When I walked through Beijing airport today I spotted our Cisco IP phone model ;)
The phone is Cisco's only "real life" product, as opposed to all the servers, routers, hubs and switches. We decided to build one with a 50" LCD screen that runs an interactive infomercial. People seem to like it, when I walked by a few people stood there and watched the movie. The client also loves it, of course. It his product, just bigger.
The Audi Q7 launched only this summer in China, but the campaign is from beginning of 2005, kind of a teaser campaign to introduce the car. The car itself is rather unique, its big like a tank, and it costs 120.000 Euros here in China.
The campaign had to create awareness and anticipation around the Q7 launch and generate leads for dealer follow up. So under the brand idea of "discover your own adventure", we came up with an integrated campaign around a broad societal thought: What is the definition of adventure.
We wanted to get user participation and involvement, so we endorsed 16 Chinese celebrities to state their personal adventures in the fields of design, performance, luxury and individualism. Their interviews were then published in four leading Chinese magazines as the "Audi Adventure Chronicles".
The site was the crucial point in the campaign. We wanted it to be functional, especially in terms of User Generated Content, but also show the car off in a really nice way. We decided to place the car outside a villa, set at the highway number one in California. We went down to a 3D studio and started to render out some pictures.
After a week of tweaking, we had a nice house with a lot of content in it. Users can can go outside to explore the car, they can sit down on the table and read the chronicles and through the picture-frame can participate at the "what adventure have you discovered" competition.
Results
252,084 unique visitors visited the site within two months.
32,364 screensaver, 8,875 wallpapers and 29,177 MP3 files were download during the campaign period.
Over 1,500 registrations to obtain more Q7 information and more than 150 qualified entries to the competition.
Check the site here
I was asked to write an article for the Greater China edition of Viewpoint magazine, Ogilvy's house internal magazine to all staff, media and clients. Here is what I wrote:
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We creatives live a tough and dangerous life. We have to work such long hours, we have to endure those endless meetings and we have to fight so hard to sell our brilliant ideas to our clients. As if this would not be enough pressure, now we are even threatened by the very people we are creative for: our client's consumers.
Suddenly, it seems, everyone is a copywriter, a designer, photographer or music composer. Everyone wants to, and easily can, create content and share it with the world. And it seems that many of those videos, blogs or podcasts are even more successful than our well crafted and researched ideas? What's going on out there?
The answer is short, and it doesn't sound very sexy: UGC. User Generated Content is about to spark a revolution of how we consume media and share our ideas.
mySpace.com is the biggest collections of personal blogs in the world. It has now reached the magic number of 50 million bloggers and is therefore also one of the biggest internet phenomena in history. MySpace started out as a platform where musicians and bands could post their songs and fans could chat about it. Music as the force behind the network. Now, there are up to 270.000 new blogs created a day, with topics ranging from my-cat-on-my-sofa-pictures to discussions about coca-cola's latest TV ad. The power of this incredible large amount of UGC is so attractive to other surfers, that mySpace is about to become the most frequented website in the US, with people spending hours and days reading through blogs of other people.
YouTube.com is another fascinating online idea. A website where people can share videos as easily as they can watch it. Within an instant you can upload your movie clips (from your phone, video camera or ripped from DVDs and TV) and share it with anyone in the world. Viewers can rank and vote and comment on it. Once you've started, you can't let go. You'll find just about anything on YouTube, from recorded TV series from the 80s, to exotic cocking receipts to south park episodes to music videos to the funniest clips you have ever seen. Just try it out. Already now youTube claims to have more than 45 million videos played a day, and site visitors more than amazon.com and almost as many as CNN.
Of course there are plenty other examples of places where users share their own content or mix up others. Pictures on Flickr.com, your favorite sound on Last.fm and your bookmarks on de.licio.us.
So if everyone is out there creating their own content, what are we creatives then supposed to do?
The key to survival is that we know how to make the most creative and most relevant use of these new resources. That we find ways of making it work for our brands and that we manage to make the user and his creations part of our story.
One recent example was the China launch of MP3MOTO.The campaign made use of the just emerging phenomena of home-shot lip-syncing videos, as seen in the Back Dorm Boys' performance of "I want it that way". Ogilvy recruited the two students from Guangzhou and had them sing the original track of "Radio in my head" for Motorola. As expected, the video went very viral. On the campaign's website users could create, upload and share their own videos and remix the soundtrack. Over the campaign period, the site had more than 14 million page views, there were 257 videos uploaded and 232.000 people voted on them. 545 songs were remixed and 1.3 million people voted on them. A great example of how powerful a campaign can be if we include the consumer in the equation.
Nike London took the idea of user generated content even a step further. On their runlondon.com website they offer a lot of useful content: running tips, training techniques, a schedule planner. But the real meat is this: a running-route finder based on a Google map and satellite images. You can in 3 easy steps create your very own and personal favorite running route through London. Draw it on a map or directly over a very detailed satellite image. Add your comments and then, of course, share it with every other running fan in town. Runners can search through routes based on distance, terrain, postcode or lighting conditions. And they can vote on it. This is an example of how a brand can offer a platform for users to share their passion, and their knowledge with others, in a very innovative way. It creates an immensely relevant value for the audience. And therefore for the brand.
In the future, we creatives (as well as everyone else!) have to stay on top of these new digital innovations. We have to pay very close attention to what really matters to consumers. We have to find ways of making them part of the story, part of our campaign, we have to let them own the message. If we all embrace the change and feel comfortable in this new digital lifestyle, then we will be able to create campaigns with even more impact and especially value for our clients' brands.
This article I wrote for Campaign Brief Asia, the leading publications for all advertising creatives in Asia. The funny thing is that Kim Shaw, the editor in Chief, so far has not made any effort to include anything interactive into Campaign Brief. It is so traditional, that even he makes jokes about it.
The current issue has a special feature about creativity in China. So he invited me to contribute something general, rathe rthan too interactive, haha. I didn't want to go down the traditional route of writing about our own stuff, so here is my take on what will happen in the near future to creativity in China:
In the 60's when China launched its first TV network there were approximately 12 thousand black and white sets dotted throughout the country. In a lack of understanding on how to structure and design the TV programming, the government looked to Russia and East Germany for advice. The outcome: a glittering evening's entertainment of factory workers discussing the current five-year-plan and the National Ballet performing the revolutionary 'Raise the Red Lantern'.
It's now 2006 and after 40 years of a shadowy media industry, China is fast tracking. The current generation of youth has skipped video recorders for Div-X movies; CD players for MP3 players; landlines for mobile phones and monopoly for World-of-Warcraft. They're as digital savvy as their counter parts in Europe or America and they're a whole generation of early adopters. The digital lifestyle has brought this generation an ease of access to information, connecting to others and limitless opportunities for self expression. The digital generation in China is not only the most informed and best connected ever, it is also the most creative.
This new generation of young creatives is growing up – almost unnoticed – in the cities, towns and villages. They use their computer to express their emotions. They sit in internet cafes for days and weeks to create animations in flash, which they then upload on community sites to be seen by hundreds and thousands of peers. They form small design collectives and produce posters for local parties, packaging for around-the-corner shops, brochures for real estate developments and CD covers for their bands. They create toy figures, customise jeans and sneakers, print t-shirts and publish magazines. Most of it for very un-commercial reasons. Why: because it's a way of self expression, a way of making a point, leaving a mark in the Chinese creative landscape.
This generation comes from a unique background: as part of the one-child-policy, their parents grew up during the Cultural Revolution, with its hardships and destructive attempt to suppress anything creative and innovative. They were born in the '80s and grew right into Deng Xiao Ping's open-door policy. They were the first generation with access to foreign music and literature, with the means to build an informed opinion, to be influenced by western culture. They were eager to break free from the rigid lifestyle their parents were living. They were part of the progressive plan to growth and witness the transformation from ancient China into a glass-and-steel high-tech capitalist world. They've experienced more change in their 20 years of life than most westerners have in their whole lifetime
Now these kids are getting organised on design websites, in Chinese design magazines and in nationwide design exhibitions. They're connecting to the rest of the world. They're hungry to learn and they're willing to experiment. They're influenced by the top visual artists in the world: at the same time they're proud to be Chinese, to build on their thousands of years of cultural heritage. They've grown up in one of the most dynamic markets in the world and they have something to say, they're real, they're authentic. They will create a creative landscape in China that will be very unique in this world.
It will take another few years, but there will be a creative generation in China that will easily compete on a world stage. They will know the rules and they'll begin to set standards as they start to create their very own unique style. It's up to us in the advertising industry to recognise this movement, to value this generation and bring them close to our work.
Motorola signed Jay Chou, one of the biggest pop acts in Asia, to endorse their brand for the next 18 months. The first kickoff campaign was done to promote Motomusic, Motorola's music download service in China.
This is the homepage, where Jay walks in and greets the User. On the top you can log-in to your motomusic account and browse the supported phone models.
Here is a close-up of his arm with the tattoos representing the track names of his new album
This close-up holds the specials like music video, wallpapers etc
Check out the site at http://www.motomusic.com.cn/jaychou
The site's idea is to get closer to Jay Chou. This idea has a background. Jay is endorsing a wide range of products in China. One of the most popular brands for example, M-Zone (China Mobile's youth marketing program) is using Jay for many years already, and his face and style in advertising is quite shaped already. He is a fairly in-approachable star. In our site, fans and consumers, get to see a totally different Jay, a more rough, rockstar like person. The navigation lets the user zoom to a super-close-up on his body, where the actual content is displayed as tattoos bleeding onto his skin.
The site offers quite a cool content. You can exclusively download his newest album as MP3 to your mobile phone (of course one has to pay), as ringtones and you can also stream it for free. Additionally there are very rare and intimate interviews, lots of specials like behind the scenes movie clips, wallpapers etc and last but not least a really cool danec mixer, done by Northkingdom.
We created awareness for the campaign with two TV commercials, banners on Baidu (China's Google) and a super banner on motomusic. We also gave 3 unpublished interview videos to Jay's fanclub and associated websites so they could publish it exclusively and encourage trackbacks, and we uploaded them to youtube and to toodou.com, China's equivalent.
For me personally the coolest thing was to be able and secure Northkingdom to produce the work. It was the first time for any client or agency in Asia, outside Japan, to work with a professional interactive production house. Northkingdom's role was to put all the assets together in flash, video, sound and our layout, and also to produce the video mixer, part of the website.
Check out the site at http://www.motomusic.com.cn/jaychou
See the behind the scenes video
Contagious Magazine wrote about it in their newsletter
Media Magazine in Hong Kong picked up on it
This Article I wrote for Campaign UK magazine. It was published somewhen in late August 2006.
Twenty five years after Deng Xiaoping made the decision to experiment with demographic engineering, with the introduction of the one-child policy, a generation of digitally savvy consumers is coming of age: according a 2005 population estimate, China had almost 275 million people under the age of 14. Roughly equally the USA's entire population for that same year.
Pretty much anyone you speak with today under the age of 30 is part of the one child generation, a generation who grew up without brothers or sisters, but with two caring parents and four loving grandparents who pool their rising disposable income to meet this one child's every need – and want. Why: to provide a better life than they had; they're determined to give them a life more comfortable of any generation. Studies have estimated that up to half a typical urban Chinese family's disposable income is spent on, or by, the child in the family.
The pressure is on. For the bigger part of high-school this generation has to perform to ensure they qualify for the limited spots available at the city universities each year. If not, years of comfortable favors from family members have been borough. So they study. They study so hard there is no time for anything else. No friends. No fun and almost no life outside the study room. Their only luxury is a digital connection to the world, a PC in their room, or if this is not affordable, daily visits to the closest internet bar.
The connected computer becomes the focal point of this generation in China. They grow up with a computer that links their study room, filled with pressure and the desire for freedom, to the outside world. Days and months are being spent in MUD games like World of Warcraft and Legends of Mir. Friends are being added to the much important buddy list on MSN and QQ, China's version of an Instant Messenger with 80 million users. Stories are written, are drawn and animated in flash, and are being uploaded to flashempire.com and flash8.net where they find hundreds of thousands of viewers. E-magazines on niche topics are published anywhere in the country and read by millions of young reader. MSN spaces host millions of private blogs, customized homepages full of emotions and self expression. E-flyers are sent out that bring people together in real life, to punk concerts and hip hop parties.
This generation of young Chinese consumers is more connected than any generation before them had ever been. They skipped over video recorders for DIV-X encoded mpeg movies; CD players for mp3 players; fixed landlines for mobile phones; film for digital cameras and arcade games for multi-user online games. The digital lifestyle is present everywhere and the numbers speak volumes: more than 100 million connected PCs - half of them broadband - link kids' study rooms, students in university and white collar workers in office buildings together. 400 million mobile phones send billions of SMS, with another big revolution looming when China enters into 3G communication at the end of the year.
Technology is liberating those young Chinese. It allows them to reveal a true inner self, to be emotionally open, express their feelings and ambitions and be in charge of their own personal space.
The current revolution is obvious: it's digital. But it's happening so fast it's difficult for communication and marketing specialists to keep up, to stay relevant. What's in our favour is the knowledge that Chinese think in terms of community – they see themselves as members of a group, which is why the digital lifestyle amongst this target is so prevalent – Chinese society is a relationship society; they listen to recommendations and emotional appeals, they're big readers and talkers. Word of mouth branding works well, but messages need to address motivations; tell a story and have a strong identity.
Hey, this will be my first entry into my first blog. I am psyched!
They also give me this extended firm - what am I gonna do with it?
