A reality TV show, KOC Vietnam, brought in revenue for participating brands through selling products with reviews by KOCs on the show, while establishing KOC as a legitimate career in Vietnam.
Objective:
In Asia, the Key Opinion Consumer (KOC) concept has become popular due to the rise of social media and multi-format shopping content. Especially in China, when the names such as "King of Livestream" Li Jiaqi were rising, the e-commerce market was booming, and thousands of people noticed this job.
In particular, the KOC field in Vietnam was born a long time ago by reviewing videos about food, restaurant, product, and places. However, this field has only boomed in recent years, when the demand of consumers on social media and the Internet rose during the COVID-19 pandemic. With attractive content and trusted reviews, reviewing videos on Tiktok or YouTube always have incredibly high interactions and views, making audiences feel trusted and making it easier to make a decision.
According to data from Influence Marketing Hub, the value of marketing through influencers has risen significantly for years, from 1.7 billion USD (about 39,6 billion VND) in 2016 to 13.8 billion USD (about 321,5 billion VND). In 2022, this number is expected to reach 16.4 billion USD (about 382,1 billion VND).
However, the idea of KOCs in Vietnam is facing many challenges, including:
Campaign goals:
Target Audience:
As a contest and reality show, the brand aimed to attract two groups, including audiences and contestants.
With contestants:
With audiences:
Creative Strategy:
To attract contestants, a website http://kocvietnam.vn was created to serve as a place where contestants can apply through pictures and videos. The website has an intuitive visual, is easy to interact with and popular with the young generation. Moreover, the creativity in the topic (contestants need to review an unreal product or a typical product on their house) is also an attractive point of the show, helping to find quality contestants.
This time, each episode had a specific topic and educated contestants on many different skills due to the help of mentors with the rising level. In the broadcasting process, the brand gathered the number of votes from audiences and the number of products sold by contestants, hence, choosing the winner.
Other marketing tools included:
Context:
KOC Vietnam is the first and only reality show that stuck with the e-commerce market in Vietnam. In the first season in 2022, the brand established the rules to be fair and transparent for contestants. From the casting round to the official round, it built a system for calculating points, including points from the examiners, points from audiences, and points from the number of orders sold by contestants, via the partnership with Accesstrade Vietnam, who provided the technology platform. This is also the most unique technology factor that was created, suitable with the marketing trend through KOC nowadays.
Overall Campaign Execution:
From the casting, the brand transported the products through systems and services of Accesstrade and Lazada with 100 orders in 2 days, to help contestants finish the test on time. With the scale of a reality show and thanks to the operating systems of partners, there were more than 5,000 orders delivered to the customers, bringing millions of VND for brands who joined the show.
Mobile Execution:
Thanks to the resources of VCCorp in Marketing, the brand applied the mega-livestream strategy. The brand broadcast episodes of KOC Vietnam on every suitable channel with mobile, including the news sites, Apps, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, with a total number of channels of almost 100. During the broadcasting time, the audience was virtually "forced" to see KOC Vietnam on the internet when they join any online platform.
To operate the show stably, collecting the result within the actual time and delivering the product to audiences is a complicated process that requires human resources, technology, and finances. By using the platform and technology optimized for the mobile, the young generation and people who like shopping feel familiar with the content of KOC Vietnam and trigger their shopping demand. Therefore, both contestants and brands can create income through this show. Mobile devices appear in most of the activities, including the tools for contestants to execute the test or produce the content directly from mobile, a platform for audiences to interact with contestants and the show.
There have been many reality shows in Vietnam about careers such as model (The Face, VN Next's Top Model), fashion designer (Project Runway), architect (Dream Apartment). Drama will be secondary but mainly provide knowledge, and with product content as the main focus, KOC Vietnam is different from existing shows.
The KOC Vietnam program has achieved success when bringing in revenue for participating brands through selling products with reviews of KOCs in the program. With more than 5,000 orders sold, the total revenue for 12 brands participating in the program is over 500 million VND. Figures show that nearly 80 percent of orders are made via the mobile platform, and over 60 percent of the total 4 million votes were also through this platform.
Invested and implemented by VCCorp and accompanied by a series of big names in the market, KOC Vietnam has contributed to training a quality candidate lineup for KOCs, a potential and growing industry in Vietnam. It's about connecting talented creators with prestigious brands, appearing on the nation's leading media platforms.
Most importantly, the show has had a significant impact on the KOC market in Vietnam. At the end of the contest, there was a series of positive feedback from the audience, participants, and even KOCs in the market, turning the ideas of selling in the show from paper to reality, highly appreciated by CEOs and CMOs in the industry such as Accesstrade Vietnam and Lazada Vietnam.
Reality TV programs in Vietnam today have been standardized with three criteria:
