On marketing specialist Gu Xun’s notebook computer, the screen saver is a video called the “dancing clock”. It features a few pretty girls dancing in stylish outfits. The screen alternates between the dancing girls and a clock. Gu’s “dancing clock” was such a hit with his coworkers that they all asked to copy the screen saver onto their computers.
The “dancing clock” screen saver is a part of a global promotion launched by Japanese garment brand Uniqlo. Uniqlo hired young dancers to wear their garments, and then published the video link on video sharing website YouTube. Bloggers are encouraged to add the video link to their spaces as flash clock or download it as screen saver. Those who participate in the promotion can also vote and take part in a lottery.
Uniqlo is taking advantage of Web 2.0. The core of Web 2.0 marketing is the ability to mobilize the masses at minimal costs. All an enterprise has to do is work out a proposal and promotional model; the content, communication and cross duplication is left to the consumers to complete. Under this model, the roles of enterprises and ad agencies are changing from ad creativity centers to organizers who instead mobilize consumers to promote the brand on their own initiative. As long as the program is initiated, the content will be spontaneously spread and shared.
Decentralized Interactive Marketing
A new Gillette Braun shaver shop at Taobao.com, China’s largest consumer-to-consumer online marketplace, has caught the attention of the Procter & Gamble Company (P&G), a diversified consumer products company. The franchised outlet is doing remarkable sales. In fact, P&G has become keenly aware of the potential of online sales and is responding. Since 2006, P&G’s US headquarters and its Korean division have significantly reduced their ad placements on TV and diverted that money to Internet advertising. Now P&G Greater China is forging closer contact with Taobao.com and catalogue sales channel Redbaby. The intention is to direct more product sales to new marketing channels such as the Internet and catalogue sales.
And P&G isn’t the only company waking up to the power of networked media. In 2007, online advertising markets in China crossed the RMB6 billion (US$835 million) mark for the first time. Over the past few years, the revenues of online advertising have grown by 40-50% each year. Among them, the CAGR pay-for-performance ad has grown more than 60%, and web page banners have risen by more than 40%. Advertisement from the emerging social networking service is expected to log the fastest growth over the next five years in spite of their smaller shares at present.
However, traditional ads and their placement, even when on the Internet, are outdated for the audience-acceptance communication model. These days, it’s the Web 2.0-based marketing model that has got advertisers excited.
According to Wang Hongpeng, the executive vice general manager at Neo@Ogilvy, a fully integrated digital and direct media company of OgilvyOne Worldwide, the radical change brought about by Web 2.0 is the way it communicates. That method, says Wang, is changing from centric-oriented broadcasting to peer-to-peer interactive communications. It does not matter whether “authorities” or the “grassroots people” build the content. The key in the new communication environment is that everyone is involved in the communication process. It’s a clear sign of a decentralized marketing trend.
Wang points out that when Web 2.0 leads to large-scale performance arts, the value chain in the ad industry and its focuses also change. The core of traditional advertising is an advertiser, and ad agencies are doing everything they can to push those advertisers to the limited number of media that consumers can reach. Web 2.0 now means that media can form an environment around the consumers, which allows advertisers to interact with those consumers. The new focus is consumer-oriented independent micro units, rather than simply having content jammed into the heads of TV viewers.
An increasing number of enterprises and ad companies have come to realize that changes in the communication environment and media are slowly marginalizing the information unilaterally transmitted by advertisers. As a result, traditional media and advertisers are losing the ability to control carefully crafted messages. Instead, the users are taking over the right to judge products and tell stories about them.
Organizers and the New Assessment Model
With Web 2.0 now on the scene, enterprises need not worry about how to develop appealing content. But there are new challenges, among them, how to transfer their roles to organizers, and how to locate the group of consumers that might be interested in your products or brands? Assessing the success of a marketing plan is also troublesome since the target consumers who briefly surface out of the sea of Internet surfers often vanish after the campaign.
In 2006, Xu Le started the business program in search of viable online testing. He built a product experience platform for enterprises hoping to promote new products. It helped them locate the target consumers and spread the message through experience reports written by test consumers.
Xu Le is the person behind the “try-before-you-buy” concept on the Chinese Mainland. After observing the success of the concept in other markets, he decided to copy the formula here and started the Itry.cn with the help of IDG investment.
Xu’s business logic follows human nature: experiences produce feelings, and feelings produce the impulse to “speak out”. Xu believes he understands consumer psychology. He is also keen on the ability of the Internet to locate consumers who are interested in low-cost products. With the use of trial reports, some consumers become leaders in online communities, and influence legions of other silent consumers with their reliable opinions.
