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JUNE - JULY ‘16 #ISSUE34

The BrandLaureate had the opportunity to talk to Kevin Guo of Ctrip.com, the number one online travel agency in China, who was also one of the speakers in the CMO Asia Summit 2016. Kevin who spoke on ‘Powerful Branding in a Digital Era’ has more than 20 years of experience in advertising and marketing area, especially in internet industry and brand building. As the Marketing Director of Ctrip.com, he develops Ctrip’s brand equity through brand strategy of mobile related position and communication. Before, he was a senior marketing director of NASDAQ listed company, Huazhu hotel group (Hanting chain hotels), and marketing director of a leading travel media company.

1. Can you tell us more about your job and how has your involvement in Ctrip changed your perception of digital branding and marketing?

I have worked for Ctrip for 7 years and became the marketing communication director from 2012 to April 2016. In my capacity as the marketing director of Ctrip, I rebranded Ctrip’s mobile position and communication strategy. This involves the alteration of consumers’ thoughts of the Ctrip brand, from the image of travel booking call center to new mobile era brand.

Ctrip is an e-commerce company concentrating on travel industry. Involving in Ctrip’s marketing makes me learn a lot of methods and technical means to solve the problem of how to get more new customers and how to communicate with consumers via digital media, such as Wechat, digital TV and many more. Along with knowing more digital marketing methods, I realized that marketers need to know consumers through not only the digital figure, but also learn the thought of

consumers’ brain. The thoughts in consumers’ brain will help marketers to brand better. So, I believe we should learn the concept of whole data to understand the individual idea.

2. As Ctrip’s Marketing Director, what does your marketing strategy look like?

Firstly, a marketing strategy needs to have an objective on where we’re heading as a brand. Then, we create the content of communication which includes the core idea, the expression, the media choice and the material design. In the strategy planning, it is equally important to master the evaluation of the marketing campaign results.

3. How does knowing your audience important in building customer engagement and loyalty?

Digital marketing gives us the opportunity to understand our customer more. For example, we can track the online TV audience’s behavior after they watch our Ads or content video. That is when we get to ask ourselves: Do they like our brand more? Do they come to our website or APP more frequently? From the data analysis, we find more likeness to bring more loyalty towards our brand.

4. With all this technology coming into the mix, how far do marketers need to go in terms of becoming technologists?

Technology is always progressing. On one hand, marketers need to learn more IT tech to find how tech helps in increasing marketing efficiency. On the other hand, tech helps digital marketing to work easier than before. More humanized software and more third party agencies come in the market for marketer’s utilizing.

5. What are some of the marketing and branding strategies brands need to be successful?

Content marketing and mobile strategy!

Kevin Guo, Marketing Director of Ctrip.com

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