Recently, Business Week published an article about Chinese Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) titled "Inside the War Against China's Blogs".

Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog or who follows the Chinese Internet, including net culture and IWOM, knows that it would be quite a challenge to fully capture in a relatively brief magazine article the dynamics and complexity at play in this ecosystem and equally challenging to capture the emerging Internet Word of Mouth industry in China that has developed to help companies understand and participate in this new world.

With that in mind, I would like to provide a bit more information related to our view of IWOM and the IWOM industry and clarify some points that could possibly be misunderstood from the article.

The "power" of IWOM can be positive, not just negative: Take a look at our report on the recent Sichuan earthquake here to see how netizens came together in massive numbers and impact to share information, grieve as a nation and donate millions of dollars to the earthquake victims.

Loud consumer voices are NOT necessarily a bad thing: As I wrote on Consumer Day on March 15, more and more netizens are cutting out Better Business Bureau-type organizations (which are not particularly strong anyway) and going to the Internet when they can't get the help they need from brands. Brands being more accountable can be a good thing, especially in a country that has a long history for poor customer service. Yes, consumers can and do go to extremes, but this happens in other markets too, for example, in the US as we Business Week reported earlier this year in their story "Consumer Vigilantes".

Of course, not all cases are so extreme, and in fact, BBS is simply a natural place where consumers seek help and advice. For example, you can find PCAuto has set up a platform for auto owners to ask questions directly to auto manufacturers, with answers being rated for helpfulness. Like it or not, the Internet is a new arena for customer service--customer service is the new marketing. Brands need to be more vigilant to listening to online conversations.

CIC does not seed messages for clients: As I wrote in January, CIC is a member of The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and we follow WOMMA's code of ethics, which, in short says:
* Honesty of Relationship: You say who you're speaking for
* Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe
* Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity

Making sense of IWOM is more than reputation management. In fact, only about 20% of our work with clients like Nike, Pepsi and L’Oreal comes from reputation management. When you consider that every quarter, Chinese auto forums have almost 500,000 people writing over 15 million messages about their experiences (see here and here) and consider that 80% of netizens go to BBS to research purchases, and 61.7% ask other BBS users for purchasing advice (see here) you can understand why our auto clients want to track IWOM for a deeper understanding of what consumers like and don't like about their cars.

We provide IWOM driven insights to R&D departments, to pre-campaign strategy, post campaign measurement, to community development strategy, and product launch strategy. Examples of using IWOM for product feedback, digital PR and marketing insights can be found in our white papers on notebooks, mobile phones, automobile and sports here.

Bloggers want connections, not "pampering": CIC uses its technology and deep understanding of online community to identify bloggers and efluencers who would have the most interest in developing a meaningful relationship with our clients. CIC does not believe bloggers or efluencers need or should be "pampered," nor does CIC pamper then. Identifying efluencers is part of CIC's Listen-Know-Participate (L-K-P™) framework which we have outlined many places including here and here.

"War" is the wrong metaphor for IWOM: While we certainly understand there are cases where companies are attacked online, and this behavior is often the focus on media articles, we do not believe "war" is an appropriate or accurate metaphor to view IWOM. As we have outlined here and here, we prefer the concept of the "connected agency," which Forrester defines as an agency that has "a deep understanding of consumer communities, helping brands create and nurture connections, deliver targeted, on-demand messages, and network for talent and insights."

By tracking and analyzing IWOM, brands can tune into and connect with the most informed, active and influential consumers in the market. Brands can learn consumers' language, learn that they watch the NBA online and virtually cheer in BBS conversations, learn how they meet up offline, and learn how they research products online. In the end, we see that for brands, tracking and analyzing IWOM is not a threat, but an opportunity.

Update: Below are more reactions to the article:

- David Wolf, China's war for the soul of online corporate communications
(if blocked for China readers, try here)

- Will Moss, Is it "war" against Chinese blogs?

- Paul Denlinger, The PR Problem for Chinese Online Public Relations Firms

- China Web2.0 Review, The PR Problems of China’s Social Media