“At 13:30 in the afternoon on 16 July, the China National Network Information Centre (CNNIC) released its ‘24th Internet Development Statistical Report’ in Beijing, indicating that as of 30 June 2009, the total number of Chinese internet users was 338 million, and the total number of Chinese internet users with broadband access was 320 million, comprising 94.3% of all internet users. The total number of internet users who use their mobile phones to access the internet is 155 million.”

“The ‘Report’ indicates that as of 30 June, the total number of Chinese internet users and Chinese broadband users is still the highest in the world, and that the internet access rate is steadily increasing. With the development of 3G technology, the number of internet users who use their mobile phones to access the internet has already reached 155 million, comprising 46% of all internet users, and increasing by 32.1% within the space of only six months.”

“At the same time, internet security has become one of the most important issues for all areas of society, with the existence of internet worms, viruses and trojan horses creating problems for the development of e-commerce and online payment. The report points out that given the rapid increase in the number of internet users and internet applications, China’s internet must develop from the stage of usability to the stage of reliability.”

“Number of internet users remains highest in the world, internet access continues to grow steadily.”

“The effect of the global financial crisis, which continues to spread, upon China’s internet has not been significant. The ‘Report’ indicates that the number of Chinese internet users and broadband users is soaring, and that China’s total number of internet users continues to remain the highest in the world. As of the end of June 2009, the total number of China’s internet users was 338 million, increasing by 13.4% compared to the end of 2008, and increasing by 40 million in the space of half a year. The number of broadband internet users reached 320 million, comprising 94.3% of all internet users, and increasing by 3.7 percentage points compared to the end of 2008.”

“With the continuing increase in the number of internet users, the access to the internet within China has also steadily increased. Data indicates that as of the end of June 2009, China’s internet access rate reached 25.5%, maintaining a steady rate of increase.”

“Mobile phone internet use increases by 30% in six months, 3G market capacity still highly flexible”

“Data from the ‘Report’ shows that as of June 2009, the number of internet users who use their mobile phones to access the internet reached 155 million, increasing by 32.1% in six months. In addition to benefiting from the strenuous efforts of the government and businesses to promote its usage, this increase is also closely related to innate trends in internet usage, and the wealth of developments in methods for using mobile phones to access the internet. The proportion of people in rural areas using mobile phones to access the internet has also further increased.”

“According to surveys, amongst internet users who use mobile phones to access the internet, 28% indicated that in future they would use 3G mobile phones to access the internet; 39.6% had no definite attitudes about how they would use mobile phones to access the internet in future. Amongst internet users who have not used their mobile phones to access the internet, 14.8% indicated that they might use their mobile phone to access the internet within the next six months, and of these people, 49% indicated that they would use 3G mobile  phones to access the internet. This clearly indicates that the future market capacity for 3G mobile phone technology is quite flexible, and needs businesses to invest their efforts in its development.”

“Entertainment applications see stable development, commercial applications also develop”

“The ‘Report’ indicates that at present, the percentage of Chinese internet users who use the internet for entertainment, obtaining information and social interaction is relatively high, and that in addition to discussion forums and BBS’s, over 50% of internet users use the internet for these three purposes. Use of the internet for entertainment purposes has stabilized following a long-period of rapid increase. Use of the internet to listen to music is still the most popular form of usage, with the usage rate increasing by 1.8% in the past six months. The number of people who use the internet to watch television shows or movies is increasing rapidly, growing by 10% in the past six months.”

“What is worth noting is that the use of the internet for commercial transactions has increased wildly, due to the effects of the international financial crisis. The number of people who use the internet for purchasing goods has reached 87.88 million, increasing by 14 million in the space of six months. The rate of usage of the internet for payment purposes has increased by 4.8 percentage points in the past half year. Analysts point out that the financial crisis has made the advantages of using internet purchasing platforms more pronounced, attracting a large number of internet purchasers. This is the reason that the use of the internet for commercial transactions has increased so quickly.”

“The importance of internet security increases daily, internet reliability has become the future trend.”

“The ‘Report’ points out that in the past six months, 195 million internet users have suffered from computer viruses and trojan horses as a result of internet use, and 110 million internet users have experienced problems with people stealing their account numbers or codes. The problem of internet security has caused the confidence of internet users in the in the internet to decline, with only 29.2% of internet users feeling that online transactions are safe. This further restricts e-commerce, online payments, and the development of internet commercial applications.”

“Analysts point out that with the constant improvement of China’s basic internet facilities, the increase in the number of internet users, and the innovation and development of internet technology, internet applications have gradually shifted from entertainment to infiltrate all areas of economic life, and the need for confidence in the internet and internet security is also continually increasing. Means for increasing the level of trust of internet users in the internet have already become an issue in urgent need of resolution, and the creation of a ‘reliable’ internet environment on a foundation of ‘usability’ has become the necessary trend of the future.”

I can however provide some topline mobile marketing indicators.

Top Line Mobile Marketing Indicators:

• Mobile marketing and mobile consumption of digital content will surge
• 155 mln Mobile Internet users in 2008 - 22% of total mobile users*
• 165 mln 3G users predicted by 2010*
• Chinese audiences consume more digital content on their mobiles per week than the Korean and Japanese

*Source: Phone Valley Media Scene 2009

Takeout: Mobile advertising in China will see some healthy growth this year with the 3G rollout.

China Mobile Market Vs US Mobile Market#

• 28% of Chinese own two or more mobile devices, compared with just 18% of Americans
• Chinese access more services and activities on the mobile web, including email, news, games, local information and financial accounts. Americans and Chinese differ in the top services they use and the frequency of use. For Americans, the top three services on the mobile web are e-mail, texting and weather.  For Chinese, they are news, texting and instant messaging (IM).
• 58% of Chinese mobile web users post Web 2.0 content via their mobile devices, compared with 41% of those in the US.
• 64% of Chinese mobile web users purchased premium mobile web content in the last year, compared with 36% of US mobile web users
• Chinese mobile web users spend more than ¥1.2 billion ($182.6 million) each month on premium services, compared with $64.8 million in the US.
• Chinese mobile web users spend a higher proportion of their monthly incomes on mobile data services (3.4%), compared to 1.2% in the US.

#Source: Netpop Pocket: Growing the Mobile Marketplace

Value in Services and Content for Mobile

Start thinking about the value in services and content rather than messages for mobile as this is where you will win your audience.

The mobile space is going to heat up this year in China with the rollout of 3G services. According to Digitimes.com This rollout is actually the main motor fueling growth in an otherwise global market which showed 9% revenue contractions.

China Telecom Focus
China Telecom’s deployment of their 3G network  resulted in the most CDMA base station shipments in over four years.1 This service provider will be a key player in the 3G space supporting the growth of China’s mobile internet.  China Telecom will be providing some of the broadest coverage and fastest network access of the main 3G telcos and should prove popular with consumers who want mobile access to their some of their favourite internet services.

China’s Mobile Internet as Compliment not Replacement

Mobile is a great compliment to the Internet rather than a substitute and will be used alongside other more traditional access points, such as home/office and internet cafes. For example SMS is still currently the most dominant non-voice mobile service with 90% of them being P2P messages.2

Chinese Activities on Mobile Internet vs Internet

China’s Leading Mobile Portals

Sources
1 Press release, May 22; Meiling Chen, DIGITIMES [Friday 22 May 2009]
http://www.digitimes.com/

2 iResearch 2008.4

Thanks for your patience and support

cheers /tim

Here’s a quick summary of the salient points as released by CNNIC.

Internet Penetration Rate in China Surpassed the Global Average Level for the First Time

According to the report, by the end of 2008, the Internet penetration rate of 22.6% in China had surpassed the global average level of 21.9% for the first time. Meanwhile, the amount of Internet users in China had reached 298 million, with 279 million broadband users. And the registration number of CN domain names reached 13.572 million. The three indexes continued to rank the first in the world.

Wireless & 3G in China

The report also predicts that, with the advent of the 3G age, wireless Internet will display a trend of explosive growth. The Internet is undergoing a change from entertainment applications to the age of value-added applications. The application rates of practical use such as online job hunting and online shopping grow to a large extent, the application rates of entertainment such as online music and online video display the trend of falling.

NOTE: 3G is still undergoing beta testing in various regions throughout China and 3G’s value propositions are still being explored for Chinese Audiences.

Mobile Internet Users  Exceeded 100 Million, Explosive Growth Will Come

According to the report, as carriers paid more attention and the hardware cost of mobile phones kept falling, Internet users accessing the Internet via mobile phones in 2008 doubled, reaching 117 million.

NOTE: Mobile Internet users data must be viewed as an “unfiltered” figure as access is not defined [duration/activity/frequency etc].

China’s Online Population and Online Commercial Value Has Doubled

• Size of Internet users in China has been close to 300 million, increasing by 41.9% from 2007
• Internet penetration rate has reached 22.6%, slightly higher than the global average level (21.9%)
• In the last 6 months, 90.6% of Chinese Internet users accessed the Internet via broadband,  [270 million Chinese Internet users accessed the Internet via broadband] - an increase of over 100 million from 2007
• Amount of registrations of CN domain names increased by 50.8% from 2007, and the amount of websites under .CN increased by 120.3%.

The Urban-Rural Gap

By the end of 2008, the size of rural Internet users had reached 84.6 million, increasing by 31.9 million from 2007, with the growth rate surpassing 60%, far exceeding that of urban Internet users.

This will effect you…

We are watching a new economic system develop right in front of us.  The future of your business, career path, and political leadership may, amongst other things, be effected.  It may help to get a quick primer on the Social Economy.

Social Economy 101

I have been thinking quite a lot lately about the rise of the social, well who hasn’t! And more recently tweeting about the Social Economy [#SocialEconomy].  What follows is a general framework surrounding the Social Economy to help locate and explain some of its features and functions.  I suppose this really is  a general introduction to the Social Economy, later posts will dive deeper into some of the prominent nodes,  networks, and behavior which are helping to build and drive this quickly rising system.

Sociological Perspective

I think I should start with the big picture then drop into the detail. First, please bear with me while I digress into a quick sociological synopsis. My sociological training has taught me to be vigilant for newly developing patterns and connections between macro and micro social processes.  This simply means that broader social movements can be seen in smaller related day-to-day experiences, events, and social phenomenon.

Capitalism, Communism – What’s Next?

So we have had capitalism with us for since our grandfathers, grandfathers, grandfather, or something like that, and communism with us a little more recently. Now we are facing a new economic system, which we could easily term the Social Economy.

Welcome To Your Social Economy

The Social Economy is, at heart, a reorientation of value within both social and economic processes.   The Social Economy is primarily driven by new principles of value:

• Value in sharing and participation
• Value in information and knowledge
• Value in networks and connections

Real economic value is created out of these new principles simply due to the masses of individuals who are living, experiencing, and expressing more and more within digitally enabled social and peer networks.  Value within the Social Economy gains real tangible economic expression as it interacts with existing economic systems [capitalism and communism].

The Social Economy Does Not Replace Capitalism or Communism

Relax, the Social Economy plugs into existing economic systems,  it doesn’t replace capitalism or communism or any other long established system of economic trading. Don’t worry, your hard earned cash is not going to be replaced by #smileys.

The Social Economy operates within these larger established systems and could not function without them, so it really is just an extension of, and functions within, these traditional economies.

A Shift In Value

A value shift is central to understanding the Social Economy. The value shift doesn’t necessary mean supporting agendas like world peace or fighting environmental decline.  It does however reflect a certain reshaping in what is thought of as value, how value is expressed, and the mechanisms [social, technical, economic etc] used to build and communicate value.

Social Economy Examples

The Social Economy can be seen in:

• Grassroots political expression [Obama’s 08 Campaign]
• User Generated Content [UGC]
• Open Source/Creative Commons
• Micropayments
• Social Ad Networks [about to be launched]
• Corporate Social Responsibility [CSR]
• Crowd Sourcing
• Peer Networks [SNS & P2P] & Peer Reviews
• Social Web/Social Media
• Instant Messaging [IM]

The above and below examples should not be seen in isolation, are not exhaustive lists, and simply illustrate some common touchpoints where we all engage with the Social Economy.

The Social Economy is expressed through:

• Information, knowledge, and resource sharing
• Individual and collective content creation
• Conversation as economy
• Connections as expression
• Communication as engagement and activism

Impact of the Social Economy

The Social Economy is already having a significant impact upon certain sectors.  The Social Economy has helped a US president enter the Whitehouse, caused the decline in profits for many information and entertainment related businesses, shapes political policy, and is reshaping both business and marketing models, amongst many other changes.

The Social Economy has changed the Marketing Model:

From AIDMA TO AISAS.
The new AISAS marketing model becomes a social process.

Economics of the Social Economy

Economic activity moves beyond individuals and circulates within friends, groups and networks. Economic activity is highly portable and transferrable, with the ability to share either symbolic or real money.  Micropayments help transact the symbolic currency into real currency.   Value is attached to acts which are beneficial or of value for your friends, groups and networks. This converts previously informal value [good deed, knowledge, sharing etc] into a formal social value and creates currency which can then be transferred into real currency.  The Social Economy reflects a shift in how value is perceived, attributed, and distributed.

The newly developing Social Ad Networks will grow and flourish on the basis of this economic principle, along with opt-in membership supported by Behavioral Targeting and micropayment for distribution of real currency.

Early Economic Examples:

http://twollars.com

http://www.socialvibe.com

I think this is probably enough to introduce The Social Economy.   I’ll come back soon to put some more flesh around these quickly developing Social Economy bones.

Brands are recognising the marketing advantage of microblogging platforms like twitter.  The recent Skittles example which saw a direct feed of all hashtagged #skittles conversation being directly fed to the skittles homepage.  Of course non mediated, instant, high profile publishing was too much of a temptation for some to have fun.

Twitterville Taggers Left Their Marks

Like a big freshly painted white corporate wall, many twitterville taggers left their marks. Even TechCrunch jokingly tweeted “Skittles give you cancer and is the cause of all world evil http://skittles.com/” ….

Co-opting Conversation

This style of conversation co-opting is great word of mouth and would certainly drive traffic and profile for the Skittles platform. I think a great job well done, albeit shortly lived. Many commentators focused upon the tweets themselves with emotionally loaded language like childish, immature, pranksters etc.  This perspective completely misses the marketing point, and remember, value in social media doesn’t always have to be highbrow,  there is value to be found in fun also!

Brands Must Move With Social Media

Of course the word of mouth marketing effect was significant for this brand as a result of using the power of twitter like this, and of course they pulled the plug once the content got too harsh for the brand to bear.  They have currently replaced twitter with their, more mediated, facebook page.  This brand understands the instant power of social media and the significant benefits for moving quickly when opportunity arises, and of course moving just as quickly when that opportunity begins to close.

Skittles replaced twitter with their facebook homepage [above]

Brand Gateway Platform

Good to see Skittles deploying a simple version of a Gateway Platform.

About #Hashtags

#Hashtags are like flickr tags which place additional context around microblogging posts and allow for keyword tracking.
See http://hashtags.org/

Digital Ecosystem Strategy

We recently worked with a 4A agency supporting them for one of their blue-chip brand clients who required multiple marketing activities within the Digital Ecosystem. The brief was great as it was broad, ongoing activities were required to support and drive broader campaign and market movements. This required a strategy which had ongoing activities living across the Digital Ecosystem, many of them focusing upon the Social Media Ecosystem itself.

A Digital Ecosystem communications strategy was developed to deliver powerful, sustained, and integrated communications across identified digital spheres. Communications activity would be constantly flowing through the Digital Ecosystem and adjusted according to KPI’s, conversations, campaigns, seasonality, issues and sentiment management.

I will not dive too deeply into the various activities which supported the strategic framework, as this is for another post. The most important issue was that all of these activities integrated with each other and occupied key space within the key social media spheres. This meant we achieved great leverage and intelligence across all key marketing activities. This also meant we built a particularly powerful brand presence across key areas within the Social Media Ecosystem.

Talk about share of voice, this really takes on a powerful resonance when you include activity driven KPI’s.

Gateway Platform

Like most other blue chip brands in China, there was considerable brand related chatter within the Social Media Ecosystem. One key challenge was to help the brand engage and leverage the power of all of this social media conversation and activity, which was why we presented the Platform as a Gateway concept.

The concept is simple enough, combine both brand and audience social media including fan BBS, SNS communities, microblogging [for a streaming pulse], and UGC nodes. Tag clouds highlighted hot topics representing key brand conversations within the digital ecosystem. A crowdsourcing module was also integrated for valuable brand-audience interaction.

Gateway Platform Explained

If most social media activities [brand-based and fan-based] are housed and can be accessed from within a unified gateway environment the user experience would be extremely exciting and dynamic providing jump points into the brands’ social media spheres and nodes of influence [of course this can also be across brand platforms also].

The current common approach to Social Media still isolates executions and experiences within a walled garden of SNS, Forums/BBS, Blogs, UGC etc. This common approach creates little room for portability or cross pollination of content and audiences. A way to connect all of these Social Media spheres and nodes is though the Gateway Platform, for upstream traffic, and also via a plug-n-play widget, for downstream and brand network traffic. When you adopt the Gateway Platform model, you create powerful connections between isolated social media nodes, conversations, content, audiences and groups.

A Tool for Management

The Gateway Platform becomes an essential tool for the management of growing social media communities, conversations, and content.  The Gateway Platform addresses critical issues relating to distributed conversations, communications and media which currently exist outside of a brands’ reach. The Gateway Platform makes your brand relevant and allows your brand to live where your audiences live, and to engage them locally within each digital sphere and node.  Importantly, The Gateway Platform provides extremely rich data and analytics, which in today’s data hungry media systems is priceless.

01. Technology in your blood
You must have a working understanding of the current technologies used in the digital spectrum. You don’t need to be an expert in every field but you should know what the tech can do, what the experts mean, understand their language, and be able to comfortably communicate in tech speak [and understand the tech personality].

02. Social Media
You must know the social web, use and understand the growing social media spheres and tools.  Social media is only getting bigger, it is also significantly impacting upon audiences and brands more than any other digital sphere.

03. Digital Ecosystem
Don’t think channels think Ecosystem.  Successful digital marketing moves deep into verticals then across them with equal ease.  Conversations must be able to live across the many digital spheres.  In a digital ecosystem relationships are important and impact upon each other. [see marketing below]

04. Understand the principles of value
Introducing value positions the audience front and center. Value is a core driver of usability and audience acceptance, which means:

• Value in content
• Value in relationships
• Value in conversation
• Value in functionality

Most everything else is usually noise …

05. Creative
The digital creative does not search for the 1 killer line or single killer visual concept as these are a hangover from interference or annoyance marketing.  The digital creative understands how audiences find value in what they use, how we interact with content and each other, and how this all fits into the different digital spheres. Today’s digital creatives are extremely Davincian, who fuse technology with art.

06. Marketing
Existing within a digital ecosystem means the digital marketer must be able to comfortably move across the existing and newly developing digital marketing spheres with speed and flexibility.  Audiences don’t experience and live one channel at a time - they move across and through digital spheres quickly and with ease. Digital marketers must do the same - open up and free your marketing silos and audiences will follow!

07. Audience
The audience is the central most important consideration for the digital professional. And central to your audience is usability.  Creating useful, relevant, great value-driven experiences in a language they recognise, understand, and respond to - these are the defining principles of usability and of audience.

08. Methodology
Methodology is a key principle for any digital professional who wants to be able to reproduce their innovations and extend their reach to broader audiences.  Methodology allows for frameworks to be tested and developed, concepts to become scalable and transferable, and momentum gained.  Importantly, methodology allows for rigorous testing, versioning, and upgrading.

09.  Passion
The digital professional must, above all else, have a passion for what they do.  Digital sometimes requires long hours spent on fine details resolving small issues, then quickly jumping out to view the larger perspective, or late nights finalising projects or activating new ideas. Passion is the driver that keeps you motivated, positive, focused and engaged towards achieving successful results.  A successful digital professional is more a lifestyle than an occupation, and passion keeps you going!

10. Thought Leadership
The digital professional must be constantly looking at the new, be aware of what’s just around the corner, be familiar with filtering the hype from the real deal.  Learning quickly from mistakes, and not being deterred by failure all help to drive innovation and thought leadership.  Digital thought leadership must embrace both praxis and theory,  be strategically driven and tactically tested otherwise it remains academic.  Every great idea stands surrounded by the bones of many failed ones!

There are a few more including business acumen and client responsibility.   My twitter list also included analytics/metrics, expectation management, trend anticipation, local adaptations, media agnostic, outcomes driven, communications focused, strategic/tactical, and socially responsible.  But I think 10 is a good number to end this on.

Gong Xi Fa Cai.

Happy Chinese New Year to all!

The digital revolution is China’s second major social revolution within the last 60 years and social media is leading the charge.

Chinese Audience Behavior

China’s audience behavior helps social media lead the charge through the digital frontier.  Pearl TV news reported on January 2nd, 2009 that more Chinese now read from the Internet than print. I am trying to locate the study which supports this little gem.  These types of reports just support anecdotal evidence and other stats from other areas which clearly position Chinese audiences as advanced consumers of digital communications.

Advanced Consumers of Digital Communications

More and more Chinese audiences are turning to, and using digital media for entertainment, education, business, community, and conversation.  Deeper behavioral and cultural attitudes of how Chinese relate to new cultural movements and commodities, and to technology in general, are driving these broader social changes.  Digital communications and social media in particular is a social strategy waged in the theatre of the Chinese communications battleground.

So What Does This All Mean?

What does this mean - changes will occur here faster, the scale of change will be much larger, and following from this, the economic impact will be much greater than many other national digital communities.

Thanks to all of you who voted for Digital China Guide in the recent China best blog awards, we were winners in the best Technology Blog category.  Matt’s blog, Digital Marketing Inner Circle got first place in this category - well done Matt!

I am looking forward to developing more themes and introducing new concepts for the Digital China Guide audience.

Please subscribe to our rss feed to keep updated and always feel free to contact me.

Good luck to you in 2009!

Starting a conversation about analytics gets mixed responses and the conversation is often associated with web analytics.  Sure we are all familiar with website analytics and what a great tool it is for tracking and measuring, now extend this type of data rich reporting across all of your marketing activities and now you will see the true power of analytics.  The more integrated and deeper reach analytics has in your marketing mix, the more powerful it becomes as a business tool.

Analytics is Business Critical

It is critical that marketers get clear access to, and full visibility of, dynamic rich full lifecycle data to measure performance and track behavior of campaigns and activities, both individually and globally.  This data will help marketers drive efficiencies and effectiveness, manage budgets and resources, as well as manage campaign activities.  Of course improving ROI is a core outcome, but before we can attain any level of ROI we must optimise and adjust for effectiveness - analytics helps us achieve this.

Analytics is central to digital marketing & the Digital Ecosystem

Analytics is a core component and central foundation of successful digital marketing.  When growing your digital ecosystem, analytical data will be central for managing maximum and optimal efficiencies.   Just as analytics drives modern organisations it also drives modern digital marketing and will become fully integrated with organisational reporting framework.  Analytics is one of the sexiest marketing tool sets around that is playing a central role in creating and building powerful marketing solutions.

Nominee for China Blog Awards. Please vote!

How to vote?

Next to every blog display there’s a small voting box with a plus sign at the bottom. Want to vote for a blog? press the plus sign. The vote will then register, the number of votes will update and the plus sign will turn green.

Voting will close at the end of 31.12.2008 and winners will be announced soon after.

The Digital Ecosystem is a total universe where your communications take on a life of their own. Messages intelligently move and dynamically change through Clickstreams, spheres, devices, nodes, and networks, monitored and directed by fully automated, highly customized, 24/7 Agents. Your messages live their entire lifecycle within the Digital Ecosystem, organically adjusting, reconfiguring, and adapting to time & language zones, Clickstreams, regionalities, spheres, and audience segments and behaviors.

Agents and Human Handlers

This is life within the Digital Ecosystem, marketing messages managed by intelligent Agents [bots], and Agents in turn managed by human handlers who, like post-modern traffic controllers, monitor campaigns and messages as they worm and mutate their way their way through Clickstreams, spheres, devices, nodes and networks.

Efficiencies

Message and campaign efficiencies flowing within the Digital Ecosystem are dynamically and intelligently managed by Agents.  These Agents monitor and manage budget thresholds, audience behavior, outcome thresholds, time and sphere sensitivities, which is all constantly balanced against future predictive behaviors.

Reporting and Measuring

Reporting is simultaneously dynamic, historical, and predictive as analytics constantly streams back to the human handlers who read the data looking for opportunity and weakness patterns within the streaming Matrix of rich data.

Semantic RSS Agents living in the Digital Ecosystem search and report on KPI algorithms providing a constant stream of rich analytical campaign and message performance data.  Qualitative and quantitative measurements  of campaign and message KPI’s are constantly pooled, measured and analysed to provide dynamic instant displays of effectiveness.

Welcome to our future

This may sound like science fiction but this is the future of digital marketing and the Digital Ecosystem is at the heart of this. The technology to deliver the Digital Ecosystem experience is with us right now, as is the business necessity to engage dynamic audience segments and behaviors based on rich dynamic analytics fed models.  The tech has just not been packaged and integrated yet.  So if you consider that digital marketing is already complex, its about to get way more complex, and simultaneously more measurable, dynamic, integrated, responsive, relevant, powerful, and organic. Welcome to our future.

For relevance, reach, and effectiveness, brands must live seemlesly across multiple digital spheres and create continuous rich experiences.  Rich internet applications and sphere marketing tools of course help to build your brand’s digital presence.  However to achieve optimal efficiencies and true audience impact a digital ecosystem model must be adopted.

A Holy Trinity?

Search, Media, & Social Media Marketing: 3 powerful digital marketing tools. These should all be used with an integrated approach and live beyond campaign boundaries. These 3 marketing mechanisms should have a 24/7 - 12 month lifecycle.  They should be living within your digital ecosystem, and adjusted for seasonality and campaign efficiencies.  Digital marketing efficiencies are really a critical issue, and planning to sustain your digital ecosystem over a 12 month cycle is a central business issue.

Your Platform As An Organic Environment

We are currently building our next generation website platform.  This is a hybrid opensource framework which is widgetised.  Development on this platform will be regular and upgrades constant. We consider our next gen. platform as a living organic lifeform.  Being widgetised, we can easily Plug N’ Play new functionality for improved experience and communication.   You should think beyond the linearity of many websites and similar flash environments and think organic widgetised frameworks, then plug in rich and social media for experience and value.

I’ll discuss other important components of your digital ecosystem in following posts.

Social Media Rap

Design Coding

Paid Search Rap

On December 1st, bloggers from around the world will unite for World AIDS Day 2008. Worldwide an estimated 33 million people are living with HIV. In the United States, an estimated one million Americans are living with HIV. In response, both the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of HIV/AIDS Policy’s AIDS.gov have come together to share HIV/AIDS information with the blogging community for World AIDS Day 2008.

Please join us on December 1st in recognition of World AIDS Day 2008. NIDA and AIDS.gov are working with Bloggers Unite because we value and recognize the power of a voice. Multiply that voice by the thousands and the sound of humanity will echo the blogosphere. HIV/AIDS affects too many in our communities to ignore. Be a part of a growing community of leaders that lift their voices.

Together, we can reduce the stigma of this pandemic through our words, voices and actions.

Just a few early Sunday morning thoughts on the not-to-distant future of social media in China.

1. Social media will predominate the digital landscape in China
2. Digital becomes a gateway into and across the Chinese social media networks
3. Digital will be measured by its effectiveness to influence, contribute, and add value to social media
4. All leading brands will adopt a Chinese social media strategy or they will loose relevance
5. All agencies will build dedicated Chinese social media teams
6. Social media will become the nexus for most digital strategies
7. Social media will not be seen as a tactical or executional issue but a primary strategic issue

Chinese Social Media Value Chain

The value chain in Chinese social media is the same as everywhere.

Social media introduces a new communication model into the media mix.
This model still consists of standard attributes:

• Audience
• Participation
• Value
• Opportunities
• Threats
• Timeline

Critical elements in this new model are audience focused, and relate to relationships, participation, and value - this is the value chain in social media. Out of this value chain come opportunities and threats, and of course all of these elements are framed within a life cycle along a time line.

Bring Gifts, Not Sales People

So when you think about unlocking the value chain in social media you must put your audience front and center, enable and contribute value through helping to create and sustain this value chain.  In short, when opening doors into social media try bringing gifts not sales people.

Guerilla Marketing Shanghai

We have partnered up with an innovative PR company to deliver some Guerilla marketing [and some more traditional PR marketing activities] to the streets of Shanghai.

Guerilla Marketing Hong Kong

Our friends at Delay No Mall Guerillaed the Streets of Hong Kong to promote their Delay No Mall launch:

A great VDO summary of some Guerilla marketing:

Integrating a consistent marketing message

Keywords and integrating a consistent marketing message across channels becomes critical for any campaign’s success because it speaks directly to consumers driven by search to products and services.

Four out of five

Four out of five online sessions begin at a search engine. In fact, 41% of people use search to navigate toward Web sites. About 37% of people claim that content in a TV ad led them to search for more information on the Internet. Thirty percent used search to make purchases generated by magazine content. And based on a Yahoo and comScore study, consumers who saw both display and search ads for the same products spent 83% more than those who saw neither.

Source: Media Post

This post is really a general reflection on the digital spectrum here in China.  The events of this year have pushed the digital momentum even further causing clients and agencies to rethink their existing strategies and spend.

There is one certainty that comes with uncertainty and that is change, and often rapid change motivated by restructuring, both financial and systemic/organisational.  Global market meltdown has created a new engine of change which will drive digital faster and further into the folds of both agency and client hearts and minds alike [while it is already firmly in the hearts and minds of many Chinese target audiences].

When chatting with my colleagues here in China, there also seems to be an underlying acceptance that we are all helping to create something new: A new industry, new ideas, new attitudes, and a new digital frontier.

I think it is important to reflect upon our identity and create a sense of unity for all of us working within the digital spectrum,  some of us have been isolated in our roles, and many forging new roles and paths along the way, rising up the ranks of start-ups, agencies, or brands.  While others have jumped sectors to quickly re-skill and embrace the digital challenge.

Above all else, we should recognise what we are all part of and what we are all helping to create.

Now back to the trenches for a coffee to help me get through my monday morning reporting duties …