LINE - on the fast track to growth

With LINE users in Thailand now reaching10 million of 85 million users globally, it has become one of the important marketing tools for organisations to specifically cater to the needs and interests of users in Thailand, by signing up to LINE’s official account.

Jin-woo Lee, business representative of LINE Thailand and senior manager of LINE business office at NHN Corporation, said that LINE’s official account is set to offer exclusive content to LINE users in Thailand. It is a unique feature that engages famous local celebrities and corporates to join LINE’s official account to let them interact with LINE’s users.

Currently, LINE has signed up with 14 Thai businesses to allow them to have LINE’s official account. Among the businesses are Universal Music Thailand, Thai Airways International, Charoen Pokphand Foods, Tourism Authority of Thailand, BRAND’S, TrueMove H, MuangThai Life Assurance, AEON, and Boon Rawd Brewery.

“Well-known local companies use the popular mobile communication application LINE as a channel to build up their brands among youth,” said Lee.

He added that the “official account” feature, together with “sponsored stickers”, is a powerful and effective marketing channel, and also acts as an exquisite entertainment tool for its users.

Based on the success of co-marketing activities, LINE has been highlighted as a distinct and efficient marketing platform tool and has been gaining increasing interest from corporations.

“The two main criteria we consider to allow corporates have LINE’s official account are: they must be a ‘big name’ and have high reputation in Thai society,” said Lee.

Apart from LINE’s official account, LINE also offers services that attract users like LINE camera stamp and LINE games such as LINE birzzle and LINE pop that hit 10 million downloads in just 12 days.

 

Universal Music Thailand pioneers on LINE:

Ron Kamnuanthip, managing director of Universal Music Thailand, said the company opened the official account in LINE in September and since then has considered LINE a very effective communication tool. It is very popular among Thai users, especially young people, and it is growing very fast.  

“That’s why it fits well with our strategy to create a direct communication line with our music fans,” said Ron.

He added that compared to other similar social media tools such as Twitter that is more random and too distracted, LINE is more engaged with the people who choose to receive the news and interact with the company. 

“We realised that LINE was a very popular communication tool among Thai consumers. It fits in with the Thai people’s tastes because of its user-friendly interface and cute character stickers.  It is fun to play with and spend time on, thus it works well with our music content, and artist news. We will look into opportunities to create more innovative communication ideas with LINE further,” said Ron. 

“We are among the pioneers, and the first International Music label opening a LINE official account in Thailand. We have more than 427,000 users to date. Those are all voluntary and they choose to subscribe to our Universal Music LINE official account in order to receive news and privileges from our artists,” said Ron.

He added that it is important that the consumers choose to subscribe to the Universal Music Thailand account because they are really interested in communication, including news about artists and music, new releases, promotional activities, music quiz and games, not just free stickers or anything else.

“We have a very good rate of participation with LINE whenever we run promotional activities with our fans here.  So it’s very effective. We can measure the results instantly. We would like to see it grow organically as it has so far,” said Ron.

However, he said the company would consider any new communication tools or social media that will help it to improve interaction with its consumers.

 

TrueMove H first launches LINE camera 

True Corporation’s chief executive officer and director for brand management and brand communications, Rungfa Kiatipoj, said that TrueMove H uses LINE as a marketing tool to offer benefits to its customers. 

“LINE is a trend that we cannot miss. It is a rapidly growing communication platform. It is also involves personalisation that can reach 10 million people at one time,” said Rungfa.

TrueMove H is not the pioneer in launching LINE’s sticker but it is the first corporate to launch LINE camera. 

“We need to use LINE to fit consumers’ needs. LINE is now in people’s lifestyle. We have to be there,” said Rungfa.

With TrueMove LINE camera stamp, users can decorate their pictures in LINE camera with special TrueMove stamps. Only users in Thailand will have access to more stamp options to choose from to decorate their pictures. 

 

Brand personality

Muangthai Life Assurance’s executive vice president Phittraporn Punyaratabandhu said that LINE is the latest popular trend among Thai people, especially LINE sticker that is very cute and represents fun. This fits in with Muangthai Life Assurance’s brand personality. 

“Our mascot, ‘Nong Luck Yim’ LINE sticker, represents the company’s brand awareness beyond only Muangthai Smile Club, which now has more than 300,000 members,” said Phittraporn.

She added that the company considers LINE as its marketing and communication channel, which can spread brand awareness, to send messages including privileges, events, and promotions to its customers. 

“LINE’s sticker can reach people across a range of ages, from teenagers to adults. The people’s lifestyle is changing. They are on new media and new communication platforms. We need to be there where they are. On LINE, our position is to be ‘friends’ of users, not to sell products,” said Phittraporn.

 

Boon Rawd uses LINE to go global

Boon Rawd Brewery’s marketing director, Chatchai Wiratyosin, said that LINE is a popular app not only in Thailand but also in many other countries where Beer Singha is available such as Taiwan and Japan. In Thailand, LINE will be an additional marketing communication channel for Singha, apart from traditional and conventional media. But LINE is the main marketing communication channel for Singha in the global market since it is an effective channel that can reach a wide range of people, and importantly its cost is much lower than doing marketing overseas.

“Singha sticker gained 1 million downloads within 24 hours of its launch.  LINE is an effective marketing communication channel as it shows that the people who load our stickers are interested in our messages. Compared to other channels that might reach 20 million people, we do not know how many of them are really interested in receiving our messages,” said Chaichat.

He added that 1 million download means Singha has 1 million direct touch-points between Singha brand and the people. 

“Messages we sent over the LINE is not hard sales as we are entering into their private area. People add us because they want to be our friends. We have to ‘give’ more than ‘take’ with our friends. We offer them our privileges and gifts such as concert tickets or Manchester United T-Shirt,” said Chatchai.

LINE is for direct relationship. It is not for direct sales. It is a marketing tool that never existed before.

“We use LINE to communicate with our customers and to show our brand image that we are very up to date, in trend and global. However, whether LINE will be a long-term marketing tool depends on the features that LINE can attract and how successfully it can get user attention to stay on LINE,” said Chatcha.

He said Singha aims to have 3 million downloads within one month. Now it has only official account and sticker that are valid for 180 days.

 

Brand’s digital marketing strategy

Cerebos (Thailand)’s marketing director, Boonlert Sooksereesup, said that Brand sees LINE as the touch-point to engage customers. LINE is one tool in the company’s digital marketing strategy.

LINE recently released another exclusive feature for its Thai fans: TrueMove LINE camera stamp. LINE has partnered with TrueMove so that users can decorate their pictures in LINE camera with special TrueMove stamps. Only users in Thailand will have access to more stamp options to choose from to decorate their pictures. 

“Our differentiation is that we are the first corporate launching the presenter’s stickers, instead of using cartoon characters. Our stickers are our presenters who are celebrities,” said Boonlert.

He said LINE would be considered a long-term digital marketing tool as long as the application is updated with technologies and features that can attract users.

 

LINE is a ‘marketing gimmick’

Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) general manager Anut Pruksuwat said initially CPF did not intend to use LINE for marketing communication. It just created stickers, allowing consumers to download free of charge, to ‘thank’ consumers. But it got good feedback, therefore, the company started to use LINE as its marketing communication channel to provide news and updates as well as promotion, and to offer gifts and privileges to consumers. 

“LINE is very popular among Thai people. In the beginning, we aimed to give 1 million downloads but we got 1 million downloads within three days. Now we have more than 2.5 million downloads,” said Anut.

He said LINE is categorised as a ‘personalised’ marketing communication channel to turn ‘brand’ into LINE’s sticker character.

“LINE helps us to send direct message to 2.5 million people at once, but the message will be for the masses because we cannot segment people on LINE. If we use LINE as well, it can help the company create a brand image. LINE is a marketing gimmick,” said Anut.