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.

2. Bulletin board sites (BBS) thrive in China.
BBS culture formed the foundation of the social web long before there were social networks in the rest of the world. They provide a rich and fertile digital ecosystem of like-minded people aligned around online communities, physical communities, common passions or needs, or even groups of friends or individuals. Arguably the largest social platform (in aggregate), they provide unique insight into the Chinese consumer and should be addressed in any comprehensive digital marketing campaign.

3. Forget leveraging a user’s social profile (for now).
One of the most (r)evolutionary digital enhancements outside of China in recent years was Facebook Connect (now OpenGraph) which allowed marketers to personalize digital experiences based on a user’s social profile. It allowed for new types of digital experiences that were exponentially more relevant to the consumer. This technology doesn’t exist in China yet, but keep your eye out for the first social network to release a platform like this one, as they’re sure to grow rapidly and become the darling of China’s digital marketing community. Of course they’ll still be up against the challenge of China’s internet community being wary of sharing their personal information.

4. Think mobile first for many digital users in China.
The number of people who accessed the internet on a mobile device doubled last year with the introduction of 3G services. Many of these individuals will have their first digital experiences at school, university, work, or an internet café, but their one consistent experience with the internet will be through their mobile device as opposed to a PC as they might not have the ability to own one.

5. Never underestimate the rate of change.
The rate of change is staggering and only reflective of a society that is undergoing a mind- boggling transformation into the kingdom of capitalist might while simultaneously holding firmly onto their traditional roots. China added 131 million internet users to its population between 2008 and 2009 and another 60 million by July of this year. This same staggering rate of change exists in the growth of the population and simultaneously the sophistication of the population. Expectations around the quality of digital marketing will rise more rapidly then expected.

6. Penetration may be low, but smart phones are big business in China.
Don’t base your thinking on any statistic you read as a percentage point. It’s very easy to forget scale in China. For example, China’s smart phone penetration is approaching 11%–a small number until you remember that it reflects around 180 million people. In tier one and tier two cities—the provincial capitals and main urban (and wealthy) centers—average penetration is even higher.

7. E-commerce plays a different role in China.
Mega players like Amazon and Ebay have never been able to take on domestic China offerings like Alibaba Group’s B2C e-commerce platform Taobao. China’s great rush of consumerism has driven desire for premium brands beyond the tier one cities, but consumers don’t have access to the retail outlets of top tier cities or are unable to afford their new aspirations. E-commerce players like Taobao are able to provide access to these goods across China and appear to be able to provide deep discounts not available at retail locations.

8. Don’t expect insights into people’s offline behaviors to reflect their behavior online.
In China, the internet provides an outlet for people to live an online identity that is quite different from their offline identity. Sometimes these online personas are a reaction to a repressed cultural environment due to religion, the government, or society-based traditions.

In other scenarios, it can be an opportunity to live out escapism and fulfill people’s dreams through a virtual world. Social networks in China boast games like “buying houses” and “parking lot” for example. Don’t rely on standard research and consumer insights to reach your audience as you might find unique opportunities by understanding a consumer’s online persona and how it’s connected back to their offline persona.

Digital marketing in China is at a very exciting stage in its development. It has huge scale and reach, the budgets are growing, marketers’ understanding is maturing, and most importantly creativity is emerging in new and exciting ways. Avoid some of the pitfalls and join the fray.

(as published in AdAgeChina.com)

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.

Previously, the only other Geico commercial to pass the million mark was the 2006 Caveman at the airport, which only has 1.2mm views.

With all the great content Geico has, it goes to show you how important is a good understanding of the digital space.

And for your pleasure, here’s the latest Geico spot released at the same time as Piggy … Here’s Geico’s Octopus.

So Geico switched their ads now to weird cheese looking animal commercials… a Piggy, an Octopus, and there’s another Bird one not even worth showing. It’s really weird to watch these spots after the great legacy they left behind with the Gecko, Caveman, or even that short-lived failure money stack campaign …

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.

Inevitably and as expected, the videos got views, but following rapidly increased across all channels.

According to Visible Measures, “Old Spice Responses” — a.k.a the string of custom-made vids — is one of the fastest-growing online video campaigns of all time. The company compares the endeavor to some of the most popular viral videos to date below, and how they’ve grown over the course of 24 hours (to be fair, “Old Spice Responses” had a time limit attached, so there was more urgency to participate with this particular string of videos than there was to get in on, say, the Susan Boyle craze).

Now let’s compare the numbers to Friday’s post.

The Return of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like kept getting hits and grew from 3MM views to 6.4MM views, and from 21k likes to 33k likes. This video was autoplayed in the Youtube.com/OldSprice channel — destination where people were going to explore all the new videos being posts, over 180 videos in two days.

Some numbers:

• Total videos uploaded: 183
  • 12 July, 2010: 29 videos uploaded
  • 13 July, 2010: 89 videos uploaded
  • 14 July, 2010: 65 videos uploaded
• Combined viewing figures: 10,954,096
• Most watched video: 698,205 views

15 Most Popular Videos

What’s even more impressive, is that Old Spice has by far the most popular channel, and 8 out of the top 15 videos!

YouTube’s top Channels this week. OldSpice shows 13,500,000 views, almost tripling the 2nd best.

Top videos for today (July 16, 2010, just updated the post to add this): Old Spice with the number 1, 2, 4, and a total of 8 out of the top 15 … now that’s impressive.

Now let’s look at Facebook:

Old Spice Facebook fans increased from 563k to 592k, so about a 29k bump since the launch of the social campaign.

Referring Site	Click(s)
www.youtube.com	9,585
www.oldspice.com	968
Email Clients, IM, AIR Apps, and Direct	537
www.swaggerizeme.com	2
3.hidemyass.com	1
bit.ly	1
oldspicemobile.com	1
translate.googleusercontent.com	1
www.facebook.com	1
www.oldspice.com	1

Bit.ly link tracking from the YouTube channel header tracked 10k Facebook referrals from YouTube, compare to 1k last week.

Old Spice Twitter followers increased from 8k to 66k in 2 days.

Conclusion:

So, 58k new Twitter followers, 29k new Facebook fans, 6.4MM views of the campaign video + 5MM views of all responses in 48h.

Amazing campaign by W+K, simplicity = power. They carefully chose social influences that will promote their personalized viral video, and the true power was speed, amazing copywriting, and a great actor… hats off, I was truly impressed.

[Updated 07/16]: Added Youtube’s top channels and videos.

The latest one, called Old Spice | Questions got 3 million views in less than 1 week.

Interesting to see too how favorable reviews are … 21k positive vs 240 negative …

Other things to notice are the increasing number of call to actions to follow them on Facebook …

The video has links to Facebook in the description as well as an annotation. I actually like the watermark annotation in the video, very well executed, except the message, which should prompt to be best friends but simply land on the Facebook wall … not a good transition. FYI, Youtube does not allow annotations with external links unless it’s an ad buy, so Old Spice must see value on it to be paying per click.

The Old Spice YouTube Channel also has Facebook and Twitter links in the header … These links actually don’t link directly, but use a Bit.ly url to track click-troughs … Wonder why it’s inconsistent … they should have tracked the video annotation links the same way.

Anyways, even with the amazing success of the video in term of views, people have not been clicking much to Facebook from it … Bit.ly shows the following number of the past week, on which the video has had 3 million views

Referring Site	Click(s)
www.youtube.com	1,049
www.oldspice.com	383
Email Clients, IM, AIR Apps, and Direct	52
www.facebook.com	3
oldspicemobile.com	1
swaggerizeme.com	1
translate.googleusercontent.com	1
webcache.googleusercontent.com	1
www.oldspicefathersday.com	1

1000 clicks from Youtube … not impressive.

Also notice they have only 500k Facebook fans … small number had they tried to push traffic from the 50 million youtube views… but I don’t know for how long they’ve been trying. Would be great to have a tool to see historic growth of Facebook following for any public page / brand.

This video came out the same day the iPhone4 was released, immediately rocked the charts, and keep going strong.

The creator of the video worked at Best Buy, who immediately suspended him — creating some negative PR which shows you that even though Twelp won the Grand Prix at Cannes this  year, Best Buy is still learning how to best leverage social media.

The video in its two weeks have short of 4 million YouTube views

and 100,000 Facebook Shares

With talent like this, Best Buy should have done the total opposite and empowered the creator to build a follow up, embrace creativity to produce positive traction …

Freddie sent this email internally, but no reason we shouldn’t share.