OMFG. Brands and Social Media in China.

August 11th, 2010 • Brands, Social, Underway

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Sometimes when you do research on tech adaption worldwide you get the impression it is completely enough to look at figures from the U.S. Take for example the excellent ‘State of the Blogosphere 2009‘ report by technorati. It presents all the charts and diagrams you need if you research statistics on blog usage….but if you dig a little bit deeper you find out that it’s actually nothing but a study about the American blogosphere.

This is particularly interesting if you take a serious look at the figures. China for example has surpassed the U.S. in social media usage last year. According to Netpop almost every Chinese online user is part of a social network. There are three times more bloggers per online user in China compared to the U.S. No major study will explain an average European or American strategist what these people do, what they talk about and how to engage them. By the way, we are talking about 1.6 billion Chinese and billions of Asians that I did not even consider in this calculation.

Check out this deck by Ogilvy One Shanghai (via Giles) about the connected Chinese digital landscape which is absolutely stunning. And afterwards do me a favor and answer one question: Is it actually possible to understand and lead the complexity of this world from a desk in Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam or London and to make the right decisions? How can we build cross cultural knowledge which is so important to get away from our subjective western perspective?

Read it full screen at slideshare. It is better for your eyes.

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Tags: Brands, Business, China, Prediction, Presentation, Report, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends, Truth, We like, World

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http://www.hubertus.net Philip

Being in China this week, I can’t agree more.
Culture, perception, needs and possibilities are very different in many part of the world – and in China specifically.
There a many (too many) stores of the western luxury brands at many corners of Beijing. How relevant are they? Are they part of the culture? Can they become part of the culture? Is what they symbolize desirable in this country?
I can only recommend to get up from your desk, head over here and get a glimpse by talking to locals at lot. Live with them for a few days at least. And then let them guide you (or your brand).
Anonymous

I always felt something is missing. I mean this debate is not exactly new. But it is pretty ridiculous to either sense we can simply judge Asia by looking at U.S./European market statistics only or by just ignoring it (‘it will be similar’). I have never been to China. But it think it should be on my list pretty much at the top.
http://twitter.com/sOjahund sOjahund

Hey Gerald,

happy to see your post. I’ve been now working in China for almost 3 years and this country is still not easy to grasp or to figure out.

One of the things “Westerners” need to realise is, this country includes both:
- some of the most modern cities of the worlds with most consumerist attitudes
- rural areas, where people can not afford the cheapest computers

It’s a bit like if Dubai and a village in Bangladesh were in the same country. But then again this country has more inhabitants than any other continent except Asia. When it comes to brands and communication sometimes you can pick which China you are targeting.

For luxury brands it is mostly the big cities with rather young consumers: the type of consumers/users mentioned in the above study. These online profiles (at least in my opinion) are not that different from Westerners in terms of behaviour and communication patterns. The big difference is, the channels, that are familiar to us are not that familiar to them and vice versa. For every Youtube, Facebook, Twitter there is a Youku, Weibo, Kaixin.

But it get’s really difficult, when you are talking about a brand/product, that is targeting the variety of groups: Then you not only need different communication strategies, but sometimes even different marketing approaches (different products, pricing, packaging in different regions).

Living and working in Beijing, I think I’m getting to a point, where it’s becoming easier to grasp the rather mature groups, that have a certain amount of money to spend, have access to most (in China available) media channels and go for cool brands. But to figure out the consumers in Tier 4 and 5, I guess I’d need much more travels and like Philip said discussions with their locals.
Anonymous

Hey!

Thanks for your comment which is pretty interesting. In fact, it seems to me as if talking about China is like talking about the Earth itself. I have never been there but even if I walk into a ‘Chinese Restaurant’ in Europe I am pretty aware there is no such thing as one Chinese cuisine.

It gets a little funny if you talk about global strategies and willfully ignore the fact that you simply cannot understand what half of the world’s population is doing, saying or up to. Do you think it is actually necessary to professionalize cross-cultural knowledge e.g. via cultural anthropologists in western companies? Currently I just cannot imagine anyone paying for it, even though it makes so much sense…
http://twitter.com/sOjahund rOobin

Yeah… The Chinese Restaurants in Europe are a bit like a “European” in China…

Professionalizing Cross-Cultural knowledge would indeed help a lot. But I guess, it already starts with not going top-down with the so called global strategies, but thinking about strategies with a bottom-up approach. What are the issues on the different markets, what objectives make sense.

a small anecdote: It was pretty interesting talking to some Microsoft executives in China. They were saying how with Windows 7 they have been fighting back Mac in all their major markets. In China the issue is not Mac, but the pirated Windows versions for 1 or 2 €. How do you want to globalstrategize that?