SHANGHAI (AdAgeChina.com) — Toyota Motor Corp.’s recall of millions of cars globally has created a PR fiasco for the Japanese car company. In China, the company now has one more thing to worry about.

Negative feelings towards Toyota are bubbling just as World Consumer Rights Day is popping up on the calendar. Every year on March 15, brands are regularly taken to task by both media and netizens for poor service.  

World Consumer Rights Day started in 1983 and today is only faintly observed in many countries, but China’s vocal consumers take it seriously.

Given the problems it is already facing this year, Toyota could be headed for a perfect storm in the mainland — and things are likely to get worse for the company before they get better.

For the rest of us though, important lessons can be learned in analyzing how Toyota’s problems are playing out, especially regarding the role of the internet and social media.

Japanese products already had image problems
First, unlike in other markets, the Japanese auto industry absolutely does not have a good reputation for quality. Chinese conventional wisdom believes Japanese companies use lower quality materials and processes when they manufacture products for the Chinese market in comparison to other markets, including the use of thinner paint and thinner body materials.

This belief is so pervasive that even Toyota President Akio Toyoda acknowledged it in his speech to the Chinese people on March 2, 2010.  

The internet and social media are not playing a new role in the Toyota recall issue developing in China, but rather a very familiar one. Going back seven years, China’s crises have been initiated or significantly amplified on the internet.

The trend started with the Teflon cancer scare in 2004, and continued with KFC’s use of a cancer-causing food coloring, Sudan (2005), the SK-II chromium scare (2006), Starbucks’ presence in Beijing’s Forbidden City (2007), the tragedies caused by powdered infant formula tainted by melamine (2008), the Johnson Baby cream problem (2009), and the Sprite mercury scare (2010).

Taking the problem full circle, Toyota has the unenviable distinction of having started the trend of netizen involvement in a crisis with its 2003 Land Cruiser ads, one of the first cases globally in which netizens’ reactions to offensive ads were picked up by traditional media. In one ad, two stone lions, Chinese symbols of authority, salute as a Prado passes. Another shows a Toyota Land Cruiser towing what appears to be a Chinese military vehicle.

Toyota is just recovering from another more recent issue that was widely discussed online in China, the so-called “Climbing-Abilitygate” incident involving its Highlander SUV. A frustrated car owner made and distributed a video online of his Highlander, which was unable to climb a 30 degree incline, a slope easily handled by other SUVs and even Chery’s tiny QQ compact car. The Highlander has become the standard against which other SUV’s are measured for failure.

Advertisers should pay attention to microblogs
Blogs and social networking sites serve as a sort of “copy and paste” news distribution, and bulletin board sites (BBS) are the battlefield of rival car owners’ groups. News portals serve to aggregate, amplify and add fuel to the fire.

Relatively new on the landscape is the microblog, which suddenly is playing a bigger role. For example, Sina’s microblog accounted for almost 40% of all messages discussing Toyota’s recall, ahead of all other sources. Having a clear picture of where the crisis is playing out online is important for any crisis manager.

Key players in any crisis are the brand fans. In China, car brand fans come in the form of owners’ groups. Unlike bloggers in the U.S., Chinese do not organize themselves on social networking sites, but rather on BBS and in private groups on Tencent’s QQ.com social networking portal.

Car brand fans are particularly passionate and connected in China. For example, the Toyota Camry group on XCar alone has 2,082 members who generate 9,326 comments every month. They organize offline meet-ups, design logos for the group, organize group purchases and even design customized accessories like key chains.

For most Chinese, the car they have now is the first car they or anyone in their family has ever owned, and that car is very much a part of their identity. As such, they are fiercely loyal and protective of the brand, defending any attacks or slurs from rival brand owners.

Manipulating online conversations is a turn-off
Some advertisers are developing “social CRM’ initiatives that can mobilize these fans in times of need. Unfortunately, most marketers currently do not view these active owners as friends, but rather as the enemy.

Bloggers have complained online, for instance, that Toyota deletes negative posts through so-called “e-PR” agencies. Chinese netizens are very savvy to such manipulation. While such an approach may make the PR manager feel better, it only enrages the very constituents that should be rallied to support the brand they love.

We see brand fans across all industries mobilizing protests for Consumer Day over far less serious issues than what Toyota is facing now in China. This is a real crisis, with documented safety problems, for a brand that already has issues.

In the U.S., the much-loved brand is being knocked off a pedestal, but in China, it’s digging into a deeper hole. Actions such as manipulating online conversations will only serve as a catalyst for already angry and passionate owners.

Brands that fail to recognize the sophistication and complexity of the Chinese social media landscape during crisis communications not only miss opportunities to minimize the crisis but, more seriously, can further damage the brand.

Toyota’s brand will recover, but the question is how fast. A transparent, proactive communication which leverages the passion of Toyota’s online consumers, can, even more than Mr. Toyoda’s tears in front of the U.S. Congress, facilitate sincere and powerful word-of-mouth that will supplement and be more convincing than any traditional media communications.

On this Consumer Day, we are pleased to announce the upgrade of IWOMmaster, China’s first online service platform on IWOM intelligence and insight, click here to get your own IWOMmaster ID now!

Furthermore, we have launched our IWOMdiscover^TM, online buzz tracking engine with covering over 80 percent of Chinese social media sites. Utilizing its patent pending semantic analysis technique, IWOMdiscover™ provides you timely buzz tracking service and high quality content. Now three topics are available free of charge on IWOMdiscover^TM: Consumer Day, Toyota’s Recall Issue and 2010 Shanghai Expo.

The article source: Adage <Consumer Day Is One More Thing Toyota Should Worry About>

On this Consumer Day, we are pleased to announce the upgrade of IWOMmaster, China’s first online service platform on IWOM intelligence and insight, click here to get your own IWOMmaster ID now!

Furthermore, we have launched our IWOMdiscover^TM, the online buzz tracking engine covering over 80 percent of Chinese social media sites. Utilizing CIC’s patent pending semantic analysis technique, IWOMdiscover™ provides you timely buzz tracking service and high quality content. Now start a tour on IWOMdiscover^TM, tracking the top3 hot topics for free: Consumer Day, Toyota’s Recall Issue and 2010 Shanghai Expo.

As I pointed in my IWOM Summit post late last year, the current phase of IWOM/social media development is seeing how organizations are adapting around social media. I am attending Dachis’ Social Business Summit in a couple of weeks which addresses this topic on a larger scale and I can’t wait. BTW, Hyku blog is a must read for anyone who wants to have a practical understanding of social media from someone who is right in the middle of the “last mile” of “installing” strategic social media within organizations. 

• Centralized Control of Social vs. Spreading Social Throughout the Organization (Social Media Today)
• Social Media is the ‘Last Mile’ - Part 1, Part 2 The Internal War, Part 3 Scaling (Hyku Blog)
• Listening to the Future (Visible Technologies)

The Internet Does Not Rise Above Nations and Cultures

Google’s threatened pull out in China has inspired reflection on the larger role of the Internet’s place within Society.

• The Internet Does Not Rise Above Nations and Cultures (David Wolf/Ad Age)
• Another look at China’s Internet (The Statesman)
• The Digital Dictatorship (Wall Street Journal) 

Behind the Scenes of Chinese Social Media Operations

These surprisingly candid articles demonstrate again that you need a nuanced understanding of the Chinese web.

• Publish and be deleted (Global Times)
• Invisible footprints of online commentators (Global Times)

Social Media for Categories

Just as there are specialized communications and research agencies for certain categories like healthcare, so will there be specialized social media agencies.

• Social Media Monitoring Goes Niche (Our Social Times)
• Understanding Luxury Brands and Social Media (Mashable)

China readers without a VPN will miss the video that accompanies the story, and it is a real gem. See below:

If you have been following this blog over the years, you will know that I really love this phenomenon as it is a clear example of how the Chinese Internet Community is reshaping the relationship between brands and consumers. The Internet Community not only influences purchase decisions, but also the way the purchases are actually made. It is social commerce in action.

I first wrote about the phenomena in 2006 (Online tuangou “group purchase” giving offline retailers a run for their money), showing how Gome, the sort of ‘Best Buy’ of China, had “declared war” on tuan gou. Below is a pic of a sign from inside the store at that time.

Translation: “We are not tuangou. We are better than tuangou. Changning Guomei declares war on Tuangou.”

Two years later, we wrote how Gome completely reversed the war (Retailers reverse the “Group Purchase” trend), and actually invited consumers to tuan gou, in partnership with the Shanghai BBS community KDS.

In fact, we do see that the tuan gou phenomena is increasing in popularity. According to our analysis of over 100 million automobile BBS comments, we found that the number of mentions of tuan gou doubled in 1 year’s time.

For a ‘first hand’ account of how the tuan gou phenomena works, check out the experience of my colleague Ellen here. CNN later based an article on Ellen’s story here.

In short, it took Ellen just 2 weeks to find 54 other people from Xcar BBS to organize a tuan gou purchase with a Toyota 4s dealer to purchase a total of 55 Toyota Yaris cars at a 30,000 RMB discount.  Read Ellen’s story to also see how the tuan gou group has stayed connected since the purchase, serving as a sort of support group and circle of friends.

Of course, 4S auto dealers don’t always get it right. In this video, you can see a fight breaking out between potential customers and  Ford dealer who broke its promise on a tuan gou.  The fallout from this incident accounted for almost half of Focus buzz for the month of December 2008, which we wrote about here in our white paper co-authored with Roland Berger.

It is worth noting that sites similar to 51tuangou.com (now part of Liba) and SHtuangou.com are now being set up in other markets and are garnering interest, including Groupon in the United States which has raised over US$30 million in investment at a valuation of US $250 million. In fact, Western pundits for years there have been discussing the potential of the Internet to support ‘crowdsourcing.’ What is most interesting however is that crowdsourcing, and specifically the group purchase phenomena has been alive and well in China since the early days of the Chinese Internet.

While Groupon and other overseas sites must build a large community of consumers with a sort of “build it and they will come” approach, Chinese consumers have already organized themselves online within massive communities and even initiate group purchases without the help of a formal service offered by any site as we saw with Ellen’s case.

As I suggest in the American Public Radio piece:

“The community’s already there. So all it takes is for someone to virtually raise their hand and say, “Hey let’s organize.”

Sites like SHtuangou.com did not start the wave of group purchase, they rode the wave started by netizens.  Techcrunch writes how European startups are racing to emulate Groupon…perhaps they should look to emulate Shtuangou.com

It is these massive communities which make up the larger collective of what we call the Internet Community, and these self-organized group purchases are an example the power of the Internet Community to transform the relationship between brands and consumers. This transformation is not unique to China, but it is happening at an advanced and an accelerated rate in a market due to the fact that compared to other markets, the Chinese Internet not only has the most people online, but also the most places to talk, the most people talking and among the highest levels of participation online.

Related Articles:

• 2009.02.26 :: Online group car purchase: a real story
• 2008.10.30 :: IWOM Watch Sep 16-30: Retailers reverse the “Group Purchase” trend
• 2008.04.10 :: Interview on CBC radio about tuangou “group purchase” in China
• 2007.03.19 :: SEEISEE blog Chinese article summary (Feb 1st – March 7th )
• 2006.05.17 :: Online tuangou “group purchase” giving offline retailers a run for their money

We are pretty psyched about the new “ExpoSay” white paper we released with Ogilvy Public Relations yesterday which covers all the buzz around the upcoming World Expo 2010 Shanghai. The first of a monthly series. this report found 128,854 Expo-related comments taken from 13,994 blogs, BBS, news and SNS sites in the Chinese Internet space for the month December. The hottest discussed topics included tickets, sponsors, pavilions, countries and cities.

One thing I like about this report is that we look at not only the quantity of buzz, but also the quality, i.e. not only “how much” but also “how” people are talking and “who” is talking. The focus of the talk is on tickets, and we see that netizens are so proud of their tickets that they show them off online with pictures (called “shai,” see here for more on this phenomena).  The tickets are desired to the extent that even the Shanghai Jing’an district government is using tickets as an incentive for people to tour historic communist sites (irony alert!).

We think including such a qualitative analysis important because looking more broadly, Chinese netizens not only talk a lot online, but are very creative and active within their conversations. As this Forrester study indicates, Chinese netizens are twice as creative as Americans within social media. As we always say, Chinese social media is much more developed than western social media, and I think our white paper, with its qualitative analysis, helps demonstrate this. Ultimately, what we are hoping to show with this report is how social media serves as a primary media of self expression in China and how it is woven into the fabric of the everyday experience of brands/events (and how companies can be a part of that).

Here are the links:

• English report_Edition 1
• English press release
• Chinese report_Edition 1
• Chinese press release

Be sure to check out the Ogilvy/Michael Darragh run blog covering everything about the Expo through Worldexpoblog

Seth Grossman, Managing Director, Carat China 
November 2009 (Link)
Seth talks about social media from the media agency perspective, including the concept of earned, owned and bought media. Seth has been working in the China agency space since the mid 1990’s.

Jake Drake, President of Cohn & Wolfe Asia Pacific
November 2009 (Link)
Jake talks about social media from PR perspective. Jake was involved in Dell US social media strategy as well as their China strategy.

Bryce Whitwam, General Manager, Wunderman Shanghai
November 2009 (Link)
Bryce talks about social media from the perspective of “below the line,” with a particular focus on auto industry.

Magdalena Wszelaki, Regional Vice President – Strategic Planning
AGENDA Shanghai (now Wunderman US)
May 2009 (Link)
Mag talks about social media and the creative agency. Mag was involved in some of the most innovative social media/digital initiatives in China including Pepsi Creative Challenge and Johnson Baby mom ambassadors.

Shawn Cheng, CEO & Founder, HoopChina.com
March 2009 (Link)
Shawn talks about the power of social media from the perspective of one of the most dynamic, creative online communities in China.

Gang Lu, Co-founder, OpenWeb.Asia Workgroup
January 2009 (Link)
Gang Lu is one of the most prominent “web 2.0” thinkers in China, having both a Chinese and Western perspective.

Tangos Chen, Vice President, China Growth Capital
November 2008 (Link)
Tangos is, along with Gang Lu, one of the prominent “web 2.0” thinkers in China, having worked both from within the industry and as a VC.

Adam Schokora, Manager, China, Edelman Digital (now NeoCha.com)
July 2008 (Link)
Adam talks about social media from a PR perspective. Adam, fluent in Chinese language and essentially bicultural, has a particular knowledge of youth culture in China.

T.R. Harrington, Co-Founder and CEO, Darwin Marketing
July 2008 (Link)
T.R. was one of the first people in China to offer SEO/SEM service and here offers one of the most informed perspectives on social media.

Jan Van den Bergh, Chairman, i-merge China (now Holoba.com)
May 2008 (Link)
Jan was involved in digital from the mid 1990’s. He brings a historical and global perspective to digital and social into the conversation.

Yann Lombard-Platet, Managing Director, Nurun China
March 2008 (Link)
Yann built some of the first corporate websites ever in China in the late 1990’s and talks about Chinese social media as one of the most experienced China digital people in China.

Below are some snippet translations of this past week’s IWOM mark.

1. CNNIC launches 25th China Internet Report
CNNIC launched its 25th Internet Development in China survey report, reported that China internet users has reached] 384 million internet users while mobile internet users had reached 233 million. On the user base of social medias, Blog, SNS and BBS users reaches 221 million, 176 million and 117 million respectively. The social media growth trend continues. (Check more news on Netease Column, and currently no English report is available.)

2.  Multiple ways for you to donate your love to Haiti.
As a netizens, you can pay attention on the Haiti earthquake online through all kinds of online communities and pray for Haiti, you can follow President Obama’s first Twitter to show your support, you can donate money via Alipay, you can buy Haiti Love T-shirt to donate, game fans even can wear Love Equipment while playing games… so many ways to show your love and support, what if it was 10 years ago? This will never happen.

3. Cartoon groups on QQ have to rename the group to keep alive
4. “Illegal bouquet” (非法献花) becomes the hottest net slang term overnight
5. It is reported that Gansu province is hiring 650 people this year to track and participate into online communities as part of ‘government 2.0.’
6. CNTV launched this week, as a national video broadcasting site, meanwhile, Sun Media Investment Group invest in PPlive to turns it into net TV
7. Baidu lauches its web advertising management system for brands and agencies- Baidu Ad Master

Check more summaries on IWOM mark in CN version

Taobao & China’s “Me-Commerce” Revolution (BDA)
See also great summary of the report by Thomas Crampton: How Taobao beats eBay in China. 

As a business person in China, Taobao’s dominance is an inspiration. As a consumer in China, Taobao is a must have, where I find there is little that can’t be bought on Taobao.  BDA and Duncan Clark, who has been writing about Chinese e-commerce before my days at Chinapay.com in the late 90’s, released an impressive overview of Taobao, chocked full of interesting statistics about what sells in Chinese e-commerce as well as an overview of “social commerce” (i.e. Me-Commerce). It also analyzes some of eBay’s missteps, quoting from Eachnet’s founder about what happened when eBay took over Eachnet: “It took nine months to implement any major changes and nine weeks to even change a word on the website as everything had to go through the headquarters technology development team,” said Shao, in an article posted on the Taobao parent company website (How eBay lost the China market). It’s worth reviewing such lessons when thinking about Google, MySpace, AOL and any number of foreign companies.

Pepsi to Skip Super Bowl Ads in Favor of $20M Social Media Campaign (Mashable)
Avon to spend $50 million on social networking (Happi)
Pretty strong votes for social media vs. traditional media.  

China Ends U.S.’s Reign as Largest Auto Market (Bloomberg)
“China supplanted the U.S. as the world’s largest auto market after its 2009 vehicle sales jumped 46 percent, ending more than a century of American dominance that started with the Model T Ford.” I’m surprised this didn’t get more coverage. Now it’s time for auto firms to get serious about proper social media strategy, not just carpet bomb messaging. 

Google and China
Much to read, but most of it not grounded in actual context or fact. Best I’ve seen so far:

• Clearing Up Confusion on Google and China (Wall Street Journal)
• Why Google Wasn’t Winning in China Anyway (AdAge)
• Google detonates the China corporate communications script  (Imagethief) 

What is really wrong with market research? (Nigel Hollis)
Nice, balanced overview of the challenges of market research.  He writes: “I am afraid that many clients will demand that new and more relevant insight must come out of research that is done quickly and cheaply. And that, I believe, is the fundamental issue we are facing in market research today.” 

The Buzz Starts Here: Finding the First Mouth for Word-of-Mouth Marketing (Wharton)
“Opinion Leader” marketing is never as simple as tapping the ‘nodes of influence,’ as this research points out. We wrote of such complexity a few years ago: (Really Understanding Efluencers and IWOM)

Harnessing brand advocates (Emarketer)
Online opinion leaders also influence offline: “The most common word-of-mouth activity reported by respondents was helping a friend or family member with a purchase decision, but more than two-fifths also said they had shared advice offline about information they learned on the Web. Significantly fewer Internet users posted their own ratings and reviews online, and only about one-half as many shared links to articles or reviews about products.” 

Alabama defeats Texas, rolls to first national title since 1992 (ESPN)
Ok, nothing to do with China, digital or social media, but still a huge moment for Alabama (my home state). Roll Tide!

Hope you enjoy.

2008.01.03 :: IWOM Ethics and Why CIC joined WOMMA
CIC believes very strongly in transparency in IWOM, which is not easy in the China market where such transparency is not the norm, as my interview in this Media mag article points out. We got pretty upset when Businessweek got our stance on this issue very wrong here, and we clarified our stance here. David Wolf, Will Moss (aka Imagethief) , Paul Denlinger, and Tangos all wrote thoughtful pieces on this topic.

2008.01.28 :: Internet word-of-mouth trends in 2008
We got into the trend prediction business for this article. In the end, we weren’t too far off.

2008.03.14 :: Consumer Day 315: An overview of Internet Channels for the Malcontent
March 15th is Consumer Day in China. We shared our thoughts on the key channels in how IWOM has become front and center as a channel for the consumer voice here, even if it is sometimes amplified by forces unique to the China market as we see here.

2008.04.02 :: Connection points for the “connected agency” in China
This was the first of a series of articles that represent the core of our IWOM and the Internet is THE community philosophies. Other articles are:
• Connecting the connected agency in China
• 6 reasons brands in China should listen to IWOM (beyond seeding and crisis tracking)
• How IWOM is Redefining the Relationship between Brands and Consumers
• The DNA of internet word-of-mouth platforms

2008.05.27 :: IWOM Watch Special Edition: Internet and IWOM shape the Sichuan Earthquake aftermath
We did our best to capture the mood of the aftermath of the terrible tragedy that was the Sichuan earthquake on 5.12.08. IWOM is in fact the perfect window to capture this collective mood. Still one of our most viewed slideshare decks.

2008.06.12 :: Tuning into Sports IWOM 2007 Q4: BBS vs. Twitter
The world was beginning to be all-a-twitter about twitter when we posted this. The community and connections that drive the success of twitter have existed for sometime in China.

2008.07.01 :: President Hu Jin Tao listens to online buzz…why shouldn’t you?
Before there was Obama 2.0, there was Hu Jin Tao 2.0.

2008.08.04 :: IWOM Watch Jul 1 – 15: Marketers screw up net language, look foolish
Nice try at “participation” by brands (aka Listen-Know-Participate), but good intentions paved the road to hell.

2008.08.08 :: Danwei “Model Worker” award
Danwei has always been the standard for English blogs about China. To get recognized by the Danwei team was awesome. We were also recognized in 2007.

2008.08.11 :: Pre-Olympic Buzz Analysis of Sponsors: Keyword Association Mapping of Chinese IWOM
This was our attempt to ride the Olympics wave of buzz. Also displayed our IWOM unique methodology for China.

2008.11.27 :: CIC releases white paper “The Internet is THE Community”
Technology plays a big role in social media. But to truly get social media, you need to understand the SOCIAL in social media. For us, this is the Internet Community, which is reshaping the relationships between brands and consumers.

2009.01.10 :: The Conversation Prism Goes International
We borrowed Brian Solis social media prism to display the Chinese social media landscape. Others did it for other markets.

2009.03.03 :: Forrester: Chinese social media participation is higher than the US
China has more people online, more places to talk and more people talking. This Forrester study shows that Chinese twice as active at participating compared to Americans. China provides an unprecedented opportunity to see the future of social media.

2009.06.18 :: CIC launches a new white paper series: Making Sense of IWOM
In 2008, we launched offline research to understand what drives IWOM and engagement. The white papers in this series outlines the results.

2009.06.30 :: CIC collaborates with Roland Berger on their new ‘Chinese Consumer Report’
We strongly believe that IWOM is reshaping more than just the relationship between brands and consumers. It is doing more than reshaping communications. It is reshaping business. This is why leading management consultancies like Roland Berger are interested in the topic. Look for more in the coming year on this topic.

2009.07.28 :: Reflections on June (and some of July): IWOM Technology is Necessary, But Not Sufficient
For “listening” to IWOM, technology is essential. We have some pretty cool tools and even patent pending technology that we have developed since 2004 for the China market, and this year you will see even more tools coming out. However, we strongly believe technology is not enough. You have to be able to “make sense of the buzz” which is why this is our tag line. Products do not deliver the insights marketers need to inform decisions. People do.

2009.12.23 :: 5 Years Later: IWOM in China-Where have we been? Where are we going?
We have been in the space for 5 years, but I still feel like we are only at the beginning. Here I share a bit about the past as well as the future.

In recognition of the 3 year milestone, I wanted to take a chance to outline some of the articles that I feel are the more meaningful or significant in terms of telling the story of IWOM. To do this, I will actually step back 5 years, and include some of the articles originally published on the “China IWOM blog” written under my domain, www.samflemming.com.

Here is Part 1 covering 2005-2007.

2005.11.29 :: How did I get here? The American dream in China
My very first post was a bit personal. The road here is not road I would have ever predicted. Nor is it ever clear exactly where you are going, even if you think you know. That’s what makes it exciting.

2005.11.30 :: China ‘net stars not just for geeks
This was the first of several posts on “net stars” over the years and emphasizes how the Chinese Internet and IWOM is more than “just information,” it is also entertainment, especially in the void that exists within Chinese entertainment on more established media.  We also cover net stars in later posts, including here, here and here.

2006.04.13 :: Reward: Up to 10,000 RMB for finding good people for CIC data
We used our blog to recruit and it worked. And our blogging and overall IWOM continues to attract new hires.

2006.05.02 :: Chinese blogs and the Technorati 100: Where’s Xu Jing Lei?
Uber blogger Xu Jing Lei put to shame the ‘big time’ bloggers in the US and for the first time showed how China dominates social media in terms of scale.

2006.05.17 :: Online tuangou “group purchase” giving offline retailers a run for their money
My first account of tuangou, an amazing phenomena of social commerce that shows that IWOM is doing more than just changing purchase decisions, but actually the way people make purchases. More blog articles here, here, and here as well as an Ad Age article here. See more on social commerce here.

2006.06.03 :: Did you know that I write for the China Daily? I didn’t…
The first of many times we found our content ‘repurposed.’ Not a unique problem, for sure, but flattering in the end. See also here.  We have even found our content ‘repurposed’ within major agency white papers (we won’t name names here ; )

2006.08.03 :: China Dell Hell (aka Processor Gate)
One of the first truly social media crisis to hit big time mainstream media. See nice ending to the story here.  Article on “Crisis 2.0” here.

2007.01.20 :: History and Evolution of CIC’s logos
Open source logo design within CIC.

2007.03.19 :: CIC’s ‘LISTEN-KNOW-PARTICIPATE’ model for IWOM
The first description of our core belief that still is alive and well today (and ever evolving).

2007.03.29 :: China’s First IWOM Roundtable
First social media event held in China which brought together great clients and social media owners.  We followed up in 2009.

2007.06.19 :: Really Understanding Efluencers and IWOM
The first discussion of online opinion leaders applied to China.

2007.08.16 :: Hey DX, hope you like this post on net language for auto industry
One of the first of many articles on net language/slang and its implications. See also here, here and our white paper on the topic here.

2007.09.07 :: IWOM manager titles a trend
First article about the development of “social media departments” in China, before any such existed on client or agency side. Now….just about everyone has one in one form or another, at least on the agency side. Do the same search, and see that the trend continues.

2007.10.19 :: IWOM Watch Sept 16-30: “Shai”(晒/show) means showing off your stuff online
First article to describe the key phenomena of ‘net natives’ of “showing off.” It represents/defines the 80’s generation and even more so the 90’s generation. You will see this in every standard “China youth” presentation nowadays.

2007.10.29 :: IWOM defined
IWOM was coined by CIC. This is the first time we explicitly defined it. See also our glossary of IWOm terms as well as our IWOM indexes.

2007.12.15 :: CIC IWOM Summit: touching base with IWOM users
The first of our IWOM summits with CxO and directors in China. See 2008 wrap up here. 2009 is coming soon.