From the category archives:

Insights

Confessions of a Chinese Shopper.

03.14.2010 Insights
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Hey all; this is an article from Lin Bai of the Metan Group; who’ve allowed me to report their newsletters on LRB. Metan’s website houses a great many insightful articles; I’ll post highlights when I see them.
In the US, ‘Black Friday’ is the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. Marked as the Friday after [...]

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Confessions of a China Entrepreneur.

03.08.2010 Insights
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Today I’m going to give you a quick overview of my short experience as a China entrepreneur for reasons you’ll soon discover. So lets start with the end, and then we’ll work our way to the beginning.
Recently, I was honored to be invited and take part in UC Berkeley’s Asia Business Conference; I was a [...]

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One billion invisible Chinese.

12.11.2009 Insights
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This one isn’t about advertising; rather its a forwarded email I got from Andrew (my biz partner), which he got from his sister in Australia (now you know my content sources). In it is a Chinese man named Liu Bo Lin that literally paints himself into the background. It’s pretty cool in a weird sort [...]

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Breaking Down Viral Advertising.

11.27.2009 Insights
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Hey all; I’m still in process of rebuilding ZeroDegree’s site; here’s something I wrote yesterday for ZD; it’s a general theory of viral advertising.
Key points are breaking it down to a level wherein we can predict results. This is always limited to content; but having said that there are other ways to build some [...]

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Levi’s; So you think you can “blog”?

10.28.2009 Insights
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It is of no surprise brands and companies are struggling to find alternative and cost-effective ways to sell, survive and possibly stand out in the over-crowded world wide web.
So, given this is the era for blogging – it’s no surprise many brands are fast jumping into this space. It just seems to be there [...]

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Big Ideas vs. Small Ideas; Forest vs. Trees.

09.15.2009 Insights
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I recently spotted a great article on Razorfish’s blog titled: “Does SIM mean big ideas matter less?”.  I thought this was interesting until I realized the underlying duality of the question was inappropriate. Dualism, or “black vs. white” is never really the way to go; its always a compromise is it not? We may maintain [...]

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China Ghetto-Level eCommerce.

09.13.2009 Insights
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Here’s something I spotted over the weekend; the series of pics looks like a woman purchasing DVDs; but upon closer inspection I realized it was China ecommerce in action, albeit on a ghetto-level and dealing with “illegal” pirated Nintendo Wii, Xbox360, and PS3 games.
So what we see in this series of shots is a woman [...]

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Where are the opportunities in China’s E-commerce landscape?

09.13.2009 Insights

How many of you shop on Taobao? If you’re Chinese I apologize for asking such a stupid question. How about this one: How many of you could name the top 5 E-Commerce sites in China? Now think. You have time so don’t hurry.
If you cannot name more than three you [...]

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Advertisers becoming more agressive, so what is the ideal relationship?

09.11.2009 Insights

It’s incredible the lengths advertisers are now going to capture the consumers attention. The digital space is becoming increasingly more aggressive and less tactful. Marketers are now oozing desperation; and with major portals crowded it’s a challenge for the ‘traditional thinkers’ to capture the consumers attention.
The result ‘KIDNAP’ the screen. It makes [...]

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Prying Open Chinese Wallets.

09.08.2009 Insights
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I was sent an article today from the author of buzzandthecity; it was a link to a FT article titled “China Goes Shopping” wherein Chinese are described as “penny pinching, ruthless, suspicious shoppers”.
One key excerpt from the article caught my eye:
“Even when they can easily afford it, buying a PC typically involves six visits to [...]

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Social Media promotes generation ‘ME’

09.06.2009 China Consumer Profile
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This is an excerpt from an article on our sister site ZeroDegrees.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that the bulk of Social Media evangelists consider the space as a way to promote themselves.  Nothing wrong with promoting yourself – I mean we can’t all have a ‘Don King’ like character doing our talking for us.
A report [...]

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The Meta-Reality of China Advertising.

08.04.2009 Insights
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About a month ago, I presented my general thoughts and impression on advertising in China at NextStep @ The Factory. This post is a recreation of that 20 minute presentation; I’ll cover the point of branding, how it applies to China advertising, and case studies that show these ideas in action.
Connecting on an emotional level. [...]

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Shanghai World Expo 2010, will they really come?

08.03.2009 Insights
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So the big question I’m getting asked more and more now is ‘Will the Chinese go to the Shanghai World Expo 2010?’ but the real question is ‘Do the real Chinese actually care about it? Fortunately the powers to be do – they have a lot on the line from an international standpoint. [...]

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missniuniu case study; Building traffic through China’s social networks.

07.13.2009 Insights
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Say hello to our little friend.
Building traffic/leads to your business is tricky. Especially so in China where many of the medium are either too broadly targeted, too expensive, or simply faked numbers. So here’s the logic:
A quick rundown of your options looks something like this:
PRINT: Magazines will cost you about RMB 20k – 100k/page/month; while newspaper [...]

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How to unblock your website in China.

07.05.2009 Insights
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Recently a few posts popped up about websites being blocked in China at cnreviews and peking duck. Littleredbook, and other sites I run, have been blocked a few times before; to remedy this, I figured out how to unblock using a simple trick.  Now whether this works for you or not, I’m not sure – [...]

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Marketing to China’s 4th-6th Tier Cities.

06.30.2009 Insights

A recent report from Ogilvy titled “China Beyond” uncovers quite a few interesting findings on China’s 4th – 6th tier rural cities. Data cover a wide range of insights and business strategies for marketing to China’s lower tiers.
The book cover is interesting as well – newspaper is often used as wallpaper in China’s rural cities; the [...]

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“Sichuan Earthquake Coke Boy”; Profit motivated generosity sparks controversy.

06.18.2009 China Modern Culture

A recent post at Chinasmack features a young boy who received a free college education from Coke. Named “Earthquake Coke Boy” by netizens, Xue Xiao became famous when after being rescued from the SiChuan earthquake, the first words he muttered through the pain was “Uncle, please give me an ice cold Coke.”

Now this is a [...]

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China’s Copycats; Online vs. Offline.

06.16.2009 Insights

Bizarre Bazaar
Kai Pan over at cnreviews.com made one of many interesting comments the other day in reference to China’s SNS copies; it was an excerpt from Gang Lu’s (chief editor of mobinode) presentation at Barcamp Shanghai: simply copycats in China, unlike the West, not only survive, but thrive. Examples of such are:
Youtube = Youku, Tudou, [...]

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China’s “Plan B” Social Media Strategy; Interaction After Connection.

05.20.2009 China SNS Snapshot

If you’ve been following LRB recently, then you’ve noticed many posts on social media sites in China. When beginning this quest to catalog China’s SNS landscape, I was under the impression I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. However, like anyone who thinks they know something, further digging always reveals they didn’t [...]

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Segmenting China’s Nouveau Riche.

05.05.2009 Insights

McKinsey recently published a new 32 page Chinese consumer study; it confirms LRB insights of Chinese luxury consumers and their approach to brands (My logo is bigger than your logo; Giving Brands a Chinese Soul) while also digging deeper to reveal 7 distinct segments and where they lay along a cool looking graph.

It’s chock full [...]

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Anti-establishment branding trumps “family values” for China’s youth.

05.05.2009 Chevrolet

Celebrity endorsements are nothing new. However, one recent endorsement by Wentworth Miller, the star of “Prison Break” raises a few interesting questions. The first is you really don’t see many TV stars making waves in China, this is usually reserved for Hollywood A-list actors. I mean really, if we’re seeing “Michael Scofield” (Miller’s on-screen alias), [...]

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Kaixin001.com; Spamming to the top; How Kaixin became China’s most popular Facebook-esque Social Media Site.

04.16.2009 Insights

Everyone wants to copy Facebook’s success, and in China there is no shortage of imitators. The first successful imitator was Xiaonei.com, who had the dubious honor of proving that Facebook copies could work in China. This opened the floodgates for more imitators such as mayi.com, zhanzuo.com, 360quan.com, etc. These services were established far ahead of [...]

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