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.

Are you looking for more strategic experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

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.

Are you looking for more experts on e-commerce at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.    

Bytedance: beyond Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent - Ashley Dudarenok

Ashley Dudarenok

Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok dives into the fast-changing landscape of China's internet, especially Bytedance. The relative newcomer has become an established player next to the old trinity of Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (BAT). She looks at some of Bytedance's major operations: Jinri Toutiao and Douyin, and Bytebance international expansion for Asia Times.

Ashley Dudarenok:

ByteDance has ambitious expansion plans outside China. Founder and CEO Zhang Yiming announced at the company's sixth year-end gala in March 2018 that the company wants to become a global content creation and communication platform and that they will focus on globalization this year. 

ByteDance recently attracted notice in the West after acquiring Musical.ly, the mobile app that's very popular among young people in the US Topbuzz, the English version of Toutiao was also launched in North and South America three years ago to expand its global presence. The rising giant also bought France-based media aggregation service News Republic in 2017 and invested in Indian news app Dailyhunt in 2016. 

Outside of news aggregation, ByteDance also wants to increase its market share in video platforms and mobile entertainment apps. It acquired US video creation app Flipagram in early 2017. Then in November 2017, it invested $50 million in Live.me, a successful mobile streaming app that's focused on the US market. 

By rolling out its own products and acquiring others, ByteDance has successfully amplified its global presence to grab market share in Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Yet the brand itself is not as well-known as the top three – BAT – locally or overseas. Many people have only heard of their apps and can't connect them to their parent company. As a result, in April 2018, Toutiao confirmed that they will use 'ByteDance' from now on as the brand name for external communication and marketing. This is an obvious signal that ByteDance is gearing up for branding and firmly establishing its image as an industry leader in China's tech scene and beyond.

More at Asia Times.

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

Are you looking for more experts on China's digital transformation? Do check out this list.

Luxury brands got it wrong on Douyin - Ashley Dudarenok

Ashley Dudarenok

Luxury brands jumped on Douyin, a hip short video app that is popular among China’s young social media users, that has even been called the WeChat for luxury goods. Wrong, very wrong, says marketing veteran Ashley Dudarenok to the Jing Daily.

Jing Daily:

To Ashley Galina Dudarenok, author of the Amazon bestseller “Digital China: Working with Bloggers, Influencers and KOLs,” it was a typical example illustrating how luxury brands over-cater to fashion and digital trends in China.... 

Another concern is whether their targeted audience has the purchasing power to buy luxury goods. “As it turns out, most of the Douyin users cannot afford luxury goods,” said Dudarenok,...“Given the premium and exclusive nature of luxury goods, the sales-conversation rate generating from marketing on Douyin will be relatively low. In other words, there will be more people viewing the content but [far fewer] people purchasing products.”

More at the Jing Daily.

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

Are you looking for more luxury brands experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.  

How long format videos become popular in China - Ashley Dudarenok

Ashley Dudarenok

Short entertaining videos of 15-30 seconds were hot in China a few years ago, but the internet population is moving to a long format, that is three minutes, says vlogger and marketeer Ashley Dudarenok on her vlog. Viewers really want to be part of your life, she says.

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

Are you looking for more marketing experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Behind the success of Douyin (Tik Tok) - Ashley Dudarenok

Ashley Dudarenok

E-commerce platform Douyin or Tik Tok has added new functions for both users and brands, explains e-commerce expert Ashley Dudarenok at AskleyTalks. Users can link up directly to Taobao, making it tighter linked to e-commerce leaders. And brands can get their verified accounts, more data on their visitors and more other insights.

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

Are you looking for more experts on e-commerce? Do check out this list.