What does the Tiktok deal mean for its users? – Arnold Ma

 

Arnold Ma

London-based branding expert Arnold Ma discusses what the Tiktok deal with Oracle and Walmart might mean for its users outside China, at the state broadcaster CGTN. Who is hosting the user data is the key question to ask, he says.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on the ongoing trade war between China and the US? Do check out this list.

Why Tiktok’s sale to Microsoft might be a good deal for Bytedance – Arnold Ma

Bytedance is negotiating the sale of popular video streaming app Tiktok with Microsoft, now it became into hot water with an executive ban by US President Donald Trump. Business analyst Arnold Ma tells CGTN why that might be a good deal for Bytedance, since it has 60 apps in China, not just a few like most tech companies, and might focus on those other apps. Even the price, 10 billion US dollars for a company valued at 120 billion, is not bad for an app that only exists for three years, he adds.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

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Surviving in the new cold war - Arnold Ma

  

Marketing expert Arnold Ma runs his branding agency Qumin from London in both China and the West. He explains how brands, and his company, are doing now relations between China, the US and the UK get complicated, to put it mildly. Arnold is interviewed by Shirley Ze Yu and Martina Fuchs. What Chinese brands are doing well in the West, and many other questions.

Arnold Ma and Shirley Ze Yu are both speakers at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need them on your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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How Tiktok paves the way for third gen social media - Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma

Third-generation social media are getting ready to emerge, and marketing specialist Arnold Ma explains how Tiktok - Douyin in China - is leading the way away from platforms to content-driven communication, he tells at the UK Advertising Exports Group (UKAEG) at Shanghai International Advertising Festival (SHIAF) July 2020. Will WeChat survive in the new digital revolution? How 5G will change the world.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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At the China Speakers Bureau, we start to organize online seminars. Are you interested in our plans? Do get in touch. 

What can brands learn from China's corona crisis? - Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma

What can brands learn from China for the post-corona crisis? Marketing expert Arnold Ma from Qumin in London joins a discussion at Retail Marketing. Building loyalty during a crisis is key, he says. Some traditional behaviors will return to the old patterns, but consumers will stick to newly developed insights, he adds.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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China's next generation consumers - Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma

When you run behind social platforms, you always run behind the next generation consumers, says marketing guru Arnold Ma. You have to know what drives change, why China consumers have no legacy and - for example - while old-style supermarkets never took off in China.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Is the coronavirus disrupting your China meeting? Do check out if the China Speakers Bureau can help you.

At the China Speakers Bureau we have started to explore WeChat Work as a social platform, next to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Are you interesting in following us on this journey? Check out our instructions here. Arnold Ma at BYOB on Next Gen Chinese Consumers from Qumin on Vimeo.   

Learning Mandarin is needed to open your mind - Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma

Learning Mandarin is a way to open your mind and the world, says marketing guru Arnold Ma to the British Council, since still a small part of the Chinese speak foreign languages.

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Luxury brands focus on China’s gamers – Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma

Gamers are increasingly becoming a group of luxury buyers in China, overlapping other segments, says marketing expert Arnold Ma at OZY. "Chinese luxury buyer demographics overlap with hobbies normally associated with a younger audience, such as gaming," Arnold Ma says.

OZY:

McKinsey&Company reports that the luxury market is driven by the post-1980s generation with an average annual spend of $5,900 (RMB 41,000) and consumers born after the 1990s, who spend, on average, $3,600 (RMB 25,000) a year. A separate report by the Boston Consulting Group suggests that 78 percent of China’s luxury consumers are under 35.
In keeping with global trends, women account for a majority — 71 percent — of China’s luxury spending. But they also form 58 percent of the country’s 484 million-strong gaming population. In addition, two-thirds are between 19 and 35 and are generally middle and upper-middle class.
“Chinese luxury buyer demographics overlap with hobbies normally associated with a younger audience, such as gaming,” says Arnold Ma, CEO of digital creative agency Qumin. “A combined social content and gaming strategy for brand campaigns will not only have the most reach, but more importantly provide a far more authentic message to Chinese luxury buyers.”

More at OZY.

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Getting close to your customers is key - Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma

Brands focus to much on social media platforms and generic influencers, and forget often they need to get closer to their customers, says marketing expert Arnold Ma in the McKinsey Report on the 2020 State of Fashion. In China and the rest of Asia consumers are faster to adopt new trends and increasingly guinea pigs for Western brands.

The McKinsey Report:

Arnold Ma, chief executive of creative digital agency Qumin, suggests players should move up the influencer funnel, partnering with individuals or other brands who truly live the lifestyle and can tell an authentic story, rather than blindly paying popular more generic influencers to promote their products... 

“People [in Asia] don’t hold onto legacy behaviours such as using Facebook or sticking with credit cards instead of mobile payment,” says Arnold Ma, founder and chief executive of Chinese digital marketing agency Qumin. “When something new comes out, people welcome it with open arms.” 

This explains why tech currents increasingly flow from the east. 

“The west is just seeing successful examples and copying it,” Ma says. “They’re using Asia as a guinea pig.” 

Staying on top of Asian social platform developments is not only important to better reach consumers in Asia. Brands can also apply learnings from social media trends in Asia to their business elsewhere, giving them an edge over competitors in non-Asian markets. So, what do Asia’s next-gen social media foretell?

More in the McKinsey Report.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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How brands can relate to youth subcultures - Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma in Action

Brands need to dive into youth subcultures in stead of focusing on platforms, says branding expert Arnold Ma at a meeting in London. You have to focus on people, rather than technology, and he explains how three rebellious Chinese youth subcultures relate to different brands.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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  Arnold Ma on Chinese Youth Subcultures + Tech at the BETA British Educational Travel Association from Qumin on Vimeo.   

How Douyin is undermining WeChat - Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma

Tencent's WeChat has been an unprecedented success story on the China internet. But new platforms are undermining the dominance of WeChat, says marketing expert Arnold Ma, CEO of London-based Qumin, at CBBC. Short-video medium Douyin is one of them.

CBBC:

 Anyone doing business with China in recent years has been aware of the importance of WeChat, a one-stop-shop of social media allowing chats, promotions, shopping and payments to all be done on this single platform. And its importance can’t be understated for most businesses in China. However, its popularity and prevalence has led some companies to forget everything else and replace a broad marketing plan with a simple WeChat plan. 

According to Arnold Ma of Qumin, WeChat should be regarded as more of an operating platform than a social media channel. And when it comes to social, there’s a new kid on the block. That kid is Douyin – a short video app, that was initially popularised by people lip-synching along to famous songs. Users then started showing off other talents, performing comedy sketches, and entertaining more generally; Douyin was soon mostly made up of user-generated entertainment content. 

Over a billion videos are viewed every day by the 350 million Daily Active Users on Douyin in China – not bad for a company that was developed by a team of 8 over 200 days. Today more than half of its users are under 25 years old, making it predominantly Millennials and Gen Z users who are active on the site. 

Many of the Western early social media platforms were desktop-based sites that have been adapted to mobile. But China – without a long history of desktop internet - leapt straight to mobile. It has hence been able to develop apps that are more suited to mobile, bypassing that desktop legacy that so many western sites have stuck with. Douyin’s format of videos being presented in full portrait mode (as opposed to the horizontal mode that is more suitable for desktop viewing) has really captured a youth audience who are used to swiping, scrolling and short-form content. 

Today, only 15 percent of teens now post to their WeChat moments feed says Ma. “When social media go mainstream, they lose the youth,” he explains. “We can see how Facebook lost the youth when they went from niche to mainstream and we now are seeing the same with WeChat.”

More at CBBC.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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How the short video undermines the WeChat power base - Arnold Ma

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TikTok and Douyin, both owned by Bytedance, are two short-video successes, undermining the supremacy of WeChat, explains marketing guru Arnold Ma and CEO of London-based agency Qumin at the China Film Insider. Just like Facebook, WeChat is losing traction among the youngsters, he says.

The China Film Insider:

Arnold Ma: If your target is Chinese Gen Z and millennials, you need to move on to a different platform than WeChat. Only 15 percent of Chinese teens post on WeChat moments, and the reason for this is that, just as Facebook has gained mass adaptation and become the biggest social media platform on the internet in the West, WeChat is now the single biggest social media platform in China. When that happens, when a platform moves from niche to mainstream, they will lose what made them special for the early adopters — in this case youth. So they’re going to try something else, and that something is short-form video. Chinese people spend 600 million hours per day watching short videos. It’s probably one of the fastest growing formats on the planet. 

We think Douyin is here to stay, and it’s growing at a ridiculous rate. And now is the time for brands to take advantage of it. Imagine if a brand built a WeChat presence six years ago or a Facebook presence 13 years ago — today the brand would have the most powerful channel for its marketing. This only happens a certain amount of times in our lifetimes, maybe once every five or six years, where there’s a completely different new social media platform that gains massive traction. 

CBI: There’s so much talk about TikTok in the U.S. now, and there’s a sense that Douyin is just the same thing with a different name. Is that a misconception? 

Ma: The two are actually very different platforms, even though they’re owned by the same company.  They have different content, different functions, and different user behavior. Douyin has many more advantages for brands, whereas TikTok is still a very young platform. Douyin has a fairly affluent demographic, and they’re generally very globally aware and sophisticated consumers. 

The first main difference is the content, which on TikTok is very silly, fun video, for now. Our prediction is that TikTok content will move in a direction similar to Douyin. The content on Douyin is very grown up. Whether it’s about entertainment, education or lifestyle, it’s always more mature — less silly and more useful. It makes sense because short video is such a rich format, but it’s only in the last few years that technology, specifically 4G and 5G, has made it accessible enough to reach critical mass on demand.

More at the China Film Insider.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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China's cashless revolution - Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma, CEO of London-based Qumin dives into China's cashless revolution and then dives further into the country's subcultures among its youth.

Arnold Ma is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference?  Send us an email or fill in our speakers' request form. 

Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.  Arnold Ma: Deviant Youth - Chinese Subcultures (YMS 2019) from Qumin on Vimeo.