SK-II, a leading luxury beauty brand in Japan, was experiencing a decline. Its customers were aggressively courted by rivals, and changes in society made it difficult for the brand to stay compelling to its customers. SK-II must formulate a new strategy to fundamentally transform itself, bolster relevance and transcend the competition. The case describes the market landscape, economic, societal and technological changes, as well as SK-II’s prior strategies and their implementation. In developing the new strategy, the brand needs to decide:

1. whether and how it should speak to social issues such as gender equality and incorporate those issues into its brand purpose;
2. how digital technologies should be effectively integrated into every aspect of the brand experience;
3. how it should synergistically leverage social media, metaverse and other media platforms; and
4. how it should work with established celebrities as well as emerging influencers to create a prestigious and yet engaging brand image.

The brand needs to thoroughly assess the pros and cons associated with the potential options, craft its strategy and develop a detailed implementation plan.

The media is flooded with reports on Twitter’s impending IPO and along with it articles on how tweets are being analyzed to generate insights in a variety of contexts. One particular item in the flood of Twitter related articles caught my attention. The article noted that Neilsen had compiled a new rating of TV shows based on the number of tweets the shows generated. The article argued that perhaps this new index was valuable since it might indicate the consumers’ engagement with the show and thus perhaps with ads embedded within it.

On reflecting on this, it seemed that it was too early to make a call on the value of this new metric. First of all, the level of tweeting would depend on the nature of the audience attracted to the show. Thus, shows that drew a more tech savvy audience or perhaps a younger audience is more likely to have more tweeters in the audience to begin with, thus increasing the likelihood of show related tweets. In that case, the tweet rating would have no value beyond signaling the audience composition. It would certainly be no indication of whether or not the shows viewers were more engaged with the show or with the ads embedded within the show.

If we for a moment assume that tweets about shows signal greater consumer engagement with the show, the question still remains as to its implications for advertisers. It seems to me that one needs data in this regard and one cannot make the leap of faith that greater engagement with a show translates in to greater engagement with embedded ads. Indeed, one could make precisely the opposite case. The more engaged one is with the show perhaps the more annoying the commercial breaks become since they interrupt the flow of the show. To the degree interruption is annoying; one’s negative feelings are likely to transfer to the embedded commercials, leading to poorer impact.

Indeed there is research that speaks to this issue. Work by Park and McClung (1986), shows that the more involved consumers are with a TV program the less they are involved with embedded commercials. Moreover, my own work on the impact of moods generated while viewing programs on embedded commercials (Mathur and Chattopadhyay 1991) .

References

C. Whan Park and Gordon W. McClung (1986), “The Effect of TV Program Involvement on Involvement with Commercials,” in Advances in Consumer Reseach, Vol. 13, ed. Richard J. Lutz, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 544-548.

Mahima Mathur and Amitava Chattopadhyay (1991),”The Impact of Moods Generated by TV Programs on Responses to Advertising,” Psychology and Marketing, 8 (1), 59-77.