The Government of Taiwan to find overseas influencer to promote "Taichung Flora Exposition " to the public. But they missed a very important point. Marketing now has to be done from multiple angles.
Not only commercial brands, but even governments have to do "branding" for "Their Country" ! In November last year, the "2018 World Flora Exposition” which was held in Taichung. The Taiwanese government invited six influencers from Asian countries to promote the even overseas in order to enhance the visibility of Taichung Flora Exposition, but the government's selection of "cross-border influencer" brought a much lower amount of oversea’s discussion compared to Taiwan! and Taichung Tourism Bureau only selected a single field of influencer endorsement for the Flora Exposition. The industry too niche as people are unable to see all themes. In order to explore the effectiveness of the overseas marketing of Flora Exposition, AsiaKOL keyword is "Flora Exposition(花博)"where people’s post on Instagram are collected from October to December 2018. Let’s review the good and the bad!
Is there a problem with the strategy?
Taichung Flora Exposition invited overseas influencers, but based on AIE analysis, the overseas feedback is less than 5% compared Taiwan influencers
November 3, 2018 Taichung World Flora Exposition Opening. In the early October, Community Media marketing started in advance! In order for Taichung to turn the "Flora Exposition" into an international brand and market overseas, the Government Tourism bureau cooperated with the Contenace Birch Group (VOGUE) and called on multiple internationally renowned brands to respond to Flora Exposition, and invited Korea Bombyul, Singapore Xinlin Khaw, Hong Kong Sadelle, Vietnam Nhatha, Thailand Lita and Japan RUI Onuma, six influencer base on "fashion trend" field of cross-border influencer as a propaganda ambassador.
However, looking at IG's "Flora Exposition" data from October to December last year, these influencers did not bring a clear discussion to the community. Of the 156,023 interactions of "Flora Exposition" in the six Asian countries, the total interactions in Taiwan is about 22 times that of the six countries combined, and the number of communications related to Flora Exposition is mostly from Taiwan influencers. There is a big different in the amount of discussion about "# FloraExposition"(#花博) at home and abroad.
Analysis of the "# FloraExposition" (#花博) interactive number of top 150 popular posts, a total of 141 are from Taiwanese influencers (about 94%), Asia's six influencer is about 6%. The top three posts from Taiwan's influencers are base on cosmetic fashion, performing arts and tourism; of the top 20 posts, only Vietnam Nhatha and Thailand Lita are on the list, the rest of the topic are on Taiwan tourism and beauty Care’s influencer. The results of overseas publicity seem to need strengthening.
According to news reports, Taichung Tourist Tourism Bureau invited 6 people from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam as ambassadors, mainly in the hope that through the unique style of the influencers, fans are attracted to visit Taichung for the Flora Exposition. However, from the "#FloraExposition” overseas influencers interaction, community discussion and popular posts, the publicity effect for Taichung Flora Exposition is quite limited, the reason may be that these influencers are beautiful and attractive, but their content of the post is not fresh.
Diversified content of cross-border marketing catches eyes!
Overseas Gourmet influencer performance is better than government invited influencers
Flora Exposition also wants to take the opportunity to promote local foods, hotspots, but these have not appeared in the content of the influencers, but non-government invited overseas influencer did! For example, Singapore gourmet Cuisine influencer- “Matchavibes” shared Taichung Matcha dessert and got a high number of interactive. Even if the post does not show the influencer’s face, it can still create a high number of interactive, even beyond the Taichung government cooperation of the Singapore bloggers Xinlin khaw"#discoverTaichung" sticker; Thailand star artist Sara Hohler's posting of interactive numbers, popularity is also much higher than the invited draft of the Thai blogger Lita.
The Taichung government invited cross-border influencers are all from the "fashion trend" industry. However, having good looks may not always be able to attract the right attention. The reason for the limited effectiveness of the overseas publicity of Taichung may be because of “attractive influencers but failing to grasp the needs of tourists."
After all, the core of tourism lies in eating, drinking, playing, music four faces. The Taichung Tourism Bureau failed to understand the "#Floraexposition” (#花博), to understand the real needs of the audience. They ignore the characteristics of different community groups and failed to cater to the masses to create multiple content. Netizens loves to see attractive influencers but after a good look of the influencer’s photo, they just move on. People are not interested to “click it”, which then cannot trigger a discussion which cannot effectively lead to the promotion of market Taiwan”.
