POCO Indonesia - Being a brand guardian angel
Klikpr was selected to be POCO’s PR partner for three consecutive years, each year bringing its own unique challenges for the agency to address. The first year was particularly challenging: with POCO only recently being established as its own identity independent of Xiaomi, the one question to answer was how to make the upstart brand stand out from its parent company and in a sea of near-identical smartphone offerings. Another not-so-easy challenge to answer was dispelling public perception towards POCO as a ‘cheap’ brand and instead shift the audience’s perspective to align with its brand value: extreme performance at extreme price. Thirdly, instead of just wide, POCO went for deep: targeting very hypersegmented audience niches including gamers, skateboarders, fashion designers, and many such creative types.
The brand announced even more product offerings in its second year, but this was at the same time an exercise in setting priorities to make sure each product line received equal attention. The second year was also marked by the closing of all its brick-and-mortar stores to become a fully online presence. While this may have cut operating costs down, POCO had to communicate to its customers that it remained easy to reach out and purchase all the same.
In its third year, the priority was maintaining the overwhelmingly positive momentum we have built for POCO the previous two years, wherein the market has also been made familiar with POCO and its values. The same old narratives being repeated would not cut it; the agency had to have the creativity and inspiration to look for new angles and come up with never-before-explored stories.
Planning & Execution
In line with the brief, Klikpr formulated and executed the right activities to achieve the objectives laid out to us. From targeting hypersegmented media to reach the communities and niches we want to reach, working together with key opinion leaders (KOLs), holding regional media roadshows to build relationships with local media beyond tier-1 cities, creative press releases and content, thought leadership, and even newsjacking exercises to capitalize on real-time trends and conversations, consistency was key in steadily establishing POCO as the go-to smartphone brand at the product segment and price range. In total, the agency executed as many as 8 product launches and 48 PR activities.
Effectiveness / Results
Altogether, we generated a total of 16,630 PR stories from 2K+ media outlets, including hyperlocal and hypersegmented publications.