Industry Watch,Personal,uncategorized 17 January 2012

I am thrilled to share the great news that CIC has agreed to be acquired by WPP’s Kantar Media. I look forward to taking social media and social business to the next level in China with our new partner.

More info below

Kantar Media to acquire leading Chinese social business intelligence agency CIC

Deal extends WPP unit’s capabilities in social media listening and analysis into world’s second largest ad market.

Kantar Media, the media research and insights division of Kantar, has expanded its social media offer in China with the acquisition of CIC, a leader in the Chinese Social media listening and  analysis industry. The deal will build on the company’s significant global presence and activities in media market research and insights with 5,000 staff across 60 markets, with CIC working along with the other leading Kantar Media partnerships in China including CSM and CTR. Kantar Media is a unit of Kantar, the consumer insight arm of WPP, the world’s largest communications services group.

The acquisition comes in response to the growing client need for the real-time monitoring of consumer brand conversations in a market with over 70% of the 500 million Internet users on social media and with over 50,000 enterprises owning a microblog account. It gives Kantar Media a strong base in China and Asia Pacific for social media intelligence and insights as China this year became the world’s second largest advertising market.

Founded in 2004 and with offices in Shanghai and Beijing, CIC coined the now standard Chinese industry term Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) and pioneered the concept of social business in China. With a team of over 60 social media consultants, innovative dashboards solutions and patent pending in technologies such as Chinese language text mining, CIC has led the industry in developing and applying social media intelligence and insights across its roster of blue-chip clients includes 5 brands out of the top 10 listed in Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, and is at the forefront of monetizing the social business industry in China.

Sam Flemming, founder and chairman of CIC, commented: “In joining Kantar Media, we will provide our clients with accessible, intelligent and meaningful analysis of brand discussions wherever they take place. We will also develop new client offers by identifying the synergies between our data set – including an archive of over 3 billion consumer brand mentions – and Kantar Media’s vast data resources. Further, the relationship will allow CIC to bring social business intelligence and insight to Kantar and across the whole WPP network as well as replicate its success in the broader Asia Pacific market.”

The CIC team will remain based in Shanghai and Beijing, China, and its management team will report to Jean-Michel Portier, global CEO of Kantar Media.

Portier said: “It is clear that the monitoring of consumer, brand and market discussions and the resulting insights are vital tools for executives worldwide. With Kantar Media Cymfony, we are already committed to maximizing our clients’ success in monitoring and analyzing consumer discussions in the US and in Europe. With CIC, we are achieving another milestone to establishing the same recognition for excellence in China that Cymfony already has. CIC is an exciting and successful company.  CIC will enrich our global digital expertise in capturing millions of online conversations and “making sense of the buzz” in order to provide interpretation that informs strategic decisions and leads to action.”

About Kantar Media

Kantar Media provides strategic advice and competitive intelligence to the world’s leading brands, publishers, agencies and industry bodies, helping them navigate and succeed in a rapidly evolving media industry. This includes analysis of paid media opportunities; counsel on brand reputation, corporate management and consumer engagement through owned media; and, evaluating consumers’ reactions in earned media. Kantar Media provides clients with a broad range of insights from audience research, competitive intelligence, vital consumer behavior and digital insights, to marketing effectiveness and online influence. Our experts currently work with 22,000 companies tracking 3 million brands in 50 countries. Kantar Media is a unit of Kantar, the consumer insight arm of WPP. WPP is the world’s largest communications services group with billings of $66 billion and revenues of approximately $14.4 billion.

www.Kantarmedia.com

For more information, please contact

Europe :

Teresa Horscroft

Tel: +44 (0)1420 564346

Mobile: +44 (0)7990 520390

Email:teresa@eurekacomms.co.uk

Asia :

CIC – Chander Guo

Tel: +86 (21) 52373860 * 891

Mobile: +86 13816361709

Email:chander.guo@cicdata.com

 Industry Watch 16 January 2012

In 2011, we witnessed the explosion of microblogging in China. However, while most of the attention was fixed on  Sina and Tencent Weibo, China’s top SNS are quietly making advancements in user experience and commercialization, particularly in terms of social advertising. Two particularly noteworthy SNS are the now publicly listed Renren (NYSE: RENN) and Tencent’s Pengyou. However, Pengyou has yet to embrace social business so it’s Renren, who campaigned  as “China’s Facebook” on it’s IPO roadshow, which offers greatest insight into upcoming commercialization trends for 2012.

Coming Soon :Renren 6.0

Renren was a perfect clone of Facebook in it’s earlier days. After 6 years of growth and development, Renren is now readying to launch it’s 6th version; increased emphasis is now being placed on User Generated Content (UGC), with a counter visible in the leaked design of this new interface.

What does this mean to brands and advertisers? 

A key component of any social advertising campaign is a quality that inspires potential consumers to generate content that can trigger a string of engagements, transforming the brand’s contents into much more credible, crowdsourced media.

This we often refer it to as the process of transforming paid media to earned media.

According to Facebook’s earlier definition of social advertisement, it’s the new way for brands are to engage with consumers online.

“Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online,” Zuckerberg told an audience of more than 250 marketing and advertising executives in New York. “For the last hundred years, media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.”

To support this vision, Renren  opened it’s Public Pages for free in 2011, allowing any business to setup a branded presence. To help brands maximize their exposure, Renren is also experimenting with microblog like re-posting features that will show the source of content more clearly.

i.e. If I were to re-post a piece of news from a friend, who had in turn re-posted it from a brand, I’ll be able to see the brand quite clearly.

On top of all these features, which will help a brand to spread it’s content, Renren also offers more advanced forms of Brand Page that will include widgets for communication and social gaming. So, it really comes down to clearly defining the right target consumer group, planning and then implementing a precise social advertising campaign, tailored to suit them.

Image source: TechRice - The New “Renren 6.0″ User Interface Places the Focus Back on Product

Renren Going Mobile

According to Renren CEO Joseph Chen at 2011′s 3rd quarter earnings call at the end of November, 35% of Renren’s active users login daily via mobile devices. THis emphasises the enormous potential of mobile marketing, especially when the Renren mobile applications are equipped with location functionality that can alert users of business deals in the vicinity.

Also, with their group buy service Nuomi, brands can potentially provide attractive deals targeting specific geographical regions, perhaps employing Renren’s user demographic information.

Renren’s Brand Video Channel

With the purchase of video site 56.com, Renren now has the resource to provide branded video channels. Also, users themselves are allowed to instantly upload videos from their mobile (currently only available on the HTC Renren Phone).

Video is one of the most viral forms of social media content, both brand published and user generated, brand related videos can go viral, garnering thousands of views in a very short time. So, in addition to the vast opportunity, managing this kind of content will be an even greater challenge for brands in 2012.

Disclosure: As co-founder of TechRice.com, I am a tech blogger with a product design and user experience emphasis. In contributing to CIC’s official social media blog, I have represented a more marketing based perspective.

 The Weekly Buzz 5 January 2012

Our insatiable appetite for information, the exponential growth of social media and the ready availability of smart mobile technologies are bringing about a whole new experience in digital reading. The popular mobile app “Flipboard” acts as a “social magazine” and helps to define the concept of “social reading” in a vivid and accessible way. So, is this the future of reading? An exquisite visual experience, similar to the glossy magazine version; content sourced from social media, aggregated, collated and recommended by a trusted group of peers; an independent subscription model, fulfilling the needs of a truly personalized reading experience; the interactivity and social functionality of a content delivery mechanism that analyzes user preferences.

This issue of IWOM Mark picks out some of the apps competing with “Flipboard” for social reader supremacy in the hands of China’s mobile netizens.

[1] Flipboard

For the Chinese version of Apple’s iPad, Flipboard has cooperated with Sina Weibo and Renren.com to bring the “social magazine app” to China. Internationally, @Flipboard has been named as “iPad App of the Year” for the way it collects social content and presents it in the form of glossy magazines. Readers can customize the app based on their prefered content and then share their recent reads with online friends.

[2] Google Currents

Google Currents is a new application for Android and iOS, in much the same vein as @Flipboard. Google provides a service tool, “Google Currents Producer”,  for those creative types who with to publish content independently. Meanwhile, its combination of “Google Analytics” facilities allows publishers to track the information relating to their content, like number of visits to the page and so on.

[3] NetEase Reader

Among the domestic apps similar to Flipboard, the NetEase Reader, or @网易阅读, features a host of rich Chinese resources. Chinese net giant Netease, as the content provider, also provides the exclusive resources such as “Official Info of Netease Games” as part of its core application. For more, click here to visit the official website.

[4] ZAKER扎客

In China, ZAKER ranks the most popular social reading application and again, is very similar to Flipboard, with a rich visual experience akin to an e-magazine. There are three reading modes; 3D rolling effect, the slide effect, and the classic page-flipping effect. It also provides user-friendly functions like offline reading and the extremely social ability to follow closely the reading habits of five friends. Click here to visit the official website.

[5] News.me

News.me delivers targeted content, which is filtered and selected based on the people you follow on Twitter and other expert recommendations. Distinguishing it from Flipboard, News.me is focused on this expert, or celebrity, sourced content that is more interest oriented than generally topical.

[6] iCare (@腾讯爱看)

iCare is affiliated with Tencent, so not only does it share the combined resource of 65 collaborative media sources in the Tencent stable, it also supports forwarding of the content via both Tecent and Sina Weibo . There are also columns for “favorite posts”  (爱看精华) and “found posts” (发现) that allow users to optimize their reading experience. For more information, click here to visit their official website.

[7] Yahoo Reader (@雅虎漫读)

In order to stake a claim in China’s domestic social reading market, Yahoo issued its Chinese Yahoo Reader app (雅虎漫读) without much fanfare towards the end of 2011. The reader is what you might call a  “boutique” application, in that it can be tailored in terms of the column, pictorial and news feed, by the iPad user themselves. For more information, click here to visit the official website.

 The Weekly Buzz 6 December 2011

[1] Shopbop.com Launches in Chinese

The women’s fashion store from Amazon, shopbop.com, has officially opened a Chinese edition. It sells street styles by independent designer brands, direct to Chinese netizens. Shopbop.com’s styling magazine, LookBook, is often referenced in “Vogue”, “Harper ‘s Bazaar” and “Elle”, as well as other well-known fashion magazines.

[2] Renren.com 6.0

Renren have launched version 6.0, which increases voice input function and introduces a user-generated content count display. For a look at the new Renren interface, click here.

[3] Police “Big Bang” Guide to Dealing with a Break-In

Making notes on an episode of hot U.S. TV comedy, The Big Bang Theory, which is hugely popular amongst China’s netizens, Officer Xiao Li (@徐泾派出所小郦警官) of the Xujing Security Bureau police in Shanghai, created a guide to dealing with a crime scene.

[4] Launch of Luxury B2C Site 360top.com

Jingdong.com, or 360Buy as it’s also known, has launched a luxury B2C online store called 360top.com, which replaces Toplife.com.

[5]The Information Office of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government Go Weibo

After Beijing opened their “Beijing Weibo Conference Hall”, which aggregates more than a dozen government weibo accounts, Shanghai has also moved to develop an accessible government presence in weibo. This morning, @Shanghai_Issued_Officially (@上海发布) officially opened in Sina Weibo. They released the news on Tencent, Sina and other mainstream microblog platforms.

[6] Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Go “Around the World in 30 Days, Free”

Hong Kong Dragon Airlines opened their homepage in Renren.com and celebrated with a campaign offering a 30 day, round the world trip for free to lucky netizens. This activity attracted 74000 people to participate, with fans of the page growing to more than 53000!

Tip: Learn more via Sina Weibo, follow CIC for the latest updates. http://weibo.com/seeisee

 The Weekly Buzz 22 November 2011

[1] Douban Does eReading & eCommerce

The author, who’s been certified by Douban, can compose and self-publish through the Douban platform, earning real cash from their readers’ purchase. The competition goes up, the quality of written work goes up, the reading audience gets a better experience, and the authors get paid – everyone wins. http://read.douban.com

[2] Nokia N9 Micro-Movie “Unfollow”

The micro-movie, “Unfollow”, featuring the popular Chinese star Fan Bingbing, is part of the marketing campaign for the new Nokia N9 smartphone in China. Although the micro-movie is becoming ever more popular, this is Fan Bingbing’s first, and Youku has the whole thing.

[3] Tencent Micro-Store

The latest evolution of Tencent Weibo’s enterprise offering, the Micro-Store, unites microblog based ecommerce, payment and cross-platform integration with any other platform, including brands’ official websites. Online shoe shop “Haolemai” has implemented the “Micro Store” function and this is how it looks…

[4] Group Purchase Problems

Since the Gaopeng sold counterfeit luxury watches, the Lashou Group has halted their US IPO roadshow. Then there’s those McDonald’s group-buy offers, which have launched on some group purchase websites but haven’t actually been officially authorized. There’s also news of investors planning to merge the 24 Quan and 55 Tuan group-purchase websites. Well, it does have a ring to it.

[5] Government Launch “Beijing’s Weibo Conference Hall”

Within Sina Weibo, Beijing’s municipal government has opened the “Beijing Weibo Conference Hall”; an aggregation of local interest information sources, news releases about new policies, work briefings, and replies to the issues that the public are most concerned about. Netizens can follow 26 weibo accounts of select agencies and officials as a new way to stay connected to government.