To try and create greater familiarity for those living elsewhere, we’ll periodically profile some China brands and businesses that we believe will be household names across the world soon. In this first post of the series we’ll cover consumer electronics brand Xiaomi (小米）and Roewe（荣威）- a car brand from SAIC Motors. Xiaomi (小米) is a consumerContinue reading “Famous in China”
Category Archives: English
Marketing in a Pandemic – the need for business model reinvention
COVID-19 has been with us for about a year now. In that year, companies like Zoom have gone stratospheric. E-commerce and food delivery have prospered. Online trainers, home gym equipment and virtual learning have all been much in demand. Netflix has done very well indeed. At the same time, some businesses have suffered. Anything relatedContinue reading “Marketing in a Pandemic – the need for business model reinvention”
3 Top Tips on picking a new agency in the new year
It’s January and many clients’ thoughts will soon turn to the year ahead. Often, this is when a decision is made to call a pitch, evaluate different agencies and choose one to work with for the next couple of years (at least!) Based on my experience running pitches for clients over the last 3 years,Continue reading “3 Top Tips on picking a new agency in the new year”
The empirical approach to defining a target audience – Spray, Learn, Focus
For the first 20 years of my working life, I was in an advertising or media agency. In our interactions with clients, very early on, there would be a defined target audience that we set out to create communication for or buy media in order to reach. Usually, the definition of that audience was basedContinue reading “The empirical approach to defining a target audience – Spray, Learn, Focus”
3 problems with the procurement approach to media buying – and why the partnership approach is better
Long ago (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I was a young lad skipping carefree through the meadows, placing a media buy here and there as I went) media agencies were treated as partners by their clients. We were co-owners of their successes and failures and while we never forgot that we were running ourContinue reading “3 problems with the procurement approach to media buying – and why the partnership approach is better”
Alibaba’s 11.11 (world’s biggest online shopping festival) – hype or honest opportunity?
Double Eleven (11.11, or 11 Nov), a.k.a. Singles’ Day Festival is a global shopping event initiated by Alibaba and adopted by other e-commerce platforms and retailers. For those who are not familiar with it, Alibaba’s online shopping event on November 11 every year is the biggest in the world. You could say Black Friday is Amazon’s weaker,Continue reading “Alibaba’s 11.11 (world’s biggest online shopping festival) – hype or honest opportunity?”
Opportunities and hurdles in China’s vast e-commerce market
At first sight, the China e-commerce market looks like a marvelous gateway to the land of 1.3 billion consumers. However, there are some key differences between the e-commerce world here and elsewhere. Brands are not in control of their online commerce in China the way they can be elsewhere. There is room in most marketsContinue reading “Opportunities and hurdles in China’s vast e-commerce market”
What kind of agency do you need? (Thoughts on eliminating the middlemen in media)
Over the last 3 years I’ve been involved in about 18 agency selection projects with clients – where we help them evaluate and select an agency to manage their media. (By the end of this year I’ll have seen a few more of these projects). Across all these projects I’ve noticed one very consistent patternContinue reading “What kind of agency do you need? (Thoughts on eliminating the middlemen in media)”
Little Ondine – the start-up cosmetics brand that made it big in China
Challenge: After an initial successful launch, many copycats launched cheap products on EC forcing Little Ondine to reduce prices. The business dropped in the absence of tactical price promotions. Offline stores lost revenue and became unprofitable. The consumer profile on Tmall is students or girls from T2 cities who can’t afford regular visits to theContinue reading “Little Ondine – the start-up cosmetics brand that made it big in China”
China’s Advertiser-Unfriendly Digital Media Ecosystem
There is one profound difference between the digital media landscape in China and everywhere else. The two key players who control most desirable digital advertising inventory / publishers in China do not depend on advertising for their revenue.This simple fact makes it easy to understand why, unlike Google, Facebook, Twitter or ad-exchanges elsewhere in theContinue reading “China’s Advertiser-Unfriendly Digital Media Ecosystem”
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