In the past two years, CIC data has been developing the technology and the expertise to help companies in China track conversations on BBS and blogs. We call the space we are in I-WOM: Internet Word of Mouth. Most recently, we have been focused on developing specific industry practices. One of those practices is automobile.

Over the course of 3 or 4 blog posts, I will outline the I-WOM landscape for automobiles in China as we see it and how we think brands can benefit from systematically tracking I-WOM.

First up: I-WOM channels. I-WOM channels are the tools, sites, forums where consumers share their opinions about brands, products, and services. There are many, but the three I will focus on here are blogs, video and BBS.

Blogs

Industry executives, journalists, fans and self proclaimed experts have found a voice in the Chinese blogosphere, primarily on blog channels on portals such as on Sina and Sohu and blog portals like Bokee.

These blogs vary in popularity and frequency of writing. As an example, Moyan Qingfen (莫言清风) Blog is written by an auto industry executive averaging about 1-2 articles a day about the industry, with some articles getting upwards of 50 comments.

Weblogs, Inc has a Chinese version of its Autoblog on Autoblog.cn. However, it is mostly translation of the English content, with relatively little China related content.

Importance of blogs for brands: Auto blogs are important to monitor as they provide a new media channel for industry insiders and participants which can influence professionals, and to some degree, consumers who follow the industry. In our opinion, however, they are not a representative consumer media as much as BBS is.

Video

Sites like Toodou and 6 rooms are making video a regular part of the Internet experience. For automobiles, the main source of activity is the sharing of some television shows or news reports. For example, here is a TV report analyzing the different customer types at gas stations. Here is a consumer video of an off road driving contest. Interesting stuff, but not especially mind blowing for brands.

Ultimately, the impact of video sites is not so much that they offer the venue for consumers to upload their own videos (though more of that will eventually happen), but more that they serve as an "always on" channel to spread "official" videos that consumers may not have seen when they were on TV or maybe even unavailable in China. For example, Tiida's "Sex and the City" series of TVCs shown outside of China (see below) are very racy, and might appeal to some Chinese, especially to those hipsters who download the show on BT sites in China (and there are many of these). Why shouldn't Nissan or its agency upload these to Toodou?



Importance of Video for brands: Video sites should be monitored for the chance that a consumer puts up a very crisis inducing video, however, their greatest impact could be in making additional and compelling content more available.

BBS

By far, we see BBS as the most influential I-WOM channel in China. BBS is where car fans, car owners and potential owners share their love, knowledge adn problems about cars.

Xcar Ford Focus Forum

Let's look at some of the numbers for our automobile BBS practice we collected in September from the top automobile BBS sites in China

• Number of messages collected: 3,826,853
  
• Number of unique posters: 93,720
  
• Average number of posts per day: 127,561
  

What does this mean? We have 3,826,853 comments written by 93,720 consumers for the month of September. These are the consumers who are already own cars or are thinking about buying cars and/or are actively discussing cars right now.

What are they talking about? More details on this in a later post, but here is a taste of one popular make/model they are talking about in September:

• Number of messages mentioning Ford: 70,674
• Number of messages mentioning Focus: 53,042

Diving deeper into the Ford Focus (one of the more popular models in China for its class) indicates just how impressive the message volume for BBS in China is. For example, looking at the Ford Focus forum on Xcar, we find over 300 messages per day with new replies. For all of our collected data for Focus, we see an average of 94 new threads per day with an average of 1541 comments to threads per day.


Importance of BBS for brands: We believe that the sheer volume of conversations about automobiles on BBS makes this channel a "must" for tracking. BBS is filled with consumers in discussions with other consumers about their experiences and opinions about owning and buying cars. Exactly what and why can and should brands be tracking? That will be the subject of upcoming posts.