360DigitalInfluence

This article was originally posted by MEDIA

Shenan Chuang (pictured), chief executive at Ogilvy & Mather Group China, shares her insights on marketing to Chinese consumers during the rapidly approaching Chinese New Year period and gives advise on how brands can capture a bit of the holiday magic.

1. Planes, trains and automobiles. In China, each year’s ChunYun, or Spring Festival travel season, sees hundreds of millions of people crisscrossing the country to reunite with their families. During this 40-day frenzy, three distinct groups of travellers can be spotted based on their choice of transportation. Migrant workers and students flood the trains; office workers, expatriates and overseas travellers form the core of the air travel segment while short-distance travellers take to the streets in automobiles. This mass migration means most consumers deviate from their normal media consumption habits and channels for up to a month or more - not an insignificant amount of time. Buses, transit zones, and outdoor media often become the primary communication channels for a country on the move.

2. Know your (often unlikely) brand ambassadors As scores of migrant workers and students temporarily trade in the bright lights of the big cities for their hometowns in the countryside, they arrive loaded with gifts, products and information from their big city lives. Viewed as successful returnees, their attitudes and opinions on brands and products are very influential on old friends and family. For brands seeking to penetrate lower tier Chinese cities and rural markets, word-of-mouth endorsements from these (often unlikely) brand ambassadors are your best - and most effective - bet.

3. The New Year’s Eve dinner. The New Year’s Eve dinner is always a highlight of the holiday celebration and family reunions. But the format has changed over the years. First it was a must to gather at home for the annual feast. That tradition eventually gave way to eating out as many families chose restaurants for their convenience and ambiance. Nowadays staying at home for the once-a-year indulgence is back in vogue – but with a twist. Rather than slaving over a hot wok or battling for a reservation at a hotel, more families are choosing to order ready-made meals that can be enjoyed at home without the hassle of fighting for a taxi only to be stuck in holiday gridlock. This shift signals big business potential for brands that can enhance those dinners at home with tableware, gift sets of holiday spirits, sweets and snacks or even jumbo family packs for the three generations reuniting over this special event.

4. CCTV New Year’s Gala – who’s watching? The CCTV New Year’s Gala (or ChunWan) is the premier mainland Chinese television event of the year, comparable to the Super Bowl in America. As the most influential and highly rated TV show in China, the Gala attracts marketers eager to buy airtime at any cost. But be forewarned: audience ratings drop as you move from the north of the country to the south. The highest ratings can be found in Northeast China where 85 per cent of residents tune in. This percentage drops to 70 per cent for Beijing and Tianjin, 60 percent for Shandong/ Shanxi/ Henan/ Shaanxi, 20 per cent for Shanghai/ Jiangsu/ Anhui/ Hubei/ Sichuan, 10 per cent for Zhejiang/ Fujian, and below 5 per cent for Guangdong/ Guangxi/ Hainan. So before you burn through your budget, think hard about your target audience… and where they live.

5. Home (and nowhere else) for the holidays. While some sightsee during the holiday, others prefer to “ZhaiNan,” which essentially means hibernating at home doing three things: eating, sleeping and surfing the web. Surfers are primarily engaged in online shopping, SNS and gaming. In 2009, online retailer Taobao.com reported a 195 per cent increase over 2008 in the number of products exchanged by consumers during the CNY period. Bestsellers were mobile phones, digital products, household appliances and gift packs with health supplements. Another trend of recent years is the younger generation’s preference for sending New Year greetings by SMS rather than paying a visit to relatives and friends.  As the internet and mobile applications make their mark on millennia-old traditions, it’s time for marketers to make inroads into the CNY “ZhaiNan” phenomenon.

Across Asia, social media tools like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blogs have redefined how businesses operate. While the focus is often on Social Media strategies for reaching consumers, companies operating in the B2B space – consultancies, wholesalers and manufacturers – can sometimes benefit even more than consumer-focused companies.

Shouldn’t you learn how to leverage social media?

Join the award-winning Social Media team from Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide for a free 30-minute online seminar powered by Citrix GoToWebinar and done in partnership with The Wall Street Journal Asia.

This webinar will provide concrete examples, action plans and case studies, including:

· 5 key steps for a business-to-business strategy;
· How to build and engage a community of potential and current customers;
· Real-life case studies from successful business-to-business strategies;
· The highly popular – and now extended – Question and Answer section;
· Much, much more…

The seminar will be led by Brian Giesen a senior regional strategist in Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team and moderated by Thomas Crampton, the team’s Asia-Pacific director.

Hurry! Space is limited for this 30-minute webinar* and registration is required.

Join us Wednesday, 3 March at 11:00am (Hong Kong time)

To register go to wsj-asia.com/webinar

I had a wonderful conversation this afternoon with MIT Professor Jing Wang about her project “NGO 2.0 China.” We were first introduced to each other randomly through Scott Kronick, by my desk, where I kept a book Brand New China written by her. Scott asked me if I’d like to have the author’s signature – of course! During our random but pleasant encounter, Professor Jing Wang mentioned her current project -“NGO 2.0 China.” I was intrigued. Having done some research at home, I wrote to her and told her that I’d like to be a volunteer.

Professor Jing Wang launched the NGO 2.0 China project in spring 2009 in collaboration with Ogilvy & Mather in Beijing, the University of Science and Technology of China, and three other Chinese NGOs.

What exactly is NGO 2.0? Professor Jing Wang and her partners are building the first social networking platform for grassroots NGOs in

China. At the same time, they will be holding Web 2.0 training workshops for NGOs in Western and central provinces and co-developing training materials with Intel China. A ranking system will be integrated into the platform to promote the organizational transparency of NGOs.

The project was created to meet the dilemma faced by mid-sized grassroots NGOs in China: even as they each develop their own small websites, these NGOs remain as insulated from one another as before. What they actually need is a platform that allows them to share resources, build networks and recruit members at little cost. Web 2.0 would be a perfect solution to help them.

Professor Jing Wang’s design of the project, in its much simplified version, is to bridge Chinese grassroots NGOs with 1) IT infrastructure/service providers and 2) business entities like Ogilvy & Mather. The former can help build a necessary platform and participate in implementing creative ideas generated by vanguard grassroots NGOs; the latter can provide creative ideas for NGO 2.0 programs and help with content generation on the platform. In addition, (1) and (2) can both contribute to training programs for capacity-building.

The NGO 2.0 China project intrigued me because in a world where everyone is talking frantically about social media and Web 2.0, I feel this project is one of the few that has a clear purpose backed by thoughtful program design.

NGO 2.0 China is not the kind of ideal that can only end up being a good will in real life. This ideal is supported by pragmatic program design that aligns partners with different interests and drives things forward together. Imagine an IT company that has a strong interest in CSR projects. Imagine a company that is attempting to engage third-party endorsers.

Finally, NGO 2.0 China encourages me to think critically about the role that traditional and mainstream Chinese media plays in this field. Many times, published NGO stories are often dominated by sensational and distorted narrations. The effect of such reports, in addition to creating a large readership, is often the further marginalization of the victims.

If you are interested in learning more about this project, please visit the following websites: http://web.mit.edu/fll/www/people/JingWang.shtml (Professor Jing Wang’s personal webpage) and http://ngo20china.wikispaces.com/(NGO 2.0 wiki site).

I am sharing some research that was released from the Ogilvy PR Australia office earlier this week about what major issues are keeping Australians “up at night”. The research included a finding called the “One Kilometre Phenomenon” - or the fact that issues cosest to us are really top of mind for all. 

Here’s a bit more about the research:

A lack of respect for both other people and public property are two of the most common concerns raised by Australians in a new suite of research released today.

Conducted by advertising and communications group Ogilvy, the study was designed to discover what issues were concerning Australians, rate the level of concern and measure how much control we felt over those concerns. The study uncovered a spectrum of concern spanning relationships, juggling work and life, ageing, health and wellbeing, technology, food, finances, security and government.

continue reading

I recently setup an Ogilvy Asia-Pacific Tweeters list using a handy service called TweepML. In case you’re not familiar with it, TweepML is in its own words “an easy way to create, manage, share and find lists of interesting Twitter users to follow.”

Very easy in fact, it took only a couple of minutes to copy-and-paste in all the Ogilvy Asia-Pacific Twitter users I could find. All there was left to do was tell everyone about it.

But then of course Twitter rolled out its new lists feature, giving us all the functionality we could ever want, and pretty much rendering the TweepML service and my blog post obsolete – or did it?

One thing is for sure: Twitter lists are rapidly becoming the new currency in social media with traditional follower-metrics on the way out and list-baiting already well under way.

But after having used both, I can say that Twitter lists are still missing some key features. For the Ogilvy Asia-Pacific list it came down to 2 things which TweepML lists let you do that Twitter lists don’t:

1. Users suggestions
   The Ogilvy Asia-Pacific Tweeters list will most likely grow and chances are not everyone that should be on it was there from day one. So allowing users to suggest additions is key to keeping the list relevant and up to date.

2. One-click following
   Twitter lists are a great discovery mechanism as they essentially allow you to subscribe to a feed of users without directly following anyone. But what if you actually want to make a connection with everyone on a list? With a Twitter list you would have to go through the entire list and manually follow each user, TweepML lets you follow everyone in a list with just one click.

So if you want to connect with fellow Ogilvy thought leaders in the Asia-Pacific region, make sure you check out the Ogilvy Asia-Pacific Tweeters list.

Here are the slides from our highly successful partnership with The Wall Street Journal and GoToWebinar for the training on The Executives Guide to Facebook for Business.

We also have a full video version posted here and below.

Please enjoy and share!

Oct 7th Facebook for Business from 360 Digital Influence on Vimeo.

First in a series of free online Webinars on Social Media presented in partnership by The Wall Street Journal Asia, GoToWebinar and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. Join our next event! Next session announced on our blog: www.asiadigitalmap.com or email thomas.crampton@ogilvy.com