more branded video content in china ::
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
:: as an update to this 56minus1 post about brands using online video in China from a couple weeks ago, I learned of a new example.
Master Kong (康师傅) ice-tea has just launched a fully interactive, socialized, Webisodic series titled Sunshine in a Guitar (吉他里的阳光). The first episode went live yesterday, with episode #2 going live on the 27th. Link here to see the campaign mini-site.
This is a great example of a mass-consumer brand understanding that its successful participation in the digital space hinges first and foremost on delivering value to online audiences. In this case, the value Master Kong is delivering is free entertaining and engaging content and other interactive fun (voting, points, prizes, opportunities to be in the show, etc.).
This is also an example of another digital best practice: brands going to where its online audiences are, as opposed to expecting online audiences to find them. With all due respect to Master Kong, its online target audience is simply not going to its homepage or any of its other static branded sites – would you? The entire Sunshine in a Guitar campaign is housed within the QQ domain / ecosystem, which for those unaware, is by far the largest and most trafficked social networking, instant messaging, causal gaming, and information / entertainment portal in China (probably the world).
My only criticism of the campaign at this point is that the video content doesn’t appear to be exportable / sharable outside of the branded mini-site. Why not let netizens embed the videos anywhere they want online? All such embedding would link back to he mini- site anyway, thus driving free, organic traffic and Internet word of mouth. For example, me as a blogger would have shared in this post.
It will be interesting to see how this campaign is received and develops. More to come. Check it out for yourselves.
Oddly, Master Kong is using a very obvious image of a MacBook laptop on the campaign’s homepage. I wonder of Apple is paying for product placement. H/T to . // AjS
