Navigating Shanghai’s hectic pedestrian crossings isn’t for the faint hearted. Drivers disregarding red lights, motorbikes disregarding pavements - you definitely wouldn’t want to ‘text and walk’ at rush hour here. On my second trip to Shanghai, I’ve been reminded that China presents one of the most challenging, exciting media markets globally; navigating complex terrain – much like the pedestrian crossing – is second nature to marketers here. One of the (many!) benefits of a global perspective is the opportunity to cherry pick the most inspiring facets and traits across markets. Here are some key takeouts I’m bringing back from China:
A super complex marketplace
As the world’s third largest economy and home to 1.3bn consumers, China is probably the most competitive media marketplace, with big international brands continuing to enter to compete with strong local ones.
The sheer size and intricacy of China’s physical and political landscape is reflected in the complexity of its media and regulatory landscape - it helps to approach China a region much as we do the US or Europe, rather than one single country.
The government plays a highly active role, from changing TV minuteage, to ‘managing’ digital competitors. And the Darwinian nature of the market has required local CMOs to adapt fast. Mass testing of new channels has had a positive impact on digital spend levels (up to 37.5% for 2015 in GroupM’s TYNY July 2014 report), and specifically on video, ecommerce and social.
By necessity, ecommerce and video are way ahead
In a vast, sprawling country where many brands have yet to reach every city, China’s newly affluent middle class has grabbed the opportunity to order goods online with both hands. A historical equivalent would be the Sears catalogue in the late 1800s as the US expanded.
Online video consumption has also surged ahead of the West due to necessity. Traditional business models, whereby consumers pay directly for content, weren’t available to publishers in China so they were forced to create new models.
As a result, online video viewing of professional licensed content existed in China long before it did in the west and is at a far more mature stage and growing fast, valued at $3.88bn in 2014. We can look to the opportunities already available with online video in China for inspiration, as many of them don’t exist yet elsewhere.
Breadth vs depth
The unique make up of China’s digital space also beckons opportunities that we don’t yet see elsewhere. In most markets, each company has a distinct specialism; Facebook is purely a social media site, Netflix only produces and broadcasts video content. In China, the big digital players offer multitude services. Tencent – best known for its WeChat messaging app - is a leader in social media, news, games, blogging and microblogging, video and increasingly mobile payment.
On the one hand, this means the country’s media owners wield a huge amount of power– and as such isn’t ideal for media agencies and advertisers. . On the other hand, it creates perfect conditions to plan highly integrated campaigns across multiple channels. As traditional models are falling apart in other markets and TV production companies, record labels, magazine publishers and so on take gradual steps to figure out solutions that have already existed here for some time.
The same, but different
In short, while nothing in China’s media is exactly the same, most things aren’t dramatically different. Take for example Weibo, Sina’s microblogging platform. Initially, it was hard to distinguish from Twitter. But you can say a lot more in 140 characters in Chinese than you can in English, so the nature of posts became quite different to Twitter; more detailed, more thought out, more nuanced.
For many years, the West has accused China of being a copycat, but as the market moves from necessity to opportunity, the focus is now increasingly on brand, innovative and original design and services, and all with access to advanced tech. We have a tendency to perceive ‘the world’ from the West; let’s not forget what we can learn from where other markets have surged ahead.
Lindsay Pattison
Worldwide CEO
Maxus