The article below is also my latest column post on iMedia Connection Asia. Check out their relatively new Asia section for some pretty interesting articles related to digital marketing and branding.

INTERNET WORD OF MOUTH TRENDS IN 2008

I have been watching the Chinese internet word-of-mouth space since 2004, and I strongly believe that 2008 will be the most interesting year yet. Here are my 10 predictions for the IWOM Industry this year.

Brands (really) join the conversation
After sitting on the sidelines listening to the millions of conversations happening around them on bulletin board systems (BBS) and blogs, a number of high profile brands in China will join the conversation and become corporate netizens just as Dell, Intel, KFC and IPOD-wannabe Meizu did. They will use one of several platforms including blogs, BBS or a concept like Dell Idea Storm. "Joining the conversation" does not mean pure promotional blogs or BBS, which are set up for a quick campaign with frivolous posts or unsubstantial content that are later abandoned. Instead, these are rather long-lasting platforms that will succeed because they are the voice of the brand. This is a "non-corporate" voice that reflects the brand and resonates with the consumer conversations at the same time.

Online communities and brands forge more explicit relationships
Brands will begin to recognise the power of the communities that already exist on vertical BBS, such as sites like PConline, Xcar, Redbaby and Baidu Tieba. These owners and fans in communities like the one for Ford Focus on Xcar provide customer service. It has volunteer experts answering questions as well as marketing via IWOM recommendations. Companies like Get Satisfaction in the U.S. have figured out such a business model to take this service to brands, and it won't be long before the commercial portals behind these communities begin to offer involvement, sponsorship or even outright purchase.

BBS sites add SNS-like features and rebrand themselves as SNS
Facebook is worth US$15 billion? In addition to sites like Xiaonei and 51.com making claims to be the Chinese Facebook, expect to see BBS communities add some social networking site (SNS) features and rebrand themselves as SNS in an attempt to ride the Facebook wave. The truth is, the Chinese BBS platform represents a 'legacy' SNS platform. BBS sites already have massive communities and have SNS features such as private messaging and profiles, and in many ways, have stronger social networks than any of the existing SNS sites in China.

"Real names" becomes a buzzword that netizens don't buy into
Sites like Hainei tried to copy Facebook by employing "real name" systems. Expect more SNS and BBS sites to try this. While real names can reduce seeding from "gunners" (people hired by brands or agencies to pose as consumers to write 'fake' messages to promote the brand), it is unlikely netizens will adopt such systems. This is because self expression on the internet in China is driven by self exploration of different identities that netizens may feel inhibited to explore offline. Self exploration is better done anonymously.

Brands recognise IWOM as a separate skill set and headcount in China
Do a search on American job aggregator, Indeed ,and see the increasing number of job descriptions including the term "social media". Many of these jobs are related to digital marketing and PR. Toyota USA has an IWOM manager. We see this same trend happening in China, with some of our clients beginning to have budget line items and headcount dedicated to IWOM.

Facebook acquires a local SNS, and Chinese netizens couldn't care less
Facebook will acquire a local SNS, but no one will care except for the foreign media. What does Facebook have to offer in China? Chinese netizens have been expressing themselves and communicating online since the beginning of the Chinese internet in late 90s. Facebook will do fine, but they won't have the impressive numbers it has in the West. There is too much competition for the community/ expression attention of netizens in China, and most of it is dominated by existing players like QQ.

Brands recognise the importance of social commerce
If you think Jack Ma's Taobao is the eBay of China, or that Taobao beats eBay at its own game in China, then you are wrong. Taobao won by recreating C2C just for China by building up an incredible community of buyers and sellers. eBay has the platform, but Taobao has the platform and the community. Sellers build up reputation not only through the official trust management ratings, but also through active participation in communities offering helpful information and influencing purchase decisions. The fact that these sellers are not official reps and may sell grey market or repackaged goods from Hong Kong, will make brands uncomfortable as they struggle on the issues of if and how to develop relationships with these sellers to ensure they are offering the correct and most helpful information.

Digital agencies take ownership of IWOM marketing
PR firms in China are missing the IWOM boat by retaining an exclusive focus on mainstream media, or at best, treating IWOM in the same way as traditional media. Digital shops like Agenda and China Interactive will make impressive gains this year by adding even more impressive social-based programmes to their case list such as Agenda's award winning Pepsi Creative Challenge II.

Vertical-focused SNS sites will emerge
Shao Yi Bao's Babytree is an example of what will become a trend of successful vertical-based SNS. Expect new sites to be launched for other popular verticals with strong communities and strong commercial interest including mobile phone, automobile and cosmetics/fashion (these categories have the most active BBS communities).

IWOM has its day on Consumer Day
March 15th is Consumer Day in China, and consumers are encouraged to express their opinions about customer service on that day. Traditionally, Chinese mainstream media will select various companies or issues to focus on. This year, expect netizens to organise themselves online to bring attention to certain issues (perhaps with the help of portals). We saw a few examples of this last year and the groups that carried this out had official press contacts and a media strategy. This year, expect more.

Christine Lu, who I first met in 1999 in Shanghai during the first “dotcom boom,” now runs The China Business Network. She recently interviewed me for a radio show she hosts in the US. Christine is an excellent interviewer and I had a great time, but I must admit, it was surreal to be talking about “web 2.0” innovations in China on the A.M. “Talk Radio” format. Christine has built up an amazing network on her site and has interviewed some interesting people, including Kaiser Kuo from Ogilvy (Digital Watch) and Steve Dickinson from the Harris Moure law firm (ChinaLawBlog).

Go here to listen to my interview.

I am happy to announce the release of our IWOM whitepaper on notebook computers. You can download it by going here. You can find previous whitepapers on health, auto and mobile phone here.

The social media press release for the paper is here, and is full of bite size data points and comments. You can read more about why we are using a social media press release for English media here.

The more traditional Chinese press release is here.

We were fortunate that our release comes on the heels of CNNIC's release of the latest Internet stats finding that there are now 210 million Internet users. For more on this study, see China Web2.0 Review here and NYTimes article here. For a deeper understanding on BBS culture (especially relevant for understanding our whitepapers, see ReadWriteWeb here.

I will be sharing more thoughts on the whitepaper in coming posts. Two points I think are worthy of exploration. First, is that Lenovo dominates the buzz:

Lenovo dominates manufacturer buzz with 33.9% of all brand/product mentions (vs. HP with 18.9% and Dell with 14.4%). Lenovo’s buzz is fueled by ThinkPad which is mentioned in 17.2% of all brand/product mentions (vs. Dell Inspiron with 3.4%). However, clearly some ThinkPad fans see Lenovo’s recent change in ThinkPad design as a threat to the brand.

The second point centers on Dell's blogging efforts in China. A couple of bullet points from the press release here which I will look to further develop:

CIC’s study found 1,204,117 messages written by netzens talking ABOUT brands; however, the brands themselves are not part of this massive and passionate discussion. The exception is Dell, which utilizes its Chinese blog to address complaints like those that occurred in August about the highly buzzed, colorful but out of stock Inspiron 1420.

Interestingly, Dell was previously the object of Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) centered ire via "Dell Hell" in the US and "Processor Gate" in China. Now, its blogging efforts in China closely follow those in the US which are receiving praises. Dell demonstrates that in the Web 2.0 world, having an authentic voice is more important than crafting and disseminating a message. Other brands which have blogs in the US like Lenovo and HP, might do well to follow suit and extend their efforts to China.

We are busy putting the finishing touches on our Notebook IWOM whitepaper, which we will release early next week. It follows in the footsteps of our previous white papers on auto, mobile phone and health topics, all of which can be found here.

I have decided this time to NOT issue an English press release, but rather a modified version of the "social media press release" proposed by Edelman and Shift Communications last year in the US. I am not sure if the format ever gained any traction, but it fits our needs well. I really don't want to waste time having our team put together a wordy, hyperbolic, bragging style statement that won't get picked up much anyway, at least by the media and "new media" that are interested in our work. We will distill the "facts" into byte/bite size pieces, or ingredients, so that it will be easy for whomever to pull out what is most interesting to craft their own take from it.

For Chinese media, we will use a traditional press release because we think that does work well in terms of getting coverage for this audience. But the press release won't be hampered by trying to match the style/content of the English press release.

For the second year in a row, OfficeMax in the US launched an incredibly successful online viral site called ElfYourself during Christmas. Essentially, the site asks you to “spoof” yourself or others by uploading a headshot pic as the head of a silly dancing elf. At its peak, the site generated an average of 41,000 elves per hour or 11 elves per second (from Promo Magazine).

Not surprisingly, the site even created buzz in China where “spoofing” (i.e. e-gao/恶搞) is practically a sport for netizens. As we see this month's IWOM watch, netizens spoofing in China can lead to both positive and negative images for brands. Brands in China who can follow OfficeMax’s lead and come up with campaigns that make the brand a platform to incentivize and tap into netizens creativity and funnel it towards positive spoofing will have a great opportunity for campaigns with similar success.

Sample Quote
真好玩,笑死偶也,太有意思了
The site is really funny and interesting. (link)
是一个可以恶搞的东东，把自己的照片换上，会看到让人喷饭的效果.
The site can spoof someone by yourself. It will be funny if you put your photo on it. (link)

Summary
For Christmas day, many receive greetings and wishes from relatives and friends via phone calls, email, and SMS. In addition to these formats, Elfyourself provides a very funny and unique format to give you an opportunity to make a special wish. You can upload anyone’s photos, make a funny dancing image with his/her portrait, and send to your friends.

CIC View
Spoofing has been a part of net culture for sometime in China. We can see that netizens also enjoy spoofing brand content such as TVC and ads (see example here). In some cases, this really hurt the brand image. But from consumer side, spoofing can also have a more positive effect. It plays a role to bring fun and happiness to others close to a relationship with the brand. Spoofing has potential to be an effective method to engage consumer into campaigns more proactively.

Below is a screen shot of the index for the full IWOM watch report

Other CIC IWOM Watch related posts that may be of interest:

-CIC Watch Half-Year Review released (download the full report)
-CIC watch: "You" - Time's Person of the Year - also lives in China (download the full repor

Last week, I published my interview video with ThinkTech Hawaii in which I gave a basic overview of Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM). In the name of experimentation, I am posting a short audio post that digs a little deeper on IWOM, based on the IWOM puzzle graphic above.

You can also listen to the mp3 on tudou directly or download it at here.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I am sincerely flattered that blog aggregation site Bolaa copied one of our blog articles for it's regular column on Donews. Our article, originally written by Clash, is here. The Bolaa article is here.

We of course are well aware such a practice is not uncommon in China. We were copied by the China Daily in 2006 as I wrote here. Actually, the China Daily gave me credit for the article, they just didn't tell me about it. I wrote more about the "copy/paste" or zhuanzai (转载) concept here.

Recently, CIC became a member of WOMMA. If you don’t know WOMMA, and you are in any way interested in, a student of, or practicing IWOM, then you definitely SHOULD know WOMMA.

We first met with WOMMA at their headquarters in 2005 when Andy Sernovitz was the President. We had a great meeting with Andy, but decided at that time that WOMMA was more focused on the American market and membership would not have so many benefits for a China based company like CIC.

My thoughts have since changed. We have been offering IWOM research and consulting services for over 3 years now, and as I see the industry developing, I have come to see the importance of an industry organization to establish guidelines and principles to not only define and promote the industry, but also to protect an industry’s reputation. To this latter point, it was when I reviewed the WOMMA code of ethics that I decided we should join.

The WOMMA ethics code is best summed up by the following:

* 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

In truth, we are an IWOM research and consulting firm, so we do not actually “execute” or “engage” in IWOM marketing, but rather offer insights and suggestions on how to do better IWOM marketing based on our systematic quantitative and qualitative analysis of IWOM conversations. When we do make recommendations, we strongly recommend clients follow this ethical code.

When we applied up for our WOMMA membership, we had to tick a box that pledged:

Our company hereby joins the Word of Mouth Marketing Association as of this date and I am an authorized representative. By joining this organization, we demonstrate our commitment to the growth of the word of mouth marketing industry. We affirm that our company supports the highest level of ethical word of mouth marketing practices.

There are currently WOMMA members based in China as well as WOMMA members who are doing business in China. I hope that we can all remember this pledge, and more importantly, honor this pledge. It is not only the right thing to do, it is for the good of the industry. What makes IWOM so powerful is that is trusted. If the trust is lost, we all lose.

I am writing this on the first day of 2008. I am not going to get especially sappy or reflective; suffice it to say 2007 was an amazing year for me and for CIC. Both myself and the company have grown immensely and have learned so much. We have both gone places and done things I thought were never possible. It is continually challenging to run this company, especially in China, where running a business has its own particular challenges. Fortunately, I have surrounded myself with great people who are smarter than me (no seriously, they are) and help make things run amazingly well and help us grow.

Ok, that was the sappy stuff. Now, some cool stuff…

For 2008, I got some cool gifts I want to “shai”. These are little things which make me happy and make my office a bit nicer.

First, there is my framed collection of R.E.M. 7 and 12 inch singles, including a gatefold double disc UK only single of Wendell Gee. I got these while in university when they were rare. Now they are especially rare in China. They are now up on my office wall.

My wife Vennie gave me an awesome crystal photo display. It is simple, but classic and very cool.

Daisy, our research director on sabbatical in the UK, brought me back a very cool glass paper weight from the Millefiori factory in Italy. It will live on my desk and definitely classes the place up.

Finally, as a little gift to myself, I got the Radiohead special edition boxed set of In Rainbows which includes 2 CD’s as well as two records and some cool art. In this age of digital music, there is just something cool about having your favorite music in tangible forum. Truly reminds me of being a kid after buying records like the Eagles’ The Long Run and The Police Synchronicity. I loved the packaging as much as the record itself.

Hope everyone has as good a 2008 as I am hoping to have….