Day 3, Seoul: Coca Cola, Publicis, and Korean BBQ (finally!)

8/30/11
So, yesterday was our last full day in Seoul. We visited Coca Cola (AMAZING!) and Publicis Modem.

Coca Cola was great. The speaker was delightful and interesting to listen to. She talked all about their marketing approach, using their Happiness Factory campaign and the Wavin' Flag to bring their approach to life for us. Their campaigns break down into three parts:

1. Brand Content - they create content in order to communicate to their consumers.
• This seems pretty basic, but creating great content can sometimes be the most difficult part.
2. Brand Experience - they create opportunites for their consumers to experience the brand, and bring that content to life.
• The example she used was Coca Cola's viewing venues during the World Cup in Africa. They basically set up large viewing screens in off-site venues for people to gather and watch the world cup games. I tried to find an image of one of their venues, but failed.
• Fun Fact: I didn't know this. The "Wavin' Flag" song by K'NAAN which was basically the song of this world cup, played before every game coverage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTJSt4wP2ME), was actually Coca Cola's promotional anthem (I thought it was FIFA's). Coca Cola used this anthem to help cultivate a purposeful storey. It enabled them to connect with consumers in over 200 countries with one idea. The song went to #1 on the charts in 17 different cultures.
3. Brand Conversation - The content and the experience should inspire conversation among their consumers
• The example she used to bring this point to life was that of the "Friendship Machine". Watch this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj3QLLTFDX8 
• Another example was the "Happiness Truck" where people pushed a button and received a free gift. Watch this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVap-ZxSDeE. There was actually a person in the truck, watching people's reactions and choosing the right gifts for each individual. 

Ultimately, everything comes down to creating a story for people to connect with, remember, learn from, and share. They also gave us some free swag: a Coca Cola branded USB! Below are some pics from the visit.

At Publicis, we learned more about the media landscape in Korea, the differences between the landscape in the US, and media planning. Not as crazy exciting as Coca Cola, but the main speaker was a University of Michigan grad and he made this somewhat dry subject interesting and fun to listen to. Any time I had a question, he'd call on me by saying, "Yes, University of Michigan." The most interesting thing about this conversation was hearing how their media is set up, and the transition that they've gone through (and are still going through) since their dictatorship ended here in South Korea.

The second speaker from Publicis was the account manager for the LG account. He ran down the presentation they gave to LG in a bid for their global website strategy. Interesting learning from this part of the presentation:

• In a previous post, I mentioned that Cheil Communications was a subsidary of Samsung (basically, Samsung owns the agency Cheil). Apparently, this is standard in South Korea. Most of the large companies in Seoul own an ad agency. Publicis is pretty much unique in that they are independent and have been able to survive in South Korea.
• This independence is an advantage for Publicis in some aspects, but can be a hindrance. While their pitch for the LG global website strategy was rated well above than their competition, they didn't win the bid. LG decided to give the business to the agency that is their owned subsidary.

We ended our company visit about an hour early, which we were all excited about since it was our last night in Seoul. After a quick refresh back at the hotel, Misia, Mel, Lindsey, Katie, Lauren and I headed out to see the Seoul Tower and find a kick-ass Korean BBQ place to eat at.

We once again, navigated the subway system toward the tower. The Seoul Tower is a communication and observation tower located on Namsan Mountain. Reaching about 236.7 m (777 ft) in height, it provided some great views of the city.

One of the big attractions, apart from the views, were the Love N Letter, Love Magnet Wall, and Love Tree. Love is apparently a big thing at this tower. To my parents and Joe, I sent you a letter from the Love N Letter post office at the top of the tower.

Below are a few pictures from the Love Tree, which is actually a viewing deck where couples attach locks to the railing to signify everlasting love. While you and your partner are supposed to put the lock on the tree together, since Misia couln't mail a letter to James she purchased a lock to put on the tree for them.

After getting back down the mountain from the tower (via cable car), Misia, Mel, Lauren and myself went in search for a Korean BBQ restaurant (Katie and Lindsey headed back to the hotel). Korean BBQ is the one thing you don't want to miss out on here. I had failed in my attempts to do Korean BBQ the previous nights, and I was not going to leave this city without eating it. We found one and I was happy :-)

It was a long day and we didn't get back to our hotel until about midnight. I attempted to hop online quickly before bed, but our hotel WiFi was being crappy. I'm currently at the airport waiting for my flight to Shanghai. I'm not sure what the situation will be there with regards to WiFi and firewalls. As you all may know, China has very strict internet regulation, and certain things are not allowed (such as Facebook). I installed a VPN network on my computer through Northwestern University to try and bypass any firewalls, but I won't know if it works until I get there.  If I don't update this for the next 7 days, do not panic. I just may not be able to access this blog page while in Shanghai.

<3E

Day 2, Seoul: Company visits and Cultural Learnings

Day 2 was a full day of company visits. We went to three companies, Cheil Communications, Grey Group, and Samsung.

Cheil Communications is a global agency based out of Korea and is actually an affiliate of Samsung. Only recently have they been working to obtain other global clients, apart from Samsung. They won an award at the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity for their work with Tesco Homeplus campaign, beating out 50,000 campaigns. So Tesco is a well known supermarket internationally and Homeplus is their online shopping network. The campaign Cheil put bascially created an virtual shopping center at a few subway stops here in Korea. They plastered the walls of the subway stop with grocery store shelves and products (basically a big piece of wall paper). The imagery, detail, and design was amazing. I'll try to get a picture of it up here later. On all of the products featured were QR codes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code). Koreans were able to capture the QR codes of the products they wanted, put them into a virutal shopping basket, and order them for delivery. They had to spend a minimun of $20 or something, but it basically helped these busy Koreans who only recently went down to a 5 day work week (used to be 6 day) accomplish a necessary task, grocery shopping, in a less stressful way. Rather than going out of their way to get to a grocery store, the store was brought to them. Truely innovative, creative, and an inspiring use of new technology.

(added pics of the Cheil Tesco Homeplus campaign)

Grey Group was more of a consumer insights agency. We learned a ton of interesting things about the Korean culture. For example:

• The young Korean male (~20 yrs old) is becoming more sensative and adopting certain female characterisitcs or habits 
• The Korean male might spend 2 hours getting ready
• The Korean male freely cries. In fact, during an hour long soap opera here, you might see a male character cry a number of times while the femal character will never shed a tear
• The Korean male may carry a purse
• The male makeup industry has been rising at a 12% rate, and is expected to rise even more this year.

As you can tell, the information on the Korean male was most interesting.

(adding some pics)

A couple guys and their designer purses

Promotion for male makeup

Samsung was what you would expect. The conversation revolved around the 3D TV. The show room they gave us a tour of had a ton of cool things that I would love to share with you, but probably shouldn't. Basically, technology is only going to get cooler!

We arrived back at the hotel by about 7pm. Melanie, Misia, Lauren and I went down the street to the Coex Mall, which was actually a typical mall. We grabbed dinner there and then walked back to the hotel. It was a long day. Tomorrow we'll be visiting Coca Cola and Publicis. I'll try to hop back online and post again tomorrow night.

<3 E

Seoul, Day 1: Nike Visit!!!

Today was our first full day in Seoul. After getting to our hotel at about 6:30pm yesterday (4:30am CST), it was a struggle to stay awake; but we forced ourselves to get out of the hotel and see a bit of the city. Thank goodness we did, as it allowed me to pass out at 9:30pm and sleep through the night. Battle jet-lag over, Erika wins.

What was on the docket for today: Nike visit and more city exploration.

Nike was pretty darn cool. We were escorted into one of their show rooms for the presentation, which held a number of items that have yet to be introduced to the stores. I instantly spotted a pair of yellow and blue running shoes that I will have my eye out for within the next year. The presentation gave us an overview of Nike Global, and then more specifically discussed Nike Seoul and their local marketing strategies. Interestingly, one of the cultural barriers for Nike in this country is that it is a culture of education. Apparently, kids spend way too much time studying. "If you sleep for four hours or less, you will get into one of the top four universities" is a key idea that most young students take very seriously. At most, the typical kid (as young as elementary school up though high school) only gets about 20 minutes of exercise. Basically, kids here study wayyyyy too much. Since Nike is all about athletics and sports apparel, you can see how this has an effect on their marketing strategy. If working out and athletics is not an important part of their target consumer's lifestyle, they basically have to convince a culture to change their behavior. Getting a consumer to change a behavior is one of the toughest challenges for a marketer.  

They also discussed how they might take a global campaign and give it more of a local feel so their message resonates with the local consumer. For example, they might use a local soccer star, who is well known on the national level in their marketing campaigns. While the global campaign might feature the Brazillian footballer, Ronaldo, the local campaign could feature Ki Sung-Yueng, a South Korean who plays with the Celtics. They further discussed the dynamics between global and local, and how much autonomy they have to make campaign decisions. Basically, everything depends on the situation and the campaign at hand.

This was a fun and interesting visit for our first day. Plus they gave us free swag!

Since today was our only day in this beautiful city with an free afternoon, we decided to take full advantage. After a quick shoe change at the hotel, we were back out in the city and on our way to see a Palace! We braved the subway system, which actually wasn't that difficult once you got over everything being in not only a foreign language, but completely foreign alphabet and writing system. They actually make it more intuitive by using a lot of arrows and numbers. You know you are heading in the right direction, if the numbers are going in the right direction (up or down).

One more note on their subways: they are super clean and bright.

We found our way to the Palace and made it in time for the last english tour of the day. It was pretty cool. What I found most interesting was the sharp contrast between the old palace and the modern city background.

After our tour of the palace, we walked about a half mile to a market to do some shopping and bargaining. We ended up finding a neat restaurant in the market to have dinner. Yes, we had to take our shoes off and sit on the ground. Note to all girls: maybe plan on wearing shorts or pants as it is very difficult to navigate this dining position in a skirt. After dinner, the group of us basically ran back to the subway, as we wanted to go on a river boat cruise at 7:30. We missed the boat by 5 minutes and had to wait for the 8:40. By the time we arrived back at the hotel, we were all falling over with exhaustion.

Tomorrow we'll start the day at 9:30am and we'll visit three companies, ending the day at 7pm. There are of course more pictures and stories from today, but this post is already extremely long and the wifi is extremely slow. So, good night for now and I'll try to post again tomorrow!

Arrival

I have arrived safely! About 24 hours after leaving my home in Chicago, I've finally arrived at the Ramada Seoul here in South Korea where I'll be for the next four days. My roomie for the duration of this trip, Ms. Melanie Greben, is about ready to explore a bit of Seoul so I will sign off. I'll attempt to upload an photo of the view from our room. Hopefully it works.

Best,

E