How's everyone today?
I really like the energy in this room.
Before we get started today,
I actually want to do two quick polls. Okay?
First,
please raise your hand if you have watched travel-related
video in your For You feed recently on TikTok.
All right, that's 95%, almost everyone.
All right, second, after watching those videos,
could it be sipping cocktail at the rooftop bar in Bangkok?
Could it be having road trip,
a motorcycle road trip in Vietnam?
Or could it be having surfing lessons in Philippines?
Will you tell yourself, Hey, I want to be there.
I want to try that.
Or you usually also share those videos
with your families and friends
for inspiration, please raise your hand.
That's about 60 to 70%.
All right, I think we have
the perfect audience for the event today.
All right.
Hello everyone.
My name is Matty Lin and I'm the General Manager
of Global Business Solutions for TikTok Southeast Asia.
Today, on behalf of the entire crew,
I would like to welcome you onboard Travel Unboxed 2023.
(audience applauds)
As you all know,
the travel landscape has undergone significant changes
in the past few years due to pandemic.
While the industry has been gradually recovering
and I think the overall conditions continue to improve,
There are significant shifts in consumer behaviours
that we believe are here to stay.
Today's travellers,
they're looking for more than just a change of scenery.
They look for more holistic,
more enriching experience that allows them to fully immerse
with their destinations by exploring,
by engaging with its local culture, local food,
local people, local art, and many, many more.
They also want to get a taste of what the place is like
before even setting foot there.
Let me share a personal anecdote with you,
I think most of you know actually.
So in the past few weeks,
I've been travelling back and forth between New York
and Singapore covering over 10,000 miles weekly
in the past five to six weeks
with very much limited amount of time
to do the research and to find out
all the cool things you know, to do in Singapore.
Like many others, I turn to TikTok for quick inspirations.
It is like having all of your travel channels,
travel blogs, travel vlogs,
and a Google search in one place.
TikTok actually guide me through most of the Hawker centres
and cafeterias.
I have to admit, I had my fair share of chicken rice, chilli crab
and a lot of unnamed desserts in the past few weeks.
So my travel experience has changed completely
and I'm certain I'm not the only one.
Everyone here we have access to information
more than ever before,
we're able to customise and personalise
our travel experience that were once unimaginable.
Actually, let me show you what my feed looks like.
♪ You ain't nothing but a ♪
♪ I get it, I know you got some other you wanted ♪
♪ I get it, you needed someone that could prove you wrong ♪
♪ So I reckon, ♪
♪ you leave all of your problems at the door to my city ♪
♪ You gon' need to tell my brothers where you from ♪
♪ And I admit it, I still got empathy ♪
So in the new era of revenge travel,
we have in tense competition and the disruptions
drives the travel industry.
Brands must connect deeply with the travellers
to satisfy their motivations,
to inspire their travel wanderlust.
That is where TikTok can help achieve in multiple ways.
One,
by inspiring the potential travellers
even before they have the intentions to travel.
Second,
by empowering the travellers to share
their authentic travel stories
with the community of like-minded users.
Last but not least,
it offers a platform and a canvas
for all the brands to be creative, to be innovative,
and to build meaningful connections with their audience
and also to drive actual concrete business results.
To conclude, I will leave you with this,
TikTok is the trip before the trip.
Where are real travellers
and real experiences drive real results.
Now let me provide you a very quick run through
of today's agenda.
We have packed schedule today as everyone see
from your sheet,
so please fasten your seatbelt and get comfortable.
We will have two keynote presentations today, Chew Wee.
First Chew Wee, our Head of Global Business Marketing.
She will talk about how immersive content
and engaged community influence
the decision making among the travellers.
Next, Camila, our Head of Marketing Science,
she will talk about how TikTok
can help the brands drive the business results.
Last but least David, our Head of Industry.
He will moderate a panel discussion and explore
how to leverage the power of short-form video
for the travel industry.
Alright, now I'll handover to Chew Wee.
She will deliver the first keynote speech.
(audience applauds)
(upbeat music)
Thank you Matty for travelling 10,000 miles
all the way from New York to join us here today.
Good afternoon everyone.
Are you ready to take the trip with TikTok?
[Audience] Yeah.
Very good.
Love the energy.
Hi everyone. I am Chew Wee.
I head the marketing team at TikTok Asia Pacific.
I was thinking about how I can best introduce myself
to all of you,
and I thought why not share with you
one of my travel TikToks?
Check it out.
(bright music)
That's my daughter, by the way.
This is a video of my family trip
to Chiang Mai last December.
Every year my father-in-law, he's an amazing man.
He plans a mega trip involving four families,
including my sister-in-laws
and my father-in-laws' families.
We do this without fail every year,
even during the pandemic
where we pivoted to a staycation in Sentosa.
My point here is,
my point here is this video is something that I created
in 15 minutes on TikTok,
It took me a grand total of 15 minutes
and I shared this TikTok with my in-laws.
And this video is one of the many examples
of the type of travel content, of the type of real content,
real reviews that you will see on TikTok.
And today that's what I will be talking about.
I'll be sharing with you how real experiences
from real travellers on TikTok will get you real results.
We are witnessing an evolution
in the way consumers consume content,
in the way they get that information and what they
are influenced by.
In the early 2000s and the way we consume content
is very much one way,
From medium like TV and print.
We call this the age of context.
So our ideas, our inspirations on
where to go and what to do are very much influenced
by news editors and TV producers.
Then came the age of knowledge
where a large amount of information is available
on the internet and we do our trip planning and booking
with the help of search engines.
Then came the age of social
where we started broadcasting every aspects of our life
on social media and we were very much influenced
by what our friends is sharing,
what they like, very much influenced by our social network.
All of that is culminating today in the age of content.
In the age of content,
the content that you get is highly personalised,
delivered to you, curated to you by a recommendation engine.
In the age of content,
we see an explosion in the growth of content.
We see UGC, user generated content growing,
exploding alongside PGC, professionally generated content.
I'll show you how that translates into the travel space.
This is an example from the Vietnamese tourism board,
the Vietnam Tourism Board, VNET.
VNET work with a TikTok to launch a campaign called
Hello Vietnam, to promote domestic travel.
So for this campaign,
every two months they featured a new city
and a new province in Vietnam.
And what they did is that they encouraged the TikTok community
to respond and share what they interpret
of that province in Vietnam.
And the TikTok community did not disappoint.
They generated tonnes of content featuring Vietnamese food,
Vietnamese culture, Vietnamese tourist attractions.
And what we saw is that the amount of content
that was generated was far richer,
far more diverse than if VNET
had created the campaign on its own.
And if you look at it, think about it,
your consumers have now become your brand ambassadors.
They have become your brand advocates.
So indeed, we saw through the age of content,
it allow us to travel through the eyes of other travellers.
We get to experience the place, the destination, the hotel,
the airline before we even take the actual trip.
So this video is an actual TikTok that I stumbled upon
on my For You feed
and that influenced the location for our family
destination this year.
Any guesses where that will be?
Can you tell from the video?
Australia. Yes.
So the destination for my family trip this year
is Gold Coast, Brisbane.
Now you see the opportunity here,
On TikTok.
Consumers get to take the trip before the trip.
They get to experience the place
before they actually visit the place.
What does that mean for all of you here as brands?
It means that through discovery,
you have the opportunity to create the intent,
create the intent to travel,
going beyond just targeting the intent.
By the ability, by being able to create the intent,
you're able to influence traveller decisions more upstream.
Indeed. Indeed.
From our survey results,
we found that majority of TikTok community,
majority of TikTok consumers are influenced by the content
that they see to want to travel.
And that prompted them to make bookings often spontaneously.
So why is this important to all of us as marketeers?
One, one thing that we will love to encourage
all of you to do
and think about is to play in the space before,
before your consumers,
before your travellers even have the intent to travel
to start inspiring them a bit more upstream
and use TikTok to do that.
So how do I use TikTok to do that?
Now,
we can't talk about TikTok without talking about
the For You feed.
So the For You feed is where majority of our users
spend most of their time.
It's the first thing you see when you open up the app.
I will explain a little bit
about how the For You feed works.
The For You feed is powered by a recommendation engine
that delivers content to you based on your interests.
It uses signals like
which are the videos you spend more time on,
which are the videos you swipe,
which are the videos you like,
you share to deliver a content feed
that is highly personalised to you.
No two For You feeds look the same.
If you look at mine For You feed,
it will look very different
from that of Matty's For You feed.
All right?
And For You feed is built on what we call a content graph,
not a social graph.
Not a social graph,
meaning the content you get
is not limited by the friends you have,
who you follow or who follow you or what you search for.
One thing,
one thing that is very unique and powerful about our
For You feed is that it also deliberately
diversifies the recommendations.
So that you can stumble upon new content categories,
new creators or more importantly, new brands.
To ensure that your feed doesn't become an echo chamber.
So because of the power of the For You feed today,
TikTok is enjoyed by more than 1 billion users
around the world.
And out of this, over billion users,
364 million are in Asia Pacific.
So more than 30% of TikTok users are from our region.
And they are spending 80 minutes a day on our platform,
80 minutes a day.
That's more than hour a day.
That is a lot of time, attention
that all of you can capitalise on.
So unsurprisingly, with that,
with that growth in the user base
and the growth in the content,
we also see a natural growth
in travel related content.
Travel in Asia Pacific
is the fastest growing content category
in Asia Pacific growing at 66% year on year.
And we have seen travel related content
Garnered a whopping 553 billion views, 553 billion.
I have no idea how many zeros that is, but it is a lot.
So again, what does this mean again for you as a brand?
All of you here are travel experts.
You know the travel journey,
the travel planning journey more than I do.
But what I do want to call out
is that in the age of content, in the age of content
there's an opportunity for you to use content
to use short-form videos to influence travellers
at every stage of the planning process.
Starting from the beginning when travellers are starting
to dream of their holiday to the planning,
to the actual booking,
and then to when they start to share their experiences
on content platforms,
thereby further influencing other dreamers,
creating this infinity loop.
I want to spend a bit of time
to talk about the planning phase, the planning phase.
We know that the planning phase for travellers
can be quite a stressful and time consuming affair.
I know because just last week I tried to upgrade
my Brisbane flight tickets using my KrisFlyer miles.
It was very stressful, trust me.
Is there anyone from Singapore Airlines here?
Yeah,
I hope they can do something about the miles redemption,
but that's a story for another day, yes.
So it is time consuming. It is stressful.
And as marketeers often
we like to play in that space.
We invest and we spend considerable resources trying
to drive consideration during the planning phase.
But we also know that space is very cluttered,
very noisy with many brands, many OTAs, airlines,
tourism boards, accommodations, hotels,
fighting tooth and nail to try to influence at that space.
We also know then amongst the clutter, where people's attention
are getting very short, but there is attention deficit.
How can you stand out for your brand
to get the attention.
So TikTok through the power of our short-form videos
through the command, through the attention that we command,
we want to be able to accelerate that process for you
and help you be able to influence better.
Let's take a look how that can be done.
(keyboard clicking)
- [Narrator] A few moments later.
One eternity later.
(bright music) (singing in foreign language)
Yes, so that is an example
of how through entertaining videos, short-form videos,
you can accelerate the process and influence
at the planning and the dreaming stage.
One thing,
one thing that sets TikTok apart from other platforms,
other digital platforms is authenticity.
You will hear me use the word real a lot,
you hear me talk about getting real a lot today,
and that is indeed what sets us apart.
We have a community that is made up
of real travellers sharing real reviews, real experiences.
There's no pressure to be polished or perfect,
It's about sharing the raw and real moments of travel,
the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between.
Let's look at some examples.
(upbeat music)
Another example.
This is from a solo female traveller
sharing some very practical, very real advice.
Here's five things I would never do
as a solo female traveller.
Number one, I would never stay in an Airbnb alone.
Number two,
I would never arrive to a new city during the night time.
I'd much rather spend a few extra dollars
and arrive during the day to feel safer.
Number three,
I would never not share my location
with a friend or with family.
So these are some examples
of the type of travel content
that consumers will get on TikTok
because of the authenticity,
that realness, there is a higher level of trust,
and that trust is the currency that will help us break
through the clutter when we're trying to fight for attention
and because of this level of trust,
you see consumers on TikTok being more prepared
to take action,
and make bookings.
Now, you saw several of the videos that had played.
Many of this video are created by everyday consumer,
everyday traveller, like you and I.
It is not by a professional producer
or by a celebrity,
so what you are seeing,
what we are seeing is that in the age of content,
there is a democratisation of creativity,
a democratisation of content where anyone,
everyone can be a creator.
Which means that practically every user,
every traveller on TikTok can be a creator for you,
for your brand,
to advocate for your brand on your behalf.
So you saw,
you saw the growth of that content and our creators,
and that has led to the emergence of many subcultures.
Within TikTok, we have subcultures like family travel,
like street food,
where the community come together to share common interests.
And this is an opportunity for you as brands to
engage with the community and own certain subcultures.
We also have seen that through these subcultures,
the emergence of trends driven by music,
driven by challenges.
Let me share an example of a challenge
that was trending on TikTok playing to the song,
can we skip to the good part?
Take a look.
♪ Can we skip to the good part? ♪
♪ You've arrived at your destination. ♪
(upbeat music)
So what I have shown you,
what I have shown you is an example of the content,
the creators, the community on TikTok.
So who are the consumers?
Who are the consumers consuming all of this content?
We did a research,
we did a research into our user base
and we identified five personas that stood out,
they are nature lovers, culture seekers, foodies,
event goers, luxury travellers.
I'll not be elaborating on this personas.
We do have a booth at our experiential zones
where our staff will share a little bit more
about this personas to you.
But what I want to callout is that through a mix
of targeting techniques and options on TikTok
through interest targeting,
behaviour targeting, hashtag targeting,
which is quite unique to TikTok,
as well as even contextual targeting
where you are able to place your ads,
your branded content before and after a piece
of relevant content to target these personas.
So all of that combined for me to share how you can tap
on the content, creators, community and consumers on TikTok,
what are the takeaways,
besides dreaming of your next holiday.
So if I could leave you,
if I have asked for all of you today,
if you have not already done so,
do download the TikTok app.
You need to experience the app,
experience the ForYou feed for yourself to really fully appreciate
the power of the content and the recommendation engine.
And we have three takeaways for you.
One, we are already in the age of content,
where our information,
our decisions are influenced not just by our friends,
not just by our search engines.
Tap on the power of short-form videos to influence travellers
at every stage of the travel journey.
Two, across this various stages,
the stage that is a missed opportunity
is a stage where the dream begins a little bit more upstream
and you have the opportunity to use TikTok
to create the intent,
to create the intent because TikTok is the place that people
go to to take the trip before the actual trip.
Finally, you saw some of the real reviews,
the real experiences coming from real travellers on TikTok
tap into this community, leverage it to get real results
for your brands.
And I will be passing on to my colleague Camila,
who is our measurement expert,
to share how you can do that,
how you can get real results.
Thank you.
(audience applauds) (upbeat music)
Thank you, Chew Wee, that was amazing.
Hi everyone. I'm Camila, I'm a measurement lead on TikTok.
I'm very happy to be here today and I'll be talking about
how brands can see real results on TikTok.
So first of all, as we touched on earlier,
your travel is a complex journey
and we'll cut across several touchpoints and channels.
So before a traveller makes a decision,
they will go through across all of these touchpoints
and it will cut across how they choose the destination,
and when they choose the destination,
where they go, what they eat, and where they stay.
And the role of TikTok is to allow the travellers
to make the trip before the trip,
bringing them closer to an experience of what before they,
sorry, the experience of booking,
regardless of where they are at in their decision journey.
So our visually immersive bite-size content videos can spark
the travel inspiration and help them to research on TikTok
to make that decision of where they're going
and what they're doing.
So on TikTok, we believe that views matter.
And as a leader of short-form videos
where people can come and consume content,
TikTok is actually a single screen experience.
And because of that,
whatever they are doing on our platform
is getting more attention.
It's focused and that's why it's a unique platform.
So let me explain a little bit about that
before I play the video.
Our videos are 100% skippable.
So users, when they're watching something,
they can either decide to stay
and watch your content or they can just skip,
so it means that if they're deciding to watch it,
it's a conscious decisions that they're making,
you have their full attention.
So there's nothing playing on the background,
there's no minimising the screen, they're there for you.
So let me play this video.
(upbeat music)
So what it means is that when, again,
when a user is watching your video on TikTok,
they're actually interested in a brand or product.
So based on an internal analysis that we ran here on TikTok,
we saw that it only takes a few seconds
for brands to get the results, the impact from their ads.
So we only need two seconds on TikTok
to achieve most of the impact on ad recall
and only 2.5 seconds to achieve most of
the impact on brand awareness.
So TikTok not only drives brand recall,
but it can also influence action.
So in another global study that was conducted by Neurons,
we saw that TikTok is able to drive 74% influence,
74% of purchase intent,
as well as 79% of the likelihood of recommending to others.
So we also saw that TikTok improves efficiency for brands.
So in another study conducted with Adjust, which is an MMP,
we saw that across verticals,
TikTok is able to drive on average 60% lower cost
per install as compared to other paid channels.
So based on that we see that brands are rethinking
how they're spending their marketing budgets.
So we saw on another research with WARC that 67% of
the brands are rethinking how they are including TikTok
in their marketing mix.
So on TikTok, we also recommend the brands go full funnel.
And this is based on another analysis that we ran internally
where we saw that brands
that are running full funnel campaigns,
they're able to achieve two times more conversions,
36% more efficient CPAs and 33% highest conversion rates.
When they run full funnel campaigns,
it means lower funnel and upper funnel combined
as opposed to only running lower funnel campaigns.
So with that in mind now I would like to share
some case studies of travel brands that
have been successful on TikTok when they tap on the trip
before the trip to inspire travellers.
So first of all, we have Klook.
(lively music)
So this is a very inspiring video.
Klook wanted to promote their Garden by the Bay
and Avatar experience lounge in Singapore
and attracting people from Singapore and Southeast Asia.
So they turned to TikTok and invited creators
across Southeast Asia to come
and shared their experience with
their audience and their followers.
And the way they did it is they chose creators
that have a broad range of interests
from travel, to food, to fashion,
so that they can reach a broader audience.
And these creators would actually invite their followers
to come with them through TikTok live
to actually experience this in Gardens by the Bay.
So with this campaign Avatar the Experience
they were actually very successful and they achieved
6.8 million video views from this campaign.
So the next one is with Hilton.
So this was also a huge success
and it got a lot of attention with 4 million views
and 200,000 engagements.
So this is not only talking about these numbers,
but reports show that this was actually 86 times more.
They got 86 times more views than the average brand.
So this campaign actually cemented TikTok
as a huge part of their media mix with this success.
And if you haven't seen this video,
I encourage you to go ahead and watch it.
I think it's a great example of how authenticity
and creativity can actually go a long way on TikTok.
So next we have tiket.com.
So tiket.com wanted to celebrate Ramadan.
It's a very important period in Indonesia,
they wanted to do in a big way last year.
So they tapped on TikTok to actually improve
their brand love as well as user acquisition.
Here they also use creators to help with that
and they actually saw fantastic results.
This hashtag challenge that they run with the help
of creators not only saw 1.33 billion views as a result,
but it also caused growth in their user acquisition
in a way that they had never seen before.
So it was,
they saw 2.3 times growth in their user acquisitions
on tiket.com solely coming from TikTok.
So last but not least,
I would like to shift gears a little bit to a CPG brand.
L'Oreal,
because they have been very successful
with their full funnel campaigns on TikTok.
Not only they are successful on the branding side,
but we are seeing full funnel impact
all the way down to sales.
And I know travel is actually relatively new on TikTok.
So we think that travel veterans
can take inspiration from this case study.
That's why we put it up here.
So what L'Oreal did is Maybelline,
they wanted to launch a new mascara
and they wanted to create awareness
so that it would become the number one in Australia.
So in TikTok they used a combination of ad formats
and creators to drive this awareness
and this resonated really well with their audience.
And then ultimately we helped them to measure this campaign
and we saw actual impact in sales, in-store sales.
So there saw 4.9 lift in in-store sales,
which actually represents online to offline impact.
So you may be asking what does 4.9 means?
It actually is 75% above
the Nielsen Australia FMCG benchmark.
So very good results for them.
So with that,
I would like to close this session with two key takeaways.
First of all is that views matter on TikTok.
Like I said before,
people give their full attention to TikTok
with our single screen experience
and users are making a conscious choice
of watching your content or ads
and this results in higher brand impact.
And the second one,
it's important for brands
to rethink their marketing strategy.
Go full funnel on TikTok.
So this way you can actually reap the benefits
of the short-term performance campaigns
as well as the long-term impact of branding campaigns.
So with that, I thank you for your time today.
(audience applauds) (upbeat music)
Thank you Camila, for the great presentation.
I hope brands here know more about
how to measure the real impact of TikTok.
Good afternoon everyone. My name is David.
I'm from the Brand Partnerships team
and have the honour to have conversations
with market and industry leaders
from travel all around Singapore and beyond.
And hope you're buckled up.
We're halfway through our flight
and we might be landing soon enough.
But before that I'd like to introduce first guest
of the panelist, Georgina Koh,
Director of Market Activations, Singapore Tourism Board.
(upbeat music)
Next up, we have Marcus Yong,
He's the Vice President of Global Marketing
for Klook and Klook you saw earlier on the case study.
So Marcus.
(upbeat music continues)
All right,
so we've got two from brands and of course
what will we do without measurements.
So let me welcome from Kantar director
Senior Director, Claire Martin.
(upbeat music continues)
Last but not the least,
we have our dear own creator from Singapore, Amira Rahmat.
(upbeat music continues)
Awesome.
So good afternoon everyone.
Thank you very much for being with us.
Thanks for having us.
I'm sure there's so many things
I'd like to talk with you all, but first and foremost,
maybe stepping back a bit,
I would love to understand the macro
that you guys are seeing as well.
I have to go about pre-post pandemic.
What key changes have we seen in terms of travel,
how travel decisions have changed or how the decision making
has changed over time and any ideas
and opportunities that you might see?
I'd like to start with you Georgina,
if you don't mind,
and then maybe I'll go to Claire afterwards.
Sure.
So from us as from the vantage point
of a Singapore Tourism Board,
I guess where we are really looking at
what some of the shifts that we think will endure,
because that's going to influence a lot in terms of
where we are going to work with our industry
in developing the next stages of tourism growth
and products and services
that we want to bring on board the destination.
And I think there are two key things
that we're really looking at.
One is just that people are a lot more mindful
about how we consume our travel.
I think some of our colleagues
have talked about it earlier as well.
So being more conscious in some of the choices
of where we travel.
It's not just really about clocking your miles anymore
or, just checking off the sights that you must see,
but you're travelling to connect, to learn,
to be with the people that you love
and you want to share some of this joy with.
So we think that's definitely one,
people are going to be more purposeful about why they travel
and what they do when they're in the destination.
And the second is when you are in the destination itself,
you're going to be more conscious about
what's your carbon footprint?
Are you being, are you making conscious purchase decisions?
Are you staying in hotel that you can,
identify with some of the sustainability practises
that these brands and services
that you are engaging with when you travel.
So we think that consumers want to engage with brands
who embody their values.
And that's why a lot of the work that we do today
with our tourism partners is to see
how we can really bring sustainability
in the design of how we think about
our products and services that we provide
and the experiences that we create.
Even as we move towards positioning ourselves
as an urban wellness haven
for the conscious as well as a modern traveller.
Wonderful self expression of real selves.
I guess.
And as well as being conscious about the environment.
Claire, what do you see from your lens?
Yeah, I think that there's been enormous change
in the last few years and certainly the pandemic,
put a halt to travel.
But if we step back before the pandemic,
we certainly started to see, I think, I don't know if you,
anybody in the audience could remember picking out
a guidebook going along to a bookstore and picking out
a guidebook and diligently going through
that guidebook and noting all of the places
that you wanted to see and experience.
And I think now that analogue experience
is being superseded by short-form video.
I think one of the things that we've noticed
and seen at Kantar is
the way that people are actually using that
to actually really change the dynamic of
how they're experiencing travel.
We see people
that are really engaged and immersed
in those travel experiences
because when they access short-form video,
it's real, it's relatable,
it's happening right there, right now.
They are able to really put aside
anything that they've seen before
and experience it actually in the moment.
So it's a very powerful dynamic
that they haven't had access to previously.
And I think that's a really powerful thing.
I think the other thing that's happening with travel
and it has been talked about a little bit
is the way that now culture and immersing yourself
in culture is so important
when you go into these destinations.
I think, historically you might have just wanted
to have a meal at a top restaurant,
but now you actually want to go
and learn more about the chef,
how it was cooked, where did he come from,
how did he create that dish?
So you are immersing yourselves much more in the experiences
and that obviously elongates the learning experience
that I think travellers are looking for more and more.
And I think the other thing is also around choicefulness,
because of accessibility
it means that people are able to access information
in short-form video very quickly.
They make choices very quickly.
They flick through on their phones,
they see something instantaneously,
they like what they see
and they take a decision right there and then.
So it's certainly upended the experiences that travellers had
and we think that some of those trends
are definitely here to stay.
Awesome.
I have to jump into that short-form video.
It's glad to see that other brands and research agencies
are also seeing the same way
and would love to understand
from personal experience as well.
You both Marcus and Georgina have been the forefront
of driving brands through short-form.
I'd love to hear your perspective on
how it has been so far.
So for those who are familiar with Klook,
we basically allow people to book everything
from experiences,
hotels, transport options.
So especially when you look at experiences,
it is a very visual kind of object.
A tour versus a cooking class can be very different.
And how we allow people to actually discover the hundreds
and thousands of activities that we have
on our platform is really through content.
A few years ago we used to invest
a lot in long-form content and we still do.
There's still a segment of people
that want to consume blogs, they want to read listicles.
But increasingly,
and I think partially due to the pandemic as well,
the proliferation of technology has really accelerated,
people's attention spans are getting shorter.
And that's why we have really doubled down on creating
a lot of short-form, bite-size, even UGC content.
We have offices in 15 cities globally,
so we make full use of the fact that
we have our guys on ground to create that content.
We work very closely with creators like you guys saw
on the screen earlier to create all this content.
And we basically push all this content
through the various platforms that we have,
including TikTok of course,
and do a lot of A/B testing to see which content,
what topic, what format gets us the best result.
And I think it's been an amazing journey so far.
But what's most exciting is we think that we are really only
at the start of this journey.
There's a lot more that we haven't learnt,
how to integrate things like sonic branding
Music, what kind of music helps.
And then more importantly is later on
bridging the O2O experience.
Meaning the online,
when people are searching what to do,
all the way to the offline,
when they're actually in destination,
they're using the activity,
how can they then create a short-form video, leave a review,
and then discover new things to book in destination.
[David] And it's a cycle.
It is a cycle that think Chew Wee mentioned as well.
Definitely. How about you Georgina?
Well, I can't agree with Marcus more.
I mean if it is entertaining,
you will want to spend time in it no matter the format.
And I think the short-form format itself is so immersive,
so addictive and so easy to consume
that just people are spending a lot of time just,
scrolling through the TikToks.
But I think there are two main things
that we really focus on with regards to short-form videos.
One is the fact that there are just better tools.
The tools for you to create these videos just gets better
by the day and natively within the platform itself,
there are already so many ways
in which you can be very creative.
I think there's really no bounds to the level of creativity
of the content that can be generated.
Because you have a great idea,
you now have the tools to be able to do it.
And for us as a destination,
because we really are in a business of trying to market
the concept of a destination.
Creating the intent before you're planning
for the travel.
And so as many ways as we can
to put forth the destination to the audiences,
targeting at what your micro interests are,
what your tribe is, what are you interested in,
the better.
And so the more tools that we are able to get out there
for people to be creating content themselves
in a very real and authentic way
is super powerful for us as a destination,
as a travel brand.
And that's why we're doing a lot more work
with creators today,
the raw, unfiltered,
unpolished types of content is where we think is going to be
the way to go and what people are going to be engaged with
more and more than the highly glossed up,
polished productions.
I think that the second thing
is really the fact that we think that,
discovery is going to start from social and increasingly,
you see, so I mean your colleagues have shared how,
you're already scrolling through TikTok
for inspiration on where to go.
When you're in the destination,
you have opened up your TikTok to see, where are people,
going to spend our weekend now,
where are you eating?
And I think the aspect of
bringing you back to how people in the city
that you're in, in the country are in,
are living their lives are experiencing is super powerful
with TikTok because the content that we get here through
this short-form format is just so dynamic and so real time
and the fact that there are so much content out there,
it makes the discovery a lot diverse
from very time-based to,
Micro moments. Micro moments. Exactly.
Yes. Yeah.
Indeed.
And I love how both of you,
Marcus and Georgina mentioned about creators.
Very lucky to have an actual creator here today,
actually one of the earlier ones, Amira,
as I understand you're a stewardess
and you have making tips and tricks,
travel content for Muslim and beyond people
to unlock the world for them.
Could you kindly please share us your story,
how you create your content,
how you engage with your audiences?
Thank you for the great question.
I'm a travel content creator and I create tips
and create videos for a certain group of audiences
such as for Muslim friendly travel
as well as solo female travel and so on.
And for about in the past two years I delve into TikTok
as sharing my content, sharing my stories.
And I will say I was one of the early adopters on TikTok
in Singapore and I'm really grateful for that
'cause I stepped out of my comfort zone
and started using TikTok as a platform to share my stories.
So I find that short-form video content
is very exciting and immersive versus pictures,
which is kind of like curated,
which looks like polished and perfect and also text
on other platforms and using short-form video format,
it helps to capture the attention of audiences
in a short span of time.
For example, I have videos
which has reached over 1 million views
and for my niche is more towards Muslim travel
as well as food.
So it has actually garnered interests of global Muslims
and I've read some of the comments,
it has actually inspired others to be more adventurous
in their travels.
It has actually compelled me and inspired me
to create more raw, more relatable, more real,
more authentic sharing and stories.
And whenever I create a piece of content,
I try to be more purposeful
when I create a content I conceptualise I will want to,
try to solve a pain point in a community
Helps me to be handheld
my audience towards my travel journey became more immersive
and I'm trying to also dive into new era of storytelling.
Awesome.
I want to dive into that point.
Amira, you mentioned something about the journey itself,
trying to find tension points,
trying to solve them on behalf of the viewer
and the potential traveller.
And I'd like Claire to take this on.
How do you see short-form video so far
tackling this journey from end to end?
I think that's the amazing power of short-form video
is that
we've seen earlier from your colleagues
talking about how it can influence
every step of the customer journey.
We look at that first stage
where people are wanting to be inspired
and wanting to be discovered.
I love the catchy phrase that you have
with the trip before the trip
because I think that's essentially it.
People these days are wanting to actually
Be able to see where they're going
and to experience where they're going
before they actually make that plunge.
And I think that,
you see at that very inspirational stage,
the way that they can quickly flick through
short-form video.
It's very immersive, it's very real,
it's very in the moment, it's very fresh,
it's right here, right now.
And people know that information
isn't going to be outdated.
So it's very much in that discovery phase.
And then when they've made a decision that
where they want to go in their planning stage,
they can then start to look for tribes.
They can start to find
like-minded people.
They can start to look through hashtags
to really find out
what they want to do
when they're actually at that destination.
And I think that planning process now becomes
so much more empowered
and so much more exciting for people
because they can really visualise
what they're going to be doing
and how they're going to be doing it.
And then when they're on the ground, I think,
one of the things that is so wonderful
about the way that short-form video is,
is that it's created by locals,
it's created by people in this country,
that are really here,
you saw some great examples of
what it's really like to be like in Santori in Greece
and you can really go,
okay, do I really want to make that choice?
Is there something else I can find out about?
And because it's created by locals,
it's often new and unknown experiences
that they might have when they're there.
So that whole notion of gatekeeping,
tell me a secret,
those things I think that are really impactful
for travellers and short-form video
is a master of doing that.
And I think the other thing that's interesting,
it is obviously at the beginning of the journey
for customers, but also once you get back home,
the power of short-form video really comes into
its own for me because you are then resurfacing
similar content.
You're starting to see similar things.
So I think the infinity loop
was spoken about before,
but I think that there's that wonderful sense
that I am still on my holidays,
I am still getting rich experiences.
I'm still able to see
and be inspired about where I want to go next
and how quickly I'm going to pack my bags
to get on that next plane.
Never ending trip, isn't it?
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
So, at the end of the day,
this is all good theory,
but at the end we need to be able to measure things.
Are we able to do,
is short-form able to do top funnel,
mid funnel, lower funnel?
So I have to take this opportunity
to listen from actual industry experts here.
So maybe we start first with you Marcus,
and then we go to you Georgina,
how do you go about measuring all this?
It's actually not easy.
[David] Fair.
We still have a lot of internal debates
and discussions and I'll explain why
The thing about marketing
is that when you look at brand marketing
versus performance marketing,
the performance guys are always looking
for the most efficient way to drive the most clicks.
The highest conversions at the lowest cost.
But when you look at the brand side of things,
and I'm sure there are many marketers in this room,
you don't start by asking yourself
what's the cheapest cost that I can acquire a customer?
You start by asking yourself,
what is the story that I want to tell?
What is the narrative?
How do I connect with consumers?
So because of this,
you can see that when we talk about full funnel,
whenever you run campaigns or whatnot,
I think it's important to know that different platforms have
a role to play in different parts of the funnel.
The first mistake we made in the past
was trying to actually benchmark,
all channels alike and basically,
you know what split the budget, let's optimise,
let's see which platform gets us the lower CPC.
But as we started to run more, then we realised that,
you know what?
TikTok, for example,
has a very strong role to play at the top of the funnel,
influencing consideration, influencing engagement.
We start to look more at things like
content consumption.
So we look at how many views we can get,
how many people have engaged with the video.
We also look at the percentage of new users
that this TikTok ads can bring to our platform
because we believe that it helps us break into new segments.
But that being said,
when you go all the way to the lower funnel
and that's why we bring in things like PPC and all that.
They still have a role to play.
So for us now we have a very clear mandate internally what
channel works well for what measurement, that's number one.
And number two is also the kind of campaigns that we run.
So on a always-on basis we look at cost per app install
we look at percentage of new users that we're able
to bring in from app install
on a tactical mega campaign basis,
which is basically things like our anniversary sale,
birthday sale, summer sale,
that's a lot more aggressive, first two weeks,
open up the funnel, prospect,
hit as many people as possible, optimise,
test the different ads in the creative format
and then after see how we can capture the users as well.
Sounds like a lot of fun, Marcus.
[Marcus] Extremely.
How about you Georgina?
Well, we don't sell a product,
which makes our challenge very interesting.
How do you measure this concept that we're trying to sell?
And of course I think the brand metrics definitely
is a big part in the work that we do.
How do we look at whether we have moved the destinations
in terms of brand health for certain aspects
that we want to be able to create?
Are you associating, for example, Singapore as a diverse,
multicultural destination, et cetera, et cetera?
So that's a big part of the measurements that we do.
Obviously,
performance as well as cost metrics are important.
It helps keeps us honest so to speak,
In terms of how we make use of our marketing dollars.
But a lot of the work that we do
as an organisation,
as an organisation that builds overall intent
is to see our fundamental job is really
about getting Singapore in the minds of as many people
as possible in our target audience
and have we done so?
And to put it plainly,
it would be how much of the funnel have we broadened?
And we look at this through well,
like brand health that I mentioned.
But the other aspect that we will look at it will really be
how differently have we presented the destination?
Have we been innovative in a way in which we are talking
about the destination?
How focused are we
in putting some thoughts in the minds of our consumers
of what the destination stands for.
So the level of innovativeness that we are able to bring
to the category is also something
that we are very much more focused on.
Awesome.
So full funnel,
is what I hear as well as innovation both
on the activities itself as well as the measurement.
Interesting.
I heard some key words earlier today,
earlier this conversation, branding and performance.
And I have to say, I have to ask this question, Claire,
so that it's a bit more balanced.
Is it truly branding or is it truly performance?
Can I say brandformance?
It's a bit of a cop out,
I truly think that, I think as you've said,
they play different roles,
they have different functions,
depending upon where any brand is
and it's development,
its emphasis would change.
So, think that it's important
that both are considered and both are utilised
because they complement each other
and there is a role for both of them.
So I think that obviously historically certain brands,
have played very heavily
into the performance side of things
and to the detriment of not building their brand
and vice versa.
if you take a really good example like Airbnb,
obviously they have made
they have made some very big strategic decisions about
moving away from exclusively focusing on performance.
We saw roundabout 2019
that they started to really
look at the brand building side of things,
looking at their brand values,
their brand persona, their brand identity,
and I think that strategy obviously has played
dividends in the way that they are now
showing up for consumers.
So I think that,
it's a 60 million question, I can't answer it,
for each and every one of you in the room.
But I do think that,
it's a carefully considered decision
that has to be made at an individual brand, like level
as a brand marketer,
I would always err
on the side of the brand side of things,
but obviously recognising that performance marketing
is incredibly important, just a very different tool.
Can I add one thing?
So I just feel that,
to get either both brand and performance,
I think one major, major learning
that I really want to share with everyone is that
I think brands have to be prepared
to really invest not just the ad dollars
or the manpower, but in the content creation.
Because if you don't do that step one right,
the rest of it, you'll find that it's very narrow.
You don't have much to experiment with.
But when you're creating content,
there's this word that I was telling David about,
Flawsome.
[David] Ah, I love that word. Yes.
Because we learnt it the hard way
because the first time, basically, you know what,
very polished video,
Film it one minute, cut it down into 15 seconds, 30 seconds,
optimise it for different formats, vertical screen, whatnot.
But it doesn't work.
But yet, if you just take a mobile phone,
get your guys out there, shoot a bunch of clips,
make it look authentic, number one, it works better.
This, I can tell you.
Number two,
there's a lot of ways that you can experiment with.
So a video clip about 10 things to do in Japan,
today, shoot it that way,
tomorrow, cast it into a Wes Anderson trend,
and that's exactly what we did.
So you can repurpose the content
but you just have to really invest in creating it.
And then the rest will come as well.
Got it.
I can't say I was surprised on the brandformance Claire,
but there's a third part of the equation,
which is to unlock those two,
you really have to think about the content
that you're measuring at the end of the day.
Thank you very much Marcus for enlightening us on that one.
And I would love to extend this conversation.
It has been fun. It was a very quick 25 minutes for me.
I hope the same for the audience, but before we close,
I'd love to see it again back in the eyes of the creator who
is essentially in the middle of us and our future travellers.
And our current travellers actually.
So Amira, would you kindly share with us,
what is that top of mind collaboration that you've done?
If you don't mind sharing with us, why you love it?
What was about it that you think resonated with you
and would you recommend to everyone in our audiences?
I worked with some hotels as well as tourism boards
such as Tourism Malaysia and Tourism Australia.
And one of the recent collaborations that I would like to
highlight and share about is actually a collaboration
with one of the resorts in Bintan Indonesia.
So one of the main things that I realised,
from a creator's point of view,
I really like the whole process
of conceptualisation and creation.
When the brand allows,
the flexibility as well as when creators
can actually create content
based on our own style and own preference.
In this way we can let our creativity run more free
and also be ourselves.
And when we do that,
we can have actually the most authentic
and most genuine sharing of our travels to our audience.
So that's when there'll be trust between the creators
and as well as the audience.
So all in all,
when the brands actually allow us to,
create our content based on what we liked the most
and how we actually bring across
a message to the audience,
there'll be more trust, more genuine, more relatability.
So yeah,
I think that's what brands can actually consider when
working with creators for collaborations.
There you go.
Trust the creator a little bit more.
Have that collaboration.
And make things work and make magic happen.
Awesome. That's the end of the panel session.
I'm really sorry, I wish I could have extended it,
but thank you so much, Georgina, Marcus, Claire, and Amira.
I wish you a wonderful afternoon ahead.
And again, I'm sure the audience appreciated it as well.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I do hope you guys have seen TikTok,
or used TikTok or seen the ad placement.
So let us just refresh ourselves on how products in TikTok
can help you lead attention into action.
So let's watch a video here.
This is our TopView, it's our most premium placement.
Typically the first thing that is seen by a user on TikTok.
And then the user would go through and flip through content
and occasionally we'll lead into in-feed ads very seamlessly
inserting a message from the brands out there.
And then the user continues to flip through and discover
other content like this Lush Mario Brother Soap.
Haven't tried it, but I heard it's good.
And then you reach into what we call the branded missions
where brands like you can ask creators to join in
and tackle some missions
and create content somewhere along there.
And you see a cute dog or cat, whichever is your fancy,
followed by what we call branded effects where anyone
and everyone can join in, do some fun stuff using filters,
augmented reality and so forth.
And you can see throughout this experience,
It could be upper funnel, it could be mid-funnel.
I wish I had the time to show you lower funnel,
Now, this is something I have to walk you through
is our creative solutions.
You've heard from our panel today how creatives and creators
are integral and important to making successful campaigns
through TikTok and in general, short-form video.
There are two very important platforms
that you can use within TikTok.
One is TikTok Creator Marketplace.
This allows you to hunt down that creator that you would
want to represent your next campaign or your next brand.
You could see statistics from them, views,
engagement rates, and if you do indeed work with them,
you'll see post-campaign results and summaries
in that same platform to course correct
or to double down on what you've been doing.
A really exciting platform that is coming up as well is what
we call the TikTok Creative Exchange,
or we call it TTCX.
We love acronyms too, by the way.
So in TTCX,
you get to find your creative partners who will help you
from ideation all the way to execution.
Think of it like finding either consultants
or brand partners or creative partners
to help you bring into reality
and bridge you from where you are today
to what you're imagining to the future.
Of course, what is unboxed without a package?
There are two very interesting packages
that I'd like to present to you today.
There are more, but I'd like to focus on two.
The first one is travel journey to Bangkok.
If you join this package,
you'll be able to engage with creators
as they walk through their audiences on their experiences,
travel experiences from where they may be
all the way to Bangkok, all around Bangkok and back.
Secondly, and this is very interesting as well,
is the Southeast Asia Food Fest.
You will get to use and leverage what we call
food and location tags.
So in TikTok,
isn't it easier if a tag towards your favourite food
or your favourite location is there for whatever service
or product that you are selling?
So this might be something interesting.
To know more about them,
just reach out to your TikTok contact.
Now, we are really landing in a few minutes from now, so on,
but I just wanted to let you know
that I hope you enjoyed today's presentation.
Do join us, allow us to be part of your journey
through short-form video and content.
We have a lot of great partners already working with us.
As you can see, airlines, global airlines, OTAs,
tourism boards, hotels, you name it.
So please, if you haven't yet,
do consider starting your journey with TikTok.
So, you know when we get to the takeaways
usually means the last slide,
but I have one more after this, but hang on.
So yeah, first and foremost,
this is where inspiration begins,
the battle where the inspiration begins
is actually a free space,
we are generating demand,
and TikTok is a great place for both of us to work together
to generate that dream vacation for future travellers.
I, myself included,
and this has to be leveraged with short-form video.
We understand that attention spans are shorter.
People wants to see what it really looks like,
feels like, sounds like.
And that's where short-form video
takes a weapon to use to maximise
this shift inhabit and TikTok as a leading platform
obviously could be one of these greatest opportunities
for you to tap.
And last but not the least, full funnel matters.
Branding, performance, brandformance, creators.
So keep this in mind that whether it be at the start
or the end, which is the start as we learn today,
you have to consider your marketing ecosystem.
So that's it.
On behalf of the TikTok team,
thank you so much for being with us
Without further ado, thank you and have a wonderful day ahead.