Was it worth RM1.8 million?
By: Gabey Goh, Malaysia
Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen has slammed Opposition politician Anthony Loke, over comments made about the contentious Facebook tourism spending.
DAP Member of Parliament Loke claimed “six-year-olds could develop the ministry’s Facebook properties”, which the Tourism Minister has responded angrily to.
“For DAP to say this, I laugh and feel so sad for them, they use their DAP platform to compare our professional and globally run well-monitored social network,” she said, speaking to reporters after announcing local singer Fish Leong had been appointed as the country’s Tourism Ambassador for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan on Tuesday.
With public backlash over Tourism Malaysia spending RM1.8 million on six Facebook properties rising, A+M asked digital practitioners in the industry for their take on the issue.
David Lian, APAC Social Media Practice Lead, Text 100 said that increasing digital spending for the tourism sector is the right way to go, as the audience profile has shown that when people want to travel, they get most of their information online.
“So if Tourism Malaysia got one thing right, it’s that they need to focus on digital,” Lian said.
Roberto Cumaraswamy, country head (Malaysia) of digital agency Vocanic agreed, adding that spending on digital and social media is still very much inversely proportionate with the media consumption habits of Malaysians, who are amongst the most digitally active users worldwide.
“It always worries me when clients resort to social media marketing because they see it as a cheap alternative, because that is the wrong reason to use it. The reality is that building the page is just the first baby step in the journey of successful user engagement,” he added.
Kelvin Lim, digital strategist at Burson-Marsteller noted that with no clear visibility into the exact scope of work and length of engagement, no one is in any position at this point to say whether the figures are reasonable or otherwise.
However, the amount stated is certainly possible, depending on project complexity, consultant management requirements and marketing spread.
“Let’s be clear, creating a Facebook page is not the same thing as managing a Facebook campaign,” he said.
“When you consider that designers, coders, marketers and engagement crews (all of which contribute to a good Facebook campaign success formula) need to be hired, the appropriate budget has to be allocated,” he added.
Lian agreed, adding people assume that social media is “free” because the tools appear to be “free”, but this discounts the time creatives need to put in to design assets, the technical work needed to ensure proper tracking is done (though Facebook Insights is free), monitoring and community management, advertising, and other costs such as contest prizes which can sometimes go up to RM 1 million.
Cumaraswamy added that only if engagement occurs that any true value can be obtained from social media efforts: “Sure a simple FB Page using the standard tools can be built by anyone for free, including a 6 year old as the DAP MP has commented. But will anyone visit the page? Will anyone ‘like’ it? And most importantly will anyone engage with the page?”
On the view held by some commentators the bulk of the money was channelled towards Facebook advertising, Cumaraswamy noted given the cost effectiveness of the Facebook Ad model, it seems a very large amount of money to spend on advertising on Facebook in such a short amount of time.
