15 million unique visitors, 8.5 minutes on the website and a click through rate of over 4 percent! Those are numbers that I hear frequently when I judge a Chinese campaign in a regional or international creative award show. These shows are an interesting mirror of both, what is going on creatively in China and how fellow judges from around the world perceive campaigns coming out of China.
For the latter, big numbers are not any longer favorable criteria. On the contrary, those numbers raise eyebrows and doubt about the work’s creativity. Broad effectiveness doesn’t necessarily translate into brilliant creative thinking. Therefore it is fair to say that the more niche a campaign is targeted, the more difficult to reach the audience, the better the creative product has to be.
In the case of China, I think this is what is going to happen over the next year and beyond. While digital channels, and especially online have certainly reached a mass medium stage, it will be the very targeted campaigns that will set the creative standards, which then in return will be copied and re-used for broader campaigns further down the road.
Over the past 12 months we could already see things going his way. Many a campaign website has seen a significant increase in production budget, which enables creatives to work with talents from outside the own office: 3D artists, music composers, illustrators and camera men and directors. These websites create buzz, word of mouth even without spending much money on media, and are well known even beyond the target audience.
Especially in China entertainment has been high on the list of things people do online, and with a more figured out situation in the video sharing industry, branded content and brand entertainment will certainly be a thing to watch for in the next 12 months. Partnerships with professionals from outside the industry – script writers, actors, and directors – will play a significant role in creating successful online content.
Mobile is rumored to have a breakthrough in 2009, what this means though I don’t know. My personal opinion is that mobile will always be a difficult one to crack when used as a mass medium. In targeted situations this medium can become a real killer though. Social networking, location based services, flash players, high resolution cameras and many other new innovations will make for great use for in more targeted campaigns.
The global killer application on the internet is social networking and while xiaonei and kaixin are expected to grow their user base to unprecedented heights, there is still plenty of room for marketers to weave a smart SNS component into their campaign. Especially useful applications and widgets will give brands a positive appeal amongst the networkers. But the real opportunity here lies in the power of word-of-mouth, turning consumers into evangelists and spreading the word without investing big dollars in media.
Finally I believe a big trend that comes from Japan and Europe will make a significant debut in 2009 in China: the cross-over between the virtual and the real. Campaigns will increasingly make use of interaction other than with the mouse. Webcams are a hot item, when used properly they can really add the fun element into any campaign. Convergence through mobile phones and also digital outdoor that is connected to the internet will be something agencies will certainly look at.
2009 will be another year of growing up in China. While the numbers will get even more gigantic, it will be the ones who have to reach a sophisticated audience that have to be creative. Like Bill Bernbach said in one of my favorite quotes: “… the future, as always, belongs to the brave.”
