A Marketer's New Secret Weapon: Peeking Inside Google Gemini's Brand Insights

As digital marketers, we're constantly juggling a million things. From crafting the perfect social media post to analyzing campaign performance, staying on top of how our brand is perceived online can feel like a never-ending task. Wouldn't it be great to have a quick and easy way to understand what's being said about your brand across the vast digital landscape? Enter Google Gemini's Deep Research – your new secret weapon for a quick and insightful brand pulse check.

Image credit: Techrdar.com/Shutterstock

I’ve been using this tool quite a bit of late for brand research, competitive analysis and getting a sense of brand sentiment. Let me tell you, this is a game changer! Think of Gemini's Deep Research as your always-on virtual assistant, sifting through the noise online to give you a clear snapshot of your brand's performance. It's not about complex data analysis that requires a PhD, it's about getting a feel for the overall sentiment and key themes associated with your brand – whether it's on websites, social media buzzing with opinions, or even how your app (if you have one) is being received.

Why is this so valuable for us marketers? Imagine launching a new campaign for a brand. Instead of manually scrolling through countless comments and reviews, Gemini's Deep Research can quickly give you an overview of whether the initial reaction is positive, negative, or neutral. This allows for swift adjustments to your strategy if needed. Furthermore, the tool excels at uncovering key themes. Are people raving about the new flavor you just launched? Or are there concerns being raised about the delivery experience for your product orders? Gemini's Deep Research can help you identify the recurring topics and conversations surrounding your brand, highlighting what's resonating and what demands your attention. It serves as a starting point of knowing what to fix.

Image credit: Google Blog

While your primary focus is your own brand, gaining a broader understanding of the market is always beneficial. You can use Gemini's Deep Research to get a general sense of how your competitors are being discussed online, providing valuable competitive insights without the need for overwhelming data. Moreover, catching a negative trend early can be a significant advantage. If there's a sudden increase in complaints about the user-friendliness of your mobile app, this tool can flag it (as it crawls through and aggregate ratings and comments on Google Play and Apple App store), enabling proactive measures before the issue escalates. Finally, knowing what your audience is talking about and their experiences can be incredibly useful for shaping your content strategy. If customers consistently praise (or complaint) on the affordability of your products on social media, this could be a powerful starting point for your next marketing campaign.

Think of Gemini's Deep Research as your initial exploration. It provides a broad overview, a feel for the online atmosphere surrounding your brand. It's not intended to replace in-depth analytics platforms, but rather to offer a quick and accessible understanding.

For example, if you're managing the online presence for a local restaurant chain like Nando's Malaysia, you could use Gemini's Deep Research to see what people are saying about their new menu item across various platforms. Are the reviews overwhelmingly positive? Are there any common criticisms regarding the spice level? This initial insight can then guide your deeper analysis and inform how you tailor your communication.

The beauty of using Gemini for this purpose lies in its intuitive design. You don't need to be a data scientist to interpret the results. It presents information in an easily digestible format, highlighting key trends and sentiments without overwhelming you with intricate charts and graphs.

In our dynamic digital landscape, staying informed about your brand's online presence is essential. Google Gemini's Deep Research presents a potent yet user-friendly method for digital marketers in Malaysia to conduct a rapid pulse check, pinpoint significant themes, and acquire valuable insights to refine their strategies. So, why not explore its capabilities and discover what it can reveal about your brand's online narrative? It might just offer the fresh perspective needed to elevate your overall marketing strategy.

What do you think? Is this a game changer?

How You Should Use QR Codes Again

If you currently live in Malaysia, when was the last time you used or scanned a QR code? Chances are that you’ve scanned one as recent as yesterday or in the last week. But if I were to ask you the same question 6 months ago, you’d probably say not in the last month or not in a while. QR codes or Quick Response codes have been around since the 1990s, yet the culture of scanning QR codes never quite took off in Malaysia, until lately.

Malaysians never had the need to scan QR codes as it requires an additional step of downloading QR code scanners into their devices as most phones don’t come pre-installed with one. Unlike countries like China, where QR codes are used for almost everything, QR codes in Malaysia are mainly used for e-wallet transactions in the past 2 years, and even that, most Malaysians prefer using cash at point-of-sale especially people of the older demographic.

However, I foresee that trend changing in the next 6 months to 1 year. This is because, post lockdown in Malaysia, most businesses require you to scan one before you can enter their premise as it’s a mandatory requirement by the Malaysian government in order to do contact tracing of everyone who has visited a certain premise. Sure, there are still those who choose to use a traditional pen and paper to record their whereabouts, but over time, I would think those who do will eventually switch to scanning a QR code to leave their contact details as it is not only time saving, but it’s also more hygienic (you don’t know who has touched that pen previously). To sort of validate this theory, I try to look at how many people left their contact details on the book provided at the supermarket entrance where I make my weekly grocery runs. I noticed that the list gets shorter each week I go. I don’t think this is caused by lower traffic volume to the supermarket, because I go to the same supermarket each week at approximately the same time, and the queue is roughly the same each week I go there. ­­This could mean that lesser people are leaving their contact details on the book and more of them are scanning the QR code at the entrance.

Another data point is when I did a Google Trend search on QR code scanners, and no surprises that you see a huge uptick of searches during and post lockdown periods.

Google Trends showing searches for qr code scanners

So, how and what can use QR codes for? While there are a ton of usage for QR codes, here are some I find relevant to Malaysia.

Digital Payments

Payment options available via QR codes

E-wallets are set to accelerate in the coming years in Malaysia. In its effort to make Malaysia a cashless nation, the government has launched e-Tunai Rakyat (People’s e-Money) initiative back in January 2020, which saw a disbursement of RM450mil to qualified citizens to boost e-wallet usage. This saw the government pre-loading a small sum of digital cash into an e-wallet of choice to citizens for free. Think of it as a free e-wallet starter kit. With the increased number of new users on e-wallets, the usage of QR codes are also set to increase.

Tracking of Product Information

Ever picked up a packaged product and noticed a QR code on the packaging? I bet not many would know that there are QR codes on consumer products as well. It has always been there, but not many of Malaysians know of its existence to begin with. Again, this goes back to the lack of a scanning culture here in Malaysia. Some of these codes will lead you to pages to know more about a certain product, some just directs you to the brand’s website.

Product information after scanning of QR code

At Abbott for example, we use QR codes on our packaging for 2 reasons; the first allows consumers to check and track the authenticity of our products, from batch number, manufacturing date, date of arrival in Malaysia, source of milk and expiry date. The second usage would be to reward our consumers with loyalty points through Abbott’s loyalty program. We’ve been having these QR codes since late last year and now we see scan rates being up due to the QR code scanning trend being on the rise as well.

e-Brochures / e-Catalogues

Again, with more and more people opting for lesser face-to-face interactions, it would be hard for brands to or businesses to promote their products in stores. Brochures and catalogues are mainly used as a sales tool by promoters to aid selling. As many businesses are cutting back on cost as well as staff in light of Covid-19, paying for promoters to be in the store as well as paying for printed brochures and catalogues are becoming somewhat a luxury. However, brochures and catalogues can still play a part in stores, just that it has become digital. I recently went to a pharmacy that used to hand out single page promotional catalogues of their on-sale items. Instead, they now recommend you to scan a QR code to get the promotion catalogue of the month. I see this becoming more apparent in coming months as brands and businesses cut back on printing cost. It could be that the next time you visit places like Ikea or a car showroom, you can no longer get a printed catalogue.

Tracking Media Effectiveness and Traffic

It has always been a pain to justify the effectiveness when it comes to out-of-home and point-of-sale media. But if you have unique QR codes that are tagged to locations and medium, you can measure scan rates or number of scans to see how effective your advertising is in those locations. Of course, for your ads to be effective in this, there needs to be a call-to-action on your ad itself to get viewers to scan. You can then analyze which ads and locations are more effective in driving actions for your brand, which then enables you to make decisions to optimize on which location you would put your next advertising dollar on.

App to Web Authentication

If your brand has a mobile app, and also has a website that requires a login, one of the ways to skip the login process (without you needing to remember and re-keying in the username and password) is to have QR code authentications. Online banking providers such as Citi now encourages you to download their app to use it as an authentication to login to their website. This somewhat offers the customer the convenience of not forgetting their username and password. Apps like Whatsapp also require you to also scan a QR code as a form of authentication in order to use the web version.

Virtual Retail

This was a smart store in a South Korean subway station that featured a large digital screen of products by Tesco. Using an app, people would scan what they would like to purchase and add to their shopping cart on their app. Just like how you would if you go to an actual supermarket. Once they have completed selecting the products, they can then checkout those items and get them delivered to their homes. It’s a time saver especially for people on the go who do not have time to purchase essential items or groceries. Imagine the same execution being applied to fashion and the F&B industries. Believe it or not, this was done in 2011. But in a time where social distancing is highly encouraged, and face-to-face contact is to be limited, having such an execution isn’t too farfetched. 

In summary, if you’re a brand or business, start to consider integrating QR codes as part of your products and services. If you’re still skeptical on whether or not enough people will scan QR codes, the above examples clearly shows that there is an increase in trend and application in Malaysia. And with more people aware of how to scan QR codes and how they work, you will definitely see a scanning culture becoming a norm in the coming future.

5 Things to Consider for Your Brand During the Lock-down Period

We are definitely facing unprecedented times with the current Covid-19 pandemic where across the globe, we have restricted travel and movement between countries, and in some cases, even a lock-down is implemented within the country itself in attempts to contain the deadly corona virus. The issue with it being an unprecedented event is that there is neither a fix protocol nor playbook to actually that tells us what to do in situations like this. For us marketers, there is a constant debate on whether or not do we continue to spend marketing and advertising dollars in a time like this. To me, the matter is quite subjective. I would say it really depends on the type of product or service that you are offering. Some businesses could still thrive in times like this. 

Make your brand messages relevant

You should consider changing your brand messages to be relevant. The last thing you want to be doing now are having messages that are insensitive and lack empathy towards the situation. For example, if you’re an airline or from the hospitality industry, it’s probably not a good time to be having promotions on your services. Instead, change your messages to give assurance to your customers on what the brand is doing in these trying times.

If you’re in the digital space, it would be relatively easy for you to tweak messages on your ad copies on banner ads and search results so that it can be more relatable to current situation. Also consider changing your imagery on your display ads to suit your ad copy. Avoid using images of crowds, groups or people touching for this current period, just so that your brand is sensitive to current situations.

Use this time to build brand equity

Unless your product or services are deemed essentials, most people during this time are not exactly in the mood to make purchases, especially of high valued items and services. People will tend to prioritize what are “must haves” and what are “nice to haves”. If you have an e-commerce store, great! But be mindful of what you are actually offering to your customers. Do they need it now? Can they live without it? Not to say that if you are not providing essential products and services it will mean all doom and gloom, but instead, take the time to build brand awareness and brand equity. Instead of focusing advertising budgets on campaigns that was meant to drive conversions and sale numbers, which everyone know will take a hit in these times, why not use this time to actually talk about the brand?

Take the airline example above. The brand can highlight on ground stories of their staff and crew, how the brand is doing humanitarian work to help people, what extra safety measures are taken during these time. All these do not directly lead to someone into purchasing a flight ticket straight away, but instead, it builds affinity and love for the brand with your customers. Once the lock-down is over, people will have stronger confidence toward your brand.

Make everything virtual

Given the situation, majority of events or transactions that require physical intervention has been cancelled or postponed. Again, all is not doom and gloom. While it might be weird to have meetings and presentations online, we might be forced to recognize that this will be the new norm post lock-down. Schools, gym classes and church services are good examples of how something that traditionally requires you to be physically present are now online. Yes, it’s not the same, but at the same time, it forces one to innovate and venture into the online space.

For car brands, why not create a virtual showroom with virtual cars and virtual sales assistant? For FMCG brands, why not create a virtual mall, with virtual promoters (or via online chat) to talk about the product as well as to give product demos online? Can’t smell or taste the product before purchase? No problem, get your customers to fill out a form and send them samples! You’re indirectly collecting leads at this point as well. The sky’s the limit actually. It all depends on how innovative a brand can be and what they can do during this period that would make them continue to grow post lock-down. 

Change your digital marketing strategy

If your brand has presence in the online space that uses contextual targeting, please “negative match” anything that has got to do with the pandemic situation if possible. There is a saying, “leave if you’re not here to help me!”. In this case, if your brand cannot offer a solution (like essential products or services) it would be best to avoid showing your ads in those spaces. The counter argument is that there is no need for such an action as it is still creating brand awareness in the minds of consumers, right? Well, while that is true, awareness is one thing, but brand affinity and relevance is another. You would be wasting your ad spends and impressions where your ads become a blind spot in the online space, just because you’re not relevant to the user.

Don’t make fun of the situation

Finally, if you absolutely need to run promotions for your brand, please avoid having headlines like “Special Covid-19 Promotion”, “Corona Sales!” or “Beat the Covid-19 Deals”. Yes, it may sound elementary, but you have no idea how I have across some cringing promo and headlines that brands are using in hopes to capitalize on the situation, but are instead damaging the reputation of the brand. Major fail here.

5 Digital Trends in 2017

As we close off 2016 and reflect upon the year, we also try to look ahead into 2017 hoping that everything will be good in the digital space. For the record, I’m not someone who is an expert in spotting trends, but these are some things I feel will make an impact in the digital landscape in the coming year.

The Rise of Chat-bots

Chatbots are starting to gain some momentum among brands, especially those who manage customer service. The aim chat-bots is to free up the resource needed when answering day-to-day FAQs through automation when it comes to providing troubleshooting matters. However, chat-bots are still at an infancy stage. They still lack the “human touch” in terms of being able to communicate the same message differently to different audiences and they also can’t distinguish sarcasm as well. But I have a feeling that in 2017 more and more brands will start to explore and experiment with chat-bots and how it can help customer service.

Find out more about some best chat-bots around

Big(ger) Data

We all know by now the importance of data and the overused term “big data”. Often than not, marketers are only scratching the surface of how they can use all that collected data. But the more we dwell deeper into all that data and complex analytics, we hope to derive cognitive insights into helping us understand and predict user behavior. This would then benefit marketers in making better decisions during campaign planning and targeting of relevant messages more efficiently. 2017 will see more brands and companies relying on data and analytics to drive their businesses.

VR / AR

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) have been around for quite a while. Companies like Layar, which allow brands to leverage its services to develop AR based engagement, have been around since 2010. However, 2016 saw the people at Niantic Labs (creators of Pokémon Go and Ingress) took AR to the next level, making Pokémon Go the most played game app ever. Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook gave the world a glimpse of how the future of Virtual Reality will look like during their Oculus Connect event back in October. Perhaps these 2 milestones will set the tone on what is to come in 2017 in both AR and VR worlds.

360 Videos & Live Streaming Videos via Facebook

It’s not very uncommon now to see brands leveraging on 360 videos and live streaming of events on Facebook to promote brand messages. But I feel the adoption in emerging markets as well as smaller brands are slow because of the higher production cost needed for the equipment to create these videos. But as we move into 2017 however, I get a feeling that more of these equipment will be available at a more affordable prices (price reduction due to higher demand). Basic equipment that allows you to create 360 videos are now made available and affordable via crowdfunding sites such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter.

#TrueStory?

2016 was the year that “Fake news” made the news. Facebook was also accused of promoting fake news which has influenced the outcome of the US presidential election. However, Mark Zuckerberg has pledge to develop tools to combat fake news. In 2017, this would definitely impact what people think is a credible new source or otherwise. I feel that this would also have an impact on brands embarking on branded content or content association strategy. An interesting article on reddit.com talks about exactly how click-bait type article also co-relates with fake news.

** Disclaimer: All above are based entirely on my gut feel and that I won’t be responsible if these trends don’t actually happen. **

The New Five-Second Rule

Is it that hard to believe that in future, you may only have 5 seconds to market to your consumers on YouTube or any video platform for that matter? When I say video platform, these include Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Twitter and many others. Let me explain why so.In a study done by Microsoft, the average attention span on ads dropped from 12 seconds to 9 seconds since the 2000’s. 

Source: Microsoft attention spans, Spring 2015

But one may argue, that is because in the past (pre-2000s), consumers were less exposed to ad clutter and had slower internet connection speeds, thus spending longer time to consume content. Today, advertisers need to compete for attention on a space that is cluttered with ads even on video platforms, which makes the consumers prone to ad blindness or even annoyance to a certain degree, resulting in them skipping or closing ads all together the moment they see one popping up.

My 3 year old son is the best example. He presses the “Skip Ad” button on Youtube, if a pre-roll video ad is not interesting enough for him. Hence in future, the first 5 seconds is probably the most crucial to your future consumers, the Generation Alpha.

Relevant Content
The last thing anyone would like is to see something irrelevant being showed to them. It’s not only annoying, it’s also time wasting. This is where your ads have to be targeted and targeted well. Taking my son as an example, he skips ads that doesn’t resonate with him like a shampoo ad, but will watch the whole video if it’s something he can relate to like a Hot Wheels toy ad. The point here is, consumers will skip your ads regardless, if the content of the first 5 seconds is not something relevant to them. Yes, targeting is important, but it’s also equally important to make the first 5 seconds of your ad count. The same rule applies if you’re developing display type ads. Remember to be relevant to your target, otherwise it will be closed or skipped.


Short Form Goes a Long Way
While we talk about the importance of the first 5 seconds of your video ad, the general rule of online video ads is not to have it too long. No one is going to sit and watch a 10 minutes video about your company products or services unless they are made or told in an interesting way. Even that, 10 minutes is way too long these days (remember, users only have an average of 9 seconds attention span). Ideally an online video ad should be no more than 15-20 seconds and a strong call to action to lead them to a page for them to get more information, given that you can only say so much in 20 seconds. The key here is the first 5 seconds of what your user sees in that video. It will either make them stay on, or make them leave.


YouTube vs Facebook
We need to be mindful that putting a video ad on YouTube and Facebook are very different in terms of how they are presented. YouTube plays ads at the start of a video (pre-roll) and in the middle of a longer video (mid-roll), and users can usually choose to skip the ads after 5 seconds.

Videos on Facebook on the other hand are presented in a person’s news feed. By default, Facebook auto-play the video without sound, unless the user changes the setting to disable “auto-play”. I read somewhere that there is still a large amount of Facebook users still have “auto-play” turned on (something like 65%) as they don’t know how to go about turning it off. Which means on Facebook, your ads has technically less than 5 seconds to get someone’s attention while they are scrolling through their news feed. And not to mention you got to do it without the aid of sound! Sounds insane isn’t it? In one study of Facebook video ads, 41 percent of videos were basically meaningless without sound. Now imagine putting up that 10-minute long corporate video as a Facebook ad. Not such a good idea now isn’t it?

One way to reduce someone missing your video ad is to have an interesting caption that will act as a hook to get users interested enough to pause midway through scrolling on their news feed, read the copy, and then click to watch the video. According to wired.com, Facebook says that including captions on video ads increases the amount of time people spend watching them. For ad and brand recall, it is also recommended that advertisers show captions, logos, and products in ads, especially in the first few seconds.