GoGi House – a famous korean BBQ restaurant which operated since 2012 in Vietnam (Anh 2019) after 5 years

of activated, in 2017, they ran a powerful campaign to promote their brand, as well as emphasized their brand
image in customer head: “GoGi barbecue the number one delicious”. The campaign had fully exploited some
core tools in the IMC strategy, which were advertising, sales promotion, digital marketing and PR. This
assignment will analyse more clearly and insightfully on how GoGi House had achieved their goals by using
these tools.

Advertising

Belch and Belch (2018, p.27) stated that ‘Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and
promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor’. It is also the most popular term in promotion
(Belch and Belch 2018) and Gogi house had exploited it very well in this campaign. GoGi House advertisement
is in form of viral videos on Youtube. Three video are telling story about different group of customer. The first
one is about officer, the second go with family, and the last one is about a young couple. Despite of having
disparate plots, they share the same flow, which is people try to keep image at first, but after tasting Gogi
excellent barbecue, they get encouraged to behave like their real person and having happy momments together.
Besides, the same message of “be yourself” and the comfortable vibe are also be delivered throughout. The same
flow also showing through the same slogan at the end “If you come, you will be attached, if you eat, you will get
addicted”. Repetition is taken place in this advertisement, in order to make a mark on customer’s mind (Magloff
2019) and that is when brand awareness being formed (Keller 2013). The advertisement was using the soft-sell
strategies, which is target at the audiences’ emotion like GoGi barbecue is extremely delicious, people feel
comfortable tasting it and that boosting their confidence to be themselves in front of other (Hoang 2017).
Customer is more likely to get attache to the brand in term of emotion (Beverland, 2018). By that fact, we could
say that GoGi had success in chosing their message, which is be yourself – a message that GoGi found many
people may get attached to emotionally (Hoang 2017). In January, 2017, Youtube was the most active media
platform in Vietnam with 51% of population using it (Digital 2017: Vietnam 2017), which mean GoGi House
had correctly chose the media channel to deliver the video and their message. That result in nearly one millions
views toward the advertisiment in the total of all media channels and all three videos reached over 400,000
views on Youtube (Hoang 2017). Beside inform the the brand’s information, advertising also persuade customer
purchase (Sawant 2012). By targeting different group of customer that related to the viral videos, GoGi persuade
that everyone are suitable for their barbecue. Combined with the outstanding acting and filming which stimulate
the taste of viewer, the advertisements arouse people to have a tast of GoGi barbecue.

To sum up, by choosing soft-sell strategies and choosing the concise, trendy message, as well as applying
repition in advertising, GoGi had successfully inform people with the brand personality – friendly, sincerity.
Likewise, it help people to get the top of mind awareness of Gogi house: “delicous” and “comfortable” (Hoang
2017).

PR

Advertising is a great way to deliver message to large group of people, which is very helpful to enhance brand
awareness, however, their credibility is not that high (Smith and Zook, 2011). That is why we need other tools of
IMC strategy, for example PR. PR stands for “Public relations” and briefly it is about maintaining good
relationship with diversity of publics (Smith&Zook, 2011). GoGi house had been 5 years of operated when the
campaign start, therefore, there would be no surprise that they had built well PR platform with several media
channels, for example, Kenh14, Cafef, Zing and some other young media channels (Hoang 2017). GoGi using
one way communication, which is provide information of the brand to the media and they will use those
materials to write news. Through a very popular media channel which is Zing (Giang Thu Quan 2017), they both
showing positive attitude towards the viral videos of Gogi House, especially, they emphasized the campaign
message “GoGi barbecue the number one delicous”. This help a lots in maintaining the whole campaign synergy
– the key for a success IMC campaign (Belch&Belch 2018).

To sum up, by using one way communication, GoGi campaign being reported positively and with right message
by e-newspapers, which could enhance sympathetic view from publics.

Sales promotions

Using advertising and PR can help inform brand message in a wide approach, as well as unify the message of a
whole campaign. However, to encourage people using our product more we have to use sales promotions – an
activity that provide coupons, gift to arouse customer purchase (Belch&Belch 2018).
GoGi had made several sales promotions in the form of mini game, they will give the voucher for the winner.
Most typical is the mini game: “creating caption for images”(“GoGi house”, 2017). The judges would picked out
25 winner and gave each one a 200,000VNĐ voucher.

Due to Smith and Zook (2011), a successful sales promotions can strengthen the brand, in case it have to link
with brand’s image. Considering GoGi’s promotion with this theory, we could say that this mini game is not
highly relevant to “comfortable” and “delicious” theme of brand. However, it is a way of enhancing repeat
business and attract new customer (Gyant 2020), therefore, it still work well.

Digital marketing

In 2017, the most active media platform in Vietnam is Facebook with 51% of population using it (Digital
2017:Vietnam 2017). As a result of that, GoGi chose digitial marketing as another IMC tool. It is a mechanism
of promoting product on social media, internet and other digital channels (Karla 2020). Throughout the whole
campaign, obviously Gogi had used digital marketing with many other tools, for example, advertising using
Youtube platform. Additionally, GoGi used digital marketing much more through Facebook. In the owned media
platform, GoGi used content marketing, for instance, created a special menu base on horoscope which gain 7,7k
likes . On the other sector, they use KOLs voice on social media to promote the campaign, for instance, “Duy
Khanh”, “Ngoc Thao”and “Sunht”. Futhermore they connected with hot fanpage like Ve Bay (2017), the page
giving a short comic which related to campaign’s message – “be yourself” this make the campaign maintain
synergy.

Digital marketing help the customer to get the general message of campaign by its unity throughout (Karla 2020)
and helped GoGi increase the intereaction on Facebook with 358,731 posts about the campaign (Buzzmetrics
2017).

Evaluation

Despite not using all the IMC tools, GoGi had exploited effectively four main tools which stated above. Through
disparate forms but they still applied one voice strategy through out the campaign by deliver the message of
“being yourself” and “GoGi barbecue number one delicious” . Moreover, they had produced powerful
advertisment that create top of mind awareness for the customer (Hoang, 2017). Finally, the most successful
outcome of the campaign is that in November, 2017 it being voted for top 3 outstanding campaign on social
media (Buzzmetrics 2017) and top 5 most mentioned campaign (Hoang 2017). In term of branding outcomes,
base on the survey of “King choice – professional KPOP voting web” about the most popular BBQ restaurant in
Vietnam, GoGi have the honor to stand in second place, this reflects the influence of GoGi House on the market.
In contrast, there are still rooms for improvement, GoGi should operate more CSR activities in order to being
more serious in building publics’ relationship rather than only communicate with online newspaper.
In conclusion, by using IMC strategy to promote for the “GoGi barbecue number one delicious” campaign, Gogi
House had achieved several important goals. The campaign is a turning point for GoGi to step in a reputation
brands ranking and engage to a wider market.

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