-: Hello, everyone.
I'm Aparna.
I am a Managing Director and Partner
with Boston Consulting Group based in Singapore.
I lead BCG's Center for Customer Insight,
which is a center of excellence
that looks out for everything
related to customer and consumer insights
around the world.
With me, I'm delighted to welcome today, Chew Wee,
who heads business marketing for TikTok
across Asia-Pacific.
Chew Wee, it's such a delight to host you
here in our office today.
-: Thank you, Aparna, happy to be here with BCG
to discuss commerce trends in Asia-Pacific.
-: Our pleasure Chew Wee.
So today we are going to talk about the digital consumer.
In particular, the digital shopper.
And we will examine, in a lot of detail,
one specific trend that offers a massive opportunity
for marketeers across Asia.
We call it shoppertainment.
It's really a blend of storytelling,
education, as well as commerce.
And the idea is that it's a video first,
often volume-on, highly engaged format
that places entertainment first
and commerce or shopping later.
BCG partnered up with TikTok
to create a pretty extensive piece of research
across Asia-Pacific to understand
and unpack shoppertainment.
We found that by 2025,
Shoppertainment will become a trillion dollar opportunity
across Asia-Pacific.
That is a tremendous opportunity.
And yet, marketeers are barely scratching the surface
of what this means
in terms of what they can do with consumers.
So to do that,
we really understood shoppertainment at the next level,
and we went straight to the consumers.
We used BCG's proprietary demand spaces methodology
to really understand how people shop online.
Demand spaces is a proprietary methodology
that tries to understand consumers
in the language of consumers.
We don't assume any segments.
We don't assume even an x-axis or a y-axis.
We speak to the consumers in great detail about their needs
in their last online purchase.
And then we organized those needs
through many, many regression analyses
into natural clusters that emerge from the consumer data.
We then named those clusters, we called them demand spaces, and studied them.
When we did this in the area of online shopping,
we found six demand spaces.
Three of these are what we call, "functional demand spaces."
These are, I'd say, more routine,
more convenience-based, and more habitual purchases.
For example, convenience shopping,
which could be your weekly grocery shopping.
Or validation, where, I know what I want to buy,
but I'm trying to validate it a bit.
On the other hand, we also have emotional demand spaces.
These are really, I'd say, moments of truth,
where you are really interacting
with the shopping occasion at the next level.
Here, for example, you're looking to be inspired.
You're seeking an adventure.
You're really experimenting.
Or, you're simply looking to indulge,
treat yourself, buy something fun.
So when we organize these demand spaces,
we understood that shoppertainment is uniquely effective
in going after emotional demand spaces.
Now, we don't mean to say that any demand space
is superior to another,
but we find that the shoppertainment methodology,
the entertainment first methodology,
really sparks that moment of truth with the consumer,
and triggers something new.
Whether it's a new brand, a new purchase occasion,
or a new way of interacting with the customer journey.
So, with that,
let's dive deeper into shoppertainment with Chew Wee.
So Chew Wee, as we learned,
shoppertainment is poised to grow
to over a trillion dollars in Asia by 2025.
And we know that TikTok is such a pioneer
and an innovator in this space.
So can you tell us what trends have you seen at TikTok
regarding shoppertainment?
-: So shoppertainment is a kind of content-driven commerce
that seeks to entertainment and educate first.
TikTok did not invent this concept,
we did not coin this term,
but we have embraced it and further innovated on it.
So at TikTok platform,
we see content, culture, and commerce coming together
to create highly immersive shopping experiences.
Let me share with you three trends
that we have observed at TikTok.
One. Age of content.
We have entered the age of content.
So we have seen how audiences evolved
from the age of knowledge,
where they were seeking out information,
searching for information, to the age of social.
Where a lot of the content you consume
depends on what your friends are consuming.
So you consume what your friends consume.
And people are sharing multiple aspects
of their life all on social.
And then that has evolved to now, the age of content,
where we are seeing this audience
that is video first, content first,
and we see a generation of digital natives
that aren't actively searching for content,
or relying on their friends for what they consume.
And TikTok has embraced this and built up a platform
based on what we call a content graph.
So what you consume is based
on the kind of content that you like,
and you can discover new content,
and you have a platform to engage with a community
that is not limited by your social connections.
-: Very interesting.
-: A second trend that we have observed
is the democratization of creativity.
The democratization of content creation.
So we see that creativity, content creation,
is no longer the exclusive domain
of the expert or the professional.
You don't need a big budget, a fancy studio,
or highly trained talent to be able to create good content.
Anyone with an idea, with a smartphone,
can generate good content.
And technology has enabled TikTok
and many other platforms
to build tools, templates,
that can empower people to build that.
At TikTok, we truly believe that anyone can be a creator.
Finally, I want to talk about the last trend
that we have observed,
which is the creativity network effect.
I think probably you and the audiences
are probably familiar with the traditional concept
of the network effect.
Where every user on the platform
creates more value for the next user.
So what we are seeing is that
creativity, too, is rarely an isolated process.
And either can rarely be attributed to a single person.
So, as we saw on TikTok,
that you have a creativity network effect
where every additional user make other users more creative.
Because you can build on somebody's original content,
and we built features like the duet feature,
the stitch feature,
where somebody can create new content
alongside the original creator.
And that is how TikTok has embraced the age of content.
-: I like it.
I like the age of content, away from the age of social,
that's fascinating.
So Chew Wee, I'll refer back to something you said
that was very interesting at the start.
You said that even though TikTok
didn't coin the term, "shoppertainment",
you've embraced it and innovated in that space.
Can you tell us how TikTok is preparing
to be a leader in this area?
-: Sure.
TikTok is a content platform, an entertainment platform,
and shoppertainment is very much in our DNA.
We have built and continued to invest
in a suite of shopping solutions that brands,
businesses, and creators can leverage.
One, it's an area of content.
So we have built content tools and templates,
like video editing tools, effects, stickers,
that businesses and creators
can easily use to create content.
Two, is in the area of advertising.
So we build advertising solutions
that allow brands to be able to engage with customers
based on their demographics,
their interests, their behaviors.
And we also have advertising formats
that allow brands to invite a community,
to invite the customers to participate
in the brand experience with them.
One example is branded mission,
where brands can source content from the community
by issuing a challenge or a mission
for their customers to embark on.
Another example will be in the area
like interactive features.
Like interactive add-ons,
which uses augmented reality
that allow brands to allow their customers
to try on their products
without ever having to step into the store.
And thirdly, a third area that we are investing in
is in the area of e-commerce market-based solutions
where customers can directly complete the transaction
on the TikTok platform.
So this is a service, a new service, called TikTok Shop,
and it is now available in five countries in Asia-Pacific.
All right, so you can see that we are continuing
to invest in content, commerce, and creative formats
to enable this and to embrace shoppertainment.
So what I have shared is what TikTok has done.
But the community,
the community continues to delight and surprise us
in many ways with their creativity
and their community collaboration.
We have also seen trends that emerge organically
on the TikTok platform.
One of which is the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt phenomenon.
It has since gotten more than 12 billion views globally.
-: Wow.
-: So it is a trend where users, customers,
proactively share their product experiences,
their product reviews online,
and that has generated significant uplift and offline sales.
If I could share another trend,
and this is one of my personal favorites,
and that is BookTok.
Have you heard of BookTok?
-: No, sounds interesting.
-: All right, so BookTok is a phenomenon
that has caused a resurgence in reading.
And publishers around the world
have actually attributed BookTok
to causing an uplift in book sales.
Like here in Singapore, for instance,
some bookstores, like Times Bookstores, for instance,
have a section dedicated to BookTok
where they show BookTok recommendations.
-: Well, as a bookworm, I have to say, I love that one.
-: Check that out.
And what we always see at TikTok is,
what happens on TikTok, doesn't stay on TikTok.
And that is how we have invested in shoppertainment,
and that has generated behaviors offline.
-: Amazing. It's like a network effect, right?
A snowball or a positive flywheel, if you will.
Amazing.
So at TikTok, you work with some of the early adopters
of shoppertainment as some of the real pioneers.
Can you share with us some best practices that you've seen
on marketeers who've got it right, so to speak?
-: Amongst the early adopters,
we have seen businesses from different industries,
from e-commerce marketplaces, to CPG brands,
to consumer electronics.
And we have small businesses and large global brands
experimenting on TikTok and embracing this story-led,
entertainment-led strategy.
If I could share with you some examples of brands
that has done it really well.
One such example is Amazon.
In fact, they recently ran a campaign
to drive up sales and awareness for the Prime Day sales.
So Prime Day happens between July 12 to 13,
where there was the moment where they give the biggest deal
to their Prime members.
So what Amazon did was,
they work with creators like Adrian Bliss on TikTok
that put their own satirical comedic spin
to the whole checkout process.
You need to see it to be able to understand what I'm saying.
So they also embrace trends on TikTok.
Like, there's this trend, this face feature sticker.
Not sure if you've seen it,
you have the talking eyes and mouth on the product.
-: I see. -: So they embrace it,
and they created advertisements
that you wouldn't have thought was an advertisement
to drive up sales for Prime Day.
So that's an example from Amazon.
Another example that we are seeing,
and this is a CPG brand from Japan
from the Kao Corporation, this is a Kate brand Japan,
that is a makeup brand.
So what they have did is, they use the interactive features,
the interactive add-ons that TikTok provides,
that allows their customers to try on their products,
like lipsticks.
So you can try on the different kit, lipstick colors,
without ever having to step out of your home,
without ever having to step into the store.
So this is an example from Japan.
And lastly, let me share an example from Samsung.
So this was what Samsung did
when they were launching a new device,
the Samsung Galazy Z Flip3.
So it is a flip phone. -: Yes.
-: So you flip open the phone.
So what they did was
leverage this interactive feature on TikTok
where a viewer, where a TikTok user,
can activate elements of it with the hand gesture,
the hand gesture of flipping the phone.
-: Interesting, yeah. -: So when you flip the phone,
the app will respond
and reveal more information about the phone.
So that is what Samsung did,
I think to engage with the community
and get them to interact with the content.
-: Fascinating examples.
I mean, you've got new age companies,
Asian brands, international brands,
you've got a good mix in there.
So it's fascinating to hear
that so many marketeers are getting such value
out of shoppertainment.
Asian companies, global companies, so many examples.
I'm intrigued why more marketeers wouldn't do so.
So what would your advice be, as TikTok,
for other marketeers on how to unlock
the potential of shoppertainment?
-: There is a attention economy
where there are so many things
fighting for people's attention.
shoppertainment help brands stand out
and content is a differentiator.
Nobody wants to be sold to,
but everyone is open to discovering new content.
Nobody will say no to entertainment.
And that is why we see that shoppertainment
is already 20% of the total GMV in APAC.
And it's continuing to grow.
It's growing to 30% within the next three years.
So what does this mean for marketing leaders?
Traditionally in marketing,
we always talk about the four P's.
Now let's flip that around
and talk about the four C's instead.
What are the four C's?
First C: Customer.
Focus on your customer. Always start with the customer.
And we are seeing that customer needs have evolved
to not just being functional, but also to being emotional.
And we see that opportunity lies in the latter.
In the emotional.
Customers are telling us, advise me, inform me,
inspire me, educate me, entertain me.
So brands need to think about how they can do all of that
while selling their products and services.
Second C: Content.
I spoke a lot about content today,
because we truly, at TikTok,
believe that that is a differentiator for brands.
So we encourage brands to develop story-led messaging
that seeks to entertain and educate.
Adopt an entertainment-first, storytelling approach,
commerce-second, approach to truly connect with customers.
Third: Campaign.
The third C is campaign.
So how do you build a campaign around this?
Targeting the right audiences,
such that your content can reach the right audience
when they're in the discovery mindset.
Finally, the last C: Channel.
Now that you have built a content, how do you distribute it?
How do you partner with the right platform,
test and learn to distribute the content?
At TikTok, we invite brands, businesses, big or small,
to collaborate with the TikTok community,
to work with our users, with our creators,
and together embrace the age of content
and embrace shoppertainment.
-: I mean, that is a fascinating demystification
of shoppertainment for marketeers in our audience.
So thank you for joining us today,
for helping us understand the four C's,
and helping us unpack shoppertainment.
I hope you found this useful.
I hope, more importantly,
that you found it educational, entertaining,
and hopefully commercial for you.
Thank you for joining us today.