:: taken in Shanghai on Maoming Rd. near Nanjing West Rd.; a soon-to-be chai’d building.  // AjS

:: taken in my apartment building in Shanghai; an electrical box of sorts.  // AjS

:: in China, discussion of online Internet word of mouth (IWOM) PR crises always seem to be focused on foreign companies, but this is a bit misleading because local Chinese companies get it too. Online crises in China comes in many forms. Sometimes they are brought on by circumstances outside of a brand’s control – a freak accident that explodes into a storm of online controversy, or changes in government policy that throw a benign long-term practice into the worst possible light. Other crises are unfortunately engineered by the brands themselves, through carelessness or malice. The five examples below of Chinese brands in crises online in China show that in many cases, rather than the details of the problem itself, what’s important is how a brand responds to the initial crisis that makes a lasting impression on Chinese netizens. A swift, engaging, well-targeted response can make all the difference between a satisfied group of online consumers / stakeholders, and a devastating rumor that will continue to harm a brand’s image and reputation for years to come.

BYD’s “five-star” scandal ::
BYD is a domestic Chinese auto manufacturer that aspires to be an international brand. Although it has attracted considerable attention this year for its electric models, more recent news reports have focused on a safety scandal involving a traditional model. In July, a BYD F0 car rear-ended a mini van. Although BYD has boasted about the car’s superior safety rating (BYD claims “five-star” passage of the C-NCAP collision test) none of the F0′s air bags inflated when the collision occurred. The owner of the car took BYD to court for misleading customers with false test results. Shortly afterward, the China Consumer Association, the quality supervisor, issued a warning that the collision test results for the F0 are not due to be released until September, so the “five star” test results cannot not true. This statement brought the incident to the attention of the national media, and from there it spread to online forums where netizens blasted the company’s dirty dealing. In the aftermath, BYD responded by releasing an open “letter of gratitude” implying that the lawsuit was an effort by its competitors, referred to as “foreign brands and co-brands,” to fight the pressure of BYD’s climbing sales figures. An article entitled “BYD incident exposed an unspoken rule; the collision test gates is all bullshit” was published in the print media and widely republished on the major portals and auto websites. On a more grassroots level, an online post entitled “Protest! F0 was bullied. Let’s comment and tell the truth” emerged on a BYD sponsored forum and has been reposted elsewhere. Although these articles have currently diverted attention from BYD’s misleading advertising to focus on the company’s victimization at the hands of big brands who feel threatened, the cycle of the scandal is probably not finished yet. It remains to be seen whether BYD’s appeal to nationalism will ultimately work out to its benefit on the Chinese Internet, or if it will eventually have to speak directly .

Mengniu’s OMP Scandal ::
Milk Deluxe (特仑苏), a premium brand of milk from Chinese dairy heavyweight brand Mengniu, was marketed to wealthy consumers as an especially healthy beverage choice. The packaging and advertising heavily emphasized the presence of “osteoblast milk protein” (OMP), an additive that Mengniu claimed would help the absorbtion of calcium to promote bone growth. With consumers and the Chinese government wary of any and all additives to pure milk in the wake of 2008′s melamine scandal, the attention of Chinese netizens and the local mainstream media turned to OMP. A government quality investigation of Mengniu’s OMP practices hit the media in February, 2009, and sparked intense online debate (“Who’s messing around? It’s Mengniu! Is someone afraid of chaos? Are we just supposed to sit and drink poisoned milk in silence so the world will be at peace?!”). Because the product was aimed at a relatively limited consumer group, Mengniu’s difficulties were not directly related to the additive itself. Instead, it was its ambivalent response to the crisis that got it into the most trouble online from Chinese netizens who are highly sensitive to perceived hypocrisy. Initially, Mengniu claimed that OMP contained IGF-1, but when news came out that IGF-1 could be carcinogenic in large doses, it changed its tune and said that OMP was essentially Milk Basic Protein, an accepted food additive. Fatigued consumers didn’t care much at this point (“Experts say milk with OMP isn’t harmful to your health.” “Then let the experts drink it first“). However, when third-party tests were released showing that OMP did not have nearly the extent of health benefits that Mengniu claimed, the company was hit again. A posting on the influential popular science community blog Squirrel Society concluded “To make such claims about efficacy based on such preliminary research, it’s quite an understatement to say they merely ‘exaggerated the effects’.” The additive was eventually banned, and Mengniu, which had emerged relatively unscathed from the melamine scandal, ended up with a black eye.

Wang Laoji’s additive scandal ::
Wang Laoji (王老吉凉茶) is a “herbal tea” drink that rivals Coca-Cola in popularity in China, but is preferred by many because it’s a Chinese product rather than an international or American brand. It also plays up the health qualities of its formula, which is based on the use of traditional Chinese medicinal ingredients. This practice got the brand into trouble earlier this year. In May 2009, Ye Zhengchao (叶征潮) accused Wang Laoji of giving him gastric ulcers because it contained prunella vulgaris (夏枯草), an ingredient usually associated with Chinese medicine. The Ministry of Health had once claimed that adding prunella vulgaris to food and drink violated the Food Safety Law. The charges were heavily reported in the media and became a popular conversation topic on BBS discussion forums (“Wang Laoji is poison that’ll hurt your liver!”). Web portals, such as the Influential Brands website has a whole channel devoted to Wang Laoji and the case. The case even acquired its own “gate” : Additive Gate (添加门). [Chinese netizens are in the habit of adding "gates" to the ends of catch phrases representing particular online scandals.] Anti-fraudster and TCM-buster Fang Zhouzi weighed in with a blog post about implications of drinking herbal teas drinks, further polarizing the issue: now Wang Laoji’s defenders were sticking up for the entirety of traditional Chinese medicine. The popular nationalist-leaning Tiexue BBS hosted many threads related to Wang Laoji, both positive and negative. Defenses were widespread based on Wang Laoji’s previous reputation: for example, a post dated May 11 details the first time that netizens noticed the brand, which was during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008: “Wang Laoji donated 100 million yuan instantly, and is far superior to the wealthier Coca-Cola and Pepsi,” and said that the Ministry of Health should take care of Coca-Cola first if it wanted to clean up Wang Laoji. Elsewhere, netizens were not entirely negative about the additive itself: a Baidu Knowledge answer talks about the widespread notion that people in Guangzhou use prunella vulgaris to brew medicinal soups, and that it’s not bad for the body at all. The company made no response: when China Newsweek tried to interview a company spokesperson about the case, they were rebuffed as were other Chinese media outlets. On May 12 the Guangdong Food Profession Union (广东省食品行业协会) declared that prunella vulgaris had been listed in the Ministry of Health’s list of legal food additives in 2005 and that it is not known to cause gastric ulcers. So the takeaway seems to be that if you’re a well-regarded national brand known for philanthropy and that’s connected to a point of national pride, you may be able to ride out a health crisis by simply relying on the government and the patriotic public. Wang Laoji  may have avoided a crippling scandal this time round, but the poison allegations will continue to circulate online, and when they are brought up in the future, there will be no company response to rebut them.

China Post’s EMS handling scandal ::
Around August 24, a several minute clip appeared online that showed postal workers unloading EMS (China Post’s Express Mail Service) packages from the back of a mail truck. Rather than handling them carefully, as customers might imagine, the workers rolled or threw the packages onto the ground, where they landed with audible “thumps.” One of the comments on the post read, “This is a serious infringement on consumer rights….it must be strictly investigated, and management must be overhauled. Otherwise, our countrymen will have no choice but to choose Fedex, UPS, or DHL.” The video quickly spread to other hosts, like 56, and sparked animated discussion among netizens. On the Xitek forums, the netizen who started the thread said “Don’t use EMS from now on,” and similar sentiments echoed across the Chinese Internet. However, netizens confessed that many times they are in a bind: in urban areas there are lots of choices of delivery services, but China Post is practically the only option in smaller towns across the country. The response so far from China Post has been entirely media-driven. Although the mail truck’s plates placed it in Panzhihua, Sichuan, it was the Hangzhou-based Qianjiang Evening News that picked up the story in the interest of its readership, which would be particularly concerned because the city is home to the headquarters of online auction house Taobao and many small online retailers. The newspaper reported a mealy-mouthed statement from the Panzhihua Post Office: “The truck in the video isn’t likely to be ours because our mail trucks are mostly Chang’an vans. From the scene, we are not able to confirm the registration number at the moment,” which also suggested that the clip could be a malicious hoax. The paper also spoke to a Hangzhou postal official, who said that such mishandling never occurred in his city. Netizens who commented on QQ’s repost of that news item were dubious, with most seeing the official’s statement as a purely cover-your-ass action.

Google.CN’s porn scandal ::
In June, Google China was the subject of CCTV news reports that accused it of violating social morality. As part of a national campaign against pornography and other corrupting online influences in easy reach of the country’s youth, CCTV revealed that Google.CN would suggest filthy phrases and sentences to innocent netizens searching for completely ordinary, benign terms. The accusations blanketed the national media both online and off, and although netizens were generally sympathetic to Google because of previous prejudices toward CCTV’s hatchet-jobs in the service of government propaganda campaigns, it is still instructive to see how Google responded to the crisis. Unlike the dodgy medical ad crisis last December, during which Google China’s protestations made it appear like a defiant outsider attempting an end-run around China’s advertising law, its attitude all along was one of active cooperation. Its fast response drew a favorable reaction from many Chinese netizens. Initially it worked to remove the search suggestion tool that had gotten it into trouble, and thereafter made periodic statements that it was cooperating with the authorities to ensure that its search results were acceptable. At least in the context of Internet word-of-mouth, what started out as a slam on Google’s online reputation turned into a credibility hit for CCTV. Google declined to comment, preferring to let netizens draw their own conclusions about the Google.CN vs. CCTV “PK” matchup. Some netizens even suggested that Baidu, which had been blasted by CCTV for accepting paid ads for medical products it knew were of questionable legality, had made up with the network and had called in the hit on its international search rival. And when Chinese netizens discovered that CCTV had interviewed its own intern for a man-on-the-street response, and when they unearthed evidence that CCTV had essentially gamed the search suggestion tool to create the pornographic sentences, Google China continued to cooperate the authorities and let the IWOM play out on its own.

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work for Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]

:: I’ve always been fascinated with x-rays so I thought I’d share my most recent – taken today just moments after I broke a bone in my foot (see red arrows). If there are any doctors in the house, please let me know if you see anything more serious than the simple hard cast the local Shanghai doc put me in can fix. Thanks. I’m off to buy some milk. Sigh…  // AjS

:: here are five more examples of the fascinating Chinese Internet slang and memes that today’s local netizens are all about. This installment ranges from memes inspired by government-speak (“pressure difference”) and the depressed economy (“to be found a job”), to imports from Korea and Japan. Two examples trace the progress of a meme from its use as an inconsequential piece of Internet fluff to its roll in larger commercial or charitable endeavors.

brother chun / brother zeng (春哥 / 曾哥) ::
Li Yuchun and Zeng Yike, both tomboyish Super Girl stars whose androgynous style is a key factor contributing to their popularity. When Li won the competition back in 2005, she appealed to many female fans because she seemed like a liberator who cast off social constraints, and she gave confidence to women who fell short of the cultural ideal. On the other hand, there are those who think “she looks like a man.” The Brother Chun meme is due to this second group. The initial catchphrase was “Brother Chun is All Man, A Real Iron-man” (春哥纯爷们, 铁血真汉子) and sparked an online explosion of photoshopped images that combined Li’s head and men’s bodies. It soon transformed into a parody cult, with Li’s head ‘shopped onto the bodies of the icons of various religions, all captioned with “Believe in Chun brother and live forever” (信春哥，得永生) Since then, there have been other variations in a more materialistic vein: “Believe in Chun brother and you will not fail your exams (新春哥，不挂科), and “Believe in Chun brother and make a fortune” (信春哥，发大财).With an Internet culture in China that seems able to turn everything into entertainment, these memes spread quite fast and also extended their influence to the offline world. “All man” (纯爷们) or even just 纯 (pure) has gone on to be a general reference to “male quality” with a humorous undertone (the term was notably used by mincing comedian Xiao Shenyang at this year’s Spring Festival Gala, the biggest annual mainstream media / entertainment event in China). Brother Chun even has been exploited for commercial gain: an expansion released in June for the Chinese edition of the video game MapleStory (冒险岛：骑士团的逆袭), run by Shanda, echoed the meme in its advertising: “Help Brother Chun: Exterminate the Spring Dove and Gain Eternal Life” (助春哥，灭春鸽，得永生). Zeng Yike had her own set of fans and slightly obsessed anti-fans who copied the Brother Chun phenomenon wholesale – “Brother Zeng,” male body photoshops (particularly Stallone), slogans, a parody cult, and an ugly undercurrent of misogyny.

jia junpeng, postcards, & loneliness (贾君鹏 / 明信片 / 寂寞) ::
On July 16 a post appeared on the Baidu World of Warcraft Postbar (魔兽贴吧) that read simply, “Jia Junpeng, your mom wants you to go home for dinner” (贾君鹏你妈妈喊你回家吃饭). The short post – nothing more than the title, and no clue as to the identity of Jia Junpeng – highlighted the intensity of gaming culture on the Chinese Internet: eating and sleeping in web cafes without going home to eat. By the end of the day the postreportedly had more than 4 million views and 300,000 comments. A Beijing-based media company later claimed that the phrase was a viral marketing ploy, although there are other competing theories as to its origins. Jia himself was never found (see ChinaHush for more). Like other memes, Jia Junpeng has been Photoshopped extensively: Saddam Hussein, films stills, and comics, among other settings (see chinaSMACK for more images). It was also harnessed for other causes: “Taiwan, your motherland wants you to come home for dinner”). The Jia Junpeng meme, with its mention of “dinner” and a reference to the non-loneliness of being with family, was a natural complement for an earlier WoW meme, “Brother’s not eating dinner, I’m eating loneliness” (哥吃的不是面, 是寂寞), which appeared accompanied by a picture of a young man and a bowl of noodles after WoW suspended operations on June 7. Without a game to play, online groups sprang up: the “Loneliness Group” (寂寞派) and the Loneliness (Political) Party (寂寞党), and the catchphrase structure gave rise to many variations, such as “I’m not posting a post, I’m posting loneliness” (我发的不是帖子, 是寂寞). Jia Junpeng took on another dimension when the Amoiist, a blogger from Xiamen, was detained by police in July 2009 for posting an appeal video about a rape and murder. After his arrest, other netizens got involved to save the blogger, whose real name was Guo Baofeng (郭宝峰). They twittered “Guo Baofeng, your mum wants you to go home for dinner” in Chinese and English, and organized a drive to send postcards bearing that message to the Mawei prison where Guo was being held. He was eventually released, and whether or not the postcards had anything to do with it, the campaign captured the attention of the major mainstream media (See The Time Weekly 时代周报). And both Jia Junpeng and loneliness have been appropriated as t-shirt slogans. Mengtoy, a T-Shirt and plush toy company with a shop on Taobao.com, features t-shirts bearing the slogan “WoW: your mom wants you to go home for dinner,” and “MoM: I’m not eating dinner, I’m eating loneliness,” cleverly inverting the WoW into MoM.

passive actions: 被 ::
被 (bèi) is a passive marker in Chinese language, but when it’s used with verbs that aren’t normally thought of in passive terms, it represents futility in the face of external circumstances beyond your own control. It’s a familiar linguistics structure – remember back to last May when donations were being solicited for the Wenchuan Earthquake recovery effort, and 被捐款 (bèi juānkuǎn), “to be donated”, indicated that a “voluntary” contribution was automatically (sometimes unwillingly) deducted from many people’s salary. But involuntary donations apparently take place all the time, and they’ve been on the rise following the damage wrought on Taiwan by typhoon Morakot. This June, recent graduates exposed a dodgy strategy that some colleges use to inflate their successful employment statistics: they require students to provide proof of employment before they can obtain a diploma, or they cook up fake employment contracts and recruit graduates into non-existent jobs. The term 就业 (jiùyè) means “to find a job”; made passive, 被就业 (bèi jiùyè) indicates that the job-seeker finds themselves with an employment contract without actually having any of the benefits or responsibilities that come with a job: work and a salary, for example. In July, 被增长 (bèi zēngzhǎng, “to be increased”) hit the net. 增长 (zēngzhǎng), means “gain”, and is used to describe economic gains, increases in satisfaction rates, and other rising trends. When it’s applied passively, “to have been increased” indicates that someone is part of a statistical group whose numbers have risen without any actual gains being made. (This happens more than frequently in China.) The term seems to stem from a blog post made by commentator Xia Yucai, who wrote “My income has ‘been increased’ by the State Statistics Bureau” (我的收入在国家统计局那里“被增长”了). Finally, in late July and early August, 全勤 (quán qín), “perfect attendance,” has also been taken passive, 被全勤 (bèi quánqín, “to be perfect attendanced”), to describe workers who don’t take any vacation, not of their own volition, but because they are unable to take time off. Originally an isolated observation, the term took off in popularity because “perfect attendanced” workers form a significant group online. The question “Little white-collar, have you been ‘perfect attendanced’ today?” notes the demographic group affected by “perfect attendance” and many of the other passive memes.

Korean and Japanese affectations ::
思密达 (sīmìdá, also 斯米达) is a Chinese transliteration of a Korean honorific (하십니다) that is used as a sentence-ending particle in net-speak. It invaded Tianya’s Entertainment Gossip boards in 2008, to the point that people made posts asking people to please knock it off, and it’s spread across the net since then. There’s an undercurrent of anti-Korean sentiment to its use in some contexts (online jokester Chun Baba has the line “Everything belongs to Korea simida” 什么都是韩国的思密达), but it’s also used generally as a mark of sarcasm, or even simply a cute affectation that flies over the heads of many ordinary netizens. What’s particularly amusing about the mystery surrounding 思密达 is that when it shows up in the title of a web page (which pushes it to the top of search engine results), it’s most likely being used as the transliteration of Smecta, a diarrhea remedy for young children, so casual netizens who run across the term in forums remain in the dark, unless they take advantage of one of the many Ask sites, where the term is defined quite widely. There’s something similar going on for the Japanese sentence ending particle です, which has been taken into Chinese as 的说, most likely through soaps imported from Taiwan. It’s much less tied to Japan than “simida” is to Korea, and is mainly used as a cutesy, exclamatory sentence ending word. There’s a contentious Baidu Postbar devoted to the term where enthusiasts and denigrators fight it out through the use of other contemporary memes. And then there’s the meta-commentary: “The word desu was invented by the Koreans simida” (“的说”这个词是寒国人发明的思密达).

pressure difference: the Shanghai building collapse ::
On June 27, a 13-storey building in the Lotus Riverside development in Shanghai toppled over due to poorly-planned excavations for an underground parking garage. The building remained in one piece, and photos of the accident captured the attention of China’s netizens. Just as they had with the CCTV fire in February, netizens reimagined the scene in a series of Photoshops showing a Transformer attack, a number of Ultraman battles, and various other destructive events, including a visit from Brother Chun. The term 楼脆脆, “fragile building”, was the popular term used to describe the fallen structure. Just this month a building in Chengdu was discovered to have leaned sideways so the top was resting against the building next door, and it was given a similar name: 楼歪歪, “leaning building.” The official explanation for the Shanghai collapse employed the term “pressure difference” (压力差) to describe how the building was pushed over. The term was first mocked for seeming to indicate that the building itself was problem free (“blame it on the pressure difference”) and it now has been adopted for use in other areas of pressure (not just the physical ones of ground on building): A thread titled “India, be careful of ‘pressure difference’” was posted on Sohu’s military forums (印度，请小心“压力差”), and netizens have mixed the term with last year’s “Have you gone out for soy sauce today?” (今天你打酱油了吗) to create “Have you had pressure difference today?” (今天你压力差了吗？).

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]

:: one of my all-time favorite online / offline social phenomenons is the “flash mob.” Check out this one from Xi’an in tribute to Michael Jackson. Very funny how the faux-”bao an” (public security official) gets into the fun. Not sure if this was actually digitally organized, but, it’s done very much in that style. Enjoy.  // AjS

A couple weeks ago I saw this on XCar.com.cn, a Chinese online discussion forum / community site focused on cars and also, apparently, dildo calligraphy. Interesting, but seems like it could be quite dangerous.  // AjS

:: bloody kisses from Brannon. For more, link here. Bravo, well done.  // AjS

:: I was recently in Chengdu and picked up some “worshiping incense” outside a local temple. When I got back home and took a better look at the packaging, I was impressed with the all-in-one design. The box that holds the dhoop sticks has a metal ringlet that acts as a burner / holder. A simple detail, but significantly differentiating and very functional. Bravo, well done.  // AjS

:: I was recently gifted some cologne and was particularly impressed with the design of the bottle it came in. Firstly, the product just sits so nicely on its own, like a polished stone of sorts. Secondly, it’s just so easy to get a grip on. Thirdly, as soon you get a grip on it, the product ready to be sprayed / used. The scent is not bad either. Bravo, well done.  // AjS

:: this is an absolute must-read for anyone with an interest in the future (and now) of human behavior or anything digital, particularly marketing, communications, and media. I don’t want to spoil it with any commentary / analysis that is already captured (more brilliantly and more compellingly than I would do it) in the below presentation. Slide 13 perhaps says it all though: “…the next generation Internet strategy has got nothing to do with the Internet…”

Okay, one more great combo-quote from the deck, from slides 140 and 153-155: “…having a presence on social media is not social media – talking, discovering, and building relationships are. It’s the nature of your activity that is important, not your choice of technology. We are moving from channels where brands are law enforcers, to arenas where brands are participants. This means that every screen, interface, and object is an opportunity for dialogue, interaction, response, and collaboration. Explore these opportunities rather than just tell your story.”

Last one, I promise, from slide 93: “…our job is not getting people from A to B to C, (our job) is creating value…” Bravo, well done Helge Tennø.  // AjS

:: see below for some photos and anecdotal (sometimes random) notes from a recent trip I took to southern Vietnam. This was only my second time in Vietnam, so please correct me if I got anything wrong. Thanks.  // AjS

snaps ::

scribbles ::

• Vietnam is really two words and should be spelled Viet Nam.
• Pepsi not Coke.
• I have never seen stores selling caskets before. In Vietnam such stores are all along the roadside. It’s very sad to see a stack of children-sized caskets ready for the sell.
• There are a lot catholic churches in Vietnam.
• Vietnamese cemeteries are above ground and beautiful.
• Warrior sneakers and Tiger beer are the only Chinese brands I noticed in the Vietnamese market.
• Pho is of course never better than in Vietnam.
• Motorbikes not cars.
• Vietnam has some of the most interesting signage, particularly government propaganda anti-smoking, and disease awareness signs.
• Vietnamese people don’t stare, at you in fact, you’re lucky if they look at you at all.
• Some local fishing boats look like teacups floating in the water.
• In-store / shop / home Buddhist shrines have flashing neon lights.
• Quite a few people speak Mandarin. More than I would have expected.
• Samsung and NOKIA seem to be market leaders in the hand set space in Vietnam.
• A few KFC, no McDonalds. A good thing.
• WIFI internet access is fairly readily available in HCM city. The fastest internet connection I’ve accessed in years in in the HCM city airport courtesy of Vietnam Airlines.
• Vietnamese coffee is still the best coffee in the world to me.
• Automobile horns are different…they are considerably louder, at a higher pitch, and more annoying.
• Buildings are tall, skinny, and deep.
• Motorcycle helmets is a good industry to be in.
• “Same same.” is a full and proper sentence in Vietnam.
• Unlike the most of the rest of East Asia, Karaoke is not a very big deal here.
• Barefoot.
• Limes, not lemons.
• Bugs are bigger here.
• What’s the point of the last 3 zeros in local currency?
• The Mekong River is very muddy.
• The Vietnamese, like almost every country I’ve ever visited (accept Germany) appear to be quite patriotic.
• There is no subway in HCM city, although I understand that is going to change soon.
• Although the official name is apparently HCM city, most local people still seem to refer to it as Saigon. Saigon sounds much better, but
• HCM was a pretty interesting guy and probably worst have a big Vietnamese city named after him.
• A lot of graffiti tags, but couldn’t really find and proper pieces.
• There is an odd and very obvious surplus of older Western men with badly done arm tattoos running around this country.
• Palm trees and coconuts.
• To my great delight, 8bit Nintendo is still played by the average Vietnamese “gamer”
• The Saigon River-front in downtown HCM city reminds of what Shanghai must have looked like in the late 80s or so.
• Bread appears to be a pretty standard part of local cuisine…unlike most other East Asian countries.
• Petro not gas.

:: my weekly Friday 5 briefs on the Chinese Internet are (hopefully) a useful resource and (fingers crossed) an excellent way to keep up with online trends / culture, local web communities, and social media engagement on the Chinese Internet. However, you are still left six days out of the week in which you can’t expect a Friday 5. Fortunately, there are a wealth of other respectable online sources focused on social media, online marketing, and digital trends in China. The selection below represents English language content of such sources, ranging from websites put out by ad / marketing / communications agencies and consultancies, to personal blogs by individuals and groups captivated by China’s Internet culture.

personal ::
In2Marcom describes itself as “a weblog all about INnovative and INsightful marketing communication, around Digital and Social Media in China.” It’s run by Jason Zhan Jia (ZJ), who started it up just this past March after working in digital and social media for several years. One interesting recent post looked at the development of a “test paper” meme, in which netizens repost exam questions answered with sarcasm, dirty jokes, or non-sequiturs, and its use as a marketing tool by Peugeot, Cadillac, and finally BYD. Dutch entrepreneur and social media practitioner Marc van der Chijs is an online personality based in Shanghai. The co-founder of Tudou.com and CEO of The Netherlands Spil Games Asia (“the world’s ultimate online game destination”), he keeps an English-language blog with a pretty good following. He’s an enthusiastic Twitterer, and many of his posts are about Twitter, for example, when his “Tweet” appeared in a Dutch newspaper from June 2009, which was about a frustrated attempt to book a flight on KLM, the Royal Dutch Airlines. Another notable post was “Talking and Talking”, from July, in which he spoke about Spil Games in Holland and Internet entrepreneurship in China. Included at the end of the blog post is an embedded video interview with an online TV station.

group ::
88 Bar (八八吧) is maintained by Jason Li and Lyn Jeffery and is the successor to Virtual China, the blog they ran for the Institute for the Future. They launched 88 Bar when their focus on Virtual China expanded from purely virtual culture to include offline culture and interactions between the two. They still blog regularly about Chinese social media, trends, and viral memes, although more as pointers to in-depth treatments on other sites. Recent posts include a look at steampunk animations and coverage of the World of Warcraft protests at this year’s China Joy. Danwei, a group blog that covers Chinese media as a whole, also dips into social media from time to time. It recently interviewed Dan Brody of 360quan and covered the shakeup of China’s microblogging platforms in the wake of the Urumqi riots.

tech ::
TechBlog86 (the number refers to China’s IDD prefix) is kept by David Feng, whose gossipy, insiderish writing style assumes that readers are familiar with the larger context behind the latest developments in China’s digital sector. The blog, which relaunched in May following an unfortunate hiatus, covers a wide and (sometimes random) variety of topics, from the most interesting MSN signatures to conference writeups (CHINICT 2009) to speculation about impeding changes in the local Web 2.0 industry: will Xiaonei get shut down? No, it’s just changing its name to RenRen. MOBINODE (动点博客) is a group blog focused on the Asia tech industry, with an emphasis on China. It’s maintained by Gang Lu (see this interview on 56minus1). Recent notable posts include advice to Facebook to forget about its prospects in the China market, and a look at Tencent’s rebate program. MOBINODE is associated with Mobinode.tv (动点博视), a series of Chinese-language interviews with Asia tech professionals. It has plans to develop an English-language counterpart, but has only done one subtitled interview, with Yeeyan co-founder Jiamin zhao, so far.

agencies / consultancies / professional entities ::
CNReviews, which hosts active discussions on hot-button issues in Chinese politics and culture, also features content from Blogger Insight that looks at the Chinese SNS / social media scene. Recent highlights include a look at the four distinguishing characteristics of Chinese SNS websites and a hilarious examination of opaque 3G advertisements. One of the things that makes CNReviews such a fun read is that it stakes out a firm position on issues – no wishy-washiness here – which generates energetic comment threads. Little Red Book looks at advertising and marketing in China, with a particular focus on the Internet and social media. It’s run by BA360, a “boutique marketing firm” (from its about page), and the major contributors to the site are strategy director Rand Han and media director Sherry Xie. Posts introduce viral marketing campaigns, quirky print ads, and SNS strategy as well as general Chinese Internet and youth culture issues. Little Red Book also provides a forum for further discussion of ad and marketing issues that haven’t made it to the front page yet. Many of the social media marketing / SNS case studies excerpted on Little Red Book come from ZeroDegrees, a project launched by BA360 in association with postcard design firm Mailman. ZeroDegrees has a fairly active comments section, and it also features discussions of more abstract issues, such as this recent post on the actual significance of Shanghai’s Expo 2010. Recent highlights include a look at micropayments in QQ, an unimpressed examination of Pepsi’s SNS campaign, and a look at how L’oreal celebrated its centenary on Chinese SNS. Ogilvy Digital Watch, although gathering dust now, has an great archive of posts about social media in China and the local tech / web industry. It unfortunately has not been updated since December 2008, about the time the agency’s key digital ninja Kaiser Kuo departed. The China IWOM Blog at CIC Data should already be on your RSS reader. The blog covers IWOM trends / culture, social media marketing case studies, and strategies for monitoring / measuring online public opinion and Internet word of mouth conversation. Mostly teasers for the company’s full-length reports and white papers, but even the excerpts are fairly interesting, and the linked PDFs invite careful perusal. An archive of past CIC slideshow presentations is available even if the latest installments, such as “Social Media Getting Closer to Real Life”, are unavailable to the casual user. Similarly, for the non-subscriber, Ad Age China has promising headlines (“Watch Out Ebay! Here Comes Alibaba” and “Can Baidu Keep its Crown as King of China’s Search Market?”) that tantalize from behind a pay-wall.

updates ::
Two other notable sites that look regularly at Chinese SNS and local social media in general are China Web2.0 Review and China Youth Watch, which were covered in a previous Friday 5 brief on Chinese bridge bloggers. China Youth Watch recently featured an article titled SNS and the Changing Chinese Youth, as well as an interview with 360quan.com editor Hui Wang. 56minus1 interviewed CYW co-founder Zafka Zhang back in November of last year. China Web2.0 Review recently covered the Xiaonei / RenRen changeover. (Incidentally, if you’re a fan of cheesy soaps and boom-era product placement, check out the TV show Heart-Net (心网), the story of a group of friends who start an Internet cafe in Shanghai. The old RenRen.com, which was huge back in 2000, is all over the show). Also mentioned in the Friday 5 brief linked above were  ChinaSMACK and Youku Buzz, two blogs that regularly feature the latest hot memes and viral videos to hit the Chinese Internet.

// AjS

[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]

:: this guy gets an A+ for effort as he reports on the recent typhoon in China. At about the 20 second mark he starts screaming about the how bad the raindrops hurt as they “smash” into his head and how he can’t even open his eyes. Amazing, and, despite the terrible destruction and loss of life, kinda humorous. Bravo, well done.  // AjS

:: Shanghaiist.com, a leading English language website about China, recently interviewed me about NeochaEDGE and my thoughts on creativity in China. To read the full interview link here. The Chinese characters scribbled on the wall in the photo read “小心口红,” meaning “be mindful of lipstick” – I am sitting in a women’s dressing room. Long story.  // AjS