:: I peeked this TED Talk today and was pretty impressed. Shirky does many things really well in this presentation, but most notably:

• he smartly and succinctly summarizes the entire “transforming media landscape” X “social / digital media is important and why” meme we have all come to know and love over the past 5 years.
• he clearly illustrates the best example of social media in a China to date – better than any of us so-called Chinese digital experts have done. [Hail the power of online video and good public speaking skills!]
• he says this, “on the Internet, every medium (i.e. TV, magazines, telephone, books, etc.) is right next door to every other medium, put another way, media is increasingly less just a source of information, and increasingly a site of coordination.”
• he also puts forth this brilliant nugget of wisdom, “the media landscape that we knew, as familiar as it was and as easy as it was conceptually to deal with the idea that professionals broadcast messages to amateurs is increasingly slipping away. In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous, and cheap; in a world of media in which the former audience are increasingly full participants – in that world [i.e. today], media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals, it’s more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups [i.e. conversation and community-based interaction]. The choice anyone who has a message that they want to have heard anywhere in the world faces, isn’t whether that’s the media environment we’ve want to operate in, that’s the media environment we’ve got. The question now is, how to we make the best of that medium even though that means changing the way we have always done it.” [Halle-fucking-lujah! Shirky, you killed it with that closer – bravo!]

The last point is what I have spent a good chunk of my professional life trying to get others to understand (and pay for). It has vast implications for “media people,” (who is everyone now-a-days) as well as the communications, PR, marketing, advertising, etc. industries. The next time your client (or colleague, or your mom) just doesn’t get it, play them this video. If English is not their first language, get a professional to translate it into the appropriate language. It will save you a lot of time / effort / money in the long run.  // 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

:: 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.]

:: as often noted within the depths of these posts, design, technology, and communication are evolving — quickly. Our perspective, on this side of the globe, is within the spectrum of an emerging culture that is making leaps across traditional communication, travel, and technology barriers. The experimentation, chaos, and expressiveness that often characterizes modern art and design in china fits nicely into the Tate’s new concept — altermodern.

In his keynote speech to the 2005 Art Association of Australia & New Zealand Conference, Nicolas Bourriaud explained:

“Artists are looking for a new modernity that would be based on translation: What matters today is to translate the cultural values of cultural groups and to connect them to the world network. This “reloading process” of modernism according to the twenty-first-century issues could be called altermodernism, a movement connected to the creolisation of cultures and the fight for autonomy, but also the possibility of producing singularities in a more and more standardized world.”

I also pulled the Altermodern manifesto from the Tate Britain’s exhibition which is fascinating and insightful especially as it relates to emerging artists within China:

A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture

Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live

Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe

Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now starting from a globalised state of culture

This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalised dubbing

Today’s art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between themselves

Artists are responding to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.

I would be interested to hear how you think emerging Chinese artists fit into this paradigm…is it relevant? //

[ is a guest contributor on 56minus1.]

:: companies, from the CEO down to entry-level employees, are using blogging as a way to openly, honestly, and authentically communicate and engage with their online audiences / stakeholders.

As an interactive platform for the exchange of ideas and discussion, a blog can be a useful tool for meeting the public (and for the public to meet you) on any number of issues or communications (work and not necessarily work related). How this is done depends on the individual blogger’s personality, time commitment, what information they are seeking to convey, and of course any company specific digital ethics or guidelines about public online discourse.

Here are a few approaches that company executives and employees in China have taken with their blogs:

work-related blogs ::
Robin Li (李彦宏), CEO of Baidu, keeps a high-traffic blog on his company’s platform that features his thoughts on his public appearances and various matters concerning Baidu. Soho Chairman Pan Shiyi (潘石屹) practically lives in the media’s eye, and his blog is no exception: he started blogging on his own platform ahead of the huge tide of celebrity / executive bloggers, but later moved to Sina where he sits high in the traffic rankings. He’s even published a book made up of selected blog posts. Vantone chairman Feng Lun (冯仑) is another real-estate mover and shaker who blogs frequently about his company, press interviews, articles from his in-house magazine, and random snippets of videos and other entertaining things from around the Internet. And Jack Ma (马云), head of e-commerce giant Alibaba, blogs Alibaba-related content on his own company’s platform. However, his posts unfortunately are largely drawn from material initially presented elsewhere, such as lectures and press junkets.

crisis / issues management blogs ::
Wang Shi (王石) is the chairman of Vanke, a major Chinese real estate company. He blogs mainly about traveling (he’s a climbing enthusiast), but he also uses his blog as a way to communicate directly with the public by responding to questions from readers and issues currently in the media. This has not always work out for the best for him: after the Wenchuan earthquake in May, 2008, he made a blog post defending his company’s 2 million yuan donation to the rescue effort and explained that he had a policy that limited individual donations by workers at charity fund-raisers to 10 yuan apiece. In the ensuing media storm, public opinion largely saw Wang and Vanke as stingy and selfish. However, Wang’s blog also gave him a platform to feature posts and photos of the work Vanke was doing in ongoing rescue and rebuilding efforts. Other executives haven’t been so adept at taking advantage of their blogs: Mengniu founder and CEO Niu Gensheng (牛根生) used to keep a blog on Sina, but the final update came in September (of 2008) during the melamine milk scandal: an assistant (not recommended!) posted the remarks he presented to the Mengniu board promising that he and the company would strive to act responsibly in light of the scandal. To date, that post has received 2 million page-views, so there’s certainly an audience for what Niu has to say.

exposure / thought-leadership blogs ::
A number of executives seem to blog as a way to “show off” their expertise, establish thought leadership in a certain field, and keep their names in circulation online. Wang Ran (王冉), CEO of China E-Capital, blogs about business topics, as do other consulting heads such as branding expert Jacke Lee (李志起), head of China Brand Consultant Team, who mixes business and branding topics with lighter fare. Kai-fu Lee (李开复) heads Google China, but his online presence has more to do with cultivating young talent than specific corporate strategy. His Sina blog mostly follows a Q&A format in which Lee answers questions from young tech workers about education, job placement, and career goals. He also runs “I Learn” (我学网), a portal site devoted to education. The furthest extent this “exposure” has been taken is probably the blog of Dong Siyang (董思阳), controversial chairman of the Fengbohk Group, which runs a chain of restaurants. Dong became company president and CEO at the age of 21 and markets her image and accomplishments in motivational lectures and management training sessions she delivers around the country. Her blog functions as effective extension of her personal branding objectives.

personal CEO blogs ::
An executive is also just another ordinary person and may want to keep a personal blog not directly connected to their company. Tudou co-founder and CEO Gary Wang (王微) keeps one which he started in in 2005. Although there’s a category for Tudou-related posts that has over 100 entries, he doesn’t seem to write much about the company anymore. Hung Huang (洪晃), CEO of China Interactive Media, a publisher of popular magazines, posts extensive personal musings on her travels and other subjects she’s interested in. She does make one concession to company-related material in the form of covers of the latest issue of iLook, her flagship magazine title. Hung also has an English-language blog at the New York Times. Smaller-scale executives blog as well: Li Ying (李莹), head of the Beijing Yingzhibao BMW Agency, keeps a Sina blog where she posts stories about her travels, golfing, and her children.

chinese translations of foreign executive blogs ::
With China as such an important market for multinational corporations, overseas executives who blog in another language might think about translating their posts for Chinese readers. Automatic translation, which both English- and Chinese-language bloggers have experimented with, is not yet up to the task. However, Jonathan Schwartz, President and CEO of Sun Microsystems, has his posts translated into many languages, including Chinese. Schwartz is well-known in English-language IT circles as one of the few Fortune 500 CEOs who blogs, and he posts engagingly on IT trends and Internet-related topics. Note that these translations show signs of human involvement; they’re not simply his English-language posts run through a translator. Oddly, the Sun China homepage has links to Schwartz’s *English* blog posts, not the translations.

// 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.]