How to market a yellow umbrella?

A group of students is eating noodles in front of little colourful tents. White banners with large black characters are  draped around them, urging for 'democracy' and 'real universal suffrage'. In the background big yellow characters, saying 'Persistence', finish off this atmospheric scene. I can't help whipping out my phone and snapping a picture. The students don't even notice it. Behind me, two middle aged women do the same.

A festival
When not reading the texts on the banners, the occupied area in Admiralty on Hong Kong island, feels rather like a festival than a protest site. People are holding dance performances, folding little umbrellas and sticking colourful post-its on walls. Hong Kong students are very well aware of the visual communication that will spread their message through social media. Where the protest-generation that came before these teenagers and twenty-somethings had to rely on official journalist and freelance press mosquitos, now every by-passer is a publisher. Contrary to traditional press, these publishers care little for speeches and interviews. The nicer the  pictures, the more chance of it being shared on social media. Hong Kong people love taking pictures and love sharing them even more.

Selfie with the Umbrella Man

That's why art is quickly emerging
at the occupied sites; more than chanting or singing: this will virtually spread the message.  'The Umbrella Man' statue that was created overnight with small pieces of wood, has become a true icon with whom you can make great selfies. The umbrella tree on the other side, makes for a colourful composition to lighten up your Instagram. Thousands of pictures are made on a daily basis and many are being shared on social media. This way he reach of the protest is being spread far beyond the 3 physical places that are being blocked. Even tourists from mainland China can't resist the colourful displays and snap away with their phones, unfortunately risking being censored on Chinese social media. Hong Kongers on the other hand, still have the freedom to post and say whatever they like.

Emerging marketeers?

The interesting part is: Hong Kong has never been the most creative city in the world. In this financial hub the focus for students is on education and test-scores to ensure a well paid job at a large company. Nothing brings Hong Kong parents more pride. That is why most mums and dads are not particularly thrilled with the thought of their smart kids wasting valuable school time on folding umbrellas. But unlike their parents, these youngsters  know that they have to keep the masses entertained to hold sympathy and spread ideas. Besides politics, marketing is a very important part of their movement. If all else fails, some of those kids might have found themselves to be great artists or marketeers instead of bankers and accountants.

Products specifically made for the Asian market.

When living or traveling in China you come across products that you would never imagine to see in the Western world. I thought it would be nice to share this experience with you.

When I first visited a China based partner company I experienced  something entirely new during the 1 hour lunch break. During this break around 70% of the people grabbed a pillow from their suitcase and went for a 30 minute nap on top of their keyboard. 2 weeks later I discovered this product was trending and hot selling on a Chinese shopping website Aliexpress;

Part of the product description;

It looks like a large hood, almost completely covering the head and neck, only his nose and mouth breathing. It also has two side holes, a user can extend the hand, completely isolated from the external interference, resulting in the privacy and comfort in small spaces have a nap.

I think this is a perfect example of a product that is of perfect use in China but would not stand a chance in Europe due to cultural differences. How would people in your office look at you when you pull this out of your bag?

Have you encountered specific products traveling or living in China? Let us know in the comment section if you have.

For now one more product I like to share: put your baby to work! and get a shiny floor :)

Hollywood bowing to China? (part 1)

With rising production costs and a weak national economy, Hollywood is now eying foreign money with even more passion than before. An audience of 1.6 billion people, with a growing middle-class, is enough to put the ￥- signs in any movie producer's eyes. Unfortunately there are some major obstacles in getting your hands on those Chinese yuans. Is Hollywood clever enough to get past them?

Limit on foreign movies
While the US counts more than 59,500 movie theater screens nation wide, China only has little less than 14,000 screens. This means there is a limit to the number of movies which can be shown in the country. Although an average of 9 new screens per day are being added, it will take some time to make movies available to the entire population. Even worse, there is a quota on foreign movies in order to protect the local market. Although this limit has been raised from 20 to 34 foreign films per year, it comes with a catch: the 14 extra films should be either 3D, Imax or animation. This only leaves room for big budget block busters who, to be honest, will need Chinese ticketsales the most to cover their high production costs. Even more reason for for these big budget movies to not step on any censor's toes, since without their approval your movie won't even get near one of those new fancy IMAX screens.

Villains and viruses
A good example is Marvel/Disney's 'Iron Man 3' which was released in spring 2013. It's key villain 'The Mandarin' is originally an English/Chinese scientist and martial artist, with a mad desire to take over the world. But Disney still remembered their run-in with the Chinese censors when releasing 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End' where Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-Fat's scenes were mercilessly cut for portraying a Chinese villainous pirate. So this time they dodged the issue by hiring British Ben Kingsley and taking out all references to the Mandarin's Chinese background, knowing very well that 'bad Chinese' in your movie is a no-go for access to that 1.6 billion audience. The question is: will Hollywood ever have a Chinese villain again?

                Ben Kingsley as 'The Mandarin' in 'Iron man 3'

Where Chinese directors know the censors a bit better and can often play an interesting cat and mouse-game, Hollywood only knows the basic rules and prefers to play it safe. Money talks and being a good schoolboy always works. So bad references towards China like the original script of Brad Pitt's World War Z had (a deadly virus originating from China) would be quickly changed (a virus originating from Russia) for the final cut. Even director 'bad-boy' Quentin Tarantino allowed steamy scenes to be cut from 'Django, Unchained', when it was pulled from Chinese theaters for unknown reasons. The new version was allowed to play again but on less screens and suddenly facing competition from the aforementioned 'Iron Man 3'. The momentum was lost and the movie already had a bad rep for being sliced by censors. The young urban crowd was not interested in watching a crippled version while being able to buy a pirated full-version copy for a few yuan. A Chinese box office of only $2.76 million was the poor result.

Co-productions 

Lately Hollywood has found interesting ways to get past that meager quota and get some help with passing the censors: Chinese co-productions. As these are not completely 'foreign' movies they are not included in the quota, and Chinese investors bringing in some extra cash is an interesting bonus. Michael Bay's 'Transformers 4' will be a co-production, in turn needing to add local Chinese actors. Actor/director Keanu Reeves takes it to another level by having a Mandarin/English spoken movie as his directorial debut: 'Man of Tai Chi' featuring the director himself together with local actors Tiger Chen and Karen Mok.

But as all these co-productions add positive Chinese elements to get past censors and pull in that cash, they do seem to ignore an important fact: the audience preferences. The most successful Hollywood movies in China show that the audience couldn't care less about local influences: 'Avatar', 'Transformers: dark of the Moon' and 'Titanic 3D' showed the Chinese audiences something they couldn't find in local movies. Even the success of 'Iron Man 3' can't officially be credited to adding a few extra scenes in the Chinese version. So the question is: would audiences go to see a 'Tai Chi / Kung Fu' movie made by Keanu Reeves while there are more experienced local film makers to handle the material? The joy of American movies is seeing something different and escaping daily life, an American movie partly set in China might take away this experience.

David vs Goliath: can Chinese smartphone OPPO beat Samsung?

Out of of nowhere a new high-end smartphone appeared. Where other brands spend millions on marketing and announce their new models months ahead, the OPPO Find 5 just made a silent entrance. Despite its quiet nature, the Find 5 already created a lot of buzz;

But who the hell is OPPO? OPPO Digital is a Chinese company based in Dongguan  and they are already known for their high quality Blu-Ray players. Part of their vision is to 'deliver products that speak for themselves', by mostly relying on word-of-mouth. OPPO Digital doesn't even have a dedicated Marketing and Sales department. This vision has certainly proved successful for the Find 5 in China; within hours it was sold out.

Quite impressive if you consider that this particular model had no real marketing and sales strategy. The ultimate example that a good product can still sell itself through word-of-mouth. I think that is really refreshing to see in a world of mass marketing.

But would this strategy be able to bring the same success in Europe? Would they be able to compete with, for instance, Samsung? This would probably be a difficult task because, although on paper the Find 5 beats all the other high-end smart phones, there are some important downsides when you look past the phone itself.

First of all, for most people it's important to see and touch a phone in real life before buying it. Especially when a brand is unknown and new.  Now this is where it gets complicated because OPPO is not being offered in any store in Europe at the moment. So there is no chance to get familiar with the product besides online information. This way they are really limiting their market because only a small part of the smartphone users are adventures enough to buy a product based on digital information only. 

The next problem would be service and trust. Although the Find 5 is cheaper than its competitors, it's still an expensive product and customers would need a certain amount of service with it. Without any store-backing up the brand there would be no direct service. A major retailer selling and backing-up Oppo will increase Oppo's service level and also trustworthiness of the brand allot and this is a real miss at the moment.

Now the previous mentioned points are mainly carried from the traditional marketing and sales point of view. And I do believe that in the future, and even now, there are other ways of reassuring buyers . For instance the product/brand can get known through (video) reviews, forums and social media. Support can be offered in a online forum that's available for everyone.

Now the above points will be no problem for the younger, tech-smart generation, who are more likely to trust these new forms of customer service and marketing.
But to be a mature product that wants to be bought by a broad audience, like Samsung achieved, OPPO would need the support of phone retailers to let their brand grow. This way it might be able to offer the service level that the other big brands can offer.

The OPPO Find 5 seems a good product but to go beyond the tech-freaks and early adapters, it would need to have support of retailers that can help build the brand and give the Find 5 the attention it deserves.

How a yellow duck failed to survive Chinese Censorship

Censorship on Weibo is an every day cat-and-mouse game between often over-sensitive censors and Chinese netizens ('internet citizens' meaning web users) who try to push the limits. Tracking down which status updates or pictures have been deleted often gives an interesting insight in which issues are currently embarrassing to the government. A great tool to monitor this is WeiboScope, set up by the university of Hong Kong, which monitors deleted posts in real-time.

This way we know for example that combining the sensitive issues of Beijing's air pollution with chairman Mao's portrait  is an obvious no-go.

Even more information can be found in knowing which words are currently blocked by Sina's search engine. Whenever a word is deemed 'dangerous' it will (temporary) show up with 0 results. Besides obvious things, these search terms can be very creative. For example during the Nobel Prize ceremony in October 2012 the search term: 空凳 (empty stool) was blocked, since it referred to the empty chair of Nobel prize winner Lu Xiaobo who was imprisoned and could therefore not attend.

Today is the annual most busy day for Chinese censors. June 4th marks the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, a day the government wants to forget but many netizens are eager to bring to the spotlight.

Besides the obvious search terms being blocked, suddenly the 'candle' item has disappeared from the emoticon section on Sina Weibo. Officially because of 'maintenance' but it's a bit too coincidental since this symbol is often used to mourn great disasters.

Of course, posting pictures of that dark day 24 years ago, is hardly worth trying. So Web-users have been creative in bringing the issue to light in unconventional forms with using the iconic picture of the 'Tank-man' as inspiration. As a result even the word 'Big Yellow Duck' will now turn up with 0 results:

The Big Yellow Duck is an art-project currently visible in Hong Kong's harbour and a big hype in Hong Kong and China. Before yesterday it had nothing to do with politics. Today this innocent chick suddenly found itself representing the Chinese Government

Angry birds version

and of course a Lego-version

Bargaining culture in China: how does it affect online buying?

It's no secret that bargaining is important in Chinese culture. Haggling over prices is not all about the money. It's mostly being used to create trust and a connection between the buyer and the seller. That this process should not be underestimated shows by the fact that some critics blame the failure of Best Buy in China on the fact that bargaining was not an option in their stores. 

Best Buy, a big US retail chain went to expand their branch to China and used exactly the same concept as they use in the US. ''We offer the Best Buy, and our list price is our lowest price.'' No bargaining needed because it's already at the lowest price. Best Buy didn't understand that it was now missing an import aspect of the purchasing process in China, regardless of the price tag. Their approach just didn't offer offering the full purchasing experience and caused them to fail.

A good example of how far this culture goes is Taobao.com, China's largest online marketplace. One of the most popular features on here is the option for buyers and seller to connect and chat. This function is giving a platform to re-create the traditional bargaining process and makes sure the buyer and seller can bound and create trust before the purchase happens.

Negotiating over prices basically happens when the same product is available at different independent sellers like on markets or small stores. Usually the buyer is not having a preference for one seller/brand yet so the only important thing would be, the price!

 But there is a change happening and tradition might be outrun by ease. The new wealthier middle class doesn't  want to waste time negotiating and fears to over-pay as a result. They usually already know what item or brand they want and there is no need to play out time consuming routines. Think of products like Apple, Luxury watches and jewellery like Rolex, Omega and Cartier and designer clothing like Burberry, Dior etc. The exclusivity of those items is also making a bargain impossible.

My conclusion is that the required bargaining is often more trouble than pleasure for the younger and wealthier generation, because they just don't have time for the hassle. They know what they want and want it easy and fast. This younger group might cause a change in the buying process of Chinese consumers, although at the moment that younger wealthier generation is still a small part of society. The larger part still wants their bargaining  and Best Buy and their concept of 'list price is lowest price' might just have arrived a bit too early.

Has Pepsi become Chinese enough?

This weekend I was at the Midi Music festival in Shenzhen which had a whole stage and area sponsored by Pepsi Coke (百事可乐). Live bands, video-games and of course their famous soft-drink were there to appeal to the young urban crowd attending the festival. This reminded me a lot of Pepsi's strategy worldwide, tying itself to pop and sports-culture to obtain a cool image with a young target group. How does this work out for them behind the Great Wall?

Pepsi Coke first entered the Chinese market in 1981, 2 years after big rival Coca Cola re-entered the territory after a 30+ years absence due to the communist rulers closing their borders to foreign investors. As a very American-looking brand, Pepsi worked hard during the past 30 years to become more Chinese. But looking at their strategy, it hasn't been so different from what they've been doing in the rest of the world. They just added a bit of Chinese flavour to it. But often these 'Chinese spices' still seemed cooked up in the States.

A good example is this 2004 ad, featuring famous Chinese pop stars like Taiwan's Jay Chou and Hong Kong's Edison Chen. But they don't sing a note: instead they do what Americans like Chinese to do: kung-fu!



Another beautiful case of Pepsi literally showing its love for the Middle Kingdom is this commercial surrounding the 2008 Olympics: 'Love China' (all the people in the commercial are shouting 'Love China')



Where did this marketing strategy lead to? Well, to a 4.4% market share in China. Which is not bad concerning the population traditionally has a preference for non-carbonated drinks including tea and fruit juices. But when looking at Coca Cola's 15% market share in the country, it seems Pepsi has lost this cola war as well. Maybe that's why in their latest Chinese New Year commercial, the focus is on family and love. Traditionally a much more 'Coca Cola' claimed area.



But people who know a bit of the Chinese entertainment industry will still recognise familiar faces ;-)