DigitalMediaWorks takeaways: 'Go digital or die', break silos, socialise China

After a morning of educational content, more than 40 delegates created six core campaign ideas for a real-life brief from client Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Jean Lin, APAC CEO of Isobar, hosted the event, together with four speakers and six mentors, as well as representatives from sponsors Tencent, hdtMEDIA and FTChinese.com.

With digital capabilities remodelling the face of marketing on a seemingly daily basis, it's no surprise that an event for younger professionals was full of insights any media professional could use. Here are some of the highlights.

Now that a consumer's relationship with one's mobile device is closer than that with one's spouse or partner, it is more important for all industry practitioners to be on top of digital trends, according to Lin. Participate in Jiepang check-ins for mobile coupons, interact with QR codes on ads, for example.

Lin challenged delegates to not just develop campaigns within a targeted digital media silo but to build engagement by busting the silos of "social being social, mobile being mobile, search being search, video being video, or online gaming being just online gaming".

She warned that delegates, back in their day jobs after the workshop, must add strategic value for clients, otherwise their agencies run the risk of playing more executional roles in the agency-client relationship.

Karen Ho, head of MEC Interaction China, agreed. She advised delegates not to equate the digital behaviour of consumers in general with their own digital habits, since being in the industry, one is expected to be more digitally savvy than normal consumers.

Her advice came after delegates posted wrong answers to a series of questions that posited popular perceptions of trends in China's e-commerce marketing. Delegates were surprised that 56 per cent of online shoppers have started buying directly from brand sites instead of e-commerce sites, and that 48 per cent of m-commerce transactions on Taobao came from WAP browsers instead of mobile apps, for instance,

"You must know your clients' target consumers—really know them," she said. "Even though you buy all your stuff online because you work such long hours at agencies, you must not assume that all other consumers ditch brick-and-mortar stores like you."

Knowing consumers also entails understanding nitty-gritty details such as mobile banking transaction limits, a factor that is an obstacle to successful m-commerce campaigns. Variant scenarios along every single point in the consumer purchase process must be considered, Ho said, citing the recent Mercedes Benz Smart car initiative, which took into account even factors such as how other parties in the brand’s own supply chain would be affected.

Making a statement in jest, Leo Xu, SVP of client services, Posterscope China, said "Go digital or die” to emphasise the point to delegates that digital is now a new state of being—not merely a media channel, not just a virtual space.

Therefore, the same goes for converging outdoor media with digital touchpoints like mobile. Showing overseas case studies from BMW Mini, Nokia X7, H&M, and Bronx, he explained how interactivity, augmented reality and NFC technology are tools to combine media, content, and platform.

Again, he asked delegates to break old patterns of thinking about promotional formats. "In the future, we may see no more paper tickets, no more loyalty cards for customer retention," he said. "Discounts are already given online based on your Weibo pseudonyms now. This is so different from the past."

Leon Zhang, national head of social media, MediaCom China, gave tips on how to use social media to optimise SEM, while remarking that social networking is even more significant than advertising.

"The whole Chinese internet is being socialised," he said. Why? Geographical migration across China's cities is increasing the need to communicate with home. Single-child policies are causing children with no siblings to invest more in friendships with peers. And proliferation of social-media sites is increasing, with sites being copied over to suit China.

More detailed coverage of DigitalMediaWorks will be published in the April issue of Campaign Asia-Pacific.