Line intensifies local marketing push

MANILA, Philippines - When words just don’t cut it, use stickers. That’s what the folks at Line say, anyway. The mobile messenger service offers a whole suite of services — including the ability to send more than 8,000 unique “stickers” that users can download for a fee.

Line also offers calls, text, games, greeting cards, camera effects, anti-virus service, and such. It is a veritable social networking platform with a full complement of apps for most conceivable need. Under the aegis of South Korea’s largest Internet company, NHN Corp., Line has achieved phenomenal growth. Numbers bear this out, as 100 million users have been registered with the service a scant 19 months after its June 2011 launch. By comparison, it took Twitter 49 months and Facebook 54 months to reach the same plateau. After 25 months, Line breached 180 million users.

“Our around 50 applications are all free of charge,” Jin-Woo Lee, business representative of Line in the country, said in an exclusive interview with NetWorks. When asked how the company realizes income, Lee shared: “We have B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) business models.” Its B2B partnerships are realized through official company accounts and sponsored stickers — both used in marketing and publicity sustaining campaigns.

In the Philippines, where Line officially launched two months ago, Lee maintained they “are focusing more on core marketing campaigns, rather than just shoot and profit. It’s time to develop a mobile platform,” while observing: “We have seen very high organic growth from the Filipino market in terms of daily number of downloads… 26 times higher than February.”

He declared: “That’s why we decided to make more investments in the market.”

One investment that Line execs have made is toward the production of a local TV commercial, starring young celebrities Jessy Mendiola and Matteo Guidicelli. The two, who have been made Line’s local ambassadors, have also opened official accounts (@senorita_jess and @matteoguidicelli) and released personalized stickers to further drum up interest.

At the first screening of the TVC recently held at a Makati hotel, Mendiola and Guidicelli spoke about what they like about the service. Mendiola said she “likes the stickers,” and found it convenient and fast to send messages in group chat. Guidicelli added: “Instead of chatting, you can just do sticker chat.”

Line manager Darin Hwang said the platform is available to PC, Macs, tablet, phone users (supported smartphones are iPhones, Blackberry, and Nokia), and this fits into their plan for a greater swath of users. “We are a very global application (and) we have presence in more than 230 countries — where we are number one in 47 of them.”

The crux of the business for everyday users are the more than 8,000 stickers which, Hwang said, “express exactly what you are feeling at a given time.” These star, among others, Line’s homegrown characters: Brown, Cony, Moon, James, and, most recently, Sally.

Departing from the predictable kitsch of cuteness, the sticker graphics appear in degrees of coolness and misery. There are many more characters such as Disney characters, Iron Man, Hello Kitty — name it. Sticker sets are available for $1.99 for about 40 stickers, and may be bought on the App Store or on Google Play.

To feature more local content, Line is also rolling out official accounts of local brands and celebrities such as Ivory Music, MCA Music ,and Abra the rapper. Lee also shared in a previous press conference that Line officials are “in discussion with many (local) service providers to deliver more interesting service features. All those plans will be free of charge for our users.”

Indeed, all signs indicate that Line has a long-term plan for the texting capital of the world.