How HK celebrities use Instagram for marketing

Thanks to the recent announcement by Instagram that it will insert ads to users’ news feed in the next couple of months, the debate on how to monetize Instagram has once again become hot. Marketers and advertisers eye on how this platform will impact on digital world. Before the roll out of Instagram Advertising, let’s have some warm up exercises and see how Hong Kong celebrity Stephy Tang (鄧麗欣) used Instagram to promulgate her charitable photo exhibitions.

Separated in two sessions total 11 days, “StepFree” photo exhibition, aimed at fund-raising for Make-A-Wish Foundation, was held in September at Causeway Bay and in October at Tsing Yi respsectively. Hong Kong renown photographer Mic-Go provides the overall creatives and art direction, while Creativeworks was in charge of the digital marketing of the event.

[Stephy and various StepFree sponsors include Mic-Go of mPowder and Kwun Yeung of Creativeworks in Causeway Bay]

To leverage on the existing resources, such as power of the celebrity, creativity of the photos, high traffic of the locations, we suggested to use Instagram as the core platform of digital marketing campaign. As a game to encourage engagements and virality, participants are required to pick a photo they like, make a wish, take photos and upload to Instagram with hashtag #StepFree. Stephy would make donation according to the number of photos collected, and give gifts to selected winners.

[Stephy in the event]

[Moon of Line also “make-a-wish”]

[People just LOVE to take photos]

[StepFree also become a topic on Sina Weibo]

[Stephy promotes StepFree through video]

[StepFree Facebook event setup on Page of mPowder]

After the two sessions of the event, this Instagram campaign has collected over 900 photos hashtagged #StepFree. We estimated the number of engagements on these photos (include “like” and “comment” on Instagram) was more than 5,000.

To make this simple Instagram campaign more complete, Creativeworks has also designed and developed a lovely mini website for StepFree. Photos of hashtag #StepFree would be updated and shown on this website simultaneously with the updates by Instagram users.

[When you click a photo on the bottom, a bird will bring it upward to the sky]

[Congratulations!]

The simplicity of Instagram is two-bladed sword for marketers. While it ensures the app’s popularity (150m active users worldwide), Instagram cannot provide multiple user experiences directly. But because of its simplicity, Instagram is easy to work with other tools to make an integrated marketing campaign. We believe the upcoming advertising services of Instagram will provide more insights to digital marketers and brands.

  Terence Lam, Managing Director, Creativeworks

About Creativeworks

Since the establishment in 2005, Creativeworks has helped various clients to achieve their marketing objectives by applying integrated methodologies which comprise multi-media, creative design, social media and digital marketing. Our clients include AIA Group, All Nippon Airway, COACH, Ernst & Young, Hong Kong Cyberport, Hong Kong Jockey Club, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, PCCW and University of Hong Kong.

For further enquiry, please contact us by [email protected].