How Instagram changed Southeast Asia’s advertising game

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While Facebook has long dominated social media in Southeast Asia, 2016 showed that Instagram is starting to catch up – and advertisers are paying attention. Instagram passed the momentous 500 million global user mark this year, and many of those gains were made in Southeast Asia. In the Philippines alone, the number of users jumped 50% between 2015 and 2016, according to the Global’s Connect Life Report by Kantar TNS.

Nowhere, though, in the region is Instagram as popular as in Malaysia, where 73% of internet users have an Instagram account – higher than Singapore and Hong Kong. Given Instagram’s runaway popularity, it’s a great test case of how the social media site could play out in the future regionally as a means to drive certain brands and trends. It’s also home to its own crop of local Instagram celebrities who show how this is possible.

Take Malaysian blogger/fashionista Vivy Yusof. She began blogging about fashion almost ten years ago and gained an army of followers from her fashion insights. Frustrated by the Malaysian fashion scene after travelling abroad, she transformed her blog into a fashion empire in the form of Fashion Valet, a site that sells clothing lines from designers across Southeast Asia. Her point of view is that of a Muslimah, which has translated well in majority-Muslim Malaysia, while still maintaining more mainstream international appeal.

Yusof’s Instagram account has been instrumental; she now has now has 827,000 followers and uses it to advertise Fashion Valet (416,000 followers) and her lifestyle brand The dUCk Group (198,000 followers).

While it’s Instagram, that doesn’t mean the photos are a bunch of selfie-stick shots. While there are some personal snaps of her kids, most the fashion photos are very professional and well-edited. One advantage may be, though, that unlike editorials in magazines, Yusof’s photos are usually taken in the “real world” so users can imagine themselves carrying a certain bag or headscarf. They also include comments about a product’s quality and appeal.