:: viral ad / marketing fatigue shows up in a number of videos on this week’s list. It’s worth noting that viral ads are still well-received when they’re well-crafted and original, but Chinese netizens are liable to turn on brands they feel are attempting to manipulate them with obvious advertising. Overly obvious branding and messaging doesn’t work. Entertaining, compelling, and unique content does.

For more of the latest hot videos, check out the Youku Buzz blog, which posts recent hits along with snarky commentary from Kaiser Kuo, one of the site’s authors / contributors (check out his dismissal of Zeng’s talents), or the just-launched Eyes On Me feature of the In2Marcom blog, a monthly roundup of popular viral videos.

Zeng Yike spoofs ::
Zeng Yike (曾轶可), who was introduced in a previous Friday 5, was eliminated from the Super Girl talent competition in August, yet she remains a popular subject for Internet videos. Her catchy tunes led Netease user Scapegoat (替罪羊) to collaborate with video engineer Flying Frog (飞飞蛙) on a video of Scapegoat singing Zeng’s “Leo” in the voice of 15 different famous Chinese singers, such as Andy Lau (刘德华), Cui Jian (崔健) and Fei Yu-Ching (费玉清). Another popular video was made by students attending a summer military training camp at Shanghai Jiaotong University. The boys sing “Leo” to girls who are lined up on the opposite side. Two other songs follow. Zeng recently became embroiled in “Copy-Gate” (抄袭门), a scandal in which she was accused of plagiarizing the melody of “Leo” from “Horizon,” a song from Taiwan. Although we’re still waiting for standout viral videos about the discovery (all that’s come up so far have been comparisons of the two songs), it’s been the subject of quite a few BBS posts and blog posts, particularly concerning her befuddling defense to the accusations: “Horizon” was written by “another self in this world.” Netizens have been having fun with Transformer mashups lately, and Zeng Yike was the focus of one of the most popular, Transformers 3: The War of the Earth (变形金刚3：地球之战). Zeng’s unique qualities help her save the world from alien invaders in a short film full of product placements and brand messages – most likely a parody of movie-making practices in both Hollywood and China these days, and something that shows up in a surprising number of the most recent virals (more on that video here).

Citroen “advertisements” ::
Continuing with the Transformers theme, Youku user C-Team Transformers (C派变形金刚), a Citroen fan, has posted two popular Transformer-themed mashup videos. The earlier (and more popular) of the two was posted in August under the title C-Team Rendezvous (C派集结登场), and takes the form of mash-up of previous authorized Transformer-themed Citroen commercials, including an ice-skating spot and a dancing robot spot, covered in a previous Friday 5 on video marketing. Then in early September, the same user released a Citroen-themed parody of Crazy Racer (疯狂的赛车) in which aspiring champions compete for second place because of Sébastien Loeb’s multi-year dominance of the World Rally Championships driving for Citroen. This video was far less successful: apart from a bemused response on some auto forums, the majority of netizens who viewed the clip felt it was a “third-rate ad” (二流广告) or asked how much Citroen had paid the netizen who posted it. Ensuing discussions devolved into denigrations of the brand, which may, in fact, have had nothing to do with the videos at all.

Product placement in Meteor Rain ::
Product placement backlash was even more visible in the response to a knockoff version of the Taiwan TV drama Meteor Garden. The original, adapted from Japanese manga Boys Over Flowers (Hana Yori Dango), was a runaway success among Asian TV audiences when it first hit screens in 2001. This year, mainland entertainment station Hunan TV produced a copycat version called Meteor Shower that began airing in early August. The stars of the original, known as F4 (for Flower Four, from the original manga), were replaced with four new teen idols known as “H4.” However, fans of the original didn’t see eye to eye with the media juggernaut, calling the new version a “shanzhai” Meteor Garden. A backlash against the remake took place in various forums, with blatant product placement being one of the major complaints. Netizens produced videos mocking the drama to an enthusiastic response. One popular video assembled a number of the most distasteful product placements, including a long, pointless introduction to a Nanjing-manufactured MG 3SW. For fans familiar with the earlier version, it seemed ridiculous that a scion of a wealthy family would dream about owning a car that cost less than 80,000 yuan. Netizens on Douban and other online forums found the parody hilarious. Ironically, some netizens complained that all of the product placement was offensive to a Chinese audience mired in economic doldrums. Another video posted on a gaming forum highlighted a silly, stilted discussion about the MMORPG ZT Online. It looks like such product placement is only going to get worse: SARFT has placed limits on television commercials and commanded that commercial breaks last no longer than 90 seconds. In response, Hunan TV said that it would incorporate even more product placement into its shows. This will likely lead brands / marketers in China to leverage online video even more.

Hyundai viral ads ::
Turning to viral video marketing that’s been more effective, Hyundai has put up a number of entertaining clips over the past month. In late August, a vignette between a clueless driver and a hapless police officer was passed around a number of major social networks and overseas Chinese websites. The clip makes use of stereotypes about woman drivers in a dialogue-free story that makes heavy use of physical comedy. In a second clip, a careless man gets himself into a lot of trouble trying to do too many things at once: drive, light his cigarette, and use his mobile phone. A third clip shows a drift racer squaring off against a parkour traceur. Auto forums enjoyed this one, and used it as the starting point for discussions of drifting, or whether a stock Hyundai could perform as shown. These videos aren’t exactly subtle: the Hyundai logo is shown in frequent close-up, and each clip closes with a credit screen mentioning Beijing Hyundai. But most netizens found them entertaining. Yet even here fatigue seems to have set in. The “woman driver” clip garnered a huge number of views overnight, and the amount of positive votes / comments on Youku far outweigh the negative ones. The “careless driver” clip has slightly more positive votes than negative, but the “parkour” clip has been voted down heavily, with some commenters even calling, “bury all crappy films!”

National Day in China ::
National branding turns up in videos celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. TV reports about the preparations for the military parade and showing the kinds of weapons and the types of troops that will be seen on October 1 are popular with online viewers. A report from Beijing TV uploaded three days ago has garnered 1,468,413 views and 2,482 comments. Netizens have incorporated tanks and airplanes into their comments; this meme shows up on other reports about the preparations, including this one from Dragon TV (东方卫视). One of the high points of the celebration is the film The Founding of A Republic (建国大业) which has many trailers on Youku, and one of them has been viewed 923,781 times and commented 455 times. The trailer is incredibly star-studded, leading netizens to comment on the plethora of famous acting talent on display: Zhang Ziyi (章子怡), Jet Li (李连杰), Zhang Guoli (张国立), to name just a few. Some netizens responded with comments saying how the government is great, while others complain about the money spent. A little older but still relevant is a Warcraft machinima created by patriotic gamers at the Qingdao Technological University. Vast arrays of troops line a simulacrum of Changan Avenue as tanks and other armored units parade past. Negative attitudes do show up in text-based forums, with a lot of complaints about the traffic controls that are imposed when students, soldiers, and artillery displays practice for the big day, or how much of a headache it is to be chosen to participate, but videos about the anniversary of the PRC brand are pretty much all positive and excited.

// 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.]

:: 大众对于病毒式传播的视频广告逐渐产生审美疲劳。尽管制作精良，

// AjS

:: microblogging platforms like Twitter, Fanfou, and Jiwai (see this previous Friday 5) are used by Chinese netizens to pass around links, memes, short tidbits of breaking news, and other kinds of information that can fit into 140 characters. In other markets, particularly the US market, companies and brands have long been taking advantage of this platform as a communications / marketing tool, and while the tactic still seems to be in its embryonic stage in China, a number of commercial entities have found success with their interactions with audiences on microblogging platforms. The below five-point brief outlines a several examples of this, and provides a reasonably comprehensive overview of what companies and brands are using microblogging in China and how they are using it.

[Note that because micrblogging platforms are often used by netizens to share "sensitive information" and Coordinate related offline political activities, etc. (see recent events in Iran and Xinjiang), the Chinese government occasionally interferes with their operation. This week is unfortunately one of those occasions. Twitter is currently blocked on the Chinese mainland and Fanfou has been inoperable since Tuesday night (following a brief "maintenance hiatus" over the June 4 Tiananmen Square anniversary). As a result, some of the links below may not work properly if you are accessing the web from mainland China without a proxy or VPN. All links will be fine once accessibility to Twitter and Fanfou is returned, hopefully soon.]

cars ::
GM has a Fanfou account launched with little fanfare in February. It now has 14,469 followers, placing it fourth out of all organizations on Fanfou (the rest of the top five are media outlets and Fanfou itself, although the rankings are a little suspect: see HP below). A Global Entrepreneur article on microblogging in March featured the GM Fanfou experiment, and it has since become a standard case study example of a major brand taking advantage of a microblogging platform in China. GM updates its Fanfou page every few days with links to videos and photo collections of offline promotional activities, most recently the Transformer 2-related Camaro push. The individual maintaining GM’s Fanfou account interacts with followers fairly regularly: about a third of the recent updates are replies to other Fanfou users, which have included topics such as 4S shops, fuel economy, the official status of the account,  and its 10,000th follower on June 26. By comparison, check out Ford China’s official Fanfou page, which is far more recent and has just a couple dozen followers. A fan-maintained account for Ford Racing is more popular and provides links to race information, results, outside blog posts, and to the Ford Racing website.

computers ::
Hewlett Packard leverages its Fanfou account basically as an interactive customer service hotline. Fanfou users following HP ask the company questions about its product specifications and service issues. Fanfou users accustomed to inauthentic company / brand accounts frequently inquire about the account itself: is the account HP-authorized or just run by a fan? Replies generally include a customer service number and a link to the HP homepage. HP has recently had to deal with other Fanfou users asking about the controversial Green Dam filter software. The account also makes use of Fanfou’s photo sharing capabilities to post images of cool HP and Compaq-branded gadgets. Dell’s home sales service has a popular English-language Twitter account, DellOutlet, which posts product announcements and cool online deals. It has tens of thousands of followers. By contrast, the Chinese versions on Fanfou, and Jiwai, had only a couple dozen followers and mostly stopped updating in April. However, Direct2Dell’s Chinese Twitter account run by @Jaqui Zhou, who maintains the company’s Chinese-language corporate blog, continues to update with product announcements and links to articles, so it appears that Dell’s success with microblogging in Chinese has been mixed. Lenovo has two accounts on Fanfou, one for the company itself and a second for its ThinkPad brand. The Lenovo account mostly reposts updates from the ThinkPad account, which mostly posts links to the Yamato Lab blog on Sina, which is kept by Arimasa Naitoh, head of Lenovo R&D in Japan, and which, thanks to its promotion on Sina’s tech channel, has a far greater audience than either of the Fanfou accounts.

software ::
Opera, the Norwegian web browser developer, keeps a popular Fanfou account that has several thousand followers. The company has been actively targeting the Chinese market for several years and has cultivated a dedicated user group for its desktop and mobile editions. It uses its Fanfou account to interact with other users, which has recently included information on how to post from the Opera China BBS to Fanfou, font issues in Opera Mini and China recruitment. By contrast, its less-trafficked Jiwai account is mostly devoted to reposting news from its official China site. Applications software developer Kingsoft has microblogs set up for many of its utilities, such as Defender (金山密保) and Shield (金山网盾), along with its Labs (金山互联网安全实验室). These Jiwai accounts mostly carry notices of and links to incremental software updates, virus definition updates, and bug reports. Kingsoft has customized the right-hand sidebar of its Jiwai pages to include a button that allows netizens to download the software directly from the page itself rather than having to click through to the Kingsoft website. Kingsoft’s Fanfou page for Antivirus (毒霸) is mostly devoted to feeds from its official blog, but the company has personalized the page: “Antivirus Safety Bulletin” enjoys the music of Aerosmith, Radiohead, Coldplay, and Jonathan Lee, and likes the films Fight Club and Amelie. Perhaps because of the sheer number of Kingsoft accounts, none is followed by more than a couple hundred people at the moment. Not to be outdone, Rising, another anti-virus company, has its own Fanfou account that lists the latest additions to its list of websites that contain trojans or viruses. This information is normally sent automatically to users through virus definition updates, which may escape the notice of ordinary users, so its presence on a daily Fanfou update gives followers an image of a company that’s committed to its software.

media ::
Microblogging would seem to be a perfect fit for online media outlets: as more and more people are using Twitter and Fanfou feeds to locate interesting links, media entities can post teasers to their microblog and direct their followers to their website. The Southern Media Group, known for its investigative journalism and incisive commentary, is using microblogging in a big way. Southern Metropolis Weekly (南都周刊), for example, has around 1,500 followers on Twitter and over 20,000 on Fanfou. Another publication, Southern Weekly, has 3,268 followers on its Twitter, which it gratefully acquired from a fan just a couple weeks ago. Malicious username squatting and hoax Twittering usually makes the headlines, but once in a while a brand can obtain an easy-to-remember account from a benevolent microblogger who registered it first. Southern Weekly has several thousand more followers on Fanfou. The Beijing News, which is affiliated with the Southern Media Group, has a popular Fanfou account as well with upward of 15,000 followers. Muckracking business magazine Caijing has a Fanfou account with 1300+ followers. None of these accounts is interactive: they all make use of the easy link sharing functionality of microblogging, but do nothing else in the way of brand building or engaging readers / audiences in conversation or dialogue about news, events, etc. General exposure and traffic back to the main publication website is their aim – a missed opportunity indeed.

local brands ::
Smaller local brands can use microblogs as an efficient way to interact with increasingly wired audiences. A boutique chain like Sculpting in Time Cafe (雕刻时光), cafes that cater to a young, hip clientele, is a perfect fit for the sort of netizen that follows microblogs. Its Fanfou account, run by one of its Nanjing staff, interacts with other users and posts news tagged with its locations in Beijing, Xi’an, and Nanjing. The account was recently upgraded by Fanfou to become an “official” microblog. Recent updates include a link to a blog post about romance writers visiting a Beijing location, and a number of exchanges with followers about the identity of the person behind the account. Guangzhou’s Tophour bar is fairly Web2.0 enabled, with a Douban group that lists QQ, MSN, and Google groups, as well as a Fanfou account. Tophour is a venue for salons on literature and current events, so many of its updates involve spreading the word about upcoming items of interest. It’s also fairly interactive with its roughly four hundred followers, including a recent exchange about how it conducts promotion for concert events. Yilin Publishing House, which issues translations of foreign literature, launched a Fanfou account in June that currently has more than 800 followers. It interacts with other Fanfou users and posts links to new titles, cover photos, and reviews on Douban. Recent interactions include a user asking about how illustrators are recruited, and a joking personal response to another Fanfou user that came with a prominent disclaimer, “This does not represent the official position of Yilin Publishing House.”

// 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.]

:: anyone who reads 56minus1 regularly knows I love sneakers and that I’m a Ray Lei (雪磊) fanboy. So, there was no way I wasn’t going to like this collaboration. I’m just surprised it took me so long to find these. See below for two excellent productions by Ray, an extraordinarily talented multimedia designer based in Beijing.

The first one was for Nike’s Innov8 (创意沙龙) campaign and, I think, in support of the brand’s 706 interactive / multimedia exhibit last year in Beijing’s 798 art district. The 706 exhibit showcased – in a way only Nike can shamelessly pull off – 100 of the company’s most innovative accomplishments in footwear and apparel design. Pretty cool actually.

The second one, titled Moon Landing Plan, was shown at the Nike Dunk art exhibition in Shanghai last March. See Ray’s blog for some photos from the event, link here. Ou Ning, who also showed work at the exhibition, did a post on it too, link here.

Both works are great, and further examples of brands successfully engaging China’s creative community. Bravo, well done.  // AjS

:: given the vast appetite of Chinese netizens for video entertainment, online video, if done correctly, is an excellent vehicle for brands’ communications efforts. Funny, clever one-off and viral are always an option, but the possibilities are far greater than simply treating the online world as another platform for the same old same old (i.e. 30 second spots). Below is a snapshot of companies and brands successfully using online video in China to support their communications efforts; everything from viewer-determined webisodic series, subtle product placement, brand sponsored content, contests, voting, user generated advertorial content, C-suites interviews / commentary / updates on services, and, of course, magic!

brand-sponsored web series ::
Sofia’s Diary originated in Portugal as a webisodic soap opera, and later made the jump to broadcast television in the UK. The Chinese edition (苏菲日记) tells the story of Sufei, an 18-year-old girl from Beijing who’s living with her father and step-mother in Shanghai. The show is sponsored by Clinique (倩碧), whose products have a prominent placement in the show itself and in related online promotional materials. Sufei’s blog invites readers to “take a look at the Clinique products Sufei uses in the show.” Other brand sponsors include Sony (Sufei uses a Vaio laptop and other Sony digital devices throughout the show) and 51.com, which she uses in her job hunt. Audience interactivity is fostered in weekly polls where viewers vote for plot twists they want to see in upcoming episodes. The first season of 40 episodes concluded in March, but the Web site promises that a second season is in the works.

brand-produced web series ::
Lu Chen, a magician from Taiwan, was one of the breakout hits of this year’s Spring Festival Gala. He now endorses Nokia mobile phones, and the company recently released a series of branded videos featuring the star. In the “educational” videos in the series, Lu instructs observers in how he performs simple tricks (part I,  part II) involving Nokia phones. A street magic segment unites magic tricks with mobile phone capabilities, amazing and mystifying the audience. Then, in more straightforward advertisement / product presentation, Lu performs different forms of “magic”: he takes advantage of special features of the N(okia)-Gage phone to help his acquaintances with gaming, maps, and email. A flashy online campaign released by Johnnie Walker in 2007 includes a series of five connected shorts telling the story of a creative type who “keeps walking” through life in his attempts to become a screenwriter, accompanied by his friends and refreshing drinks of Black Label. The series has related graphic novel interpretations, games, and quizzes, and is still being promoted in the brand’s overall online communications efforts.

one-off / viral video ::
In September 2008, Lenovo rolled out an online promotional campaign for its S9/S10 Ideapad netbooks that included a cute mascot, a theme song, and a digital video short. The “Always Online” short tells a supernatural love story: A boy tells his girlfriend that she’s too dependent on him; she suspects he’s seeing someone else and breaks up with him. He says he’s “always online,” so she continues to seek his help through her instant messaging program. After she achieves independence and self-confidence, she finds out that he died of cancer, and that his spirit has been inhabiting a stuffed “Kuku bear” that he bought, allowing him to chat with her from the grave. Pop star JJ Lin sings the theme song “Always online” — all of which promotes the “always online” feature of this line of Ideapads. It’s a more successful viral effort than a previous Lenovo laptop promotional campaign, a ham-fisted attempt at “candid photos” of a pretty girl using a red Ideapad U110 laptop.

:: online marketing channels
Tudou has a sub-section for marketing, which hosts contests, games, product exhibitions, promotional activities, and dedicated brand channels for client companies. A typical example is a recently-launched video contest promoting Wahaha’s new beer-flavored tea drink Pierchashuang (啤儿茶爽). Contestants are encouraged to send in their own original commercials for Pierchashuang, which viewers can vote on. Ultimately, the ten most popular will be judged by the organizers of the game, and prizes awarded: a car, a netbook, or a RMB 500 “creative prize.” The competition just started on May 6th, so the entry page currently features TV ads for the drink. Original entries include a girl attempting to drain the bottle and a boy echoing the product slogan “Pierchashuang isn’t beer!” Ku6 has a User Generated Advertising (UGA) department which is involved in generating viral videos. An initial success was a short clip released in January 2009 that showed a young man losing a mobile phone out the door of a subway while he was playing with it. The actual phone wasn’t shown at all, but curious netizens tracked down the Sony Ericsson model that had the peculiar inertia-based game he was playing. A more obviously branded short is a new viral Chevrolet ad that pits the Transformer Bumblebee against a Citroen C4. The ad’s particularly interesting in how it refers back to a previous viral ad from 2007 in which a Citroen C4 transforms into a dancing robot.

corporate c-suite online video communications ::
Sohu was the official online news portal for the Beijing Olympics, and CEO Charles Zhang hosted a celebrity interview show, Sohu Beijing Report, in the run-up to the historic event. Zhang is something of an outsize celebrity himself, and his encounters with Jet Li, Fan Bingbing, Yao Ming, and other famous names had the effect of associating the interviews even more closely with the Sohu brand. Youku CEO Victor Ku releases the occasional video. He too did interviews for the Olympics, and this year did a special New Year’s greetings for the Year of the Ox . The official Youku channel has more of his videos, which range from statements about the video portal’s exclusive offerings to special “CEO vs. CEO” interviews.

// 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.]

:: how are companies and brands connecting with target audiences on Chinese social networking sites (SNS)? What has worked in China and what hasn’t?

Over the past few years, brand presence on Chinese SNS has largely been limited to passive (and really annoying) advertising and the occasional branded widget (see LG’s mobile phone widget on Sohu as an example, or read more about branded widgets in this 56minus1 post), but recently, several brands have pursued more creative and interactive ways to reach SNS users, upping the level of user participation and brand-consumer interactivity. These efforts range from curated BBS discussion forums to interactive contests within the confines of a particular SNS (such as a recent Chow Tai Fook-sponsored contest on QQ geared around a Valentine’s Day theme), to even more innovative offerings that connect virtual branded products with their real world counterparts.

Compared to other Internet markets, brand efforts on local Chinese SNS are still in an embryonic stage, however. A good number of Chinese SNS sites don’t have much of a brand presence or engagement in their games and widgets / applications at all, even when the user base seems primed for it. For example, one popular application on the generic, youth-oriented 360quan.com SNS has users playing the part of a McDonald’s cashier who has to serve an increasingly impatient crowd of customers, but it doesn’t appear to have any official McDonald’s involvement whatsoever (and it uses traditional characters, so it’s probably not even aimed at the mainland). A missed opportunity, perhaps? Other SNS may have been ahead of their time. HiPiHi, a Chinese virtual world similar to Second Life, features the heavily-promoted presence of IBM, which built a virtual conference center in the 3D environment. But perhaps because of technological limitations, interest surrounding brand involvement in virtual worlds seems to have ebbed, especially in China.

At any rate, Chinese SNS are ripe with opportunities for (reasonably) meaningful brand involvement. Below are five current examples of brands engaging and interacting with users on Chinese SNS:

magnum on Kaixin001.com ::
Magnum ice cream bars play a central role in a suite of games on the popular Kaixin001 social networking site. The “Special Treatment” (非常礼遇, shortened to the risque 非礼, which means to feel someone up) application involves codes printed on Magnum bars that can be exchanged for in-game credits (in the form of virtual ice-cream bars), which then enable users to take advantage of mini-apps like “going to work in a sedan chair,” “flying a fighter plane,” and “bathing in a hot spring.” Users take advantage of these mini-apps with their circle of friends on the website. What’s hosted on Kaixin001 is part of a larger campaign designed by Magnum in concert with the Poco.cn SNS. The contest for April has users accumulating virtual ice cream for a chance to win their own private Magnum party in Shanghai. New stages will be introduced in the coming months. See here for earlier 56minus1 post about MAGNUM.

iCoke on 51.com ::
CocaCola offers an application on 51.com that digitally inserts users into a boisterous Coke ad. Users choose a head shot, align it and tweak the coloring (screen shot), and then watch the resulting video (screen shot). The application is hosted through iCoke.cn, but it is fully integrated with 51.com’s user pages: users can choose a head-shot out of their 51.com photo album, and their activity is automatically recorded in their 51.com diary with the resulting video embedded into their user page. The game is part of Coke’s official BBS on 51.com (screen shot), which also features top-level forums related to advertising, music videos, polls, sports events, and various online activities. Users who invite their friends to join up (through April 19) have a chance to win real-world prizes like iPods, t-shirts, and notebook computers. The statistics about the group are kind of strange (like most metrics about the Chinese internet) as they claims over a million members but only 477,000 views, hmmm, but the top BBS posts have thousands of views and hundreds of replies.

Apple on Xiaonei.com ::
The Apple Store has a presence on Xiaonei in the form of a branded BBS forum and associated features. The BBS, called “Apple Institute” (苹果学院) (screen shot), has a few managed sub-boards in addition to a general discussion forum. There’s a section that provides info on Wifi hotspots in Beijing and Shanghai (two locations in Shanghai and three in Beijing so far, screen shot). Trendy young people using their iPods in real-world situations are displayed in the “iPod Spotter” section (screen shot). And the Diary section carries the latest Apple news. The page has seen more than 260,000 visits. Xiaonei users who apply to be friends of the Apple Institute (1782 so far) receive an Apple-themed virtual gift, such as an iMac icon. The Institute’s “members” are various Apple products, each of which has its own member page (the iPod Shuffle, for example, screen shot). Throughout 2008, the Apple Institute ran a promotion where virtual points accumulated by Xiaonei users could be exchanged for coupons good for products purchased at the Apple store, and a number of iPods were given out as prizes. Xiaonei also has an Apple Store user (Apple零售店), a “special friend” of the Apple Institute (screen shot), which mainly serves as a platform to allow users to post questions which are answered by other Apple enthusiasts.

Lenovo on Kaixin001.com ::
Kaixin001 offers a game in which users design their ideal virtual house. Lenovo launched a sponsored competition in March to judge the best-designed loft. The group currently has 14,465 “fans” (screen shot). Participants download the Loft template, design their loft, and then enter the result in one of three galleries (screen shot): Most stylish, most luxuriant, and most bewildering. All entries have to include the Lenovo A600 model all-in-one computer. The associated BBS elaborates on contest rules, and has lively discussion among members, who share designs and ideas or show off their entries. “Innovation” is emphasized as part of the design prompts, tying in to Lenovo’s brand message. In addition, contest entrants are competing to win Lenovo computers: the designer of the most popular loft will be awarded Lenovo’s new C305 model, while top finishers in the three categories get Lenovo-branded USB drives. Honorable mentions get a Kaixin001 virtual Beetle.

Adidas on Xiaonei.com ::
Sports brand Adidas has a heavy presence in the “Basketball Superstar” (篮球巨星) game on Xiaonei (screenshot). Players pit their fantasy team against missions, teamwork building exercises, and in PK (head to head) matches against teams run by other Xiaonei users. They use the virtual cash they win to get kitted out in Adidas clothing and shoes (screen shot). Game play is focused on setting up a team of “brothers” (friends from Xiaonei) and accumulating scores and other “brothers.” There are pages where you can train your brothers and, for a substantial amount of virtual cash, train existing basketball stars such as Chauncey Billups (比卢普斯) and Gilbert Arenas (阿里纳斯). PK matches are between players themselves in the game on the basis of their rankings, rather than according to actual real-world stats. The better your equipment, the more skilled your players become. You can also purchase virtual money by recharging your Xiaonei account by Paypal or credit card. The game’s BBS (screen shot) claims 123,990 group members, and many of the posts concern inviting “brothers” to join the game on their side.

// 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.]

:: March 15, World Consumer Rights Day, has been a big deal for several years now in China, and following all of the China-related product quality scares in 2008, the “day” has received considerable media attention this year. Although the promotion of consumer rights issues around March 15 heightens public awareness of the procedures individuals can follow to protect their legal rights, the most noticeable activity against companies and brands at this time of year is generated by Chinese government agencies and the media.

The number 315 has become a shorthand for consumer rights in China. Complaint hotlines often include the digits 315 (as in the national consumer complaint line 12315), and Web sites devoted to consumer product quality will often have 315 in the URL. For example, while the Chinese State Administration for Industry & Commerce (SAIC) provides a fairly bare-bones Consumer Rights Web site offering legal information, it falls to other 315 websites run by trade associations (and for-profit companies) to initiate legal action if enough consumers file online complaints. China 315 Consumer Rights Net is a well-known example, but a simple Baidu search for “315″ turns up a wealth of similar sites, both national and local in scope.

In addition to merely filing complaints, netizens can pursue consumer rights issues in a variety of ways via special sections set up on major Web portals, ad-hoc complaint groups, blogs, and standalone sites set up for particularly intractable problems. At seeisee’s China IWOM Blog, Sam Flemming explained how companies can use these Internet channels to reshape their relationship with consumers.

Below are some online / social media examples of activities from this year’s “315″ in China. Despite my best efforts to identify examples or case studies of companies / brands embracing 315 as an opportunity to engage with consumers / target audiences online, I am very much left with the impression that everything surrounding March 15 on the Chinese Internet is designed to teach businesses a lesson about the power of consumer rights / complaints. Stick-it-to-the man booby-traps abound. Companies and brands operating in China, beware! Muh ha ha…

web portal channels / sections ::
As consumer rights features blanketed the traditional / offline media, China’s major Internet portals also launched special channels devoted to March 15 activities. Sina’s 3-15 section is a typical example, and is built around links to articles and videos about major cases involving fake and poor-quality products / services. In terms of netizen-related content, the channel features a prominent link to MarchPhone (三月电话), a blog written by a consumer information hotline operator who describes how the job picks up every year around this time. The blog’s posts have hits in the hundreds of thousands, and the comments section is filled with people voicing complaints about products and services. Sina also hosted a Web chat with China Consumers’ Association vice-president Wu Gaohan and China Quality Long March magazine (中国质量万里行) president Wang Quelin (video, transcript). QQ has a fairly active sub-section on its Auto Channel devoted to aggregating information about car quality issues. The channel draws its information from news reports as well as the Auto Complaint section of QQ’s BBS. In general, however, most portal offerings were fairly similar, and all of them included instructions on how to report consumer issues to the authorities, as in this featured BBS post on Sohu.

a place to share gripes ::
To draw netizen participation, web portals held contests for consumer rights-related writing: blog and forum posts could be entered by putting a key phrase in the title. Some of the most popular posts were “inside stories” about how customers get screwed in various industries, as in these taken from Sohu: High markups on clothing, upselling and bait-and-switch in the wedding photos business, and the impotence of product standards enforcers. For netizens on the outside, the event was an opportunity to share gripes about how they had been ripped off in the past. On the local BBS for Xiaogan, Hubei, one netizen described how a supermarket was offering 5-yuan in cash for empty 5L oil jugs, but actually handed out 5-yuan coupons for future purchases. The solution: “I took out my mobile phone to call 12315, and the employee got nervous and immediately changed his attitude and said I could exchange the coupon.” “315″ is a shorthand on most BBS discussion forums for the consumer rights Board / group, typically a place where people complain about inferior products and shoddy services. Tianya’s 315 board is very well-trafficked, and even Youku has a 315 video section, although it only seems to receive new posts in early March.

ongoing issues ::
In November of last year, new homeowners in Xiamen’s Best Base Diadem (百源双玺) housing development discovered ceiling cracks throughout their apartments. A post to the development’s online BBS proposed joining forces against the developer, and a few homeowners exchanged email addresses. As World Consumer Rights Day approached, the residents staged a public protest outside the development, and held up a long banner complaining about their ceiling issues. Traffic and comments to the original post surged during March. Nationally, there’s a growing effort among netizens to hold Johnson & Johnson accountable for allergic reactions its products have allegedly caused in infants. On Sohu’s 315 Blog Group, a community set up in January 2009 for bloggers to pool information about consumer rights activities, J&J-related complaints are currently the top-ranked posts. Bloggers have tagged their posts with “Lodge a complaint against J&J” (投诉强生) and have shared photos of their babies’ skin rashes. One blogger recently posted a call for parents to join together to pool results of blood tests and use them against the company to attempt to prove that its products were directly involved in causing their babies’ allergies.

loser: China Mobile ::
Personal privacy has been a big issue in the past year, and one major consumer rights case this month involved China Mobile and spam SMS messages. A CCTV expose revealed that China Mobile branches in Shandong were operating bulk SMS services and had sold customer information to third parties (transcript on Sina with 1773 netizen comments). Although the revelations drew angry responses from netizens (toward China Mobile and toward CCTV as well), there were others who hailed China Mobile’s swift response to the expose as a qualified success — the company had quickly communicated not only to the traditional media but to online media as well that it would investigate the problem and work to correct it. China Mobile customer service was the focus of a post made to the Tianya BBS on March 14 by a netizen claiming to be a receptionist at the company’s customer service hotline (10086). The post ran through a long list of complaints about the job — strict performance requirements, long hours, unpaid bathroom breaks, and rage from callers. The post was promoted to featured status and drew more than 200,000 views and nearly 1,000 comments. Yet another complaint about China Mobile — this time warning about possibly fraudulent billing practices in Tianjin — was put up Sohu’s BBS on February 26, and was promoted to “3.15” featured status in the wake of CCTV’s expose, where it has registered more than 8,700 views.

notable online efforts ::
Netizens complain about shoddy products and services year-round. In 2008, one notable example was Huang Jing’s lawsuit against Asus for getting her tossed into jail on blackmail charges when she sought compensation for a faulty repair job. This led to a 315 Web site about the case and an effort to drum up a boycott against the computer company. Public opinion is divided as to whether she’s an ordinary consumer who’s been mistreated, or a scammer who got caught, but her persistence in taking advantage of all available media channels has kept the issue alive much longer than otherwise. Also in 2008, seventeen netizens filed a lawsuit against Tencent over QQ IDs they’d lost and that the company refused to return to them. In October, when the Nanshan court finally accepted the case, only eleven elected to pay the 1,000 filing fee. The blogger who had been reporting on the case at his blog has since taken down all posts related to the case, and no resolution has been made public.

// 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.]