We have a discount code for all the events so if you’re interested in attending but still haven’t purchased a ticket, please feel free to email us and we will send you the codes.

1) ‘Find Your Voice on the Chinese Internet’ a Media & Marketing Event held by the European Union Chamber of Commerce and American Chamber of Commerce in China.

Monday 16th Nov 2009 4:00pm -6.00pm
Kerry Centre, Beijing

A seminar where Sam Flemming, Jake Drake and David Wolf examine the overall Chinese Media and Social Media landscape and by taking case studies from new and traditional public relations strategies, will show you how to effectively take advantage of these new platforms and find your voice on the Chinese Internet.

2) ‘Social Engagement – Brand/Consumer Relationship’ at Ad:Tech Beijing

Tuesday 17th November 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Beijing International Convention Centre, Beijing

Led by CIC’s Sam Flemming, Philippe Lamy (EVP, Luxury Division L’Oreal China), Shawn Cheng (CEO, HoopChina.com) and Jimmy Wong (Senior Account Director, Wunderman) will present case studies from Lancôme, Ford and HoopChina.com on how to leverage social media analytics based consumer insight to create strategic, highly engaged communications.

3) Likemind Shanghai

Friday 20th November 8.30am – 10.30am
Amokka Cafe, Shanghai

A monthly global coffee date where you drink coffee and chat about the future of advertising, marketing and design in China with likeminded friends.

4) ‘How pharmaceutical brands can leverage Chinese Social Media’ at Sales and Marketing in China for Pharma

Friday 4th December
JW Marriott, Shanghai

A must-attend senior-level event for all Pharmaceutical sales and marketing executives in China. Featuring Pharmaceutical-led keynote presentations, case studies, and panel debates.

In 2009 Q1/Q2 however, despite Apple releasing the upgraded iPhone 3GS, due to stiff competition from HTC with the G1 & G2, Palm with the Pre and Meizu with the M8, the title of most talked about mobile is still far from clear cut.

Now while we’d guess that most people have heard of the first three mobile brands we just mentioned (Apple, HTC and Palm), what really stood out for us was how the relatively unknown Chinese mobile brand Meizu managed to generate as much buzz as it did. As such in this post we look into the secret behind this domestic brands outstanding IWOM performance.

Firstly, by taking a look into Meizu M8’s buzz volume and net sentiment rate (NSR) from around its launch date on the 18th February we can see that the phone’s buzz volume peaked in April with 496,938 posts per month and that its net sentiment rate peaked in March at 0.86 .

When compared to the buzz and sentiment rate of the Apple iPhone from the same time period we can see that the Meizu’s M8 buzz was almost five times higher than the iPhone’s and that it was beating the iPhone in terms of net sentiment rate.

How did Meizu manage to do this? Looking even deeper we discovered that one of the main sources of the buzz was from the official Meizu’s BBS bbs.meizu.com, which when compared to the Apple iPhone’s most famous fan BBS bbs.weiphone.com revealed some pretty interesting stastictics:

As well as beating the Apple fan BBS in terms of members, the Meizu BBS then goes onto then beat them in terms of passion (the average number of posts each user writes), creativity (the originality of those posts) and interactivity (the average number of times other users will respond to their post). By harnising this communities passion for Meizu products this is how the release of the M8 managed to generate as much buzz as it did.

Now while building a strong community or BBS around your brand is far from easy, the way Meizu did it was by having their CEO Huang Zhang often posting and replying to questions on the Meizu BBS about phones user interfaces, hardware configurations, slogans and even asking them to comment on the brands price strategy. For example taken from a recent post:

Netizen: “My Little Computer”, how about this slogan?
Huang Zhang (CEO): Good work, ~~~ “Little Computer” might work nicely on TV.
Page Views: 10,972; No of replies: 204 (Link)

Although these CEO’s replies are often very  limited, his participation within the community backed up with a strong group of forum administrators has gone on to create a healthy vibrant community, which now posts over 40,000 posts per day and boasts over 1,400,000 registered members.

Although we don’t have the Meizu M8’s sales figures on hand and so can’t tell you if this high IWOM exposure and engagement led to sales, in April, Zhuhai TV (Link) reported that from 18th February to 18th April Meizu had gone on to sell over 100,000 M8 phones.

Summing up, while we don’t think that every brand should necessarily have its own BBS, we think the Meizu BBS is a great case study as to how a brand can leverage their most passionate supporters and advocates to help raise exposure of their products and take on the international brands such as Apple, HTC and Palm.

The following post was written by Ouris our Mobile Analyst. For more information about the talk about Mobile Phones on the Chinese Internet take a look at our Mobile Phone Syndicated Teaser.

Likemind Shanghai is back tomorrow from 8.30am – 10.30am at Amokka. For those who didn’t make it to the last one Likemind is a monthly global coffee date held in cities like Mumbai, Sao Paulo, New York, Melbourne and now Shanghai, and is a place where you can treat yourself to an Amokka breakfast, drink coffee and chat about the future of advertising, marketing and design in China with likeminded friends.

Time: 8.30am – 10.30am, October 16th 2009
Where: Amokka, 201 Anfu lu near Wulumuqi lu
Hosts: Patrick and Rand (Kindly standing in for Jenn)

For more info about Likemind Shanghai and to be alerted to future events please make sure to follow us on Twitter and add yourself to the Facebook group.

Content: This includes findings that are similar to what you would find in traditional market research. However, unlike traditional focus groups, a IWOM study like the one we conducted in our recently launched “Youth Report,” (see teaser slides here), offers brands a huge ‘focus group’ where hundreds of thousands of consumers are naturally speaking their minds and generating over a million comments.

Context: Unlike traditional research, IWOM can also give you insight into the natural context behind those conversations. This for brands is essential, as not only must they understand ‘what’ (i.e. content) netizens talk about, but also how they talk, where they talk and who shapes the conversations. For example, in our youth report, you will learn that not only are the 90’s generation “individualistic” (which just about every youth market researcher will tell you), but also HOW they then use the Internet to express their individuality, i.e. in “show off” or “shai” communities (an activity which we first reported about in 2007, and which has now become more formalized and mainstream).

Implications: If you understand both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, then as a marketer this makes the “what to do” easier to answer and once again from our youth report we site several examples of how brands are successfully integrating concepts such as “shai” into their communication strategies to connect with the younger generation.

Speaking of our youth report, check out the video CIC’s youth team put together. This is something the team did without any push from their managers; rather it is “grassroots” in the true spirit of IWOM.

Also, we recently launched our IMF (Infant Milk Formula) syndicated report. The announcement is here and the teaser slides are here.

In addition, we looked at how netizens’ celebrate Qixi Festival (Chinese Valentines’ Day) and what they’re saying about the new hot TV drama “Meteor Shower.” Finally, we cover the latest online activities by the two largest telecommunication groups in China, China Mobile and China Telecom as they begin to establish their own e-communities.

Case Study

CIC View
As Shan Wan is a good way for white collar workers to relieve pressure and broadening his or her social network, it’s becoming more and more popular among this demographic. Netizens are increasingly expressing interest in joining Shan Wan activities, such as traveling, sports and KTV.
Meanwhile, the Internet is serving as a platform for netizens to find quick friends and participants for off-line activities.
Brands can consider borrowing ideas from this popular net culture, by sponsoring popular Shan Wan events or running their own Shan Wan campaigns.

Below is a screen shot of the index for the full IWOM watch report:

For related articles, please see below:

Online group car purchase: a real story
IWOM Powering Help for Quake
The DNA of internet word-of-mouth platforms

For those who didn’t make it to the last one, Likemind is a monthly global coffee date held in cities like Mumbai, Sao Paulo, New York, Melbourne and now Shanghai, and is a place where you can treat yourself to an Amokka breakfast, drink coffee and chat about the future of advertising, marketing and design in China with likeminded friends.

Time: 8.30am – 10.30am, September 18th 2009.
Where: Amokka, 201 Anfu lu near Wulumuqi lu
Hosts: Patrick and Jenn

For more info about Likemind Shanghai and to be alerted to future events please make sure to follow us on Twitter and add yourself to the Facebook group.

Case Study

KFC launched their “Drink Joyfully” campaign on major Chinese SNS
(肯德基联合热门网络社区，一齐“吸乐无穷”)

Summary

KFC has recently launched a summer drinks campaign on some mainstream Chinese SNS’s called “Xi Le Wu Qiong”. From June 15th when a customer buys a Summer Drink they will also receive a campaign card, with the code on each card then activating an individual game account. The campaigns participants win points in two ways, either by inviting friends to join the game or by stealing away their friends’ drinks. The participants who have accumulate the most points are then awarded a variety of prizes once the campaign has finished.

CIC View

Due to netizens starting to use SNS’s more and more and because of the close relationships that can be found on this space, brands and companies are now starting to use them more frequently as a platform to promote their campaigns and products.
In this example, KFC ran their campaign over a number of the most popular social networks in China, encouraging netizens to also add their online friends in order to win points. By doing this not only do KFC acquire more participants and exposure to this branded drink game but they also create a great platform that can be used to promote future KFC products and brands.

Below is a screen shot of the index for the full IWOM watch report:

For related articles, please see below:

CIC launches new ‘Youth Report’
IWOM Watch Sep 16-30: Retailers reverse the “Group Purchase” trend
The DNA of internet word-of-mouth platforms
Connection points for the “connected agency” in China

Having grown up with the Internet, today the Chinese youth generation are some of the web’s savviest users and it’s estimated that 63.7% (215.3 Million) of Chinese netizens are part of this Youth Generation (i.e. born in the 80’s, 90’s or 00’s), with this number only set to grow in the short term.

In order to address marketers’ needs to understand this first generation of Chinese ‘net natives’, CIC has created its very own syndicated Youth Report which analyzes the Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) of the Chinese Youth Generation and includes topics such as what are the youth generation talking about, where are they are talking and how are they expressing themselves.

This report based on our patent pending technology which mined and categorizes 1,137,481 youth comments taken from blog, BBS and SNS sites from January – June 2009 and combined with our analysts experience in tracking youth trends via IWOM buzz since 2004, gives the reader insights into youth related topics such as brands, sports, music, online novels, fashion, SNS, gaming and movies.

Finally as an added bonus we have decided to include a video that two of our staff- Joe and Kevin (both who were born in the 80’s) created to highlight the creativity and the values of the Chinese Youth generation. Hope you enjoy it!

For more information about CIC’s Youth Report please check out our Press Release and our Youth Report Teaser on slideshare, and if you have any other questions or queries please do get in contact patrick.searle AT cicdata.com

Likemind is a monthly global coffee date held in cities like Mumbai, Sao Paulo, New York, Melbourne and now Shanghai that caters to young professionals in advertising, marketing and design.

We know it’s early in the morning but we hope you can come and share a coffee with us, treat yourself to an Amokka breakfast and chat about the future of advertising, marketing and design in China with likeminded friends.

Time: 8.30am – 10.30am, August 21st 2009.
Where: Amokka, 201 Anfu lu near Wulumuqi lu
Hosts: Patrick and Jenn

For more info about Likemind Shanghai and to be alerted to future events please follow us on Twitter and Facebook

Below is a screen shot of the index for the full IWOM watch report:

For related articles, please see below:

ECONOMIST CHINA BRANDING ROUNDTABLE: The New Media: Can brands afford to stay out?
3 pathways to net culture
Connection points for the “connected agency” in China