In an increasingly global world, it’s not unreasonable to believe that some tactics used in developed markets will be successful in China. But it’s also important to recognize that new trends or even new uses of familiar tactics make every market different, a fact I was reminded of after moving to China three months ago.

For example, advanced analytics tools for monitoring the social media space will dramatically change the approach to social media and the value placed on it by marketers—once they arrive in emerging markets–just at they did recently in developed markets. The expansion of market leaders like CIC, a digital media research and consulting firm in Shanghai, will help drive this change.

China’s digital marketers can skip some of the mistakes made in other more established markets as they go through a huge digital growth spurt and probably develop new tools (and associated mistakes) on their own. I expect the same thing to happen with some tactics.

As a westerner living in Shanghai, I’ve certainly had to re-evaluate what I understood about China, including the way to approach digital marketing when taking on the world’s largest internet market. Here’s what I’ve figured out so far:

1. There is plenty of life beyond Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
And that’s a good thing, since these banned sites are non-players in the Chinese market. Although the social media space is fragmented, there are major players with hundreds of millions of users that rival even the biggest players.

Although a myriad of players exist in this complex social media space, start by learning about platforms like Kaixin (social network), Sina Weibo (micro-blogging), Youku (video sharing), and QQ (instant messenger). Re-learning the platforms can be challenging, but is possible for non-Chinese speakers by accessing them through Google Chrome with its automatic language translation function. The brand communications principals behind authenticity, transparency, and value in social media still apply, though.  Read More »

The week’s viral video friday goes to Gillette. Released this Monday, has quickly ramped up to 3.3 million views and 100,000 facebook shares. As part of an ad campaign for Gillette, in what was designed to look like an unscripted moment, Roger Federer serves a tennis ball across a room and it knocks a bottle off the top of a film crew member’s head. Then Federer repeats the trick.

Most comments in the Youtube channel argue whether it’s true or fake … no one said anything about Gillette, nor the video really ties into the brand on any way …

Best comment was: “I was pretty sure it was a fake but I analysed it on FC Pro. If you go frame by frame you can clearly see the faint yellow trail of the ball which in the end hits the bottle on the guys head. First I thought he hit the ball wide, left of the guy but you also can see that there are people standing, which made me wanna check it. So I’m very positive that it’s the real thing.”

Really nicely done. btw, Federer is a beast and I really hope he wins the US open again.

Today’s Viral Video Friday goes to Geico. Their new Piggy commercial is the first Geico commercial in their channel to ever go viral… amazingly, out of the 43 commercials posts in their channel, this Piggy one is the first to pass the 1 million views mark, and it did it in less than a week.

 Read More »

The “Art Class” spot for Foot Locker by SapientNitro features a purportedly nude male model, being described by students as “leathery” and “crooked.” Very nicely done.

Second spot takes a spin on the old butterface and introduces the concept of buttershoes.

• Old Spice accounted for 75 percent of conversations in the category in the first three months of 2010.

• Half the conversations came from women.

• The YouTube/Twitter social media response campaign was “the fastest-growing and most popular interactive campaign in history.”

• More people watched its videos in 24 hours than those who watched Obama’s presidential victory speech. (Which most of us can agree is kinda sad.)

• Total video views reached 40 million in a week.

• Campaign impressions: 1.4 billion.

• Since the campaign launched, Old Spice Bodywash sales are up 27 percent; in the last three months up. 55 percent; and in the last month up 107 percent.

NOTE: These stats are for the entire campaign, mostly TV and traditional. The sales numbers were taken from June, before the social media component even launched. Impressive nonetheless. For unofficial social media specific stats please refer to my previous post.