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Digital Marketing Report: Nongshim Shin Ramyun Cindy Oh, Ghea Thohir, Powen Jenq, Shihao He

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1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………2 2. Industry & Competitors………………………………………………………………....2 3. Current Strategy…………………………………………………………………………3 4. Segmentation……………………………………………………………………………..4 5. Proposed Strategy………………………………………………………………………..4 6. Evaluation of Strategy…………………………………………………………………...6 7. Success Measures………………………………………………………………………...7 8. References………………………………………………………………………………...8 9. Appendix………………………………………………………………………………...10

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Introduction Shin Ramyun is an instant noodle brand produced by Nongshim, the largest ramyun and snack company in South Korea. It has been available since October 1986, and is now exported to over 100 countries. It is produced in 3 countries : United States, China, and South Korea. Shin Ramyun is known for its spicy flavor and distinct red packaging, and is the most popular brand of instant noodle in South Korea with a market share of over 20%. According to the National Brand Consumption Index, Shin Ramyun is the number 1 brand in South korea in brand awareness and brand power. Nongshim USA was established in 1994, and its headquarters are located in Rancho Cucamonga, California. By February 2013 its most popular product, Shin Ramyun was available in 4000 Walmart stores (approximately 2/3rd of all Walmart stores in the U.S.). Shin Ramyun is also available at some locations of Costco and Sam’s Club, and can also be found on Amazon, where it is an “Amazon’s Top Choice” product. Industry & Competitors Instant noodles have become one of the world’s most popular food items due to its versatility and convenience. In 2015, 97.7 billion servings of instant noodles were eaten globally. The United States is ranked 6th in global demand for instant noodles - with 4,100 million servings. We were unable to find data regarding the instant noodle market share by brand in the United States. However, we were able to find the percentage market share for the global instant noodle market: Toyo Suisan has 11.2%, Nissin Foods has 4.2%, Nongshim USA has 4.2%, and Sanyo Foods 2.9%. Shin Ramyun’s main competitors in the United States are Nissin Top Ramen and Maruchan Ramen. Nissin Top Ramen is a brand owned by Nissin Foods, a Japanese food company that makes instant noodles. It was established in Japan in September of 1948, and established a U.S. subsidiary in 1970. Instant noodles and cup noodles were invented by the founder of Nissin Foods, and Top Ramen was the first instant ramen manufactured and sold in the U.S. Nissinfoods.com has had 136.34k total visits in the last 6 months, compared to 3.15k visits nongshimusa.com has had. 66.74% of their website traffic is from search, with 92.03% organic search and 7.97% paid search. Maruchan Ramen is a brand owned by Toyo Suisan, a Japanese food company specializing in ramen noodles, seafood, and frozen and refrigerated foods. It was established in

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Japan in 1953, and entered the United States market in 1977. Maruchan alone produces around 3.6 billion packages of ramen noodle soup a year. Maruchan.com has had 53.88k total visits in the last 6 months, which is again a significantly higher number of visits than nongshimusa.com. 90.45% of their website traffic is from search, with 100% organic search. Current Strategy Nongshim currently markets heavily in South Korea, China, and Japan. In South Korea, Shin Ramyun ads are extremely popular and use a famous male celebrity with their catchy jingle and tagline “사나이 울리는 신라면 (Shin Ramyun can make a man cry)”. In China, Nongshim sponsors a popular board game championship - “Shin Ramyun Cup Baduk Championship” - to increase brand recognition. In Japan, the “Shin Ramyun Kitchen Car” goes around Japan offering consumers an opportunity to taste Shin Ramyun. It is clear that most of Nongshim’s marketing efforts are focused in East Asia. Although Nongshim products are available in various locations, the company conducts very little marketing - digital or physical - to promote Shin Ramyun in the U.S. The company does have an official website dedicated to Shin Ramyun, “WorldOfShin.com”, which features recipes as well as merchandise for purchase, but it does not appear in the google search for “Nongshim Shin Ramyun”. This suggests that Nongshim is not investing in any kind of search engine optimization strategy to promote the existence of this resource and increase brand presence. Nongshim USA’s social media marketing is similarly underdeveloped. The company currently does not have any account that is dedicated to Shin Ramyun, as all content is posted on Nongshim USA’s social media platforms. The company’s Youtube Channel has only 2059 subscribers despite posting videos regularly and even collaborating with Youtube influencer Wong Fu Productions on a “How to Cook Nonshing Shin Ramyun” video. Its most popular video,“The Sound of Delicious”, managed to hit over 5 million views; however it is the only video to garner success on the platform. Additionally, its Twitter account has only 508 followers and its posts have few likes and retweets. Similarly, Nongshim’s Facebook customer interactions have also lessened over the past few months, with its posts having very few likes and comments despite having 103,466 page likes on the page. Nongshim USA’s lack of investment in its U.S online presence is limiting the brand’s customer acquisition and subsequent sales. Though it is very popular in Japan and Korea, many

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U.S. consumers are still unaware of the brand, particularly due to strong competition with wellknown brands in the industry. Hence, in order to achieve greater brand recognition and acquire more customers, Nongshim must undergo a change in strategy. Segmenting the Target Market To formulate a strategy that will address the above issue, we must first identify Nongshim’s intended U.S. target market. We chose our target market based on the demographics of consumers who have an interest in “instant noodles” on Facebook Audience Insights. We used Facebook Audience Insight because of two reasons: one, there was not enough data on the instant noodle market in the United States and two, it allows us to isolate the audienced based on a common interest rather than just location or age. Interest is important because we believe that the people in this group are the ones who will most strongly respond to our campaign tactics. We found that proportionally more women (66%) than men (34%) are interested in instant noodles. Interest in “instant noodles” is also highest amongst customers who are between 25-34 years old. Additionally, analysis on Google Trends illustrates that interest in “Shin Ramyun” in the U.S is centered in mainly urban areas such as California and New York. These digital insights suggests that Shin Ramyun’s customers segments are primarily women, between 25-34 who live in California or New York. Using these demographics, Nongshim can create a strategy that targets these specific consumers. Proposed Strategy Therefore, our proposed solution is that Nongshim should adopt a social media strategy to improve customer acquisition in the United States. The campaign will run indefinitely as part of Nongshim’s business model, in order to position itself as being more customer-centric. The proposed social media campaign will comprise of three strategic steps. First, Nongshim should create a separate instagram platform for Shin Ramyun so that we can monitor the development of this campaign and future campaigns. The Shin Ramyun Instagram account will mainly feature promotional images of Shin Ramyun products as well as suggested recipes curated by the company or from user-generated content. Having a separate platform also allows Nongshim to identify responses for Shin Ramyun specifically. We recommend Instagram as it is a popular platform and fits the target demographic we identified earlier. Sprout Social reports that Instagram is more popular with women between the ages of 18-49. Though Instagram is almost evenly used across all locations, its users are more proportionally located in urban areas, which

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fits our target audience. Based on the results above we believe that this is a platform that most of our target audience is using and therefore they will respond well to an Instagram campaign. We also believe that Instagram is the most appropriate platform for the proposed campaign as it is photo-based, allowing customers to visually engage with the product which is ideal for a foodrelated product. Next, Nongshim should introduce a hashtag campaign on the platform. The campaign will encourage Nongshim’s followers to upload photos and recipes of how they customize their Shin Ramyun using the hashtag #YourShinRamyun. Ramen customization is a well-known trend that was featured on several Buzzfeed articles as well as done by Kylie Jenner, so it should yield good participation rates. Having this campaign allows Nongshim to better listen, engage and promote to customers of this particular product. Nongshim can scroll through customers posts to respond to comments that identifies sentiments or concerns, gather user-generated content for promotional material, and quickly tailor promotional messages that appeal to its target audience. Customer interaction is valuable for Nongshim because it allows the company to gather customer data and adapt its value offering based on the insights. Additionally, highlighting the post of engaged customers will not only increase loyalty and relational switching costs, as customers feel valued, but it will also significantly influence other customers’ purchase behavior. Having the campaign be recipe-based also requires customers to purchase and actively interact with the product, instead of simple endorsing through “likes”. A Facebook study indicates that posts of users actually using a product increases the chances that their followers will use the product as well. Having a campaign of this nature will more effectively build on the social influence of Nongshim’s customers and spread word-of-mouth about the brand, both of which will increase brand recognition and therefore sales. Finally, Nongshim should push the campaign using influencers. Influencers are very valuable as the information spread through influencers will be exposed to a larger number of followers. Nongshim can use influencers to either collaborate and release targeted content, or to urge the campaign by posting their participation in the #YourShinRamyun campaign. FoodwithMichel and PinchofYum are two influencers that can be used to endorse the campaign. To create content, Nongshim should consider collaborating with Buzzfeed Tasty, an account with over 17 million followers. The instagram account posts many recipes videos using the one product such as the “Chicken Bake 4 Ways” recipe video posted in late 2016, with many of them

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being sponsored by brands. Therefore, Nongshim could collaborate to create a 5 recipe video using Shin Ramyun, which will not only spread word-of-mouth about the brand but also provide ideas for customers who are interested in joining the #YourShinRamyun Campaign. However, Buzzfeed Tasty has lower notable engagements and paid post performance, so it is better to push the promotion of the campaign with two additional instagrammers who have less followers but more meaningful interactions. FoodwithMichel is a food recipe account that has a 68.55% Paid Post Performance rate and 15.88% Notable Engagement rates, which suggests past paid posts have done well as followers place trust in him. Similarly, PinchofYum is another food recipe account that high Paid Performance (61.80%) and Notable Engagement Rates (12.52%). Given strong paid post performances, campaign endorsement from the two influencers should generate strong response from their followers. All three influencers are appropriate for the campaign because they match our intended audience demographically, as they have a large following for women within our age range who live in California or New York. The three-step strategy outlined above builds on social influence and customer centrality, so it should effectively increase brand recognition and bring in new customers for Nongshim Shin Ramyun. Evaluation of Strategy Adopting social media marketing is beneficial to Nongshim for various reasons. Nongshim can achieve greater reach through social media, as it is a network of interconnected nodes. Additionally, social media allows Nongshim to increase word-of-mouth and brand recognition at a smaller cost. While widespread reach is possible through traditional marketing, it would require more investment and it is not guaranteed to yield measurable returns. On the other hand, social media campaign growth can be measured using various metrics, thus Nongshim can easily calculate the return value of the campaign. Furthermore, social media allows for two-way communication. Nongshim receives a feedback loop so it can immediately respond to customers, gain insight, and alter actions. This is another strength of a social media campaign. Another carryover effect of this campaign is that it may also increase retention, as existing customers are exposed to more Shin Ramyun recipes which may encourage them to purchase more of the product in the future. However, there are costs to utilizing a social media marketing strategy. As the strategy requires Nongshim to start a new Instagram account, it will take some time to gain followers and traction. Additionally, the success of the campaign is heavily reliant on user participation. This

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could result in the need to cancel or invest more to push the campaign and ensure success. Nonetheless, Nongshim should utilize this campaign in order to increase customer acquisition, as the influence of having a strong online presence is too great to ignore. Success Measures Our goals with this social media campaign is to increase brand recognition and customer acquisition. We will measure the success of the campaign through various methods. Weekly, we will track the number of new followers and the interaction/engagement rate on our Instagram page. Since we are starting a new Shin Ramyun Instagram, it is important for the page to be constantly gaining followers. We also hope to see a significant amount of posts with our hashtag to gauge customer engagement. We will also examine share of voice - how much of the conversation with target consumers Shin Ramyun owns versus our competitors - as well as Google Analytics and Trends monthly. We can measure the proportion before and after the campaign to see if there is any improvement in the share of the conversation against competitors, and Google Trends will tell us how many people are talking about Shin Ramyun. Lastly, we will look continuously at real sales to see if they have improved through our social media campaign. All of the above measures (aside from real sales) will look at the noise we are generating through our campaign to increase Shin Ramyun’s brand recognition. Increased noise suggests an increased interest in purchasing the product, and by tracking this noise and sales we will be able to determine if our campaign yielded a positive ROI.

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References “About Us, Ando's Dream.” Nissin Foods, nissinfoods.com/our-story.

“BuzzfeedTasty, Instagram Audience Data.” Deep Social, https://deep.social/data?urlCopy=16397553&requestId=5ae6894c824d6e000114a6a9

Facebook Audience Insights, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/ads/audienceinsights/people?act=2043755613117&age=18-&country=US

“FoodWithMichel, Instagram Audience Data.” Deep Social, deep.social/data?urlCopy=11835500&requestId=5ae68906a5074f0001044a8b.

Google Trends, Google, https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=shin%20ramyun

John, Leslie K, et al. “What's the Value of a Like?” Harvard Business Review, 21 Feb. 2017, hbr.org/2017/03/whats-the-value-of-a-like.

Kashcha, Andrei. “Amazon Products Visualization - YASIV.” Amazon Products Visualization - YASIV, www.yasiv.com/.

“Maruchan.com Traffic Statistics.” SimilarWeb, www.similarweb.com/website/maruchan.com.

“Nissinfoods.com Traffic Statistics.” SimilarWeb, www.similarweb.com/website/nissinfoods.com.

“NongshimUSA.com Traffic Statistics.” SimilarWeb, www.similarweb.com/website/nongshimusa.com.

NongshimUSA Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/nongshimusa/

NongshimUSA Twitter, https://twitter.com/NongshimAmerica

NongshimUSA Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/user/nongshimusa

“Our Company.” Nongshim USA, www.nongshimusa.com/homev2/our-company/.

9 “Our Story.” Maruchan, www.maruchan.com/about/.

“PInchofYum, Instagram Audience Data.” Deep Social, https://deep.social/data?urlCopy=16397553&requestId=5ae6894c824d6e000114a6a9

Sohn, Ji-Young. “Nongshim Japan's Sales Rise 22.6% in Q1.” The Korea Herald, 12 Apr. 2016, www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160412000954.

“WorldofShin.com Traffic Statistics.” SimilarWeb, www.similarweb.com/website/worldofshin.com.

York, Alex. “Social Media Demographics to Inform a Better Segmentation Strategy.” Sprout Social, 19 July 2017, sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/.

“10조원 어치 팔린 '농심 신라면'…세계입맛 사로잡다.” Newsis, 21 Apr. 2016, www.newsis.com/ar_detail/view.html/?ar_id=NISX20160420_0014034529&cID=10401 &pID=10400.

“서른살 신라면 ‘辛기록’은 계속된다.” HeraldCorp, 26 Feb. 2016, news.heraldcorp.com/view.php?ud=20160226000344.

최윤호 . “제 2의 주식, 라면]세계가 먹는 바로 그 매운맛, 辛라면 변신하다 원문보기: Http://News.donga.com/3/All/20140920/66546426/1#csidx87037a8826096fa9 62d927133839418 .” DongA, 22 Sept. 2014, news.donga.com/3/all/20140920/66546426/1.

김상운 . “‘아시아 바둑 올림픽’ 인기 힘입어 신라면 중국 매출 급성장 원문보기: Http://News.donga.com/3/All/20160419/77657405/1#csidxca76129f35 d1887948e382cea81cfd8 .” DongA, 20 Apr. 2016, news.donga.com/3/all/20160419/77657405/1.

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Appendix

Appendix 1. YASIV Association with Shin Ramyun

Appendix 2. Google Trends for Shin Ramyun, Maruchan Ramen, and Top Ramen

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Appendix 3. SimilarWeb : Nissinfood.com

Appendix 4. SimilarWeb : Maruchan.com

Appendix 5. SimilarWeb : NongshimUSA.com

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Appendix 6. SimilarWeb : WorldofShin.com

Appendix 7.. Facebook Audience Insights on Age and Gender for Shin Ramyun

Appendix 8. Facebook Audience Insights on Regions of Interest for Shin Ramyun in the U.S

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Appendix 9. Why Instagram?

Appendix 10. Campaign Tactic #1

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Appendix 11. Campaign Tactic #2

Appendix 12. Campaign Tactic #3...