Kawaii Cam
(WhatIfCamera)
Marketing Internship
aitia' corporation is a Tokyo based startup that developed the world’s first Augmented Reality motion camera app. Worked on Kawaii Cam (WhatIfCamera), a Snapchat predecessor that facilitated AR photography.
OUR CHALLENGE
Get as many downloads as possible without using traditional advertisements.
Project goals
6 marketing interns were hired (out of over 300 applicants) and we were given the task of promoting and launching a brand-new Augmented Reality photography app WhatIfCamera (later re-branded to KawaiiCam).
The company had no internal marketing department at the time and the only instruction we got was “Get as many users as possible, without using traditional ads. “. It was an experimental marketing project for the company, and by hiring 6 university students who were in the same age group as the target market, they were hoping we would come up with outside the box marketing ideas.
Role
Aug. 2012 - Nov. 2012 Marketing Intern
Nov. 2012 - Jun. 2015 Marketing Assistant
Managed all aspects of business associated with the application including but not limited to: marketing, promotion, financial planning, and partner communication.
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Process
PRE LAUNCH
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We had 1 month till the targeted app release date. Since we were not allowed to use any traditional advertisements including Google adwords, Facebook ads, etc, we originally focused on the Japanese market upon the release of version 1.
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-Set KPIs & Forecasted active user growth
-Created roadmap to hit milestones
-Created a task sheet for all of the interns and managed
-Conducted competitor analysis on each social media and created official social media accounts
-Created app store descriptions that uses language that's approachable to the target market & translate it to English
-Created screenshots for app stores
-Conducted competitor UI research & suggested the UI implementation to the engineer
-Organized multiple offline events
-Created a list of SNS communities/media to contact upon app release
-Created press release in english
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POST LAUNCH
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Our initial launch was successful. For post launch, we focused on retaining the acquired users as well as promote brand awareness internationally by engaging Internet traffic through the use of Social Media management on various levels.
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-Organized offline events
-Organized online (in-app) events targeted towards markets outside japan.
-Localized the app to English
-Found/managed translators for Chinese, Italian, and French
-Managed official social media accounts
-Reached out to SNS communities for a feature
-Suggested the developer to implement a push notification to notify our users about our official social media accounts
-Conducted intensive bug tests throughout the app & reported directly to the chief engineer
-Attended Tokyo Designers Week to showcase the comapany's Augmented Reality technology from 10/30/2012-11/05/2012
Results
Gained 107K organic followers on Facebook with a weekly growth rate of more than 15 % in less than a year with no marketing budget.
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Became no.1 Photography app in both Free & Top Grossing categories in Taiwan, HongKong, Macao. And no.1 Top Grossing Photography app in Thailand & Singapore.
Personal Achievement
-won an in-house competition
-I was given the responsibility of managing the other interns and managed all aspects of business associated with the app
-Due to my hard work, I was the only intern that was hired back after the internship period was over.​
Skills Learnt
-When planning, make sure to have plans for the best case, realistic case and worst case scenarios.
i.g. consider getting rejected from Apple, which delays the app release date, have a plan when the server is down due to concentrated number of AU after right after hosting an online event, etc
-When problem occurs, solve it as soon as possible.