed and built such that it could be easily extended to the careers and alumni functions in subsequent phases. Effective marketing would also require that the design of the interface and context be attractive and appealing to the target audience. Also, it would require engaging this tech-savvy audience by moving to a more interactive mode of communicating via blogs, videos (e.g. showcasing a day in the life of student or graduates in a variety of industries) and having a presence in common social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn, social bookmarking, RSS, Flickr, etc.

An integrated marketing campaign was required that could create a buzz around the social extranet in the target markets in Asia, Europe, North and South America. The primary goal of this campaign was to create awareness and generate leads for the undergraduate and MBA programmes.

Execution

At the core of this project were two micro-sites, one each for the MBA and Undergraduate programme. The micro-sites were designed around the “mash-up” concept such that they not only reflected the “feel” of the target audience but also cleverly integrated all the social media elements within the site. For example, the videos from NTU’s YouTube channel were streamed to the microsite and “Wall” posts on Facebook were updated on the site in real-time.

From the technological perspective, an Admin and Reporting interface was developed that facilitated management of the various social media elements from a single dashboard. NTU administrators could, for example, manage user account, moderate forum post and generate analytics via this interface. All of these elements were interlinked to ensure that there was seamless integration across the multiple touch-points.

Levi Strauss & Co., one of the most popular apparel brands in the world, with a large market in India and an established presence of over 250 stores across the country, wanted to rollout a new customer loyalty program – the Levi’s® Loop, specifically designed for this region.

Aim

Faced with the challenge of penetration reaching a maximum in key cities in India as well as the realisation that a bulk of their revenue was being generated by a “loyal base” of repeat customers, Levi’s® formulated a high-level customer relationship strategy, that aimed at gaining consumer insights, through a robust database, analytics and accurate targeting, in order to both improve relationships and its competitive advantage.

The Levi’s® Loop program, that urged customers to ‘wear what you love and get rewarded’ targeted its primary audience, the youth of India. The digital program thus, besides providing information on the customary membership tiers & privileges, was to highlight the exclusive ‘Levi’s®’ lifestyle, providing opportunities to be part of ‘hip’ events and the latest fashion.

Execution

The digital CRM program conceptualised and developed, in line with this theme and branding, covers the lifecycle of a customer, starting from the first purchase, initiation into the Levi’s® Loop program, ongoing communications and activities as well as membership renewals and upgrades. Digital components created and utilised as part of this journey include:-

• The Levi’s® Loop website, that allows access to members-only information and offers, besides redemptions
• Digital marketing campaigns to create greater awareness and targeted programs for members, based on information & reports from the CRM database
• Digital welcome kits on initiation, to educate new members on the benefits and privileges offered by the program
• eDMs to keep members informed of their Levi’s® Loop transactions, latest promotions, reminders to redeem points, renew and upgrade memberships
• Mobile-based information channel to get notifications, reminders and on-demand information regarding membership status
• Online banners, strategically placed on relevant websites, increasing the popularity of the Levi’s® Loop program

With the Levi’s® Loop program being a customised version developed for the Indian audiences, the online website was designed with a creative touch that has enabled it to be integrated within the Levi’s® India website, giving it an ‘Indian’ flavor and keeping the digital representation of the program accurate. On the technology front, the website was integrated to the Levi’s® POS system to create a uniform view of the customer, as well as to facilitate the consolidation of activities and customer information.

United Spirits Limited (USL) is the one of the largest liquor giants in the world, with a range of well-recognised brands, across Whiskeys, Vodka, Wines and other spirits. With the launch of ‘Spiritz & More’, a multi-brand retail chain for an array of liquor choices, United Spirits Limited (USL) created a new eco-system for meaningful consumer engagements and a good shopping experience across the Indian market. Going one step further, USL wanted to engage with its large consumer base through popular digital channel, including social media, in order to stay connected with them, meet their growing expectations while offering new experiences as well as accessibility.

Challenge

Given this mandate of transporting the ‘Spiritz & More’ experience and its essence onto the Internet, Interakt was faced with the unique challenge of having to market the brand without explicitly marketing its products, owing to the strict Indian regulations banning the marketing of alcohol.

USL being an organization with multiple business lines, each supporting a different set of marketing initiatives and capitalising on various aspects of Indian interests such as cricket, movies, fashion and so on, care was also required to ensure that the online ‘Spiritz & More’ experience, remained completely aligned to its core focus on glamour and lifestyle.

Interakt Solution

Meeting these challenges head on, Interakt conceptualized and delivered a complete solution called SpiritizandMore.com comprising of a comprehensive portal offering content on latest parties in different towns, USL events, information on spirits, responsible drinking and contests, a community section to encourage user participation through blogs and the creation of social networks, Facebook & Twitter presence with daily updates on events, parties, portal updates and contests.

In order to keep the platform relevant and up-to-date during this long-term engagement, Interakt employed the following channels to derive fresh content

• Charted the schedule of USL sponsored or supported events across the country for every 3-month period
• Planned the type and frequency of content to be sourced based on the types of events and activities
• Mapped the content and events on to the SpiritzandMore.com portal, in a way that would be meaningful and interesting for the users
• Conceptualized campaigns around contests, polls and interesting online activities related to these across the different digital channels such as the portal, Facebook & Twitter
• Planned & leveraged email marketing, mobile channels to create awareness of campaigns
• Sourced and utilized third-party content suitable and pertaining to website visitor interests
• Maintained and monitored the digital channels to ensure all that activity was in line with the SpiritzandMore.com branding

And one of the notable highlights of the entire initiative was the engagement of photobloggers across the country, to cover the USL events and provide ‘real’ content on the different channels like the portal, Facebook and Twitter, besides contributions from fashion designers and professionals, at the event themselves.

Now this couldn’t be further from truth. You know what I am talking about if you have been interacting with, let’s say, front desk staff of a hotel, a dealer for electronics appliances, an airline call centre agent or a financial advisor of an insurance company. In a typical scenario, you ask them about a particular promotion, product, feature, specification etc. and more often than not you are met with a blank stare or a nervous apology. You, the customer, are left wondering as to how come you know more about THIER business than they themselves do. The answer is quite simple.

While companies pay a lot of attention and spend a fortune pushing marketing messages aimed at customers, they seldom bother to align it with the communication going to the staff, channel partners and everybody who represents the brand in the marketplace. And all this while, the smart customer is devouring all the information that comes his way, telling others and forming opinions about the brand.

As they say, some still don’t get it…..

Microsoft is spending about US$100million campaigning for Bing and you can watch some of the TVCs (though my personal view is that using the older TVC approach may not be the most effective channel for publicizing one’s online property) @ this youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/bing.

Anyways, so do I think Microsoft will replace Google in the search market? I doubt it, with more than 73% Internet and 93% mobile users using Google for searching online.

As Michael Arrington at TechCrunch states,”Whether Microsoft ultimately succeeds or not in ‘winning’ the search war, the competition is very good for the rest of the Internet. Google needs to be pushed to try innovating new things. And search marketing competition will ensure that Google doesn’t get too greedy. We don’t need Microsoft to win, but we do need to avoid a world with just one search engine that matters. Maybe Microsoft can win that lesser war, at least.”

But, what does the consumer want? We all need the relevant search results from a trusted source. Whether that happens with Google or any other search engine, it looks like we definitely stand to benefit from the spoils of this war.