360DigitalInfluence

Marketers of Technology Products and Services can Help Travelers Get More Out of Vacations
(A version of this editorial was first published in Ad Age China) http://adage.com/china/article?article_id=139980
China’s leisure industry is a spontaneous dance of sounds, anticipation, restlessness, sensations, human heat and intense togetherness, good and bad.

The whole country seems to feel an overwhelming desire to see, capture and carry as much as possible. They want to touch, see, touch again and see it again and most importantly, see it through the lens of a camera.

The experience is all about capturing everything in sight with as many mega pixels as possible. And sightseeing is like a race against time, and innumerable fellow travelers.

Desire to capture the evidence of being in a place can even surpass the desire to experience the place itself.
So while the Chinese travelers are busy capturing they can sometimes lose on the moments and experience part. Add to this the fact that if they are unable to organize what they capture – they can even miss on these memories.

The relative inexperience of the Chinese leisure traveler is a reflection of China’s stage of development, and it offers fertile ground for marketers.

There are various ways to helping these Chinese travelers. And marketers of technology products can especially play an important role in this.

Film and camera companies can help Chinese tourists, many of whom are first-time owners of high-end digital cameras, find better ways of organizing travel pictures. Photographs can be brought to life in more ways than just sprinkling them on a blog, e-mailing them as large files or dumping them in some obscure corner of the hard drive,
For example, PC and Television companies can inspire the users through easy to use though music-layered slide shows on that can be viewed on large flat-screen TV sets. Right now only Apple comes close to providing this kind of inspiration.

Mobile phone companies and wireless carriers could offer more ways to use location-based services by developing and marketing applications that help people learn more about the temple in front of them or the myth about a lake they are walking past.

Even non- technology brands have many opportunities. Brands related to travel, travel accessories and hospitality could play a more important role here. So could brands that help people better understand the places and artifacts that so far they have only been clicking and carrying home in the flash memory of a newly acquired digital camera.

Automakers can help those traveling by car discover unknown attractions on the way to the hotel.

For those less savvy with technology, marketers could bundle promotional materials such as city guides with tourism accessories like North Face backpacks or camera lenses.

Advertisers have experimented with these ideas in western countries but in China, most remain unknown — even though the mainland has become a massive market for domestic tourism.

A moment between shooting those shadows

“Foreigner lights up Guangzhou by dancing like a weirdo,” (老外搞怪舞功燃烧广州), appeared a couple of weeks ago on Chinese video-sharing site Youku. At the time of writing, the clip had been viewed 648,791 times.

The dancer, who is probably not called Matt, is dancing in Guangzhou, host of the upcoming Asian Games. The annoying catchy soundtrack tells viewers to put up their hands and cheer for Asia.

Look familiar?

It may remind some of another viral video phenomenon, “Where the Hell is Matt”, which also starred a white man dancing stupidly in various locations:

Although nobody appears to be claiming credit for the Guangzhou clip,  it was probably commercially produced, most likely by an official body linked to the Games or by Jianlibao (健力宝), the beverage brand that appears toward the end of the clip.

Many of the people who have left comments are similarly suspicious, while many others appear to be genuinely impressed and moved.

A couple of the clip’s viewers also point out the similarity with Matt’s video, calling it a “rip-off Where the Hell is Matt.”

The below announcement is regarding a Social Media strategist position in our Shanghai office, but we are looking elsewhere in Asia as well, including Malaysia.

Are you the right person? Shoot me an email: thomas.crampton at ogilvy dot com

We need an ace Digital professional in Shanghai who knows the Internet and Social Media in China.

Your qualities? You have a passion for the changes in digital and communications. You get things done. You are supremely organized. You are always learning. You hate when things are not done as well as they could be. You are enthusiastic and love team work. You are curious about everything.

Some slides from a presentation I did recently on Social Media in Asia. I may pull them out one at a time to encourage people to give their take and input. (But feel free to comment below!)

Last week Google announced it’s real time search feature, which I believe is set to forever change the way we think about and use search.

If you haven’t seen it in action yet I recommend you go to the Google home page and search for something topical like climate change.

In the results some movement should catch your eye and there they’ll be – real time search results. Take a moment to just sit back, relax and let the strangely compelling waterfall of information wash over you.

Once you wake from the dull, Google-induced trance you’ll have hopefully experienced an epiphany similar to mine:

Right at this moment people all over the world are talking about you, your business, your brand, your event, whatever it may be, and now as soon as they say it – Google will display it.

So how are we going to influence the conversation and harness the power of real time in 2010?

Singapore’s Today newspaper quoted Ogilvy DI colleague Brian Giesen about Twitter and how businesses can best use it.

Chinese microblog platforms have one major thing in common with Twitter, they limit updates to 140 characters. However, since a Chinese character generally conveys much more meaning than a single letter of the Roman alphabet, a Chinese microblog update can say a lot more than one in English.

As a very rough guide, four Chinese characters (新浪微博) are used to describe one of China’s leading microblog platforms, while fourteen characters are needed to write its English translation, Sina Microblog.

Similarly, 推特 – the Chinese for Twitter, does in two characters what English does in seven.

In addition, Chinese sentences do not need any spaces to make sense, even after punctuation marks.

Admittedly, posts on Chinese microblogs are often a mixture of English words and Chinese; and the online cultures of China and the English-language speaking world abbreviate in different ways.

However, despite these qualifying factors, by offering the same 140-character limit, microblogs are being much less stingy to Chinese writers than people updating in English.

So, a company or an individual can say a lot more. And quite often, they do just that. First, look at this fairly typical Twitter update from microblog aficionados, Dell (@DellOutlet):

Below is another update, also from Dell (@delldirect), on Chinese “twitter-like” site, Zuosa.com:

In just 114 characters, this Dell microblogger had managed to say the following:

Dell’s National Day Sale will run from Sept 11 to Oct 8. To celebrate the 60^th anniversary w. the motherland, Dell Home Computers is offering 6 cool gifts & deals on 10 computer models. These exciting offers will run non-stop for 4 weeks. Also, get a free upgrade to color casing & a 512MB independent graphics card, as well as other service upgrades. All offers are on a first-come-first-serve basis. What R U waiting 4? Act now!

It doesn’t look so “micro” now, does it? By using only part of their allowance, Dell managed to say the equivalent of 430 English-language characters.

When it comes to microblogs, I am less likely to read long updates; fat blocks of characters – English or Chinese – put me off.

Of course, not everyone is as lazy as me. However, companies should think about whether they should take advantage of these slightly less “micro” opportunities by writing longer updates. Personally, I think they shouldn’t. In this case, less is definitely more.

What do hydrants, voicemails and denial have in common?  They’re all now closely associated with the Tiger Woods brand, according to new research from Nielsen Online.

Today, Nielsen Online provided me with a Brand Association Map demonstrating the impact of the controversy on the Tiger Woods brand – based on analysis of online discussion about Tiger Woods both before and after the controversy.

Not surprisingly, as a result of the recent controversy the Tiger Woods brand has gone from being closely associated with video games, golf and other sports to other, well, less wholesome topics.

While the jury’s still out on how long it will take for the Tiger Woods brand to recover, one thing’s for certain – these less wholesome associations will take far longer to fade away.

I met up with uber blogger Robert Scoble (aka: Scobleizer) ahead of Le Web. I intended on interviewing him, but he turned his camera on me before I could get mine out.

Mobile is increasingly becoming a medium for access of social networking.  According to a study conducted by e marketer on the mobile social network users, it was observed that the percentage of people accessing the social networking sites through mobile has increased at a rate of about 100% for the year 2007 to 2008 and by more than 50% by 2009 and is expected to continue at the same pace ultimately exceeding  800 million by 2012.

 Be it networking  by face book,  microblogging by twitter or videocasting by youtube,    mobile has  created an easy and seamless way to drive consumers to mobile content.

According to Nielsen, Facebook is the No. 7 mobile website in terms of reach. About 15% of Facebook users (11 million) in the U.S. regularly access the social network’s mobile web version (not to mention various downloadable versions and the roughly three million users who use SMS). More than 3 million Twitter users in the U.S. alone regularly access the service via the mobile web. Besides,  large number of  consumers are frequently using Twitter through SMS and a range of downloadable mobile applications for iPhone, BlackBerry and other mobile devices. The native versions of YouTube that come pre-installed on iPhones, Android phones like the G1, and the Palm Pre offer the best mobile user experience. However, the mobile web version is also outstanding, and has well over 4.6 million users that log in many times a month. This has all been possible owing to the success of internet growth across the globe.

 Therefore, as the telecom sector is one of the most successful  stories for India and is increasingly revolutionizing the way we  connect with the world, the widening of spectrum will  enhance the experience of the subscribers  thereby generating more and more demand for  staying connected and  also accessing social networking platforms through mobile .   It seems that  ICT success story in India will generate a sequel in the form of mobile social networking success story in India