Posted in china, digital | social media insights, edelman, edelman digital, friday 5, internet | technology, marketing | pr | advertising, video | Tags: , , , citroen, , , , , , , , , , zeng yike | 2 Comments »

周五5 | 中国互联网上的最新热播视频 ::

Friday, September 11th, 2009

:: 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,

创意新颖的作品仍然收到良好效果,但对于那些试图操纵观众意图明显的广告,广大网民往往能一眼识破。

您可以通过优酷Buzz博客来更多了解近期的热门视频。Kaiser Kuo在这个博客上发表他对这些视频的评论。文章多兼具诙谐幽默与讽刺调侃。在最近这篇关于歌手曾秩可的文章中,作者表达了自己对曾的音乐才能的不屑。In2Marcom博客新推出的Eyes On Me栏目则汇总了当月的各个热播视频。

曾秩可 ::
继曾秩可(曾在此前的Friday 5报道过)在八月份在超级女声选秀节目中遭淘汰之后,这位“人气超女”依然频繁出现在各种网络视频中。新浪用户“替罪羊”与视频制作者“飞飞蛙”合作完成了由“替罪羊”模仿包括刘德华,崔健,费玉清在内的15名歌星演唱曾的成名曲“狮子座”的视频。另一个关于曾秩可的视频是由参加军训的上海交大新生们制作的,在视频中,男生们向女生演唱“狮子座”以及另外两首歌。曾最近被卷入一场“抄袭门”,她的“狮子座”被指抄袭台湾歌曲“天际”。在我们期待一部关于曾“抄袭门”的出色视频出现的时候(目前只有一段对比两首歌曲的视频),这一事件也引发了在众多论坛和博客上的讨论,其中有文章援引曾为自己所做的辩护:“发现世上另一个自己”。曾秩可的形象还被搬上了网友炮制的《变形金刚3:地球之战》上。在这个植入了大量“广告”的短片中,曾从外星入侵者手中拯救了地球。影片中的广告,多半是一种对好莱坞和中国电影制作,以及大量病毒式传播视频中此类现象的戏仿(更多与此主题相关内容) 。

雪铁龙广告 ::
继雪铁龙发布一系列变形金刚主题的广告之后,名为“C派变形金刚”的优酷用户再次发布了两个变形金刚主题的拼接影片。八月份的一个名为“C派集结登场”的视频是此前雪铁龙的变形金刚广告的重新剪接,其中包括一个滑冰机器人和一个舞蹈机器人(曾在此前的Friday 5中被报道过)的片段。九月初由另一个用户上传的一段视频也是一个名为《疯狂的赛车》的视频。影片中,由于雪铁龙车队的赛巴斯迪安.勒布长期稳坐WRC拉力赛冠军宝座,以至于其它车手都把自己的最高目标定在第二名。这段视频不算成功:除了在几家汽车论坛受到些许认可之外,大量网友认为这只是一个二流广告并追问雪铁龙为这个广告花了多少钱。一些网友甚至在观看视频后对雪铁龙品牌嗤之以鼻,尽管并无证据标明雪铁龙与该视频有任何关联。

流星雨中的植入广告 ::
在八月份湖南卫视版本播出其改编的台湾电视剧“流星花园”之后出现一片对产品植入的反对呼声。台版的流星花园改编自日本漫画花より男子(Hana Yori Dango),在2001年播出之后在亚洲电视观众中创出收视高潮。而大陆的湖南卫视也在此剧基础上推出自己的改编版本《一起去看流星雨》。原版剧中的四位被称为F4(漫画原作中Flower 4的缩写)的男主角被新版的H4所取代。但是“流星”粉丝们对这部新作并不买账,反称其为“山寨流星花园”。各大论坛中对该剧的批评比比皆是,其中观众有违不满的是大量直白露骨的广告植入。网友制作了一些视频来讽刺这一现象。其中一个热播的视频汇集了剧中数个最为恶俗的广告,包括一段对南京产的名爵3SW汽车冗长乏味的推介。而熟悉原版的观众来说,剧中出身显贵的富家公子居然会为一款售价仅10万左右的汽车而心动?豆瓣和其它网上论坛的用户都觉得这样的情节安排十分可笑。甚至有网友指出这些广告是对处于经济低迷时期的中国观众的不尊重。另外一个被传到游戏论坛的视频则选取了剧中一段关于网游《征途》的做作的对话。而此类植入广告似有愈演愈烈之势:广电总局最近出台一条规定:所有插播广告不得超过90秒,而湖南卫视对此的反映是它将会将更多的广告植入到节目当中。这极有可能导致网络视频在市场营销中扮演更大的角色。

现代汽车 ::
在将目光投向病毒式营销之后,现代汽车从上月起投放了数条网络视频。从八月底推出至今,一段发生在一个技术不甚高明的女司机和一个倒霉的交警之间的小插曲的视频被在大量国内社交网站以及国外中文网站上转载。视频利用了人们对于女性司机的固有认识,整个叙述过程中并未使用对话,而是大量运用肢体语言从而达到喜剧效果。在第二个视频中,一个粗心大意的司机试图一边驾驶,一边点烟,同时还要用手机打电话。第三段视频则是一个擅长漂移的车手和一位跑酷高手之间的角逐。这段视频在许多汽车论坛受到追捧,引发许多关于漂移,以及标配车能否有像视频中那样出色的表现。这些视频并不注重含蓄:现代的标志频繁在特写镜头中出现。尽管大多数网友觉得这些视频具有一定娱乐性,但对此类广告的疲劳也不可避免。关于女司机的那段视频在优酷网获得大量好评,而对粗心司机视频的好评数量稍稍多于恶评数量。而跑酷视频却得到大量的恶评,甚至有网友评论到:“什么垃圾片子,踩死”。

国庆 ::
中国的国家形象在庆祝中华人民共和国成立六十周年的视频得到了体现。对于阅兵的准备训练,武器装备,参阅部队的电视报道在网上很受欢迎。北京电视台的一段报道在上传三天后就获得1468413次播放和2482条评论。网友们喜欢在自己的评论中加入飞机坦克的图案;而这种现象在东方卫视的国庆阅兵报道中也可以看到。今年国庆的另一大亮点是献礼大片《建国大业》。这部电影的许多片花可以在优酷中看到,其中一个被包房923781次并受到455次评论。片中明星云集,包括章子怡,李连杰,张国立在内的影视大腕纷纷加盟。评论中即有对国家建设的盛赞,也有对盛典劳民伤财的担忧。而此前的由青岛理工大学一群魔兽爱好者创作的魔兽版国庆阅兵则在游戏场景中模拟了坦克和其它装甲车辆通过大量部队分列两侧的长安街的场景。负面评价多是围绕为国庆游行而进行的交通管制,以及被选中参加游行给自己带来的麻烦,但是绝大多数关于国庆的视频都是积极正面的。

// AjS

[Friday 5是我服务的爱德曼数码(中国)的一项产品。这里是全部Friday 5 的存档。 有意通过电子邮件订阅双语Friday 5者可通过以下地址向我发送邮件索取:adam 点 schokora 在 edelman 点 com。]

Posted in china, chinese language, digital | social media insights, edelman, edelman digital, friday 5, internet | technology, marketing | pr | advertising, video | Tags: , , , citroen, , , , , , , , , , zeng yike | No Comments »

friday 5 | companies & brands using microblogging in china ::

Friday, July 10th, 2009

:: 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, , 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, run by , 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. and over 20,000 on Fanfou. Another publication, , 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.]

Posted in china, digital | social media insights, edelman digital, friday 5, internet | technology, marketing | pr | advertising | Tags: , , , , , , , ,  | No Comments »

things well done | nike X ray ::

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

:: 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

Posted in art, beijing, china, cool hunting, design, marketing | pr | advertising, people, shanghai, things well done, video, youth | creative culture | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , designer, , engaging, , , , , , ray lei, , , 创意沙龙, 雪磊 | 1 Comment »

friday 5 | brands using online video in china ::

Friday, May 8th, 2009

:: 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 Ipart 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.]

Posted in china, digital | social media insights, edelman digital, friday 5, internet | technology, marketing | pr | advertising, video | Tags: , , , , , , , user generated, , ,  | No Comments »

friday 5 | brands & chinese social networking sites ::

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

DannyYungOnBrandsAndChineseSNS:: 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.]

Posted in china, digital | social media insights, edelman digital, friday 5, internet | technology, marketing | pr | advertising | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , kaixin001, , , social networking, xiaonei | 2 Comments »

friday 5 | 3/15 & consumer rights online in china ::

Friday, March 20th, 2009

DannyYungOn315:: 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.]

Posted in china, digital | social media insights, edelman digital, friday 5, internet | technology, marketing | pr | advertising | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,  | No Comments »