360DigitalInfluence

The first in a new monthly series of reports monitoring social media buzz about World Expo 2010 Shanghai says tickets to the big event is the hottest topic online.

Launched today by Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, and CIC, an Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) research and consulting firm, ExpoSay is a monthly report on Chinese language IWOM – or Social Media buzz – related to World Expo 2010 Shanghai.

“This report’s findings show how China’s netizens are already discussing many aspects Shanghai Expo, from tickets to pavilions to sponsors,” said Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pacific Director, 360 Digital Influence, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. “Chinese consumers can make or break brands online, so listening is the first step to developing a powerful strategy to engage them.”

Ticket-related topics were the subject of most online Expo chatter in December and phrases about “what to buy” and “how to buy” the tickets became the most popular keywords.

The increase of ticket prices to 150 RMB from 140 RMB announced in mid-December brought predictable criticism, but also some interesting responses. Some companies, such as the e-commerce site yihaodian.com, have started offering their customers tickets at the lower, initial price. Even Shanghai’s Jingan district is offering tickets as incentives for those touring historic Communist sites. This has served as a high-profile, attractive and relatively low cost promotion.

Meanwhile, students are using Social Media to self-organize to purchase tickets at group discounts and many people are discussing the technology behind the Expo’s mobile phone-based tickets. Netizens living in rural China have been using discussion boards as a way to find tickets.

To receive a copy of the report, simply register at Ogilvy PR’s World Expo Blog.

If you’re not one of the 70 million people expected to visit World Expo 2010 Shanghai this year then there is a perfect, virtual alternative. Expo Online is an ambitious digital project by the organising bureau of Expo 2010 which will be the nearest thing to actually being here from May 1 to Oct 31 when Shanghai’s hosts the largest world’s fair in history.

At Expo Online you can take a virtual tour of the 5.28 sqm fairground and take a look inside the striking pavilions, such as the one for Australia (above). In time the site will evolve to include more content as each participant readies its virtual contents. In some cases the virtual experience will reveal the contents of the real-time pavilions and in other cases they will merely give a taste, or otherwise complement the real thing.

China has been invited to join Hopenhagen, an international movement and campaign developed by our Ogilvy office in New York to drive action on climate change at the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen this December.

Hopenhagen allows citizens to become active participants in the climate change dialogue and make their voices heard to world leaders and the conference delegates attending the meeting. The ultimate call to action will be to secure signatures for the “Climate Change” petition in support of the UN, which calls for a climate treaty that is “ambitious, fair and effective in reducing emissions”.

Ogilvy Earth China worked closely with the New York office to translate the campaign for the Chinese audience. The Chinese Hopenhagen website will serve as the campaign hub to give Chinese citizens, government, non-profits and businesses the tools to rally support for a positive outcome at the COP15 Climate Change Conference.

Netizens can also participate in Hopenhagen through popular social networks Douban, RenRen and Kaixin, the photo sharing network BaBaBian and microblogging platforms 9911 and Sina.

There is a popular saying in politics that all politics are local; and in China the same can be said about the Internet. Local players, in tune to the specific needs of the country’s “Netizens”, rule the digital space, and the numbers are staggering. Currently, the Internet in China is home to over 340 million users who are online for an average of 16 hours per week, the same amount of time they spend watching television. There are 111 million people managing a social network profile, and these numbers are growing daily. The power of the Internet in China has never been stronger and has not even begun to be realised.

It is no secret that the Internet in China has been an agent for reform, and it is serving as a valuable tool for people to explore a world often beyond their reach. The Internet is not only serving China’s growing set of Netizens though. It is quickly replacing traditional media as brands and companies seek to connect with their consumers in new and different ways. With the exception of Google, international platforms that offer a cut and paste version of their American or European sites simply fail and often get banned. Popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter have fallen victim to the Great Firewall of China. While young innovative Chinese Netizens can find a way to get to these sites, why would they want to? Chinese social media is simply way cooler.

The Internet in China is dominated by long-running, multi-service portals like Sina, QQ and Sohu that have been offering social networking, discussion forums, blogs, instant messaging and other “socialised media” long before Twitter and Facebook. As the nationally preferred form of social media, bulletin board systems (BBS) are available in every imaginable topic, and in these forums, Netizens can be extremely vocal, resourceful, risk-takers, subversive and sometimes a little worrisome.

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From May to October 2010, Shanghai will play host to the largest world fair in history and the organising bureau are ensuring it is a digital expo too. Expo Online is a key measure of their digital communications and we are now able to get a preview into what’s in store.

You can browse the 5.25 square-kilometre site and interact with the various country and corporate pavilions on the Pudong and Puxi sides of the Huangpu River respectively.

In the screen capture at the top of this post you can see a section of the Asia Pacific area of Expo 2010. The big brown pavilion with a red marker on top is Australia. To its left you can see Thailand, and on the right Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand. Meanwhile in the image below you can see the big Korean and Japanese pavilions.

Next year Expo Online will enable users to have a fully interactive experience, going inside the virtual pavilions and enjoy beautifully created digital experiences in several languages. Until then have fun playing around with the current version and if you want to learn more about World Expo 2010 Shanghai, check out my blog.

It’s not easy being a foreign social media enthusiast in China. China blocks the social media sites that you take for granted. Life without Twitter I can deal with but can you imagine being denied Facebook and YouTube? They even blocked Vimeo and Last.fm. Try running a blog without being able to embed anything but videos from YouKu and Tudou (which is not necessarily a bad thing because they are less censored than YouTube - go figure).

I tried to get around with tools like Ping.fm which could simultaneously update my Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Delicious in one go but bugger it is banned now too.

Of course, none of this matters to China’s 360 million Netizens who think foreign social media is inferior anyway (and in many cases they are right). However there is one benefit to living on this side of the Great Firewall of China that you folks will never know; not even my friends in Hong Kong. For while I can use a VPN server to access YouTube when I really need need it, Google’s Music channel in China is something you will only experience on the mainland.

Each morning when I log on I point my browser to http://www.google.cn/music, search for music and decide whether to add to my evolving playlist (and sing along to the scrolling lyrics) or download and send to friend or iPod.

There are prompts to purchase the music although I don’t really know why anyone would, nor for that matter what Google’s business model is, other than a sink or swim retaliation to Baidu’s equally impressive music search, listen and download system.

Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide was awarded Best Use of Digital at the PR Week Awards held last night in Hong Kong for a campaign with Pond’s Age Miracle in China.

One hundred and fifty beauty bloggers in Shanghai participated in a blind trial pitting Pond’s Age Miracle against their existing prestige brand and the results worked overwhelmingly in favour of Pond’s. Nine out of 10 women said they would recommend Age Miracle to a friend and the same number said it is better than their prestige brand. For more about the case please read recent write-ups in AdvertisingAge in China and the USA.

Credit for this exciting win is shared between Marion McDonald, Rebecca Simpson, Liza Levy, Stephen Ma Haiming, yours truly … and of course our wonderful friends at Unilever in Singapore and Shanghai.

This is the second time in three years we have held this honour, following our triumph in 2007 with a case for South China Morning Post shared between our 360° Digital Influence teams in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Ogilvy PR was also recognised with a Certificate of Excellence in the Technology Campaign of the Year category for the recent Intel Blogathon in Singapore.

Moreover Ogilvy PR was named Network of the Year and took home 13 honours; three times as many as the number two agency.

Here’s a treat for viral video fans. YouKu Buzz (daily) posts interesting clips from leading video sharing network, YouKu. Here is Taiwanese magician Liu Qian dazzling fans in a clever viral from Nokia.

All across China netizens are sneaking vegetables from their neighbours!

Hua Yuan 花园, or Garden, is the social networking application of the moment that has members of Xiaonei and Kaixin hooked. The premise of Hua Yuan is simple: grow and protect vegetables and flowers in your own virtual farm and earn virtual fame and fortune along the way.

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