Chinese brand owners demand more creativity

More creativity needed
by Crazy AP via FlickrGolden China Brands is reporting from the Cannes Advertising Festival delivering a few messages regarding the China market that might come as a surprise for some global agencies. Main take-away: China is setting trends in global marketing, rather than a follower of trends. (US/Europe in brackets).

• Chinese companies only stay on average 2,5 years with an agency (5 years)
• Most Chinese companies leave because the lack of creativity of an agency (bad service)
• Work is mostly project-based (fee-based)
• China is leading in mobile advertising

More at Golden China Brands.

Beijing Olympics will be copyrighted

Image via WikipediaYou thought the newswire AP went crazy when they tried to charge webloggers who were quoting their stuff? What about the orders by the copyright authorities in China regarding the Beijing Olympics who have announced stiff fines for people who put anything online about this major event? Danwei quotes:

On (June) 12, Xu Chao, deputy director of the General National Copyright Administration of China, said that individual and websites will face fines as high as 100,000 yuan for recording or uploading Olympic Games video to the internet."

In a country where 160 million internet users watch and make video's that might be a tough policy to enforce. But the craziness of yet another government department issuing orders that mainly makes them look foolish.

Facebook launches in Chinese

via WikipediaThe popular social network Facebook has launched on Thursday its long-awaited Chinese edition, reports the research group Pacific Epoch.

Once users log in, they will see the site in whichever language they had been previously used; Chinese is the default language for new users in China. Facebook presumably used its translation project, through which its users voluntarily help translate the site, for the simplified Chinese version.

Facebooks is tremendous popular in the US and elsewhere, claiming already up to 80 million participants. But US internet companies like Yahoo and Google have done rather bad on the China market. Also Facebook will meet already powerful domestic competition and potential regulatory resistance when it enters the market.

China to raise its domestic oil prices

via WikipediaRetail gasoline and diesel prices will go up 18 percent on Friday, the Financial Times reports, quoting Reuters. That is the first hike in eight months, but leaves the retail prices still heavily subsidized, compared to the market prices.

”Yes it’s real. They are going to raise the prices. We were told to wait in the office to receive the official notice,” said a fuel sales official with top refiner Sinopec Corp.

Car owners elsewhere in the world pay up to four times the retail prices in China and have led in Europe to widespread protest by truck drivers, taxi drivers and cause a drop in the usage of the cars. In China retail prices have been controlled to avoid similar unrest and upward pressure on the inflation.

Update: The BBC reports that also prices for electricity will go up, although it does not mention figures and indicates there might be quite some exceptions.

Foreign media: "No access to Chinese sporters"

via WikipediaForeign media, and sponsors, in China are complaining they get no access to the Chinese top-athletes expected to score at the coming Beijing Olympics, according to AFP:

"We have literally sent thousands of faxes every week asking for interviews with Chinese athletes – and got nothing," he said.

With just two months to go before the Games, Olympic sponsors – who initially had a freer hand in organising publicity assignments with Chinese athletes – have also been cut off from the stars.

Chinese authorities want their sporters to focus on their training, but that might hurt also commercial interests if not a right balance is found in dealing with the media.

"Chinese companies are already innovating" - William Bao Bean

Not yet a Facebook
via WikipediaSome great insights from William Bao Bean, VC at the China/India Softbank, triggered off by Thomas Crampton, He argues against the common cliche that Chinese companies do not innovate. While a Chinese Facebook is still far away, China has its own Sillicon Valley style garages.

To support his argument William cites a company that he recently joined, iTalki, as an example of a Chinese company innovating on a global scale. iTalki is a language exchange site with a global user base that supports more than 100 possible languages. While it does copy some good ideas from other sites, William claims iTalki is the world’s leading language exchange of its kind.

William Bao Bean is going to be a speaker at my upcoming (new) speakers' bureau. If you are interested in having him as a speaker, drop me a line.

Taiwanese China Times fires half of its people

via WikipediaThe China Times, one of the major newspapers in Taiwan will fire about half of its 1,200 strong staff, the paper's owner announced according to media reports.

Stiff competition from Hong Kong-invested tabloid publication Apple Daily, a sharp increase in pulp prices, a decline in ads due to the weak economy and convenient access to the internet as well as television news networks were cited as the causes for the losses at the China Times, which was founded in 1950.

The blow for the media industry comes at a time when most news coming from the print industry looks like the obituary section. It is part of a worldwide trend where income from both audiences and adds are dropping very fast, this year in some cases with double digits. Efforts to go online have not yet proven to be a strong alternative for the traditional media, although the figures for online readership and related revenue are on the rise.

Internet censor starts blocking proxies

Forbidden
via WikipediaIsaac Mao just twittered that TOR, one of the most used proxies in China to avoid the internet censorship has now been blocked itself. That happens only a few days after reports said that also Anonymouse, one of the other more popular proxies now had been blocked.
That means a diversion from the old policy where proxies were mostly not blocked and the internet censorship was a kind of first line defense for newcomers. Most people who have to deal with information, like academics and journalists, were at their workplace in China first taught how to use proxies.
Over the past year most 'blocks' of foreign websites had disappeared and made way for more sophisticated filtering techniques. Blocking well-known proxies seems to mean the relative tightening of the censorship at a time when China had promised more openness at the internet for its foreign guests.

Luxury products in China: much to win

via WikipediaShaun Rein is focusing on a niche market for luxury products: the super-rich. Many of them go to Hong Kong or Italie for their purchases, because they cannot find a similar experience in China itself:

The seasoned super-rich want more product and brand availability, access to products that will really make them feel “special”. Yet currently in mainland China many such luxury brands and products are difficult to find, or simply not sold. Manolo Blahnik, MiuMiu, and Bottega Veneta are a few such names often missing from the racks. And of course, when it comes to fashion, these high-end consumers demand the newest, most up-to-date products. In a recent CMR study one thirty-five year old Beijing woman told us, “I go to Hong Kong to do my shopping because I know I can get the newest things there. I can’t always find the latest items on the mainland.”

More at Seeking Alpha.

A patriottic commercial

Image by Q r m o O o s h a ™ via FlickrShanghaiist rightfully points at this well-done commercial bij sportswear company Anta, made by WPP's JWT Shanghai. It nicely fits in with the patriottic mood China is in since the Sichuan earthquake. Tom Doctoroff, who is heading the JWT agency:

“We decided to extend the brand message from individual glory to national glory, encouraging everyone in China to stand tall through these obstacles.”

Kicking out all students from Beijing universities

Beijing students have been told "for safety reasons" to leave their dormitories by July 5, Truth from facts reports. (h/t Global Voices).

Certain areas will be cleared out completely to make way for various Olympic teams and officials, and all students will need written permission with the seal of various school bodies in order to stay on campus.

The announcement comes as an unpleasant surprise; part of the students expected to work as volunteers during the Beijing Olympics.
The internet censor is trying to stop discussion about the measure, but that will be hard to manage.

Notion of GFW is outdated - researcher

Accepted control
via WikipediaLokman Tsui challenged at the recent China Internet Research Conference in Hong Kong the conventional (American) way of looking at the Great Fire Wall (GFW) or the internet censorship in China, here according to the Wall Street Journal weblog.
The approach of US Congress to attack China's GFW is doomed to fail, said Lokman Tsui:

... because “the [notion of the] Great Firewall is basically a continuation of the Cold War ideology that is so predominant in the U.S.” The assumption is that the firewall is kind of like an “Iron Curtain 2.0″ that’s dividing East and West. Not so, Mr. Tsui said. But you can find that mentality in the Cold-War era ways that the U.S. tries to influence China’s control over the Internet, assuming that access to political information from overseas would foster democracy and end rule by the Communist Party...
Finally, Tsui argues that the Great Firewall metaphor presumes that there is tension between the government and citizens in China over censoring the Internet, but recent research suggests the vast majority of Chinese Internet users want the government to control Internet content.

European China Center in Rotterdam gets go-ahead

Rotterdam via WikipediaAn agreement to build a €100 million (Rmb 1 billion) European China Center in Europe's largest port city Rotterdam was signed today, report Dutch media.
The NRC-Handelsblad reports (nl) the contract was signed between property developer Volker Wessels and the Shanghai Construction Group, known from the many building sites in Shanghai and the rest of China.
The to-build complex will include offices for Chinese companies, companies focusing on China, a supermarket, restaurants and other service providers. Director Volker Wessels said he hoped the Shanghai Construction Group would also help in getting Chinese companies to the city. There were no commitments from any Chinese companies yet, the NRC added.
The complex will be build in the former harbor district Katendrecht where in 1900 also the first Chinese arrived on Dutch soil. The first phase is expected to start in 2009.

Another Olympic mishap: problems in getting tickets

via WikipediaIf organizing mishaps would be an Olympic game, China would already have strikken gold. The WSJ identifies new problems as people who bought tickets for Olympic events could not get their tickets if the name on their application form was not exactly the same as the one on their passport.
Problems occurred at the Bank of China in Beijing, in charge of handing over the tickets.

Eventually, the bank agreed to collect the forms and write authorization letters to Bocog on behalf of the ticket buyers, and the tickets were distributed. The whole process took around 2 hours for our source, though it seems not to be over yet. Later, he got a call from the BOC informing him that the bank actually wasn’t authorized to send the correction forms, so he’ll have to go back, collect his form and mail it to Bocog.

When living in China, you might get used to this Chinese way of making regulations, causing havoc, correcting the regulations, but for relative outsiders it might be less funny. None of these barriers might be too high to take, but they certainly do not add to the international atmosphere Olympics should have.
I got meanwhile also a first complaint (so we need a few more before we get really worried) of visa problems for official visitors. One invidted official from Europe got actually a 15-day visa, while he needed a 30-day; issued by BOCOG and the IOC in Lausanne. We keep you informed.

Dutch travel to China 38% down

statue "the traveller"
via WikipediaThe Dutch organization of travel agents ANVR has announced that travel bookings to China are down 38%, report Dutch media. The negative response is only surpassed by Kenia that saw 84% less Dutch travelers. The organization only mentions the situation in Tibet and the recent earthquake as reasons for the drop, not the still ongoing problems in securing visas.
The Dutch belong to the more avid travellers in the world, dominating many destination, despite the relative small number of inhabitants. A drop in the number of Dutch travellers might be indicative for other countries too.

Can Shanghai host an international event?

Will Shanghai do it better?
via WikipediaBeijing obvious had its stadiums and sporting facilities for the Olympics later this summer in place, but otherwise the event seems to turn into the opposite of a real international event. Tourism is down and many of the potential visitors are unsure whether they can get a visa. The larger international networks are seriously at odds with the organizers in Beijing on the way they can get access to the games. Beijing is busy in issuing rules and regulations and has no clue how to create an atmosphere that goes along with an international event.
So, it is time to also have a look at Shanghai and its World Expo 2010. Would Shanghai be able to organize its event better than Beijing? When the 11th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) would be a benchmark, the answer is a resounding "no".
When I started to cover the event at its early beginning I was in a forgiving mood. You simply cannot set up an international event like this overnight. But what I'm reading now is very troublesome, or should I say what I'm not reading. None of the international news agencies has sent anybody over and the only non-Chinese medium covering the event is the Hollywood Reporter through Maria Trombly. Her reports also are not very encouraging.

But the event around them began in disarray, as the press screening of the opening film, Chinese documentary "Olympics Dreamers," was cancelled when its print failed to arrive. Critics and reporters not told of the cancellation were left waiting near the venue at 8:30 in the morning as it rained outside.

At a later press gathering, "Memoirs of a Geisha" actress Zhang Ziyi said she had helped raise over $1 million in quake relief at the Cannes Film Festival but did not plan a campaign of similar scope in Shanghai, citing the lack of a "proper environment." She did not elaborate.

Also the names of the most famous stars at the event, Zhang Ziyi, Jackie Chan and Wong Kar Wai, show - something that also some of the Chinese media note, that Shanghai is not having an international film festival.
Will the Shanghai World Expo 2010 do better? I hope for the best, but fear the worst.
The SIFF still runs till June 22.