Marketing and advertising in Taiwan can both be a challenge and a feat. With more than 1.5 million enterprises, Taiwan proves to be a valuable ground for international consumers. At the same time, this country is riddled with various businesses that can be your potential competitors. This makes marketing and advertising in Taiwan far from easy. But, if done correctly, it can lead to a successful business expansion.
There are various marketing and advertising trends emerging in Taiwan. These trends result in successful campaigns, further leading to increase in conversions and business exposure. Of course, these successful campaigns are not created overnight. They are products of in-depth research on the Taiwanese consumer behavior.
For example, findings say that Taiwanese consumers now spend less time in-store due to COVID restrictions. In turn, there was an increase in e-commerce platforms usage and social media business accounts. A whopping 63.8% of the total internet users in Taiwan purchase products online on a weekly basis. They also often buy groceries online, and use product comparison services.
This consumer behavior led to marketing transformation where businesses are also taking over digital platforms to market their products. When creating a campaign, it is important to conduct serious market research. Consumer knowledge and adapting to marketing trends can ensure a successful campaign.
In this article, you’ll see how brands have tailor-fitted their marketing strategies in order to fit their target market. We have curated a list of marketing campaign success stories in Taiwan that you may take a few lessons from. These successful brands implemented various marketing strategies such as social media marketing, influencer marketing, TV commercials, and interactive offline marketing. Let’s take a look!
5 Successful Marketing Campaigns in Taiwan ⬇️
1. TC Bank
TC Bank or Taiwan Cooperative Bank is a consolidated international bank for farming, fishery, cooperative, and business financing. A financing company may sound boring, stiff, or too formal for you, but TC Bank completely surprised Taiwan when it launched its commercial entitled “Dream Rangers”.
The “Dream Rangers” brought tears to the whole of Taiwan. This commercial features the true-to-life story of five elderly men, with the average age of 81, who decided to go on a 13-day motorcycle ride. These five men already have various conditions due to old age, like heart disease and arthritis. Despite this, they still went riding throughout Taiwan because of one reason – to fulfill their extraordinary dream. TC Bank relayed the message that they can help people reach their dreams, and that people do not have to wait until they’re 80 to fulfill their goals in life.
This commercial bagged the hearts of millions of Taiwanese. It was aired on national TV, and was also uploaded on social media platforms like YouTube. On YouTube, it garnered almost 7 million views and thousands of likes and comments.
Now, you may ask, what made this commercial successful? The answer is simple. The commercial was relatable because it mirrored the lives of Taiwanese. This consumer group prefers soft sell strategies rather than “in-your-face” ones, and TC Bank knew this exactly. The execution of the commercial was also flawless. Being aired on national TV, they were able to tell this inspiring story in a matter of seconds. The main lesson we can learn from this campaign is that the Taiwanese market wants high-value content and authenticity.
2. Taiwan Beer
Taiwan is full of “smart” gadgets, like smart phones, speakers, smart watches, and this time, a mega-smart refrigerator! Taiwan Beer created a humorous marketing campaign through the use of a “smart freezer” which talks to the customers.
In this campaign, Taiwan Beer’s smart freezer does not let people open the fridge door by themselves. It talks to people wanting to buy beer, then it makes them do all sorts of things before it gives the customers the beer they actually want. There was an old man who was asked to write his order, not on the screen of the freezer but “in the air”. Some guys were also asked to think of their order while pointing their fingers to their heads. A lady was asked to point her phone to the beer she wanted. The laughs just kept coming because of the smart freezer’s personality.
This campaign was launched in one convenience store location, but the video was posted on social media. Taiwan Beer’s management raised their online marketing budget to more than NT$50 million during that year, recognizing the fact that the Taiwanese market are tech-savvy consumers.
The commercial gained almost 2.88 million views on YouTube. Most of the comments were about how the ad made them laugh, and how they wanted to purchase the beer even when they don’t drink themselves. Overall, this marketing campaign by Taiwan Beer was a huge success in terms of increasing exposure and creating a brand persona.
3. Audi Taiwan
Audi is a world-renowned company which produces sporty vehicles with high build quality and progressive designs. When it expanded its business in Taiwan, it made sure to know where the people were. Audi was able to create a successful online marketing campaign by first taking a look at the Taiwanese market’s most-used platforms.
Taiwanese internet users’ most-used social media platform is Line. Line is a messaging application wherein users can exchange texts, images, videos, and audios. Line also features business profiles and chatbots which brands can use in their marketing campaigns. Audi was smart enough to make use of this feature in order to communicate with the Taiwanese market.
Audi collaborated with BotBonnie to jointly develop a customized "questionnaire" function which instantly updates user data to the database, creating a smart and systematic registration process. Aside from this, Audi used carousel images which promoted each of their car models. Through these interactive carousels, their consumers were able to understand the differences in the models’ functionalities. Lastly, Audi used the chatbot to promote upcoming events and new model releases.
This campaign attracted a large number of people to the 2018 Meet Taipei event participated by Audi Taiwan. Also, more than 1,500 people used the chatbot function within 3 days. This shows that knowing your target audience really pays off.
Taiwan is a digital nation. Marketers must use this fact as leverage on how they choose to market and advertise.
4. IKEA
If Audi made use of the population's love for social media, IKEA did something quite the opposite. Instead of leveraging on the Taiwanese’s digital-orientedness, it utilized another activity popular in Southeast Asian cultures – eating with “hotpot”.
“Hotpot” is a cooking method that originated in China, prepared with a simmering pot of soup stock at the dining table, containing a variety of Chinese foodstuffs and ingredients. In this campaign, IKEA created an unforgettable customer experience when it installed a hotpot that will only turn on when enough phones are under the table. This encourages the people sitting at the table to interact with each other instead of burying their heads in their screens.
This campaign shows that sufficient research on the people’s culture will gain positive results. Here, IKEA made sure to localize its campaign so that the Taiwan population will be more drawn to it. True enough, the campaign gained hundreds of thousands of positive impressions. On YouTube, it gained more than 360 thousand views. The comments section were full of people applauding the idea, saying that IKEA did a great job in conceptualizing the design.
Not only did this campaign bring more subscribers to IKEA Taiwan’s YouTube page, it also projected IKEA as an innovative company which prioritizes valuable connections with its customers.
5. Aquair Taiwan
Aquair Taiwan is a shampoo and hair mask brand in Taiwan made specifically for people with extremely damaged hair. For its brand launch, it collaborated with numerous beauty, fashion, and health influencers on Instagram to create posts promoting its products.
Chiao Chiao Tzeng was one of the influencers chosen by Aquair. Chiao has 1.5 million followers who adore her fashion sense and stunning looks. These followers trust Chiao’s recommendations when it comes to beauty and self-care products. On her Instagram post, her followers also shared their personal experiences with Aquair. Some commented how easy it was to wash off, while some said they fell in love with the product because it made their hair smoother. Aside from Chiao, Aquair also worked with influencers Yu Chian, Chin Qinrou, Nina, and many others.
This campaign was a total success because Aquair’s products were exposed to millions of the influencers’ followers combined. It even encouraged user-generated content from the influencers’ followers. The hashtag #aquair now has more than 1,500 entries from Taiwanese women Instagram users.
Aquair was aware that Taiwanese consumers tend to make purchase decisions based on word-of-mouth, personal recommendations, and posts by experts. Thus, Aquair chose to work with beauty influencers who are considered experts in maintaining beautiful, healthy, and shiny hair. These influencers are considered as KOLs by their followers. There already were pre-existing genuine relationships between them, and Aquair was wise to use this as leverage.
If you want to learn more about influencers in Taiwan, visit our list on Taiwan’s top influencers for YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
Conclusion
Taiwan houses more than a million enterprises. This serves as proof that Taiwan is a good avenue for business expansion, because of its continued economic growth and valuable international consumers. However, this also poses a challenge for businesses newly-entering Taiwan. Before even starting your marketing and advertising campaign, you already have a million competitors.
The good news is that Taiwan has certain marketing trends that have been proven to be successful. In this article, we have listed 5 of the best marketing campaigns in Taiwan from which you can draw lessons and inspiration from. These campaigns prove that knowing the Taiwanese market from skin to bones will help you in devising your advertisements.
If you want to know more about marketing and advertising in Taiwan, check out the AJ Marketing Blog.
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