The move is designed to reflect Xiaonei’s growth to 70 million users. The network feels it has grown beyond its initial core of university students.
Charles Sampson, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Beijing, said: “Xiaonei.com is a hugely successful social networking site, but it doesn’t want to be exclusively for college students. The vision is to create the largest and best social networking services for Chinese, one that is loved by all internet users, customers and its third-party partners.”
The heavyweight rebranding campaign will be launched next month and includes TV, OOH, print and online. The theme of the campaign will be ‘Qing xi ren ren’, which means ‘true relationships connect everyone’.
Joe Chen, CEO of Oak Pacific interactive, which operates RenRen.com, said: “My dream is to turn RenRen into a major driving force in online in China. The first thing our users do in the morning is to log onto our site, even before they brush their teeth. I was greatly impressed by Saatchi & Saatchi’s ‘Lovemarks’ positioning and it made us think not only about how we communicate but also about the entire product design and user experience”
Other active social networking and instant messenger players in China include Kaixin.com, Kaixin001.com, Tencent and MSN .
The announcement follows the launch of Facebook Lite , which is designed to expand the US network’s presence in markets such as China.