From the category archives:

Insights

DMG; A China Entrepreneur’s Entrepreneur.

08.09.2010 Case Studies
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For those of you following this blog, you’ll know that I’ve run a China ad agency for a number of years. This innocent statement has volatility written all over it; the first being China; a chaotic beast rocketing forward; then ad agencies where business turns sweet or goes sour between morning and evening; and being an entrepreneur in the midst of [...]

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Metan; What I Learned from Chinese Reality TV.

07.29.2010 Insights
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Hey all; this is an article from Metan by Gordon Chu; it covers Gordon’s experience and insights with China reality TV. Give it a read if you’ve got the time. On one of my frequent extended stints in China, I had a quiet evening to kick up my feet and to peruse the hundreds of channels Chinese [...]

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Tencent; Hail to the King of China’s Copycats.

07.26.2010 Insights
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Picked this one up via Danwei and Thomas Morffew; it’s a cover story from China Computer World bashing Tencent, the very powerful internet company behind QQ and numerous others. As you can guess, it’s not very flattering.

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How to Become a Chinese Internet Celebrity.

07.19.2010 Insights
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Here’s an eye opener: China’s most famous digital blogger is more popular than China’s top movie and sports star celebrities combined… by a pretty wide margin. This is crazy, but when you think of it, oddly intuitively right. Offline celebrities are great, but seem distant and inaccessible. When compared to your average blogger or online [...]

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Made in China; Bought by Us.

07.15.2010 Insights
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This is old, but also great; immediately sheds light on both sides of the argument.

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China Advertising Career Evolution.

07.14.2010 Insights
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This ones been floating around for awhile, and though it doesn’t relate to China advertising, it does still apply to China’s ad agency players; perhaps to localize it we can add “Green Tea + Johnnie Walker” at the end instead of champagne… ah haha haa ha.

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HP vs. Haerbin; What Level of Branding is Acceptable in China Viral Videos?

06.28.2010 HP
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I pulled these videos from LRB forum, a viral by HP and Haerbin (a Chinese beer brand). They’re both great virals, but a few things stuck out for me, namely the overall level of branding in each video, and then the engagement based on prevalence of branding. Why so curious? First, clients build awareness by being in [...]

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Hunting Chinese Netizens with Bar Graphs.

06.13.2010 Insights
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This is a continuation of a previous article: Broadly Stereotyping Chinese Netizens; wherein we took a quick stroll through China’s major netizen groups. So today, let’s dive a bit deeper and split broader categories into finer sub-categories using data from BCG and Synovate. What are we to gain from all this scientifically backed speculation? Assuming we are living in a [...]

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Broadly stereotyping Chinese netizens.

06.01.2010 China Consumer Profile
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The question often comes up; “how do we engage China’s netizens?”. The answers I’ve heard in the past range from the general to the slightly less general; but none get very deep. So let’s take a deeper look at China’s netizens and discover how we can better target our audiences with the help of a [...]

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Anatomy of a Chinese Viral Campaign.

05.20.2010 Insights
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Today let’s dive a bit deeper into the mechanics of manufacturing consent through China social media. We’ll take a quick tour through general strategy, creative elements required, media selection process, and end results. The 138 yuan Hamburger. Yes, friends, we will be talking about a hamburger today that’s roughly equal to USD $20. Now spending 20 bucks [...]

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Manufacturing Chinese Consent.

05.17.2010 Insights
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The deeper I dive into China social media the more I learn of the oft touted phrase “content is king”. While I whole heartedly agree that great content is the “jet fuel” that propels your campaign forward, I’m not going to write about that today. Instead I’m going to write about when your content is [...]

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