Winning in China Marketing

Have you ever noticed that the advertisements of smartphones look alike? It is interesting to find out that advertisers love to ask celebrities to put their products close to faces. Is it true that advertising agencies are lazy for their jobs?   In fact, those ads are already approved by their clients so that you can see them on air.   Then, why do clients accept such “boring” repetitive creatives? As we discussed before, people’s attention is selective, like a bottleneck.   We can only focus on something at one time and are blind to others, aka inattention blindness. (Further reading: Inattentional Blindness: Do You See Any Brands in the World Cup? ) Chinese brands are willing to spend millions of dollars on celebrity marketing, just for one reason - get people's attention. Probably, brand owners are afraid that people only focus on celebrities and cannot see their products.   Therefore, the best way is to put the products closer to ...

Coca-Cola’s marketing mission statement is Content 2020, moving   from creative excellence to content excellence . Coca-Cola’s Jonathan Mildenhall, VP Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence recently stated that: “All advertisers need a lot more content so that they can keep the engagement with consumers fresh and relevant, because of the 24/7 connectivity. If you’re going to be successful around the world, you have to have fat and fertile ideas at the core.” In China, Tencent’s Chairman, Pony Ma answered a reporter’s question about whether China Internet is moving from a traffic war to a content war, saying that: “In future, the value of Content and IP will become more and more important. The significance of traffic vs content will change from 82 to 55. Traffic is the entrance while Content is the commanding height.” Nowadays, internet traffic has become more expensive and content is the new strategic battlefield for competition. Internet giants like Tenc...