4 Chinese social media campaigns to learn from – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

Hong-Kong-based marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok dives into four different social media campaigns Western brands cannot ignore, he explains on her website Chozan. “Successful campaigns in this environment rarely rely on simple advertising. Instead, they’re bespoke experiences: they speak the language of local memes, festivals, and internet jokes, and they invite users to participate rather than passively consume content,” she says

Ashley Dudarenok:

Chinese social media is a fast-moving universe. To understand how brands succeed in this environment, many marketers study Chinese consumer behavior and the digital ecosystems shaping modern retail. With over 1.3 billion WeChat users and more than 1 billion short-video users across platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou, brands can no longer treat the country as an afterthought.

Consumers spend an extraordinary amount of time online. The average Chinese internet user spends over 5 hours per day on mobile internet, much of it on social and video platforms. Just as importantly, trust in social recommendations is high—49% of Chinese consumers say influencer recommendations directly affect their purchasing decisions, far higher than in many Western markets.

By 2026, the Chinese digital landscape will have matured into a dense ecosystem of super-apps, niche forums, and seamless social commerce. Western platforms like Facebook and Instagram remain blocked, while local platforms such as WeChat, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu (RedNote) dominate everyday digital life.  These platforms operate inside a broader ecosystem of social commerce in China, where consumers discover, discuss, and purchase products without leaving the same app.

Even smaller vertical platforms command massive reach. For example, Xiaohongshu alone surpassed 260 million monthly active users, becoming one of the country’s most influential lifestyle platforms.

Successful campaigns in this environment rarely rely on simple advertising. Instead, they’re bespoke experiences: they speak the language of local memes, festivals, and internet jokes, and they invite users to participate rather than passively consume content.

The full story at Chozan.

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China’s youngsters: charity moving to the metaverse – Arnold Ma

 

Arnold Ma

China, and especially its youngsters, are paving the way into the metaverse, says innovation expert Arnold Ma, founder of Qumin, in Techround. For example, when it comes to funding of charities, he adds. “China’s younger generations are highly receptive to emerging technologies, so a metaverse version of an initiative like 99 Giving Day, powered by WeChat or a future platform, would be a powerful way to attract more funding.”

Arnold Ma:

“A lot of discussions this year have been around how the metaverse is dead and ChatGPT is king. But the scene in China looks different. Zhongguancun, which is like the Silicon Valley of Beijing, released a white paper earlier this summer calling Web3 and the metaverse an ‘inevitable trend for future Internet industry development’. Far from just being a fleeting commercial opportunity, the metaverse is clearly at the heart of China’s vision for a world-leading digital economy.

“Part of what sets China’s approach apart is the emphasis placed on harnessing Web3 innovations for common prosperity, which means putting technology to work to make society more equal. Tencent has already been driving forward a new era of Internet-based philanthropy in China with its long-running flagship initiative 99 Giving Day. This gamified version of donating, which allows people to support their favourite charities easily via WeChat, has helped lower the barrier to entry in philanthropy and unlock millennials and Gen Zers as active contributors.

“There is massive potential to migrate this approach to a metaverse space. China’s younger generations are highly receptive to emerging technologies, so a metaverse version of an initiative like 99 Giving Day, powered by WeChat or a future platform, would be a powerful way to attract more funding, and at the same time kickstart the process of integrating Web3 into wider society.”

More in Techround. 

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How brands can deal with the new e-commerce landscape in 2023 – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

China’s e-commerce landscape is changing fast and branding expert Ashley Dudarenok explains how brands can deal with the new big five: Alibaba, JD, Pinduoduo, Douyin, WeChat, for Technode. Here are her top-5 tips.

Ashley Dudarenok:

1. Adopting an overall e-commerce strategy and repositioning flagship stores on Douyin and Pinduoduo

E-commerce platforms need to adopt a comprehensive layout and reposition their flagship stores on Douyin and Pinduoduo. Douyin is focusing on developing its digital shelf e-commerce, while Pinduoduo is leveraging its advantage in high-frequency consumer goods categories to become a comprehensive platform that meets diverse needs. For brands, as the digital shelf e-commerce landscape becomes evenly matched, Douyin/Pinduoduo flagship stores will play an equally important role as their Tmall/JD flagship stores.

2. Building a stronger cross-platform synergy and seizing the opportunity to enhance bargaining power with e-commerce platforms

As e-commerce platforms become increasingly mature, the overlap of their consumer groups will inevitably continue to increase, making it more difficult to expand user increment. However, it is a good opportunity for brands to increase their bargaining chip with e-commerce platforms in terms of traffic, product promotion, and consumer data transparency. Stronger cross-platform collaboration between brand and e-commerce platforms is worth exploring on both sides, especially in category differentiation, pricing, and promotion.

3. Reducing the reliance on livestream e-commerce influencers and strengthening content co-creation

The role of e-commerce live streaming, especially influencer live streaming, in “transactions” will be further weakened. Most influencers may find that selling standard or common products are losing their appeal to the public. Influencer live streaming will reach a critical crossroads, and influencers will need to attract consumers through better content. Currently, “selling-only” influencers who lack content will lose their competitiveness and gradually be phased out. Patterns may emerge where common goods are sold more through digital shelf e-commerce and influencers will focus on more niche products with strong digital content potential like trendy goods.

4. Developing innovative supply chain solutions

Innovative supply chain solutions such as direct sourcing and supply chain financing can help brands reduce costs and improve efficiency. Brands need to optimize their organizational structure, develop cross-platform e-commerce capabilities, accumulate universal key capabilities to support multi-platform development, and lay a foundation for other e-commerce models with future development potential, such as instant retail.

5. Improving consumer experience through data analytics and personalized marketing

Brands need to use data analytics and personalized marketing to improve the consumer experience. It can help brands better understand consumer behavior and preferences, and provide tailored products and services to meet their needs. With the convergence of platform models, the profit levels of brand flagship stores on various platforms are expected to gradually converge. In order to improve efficiency, brands need to optimize their organizational structure, develop cross-platform e-commerce capabilities, accumulate universal key capabilities to support multi-platform development, and lay a foundation for other e-commerce models with future development potential, such as instant retail.

More in Technode.

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Pleas

How Xi Jinping’s rules will benefit the tech sector – Shaun Rein

 

Shaun Rein

China’s crackdown on tech firms is in the longer run benefiting consumers and the industry itself, says business analyst Shaun Rein about the governmental efforts to curtail free-wheeling companies.

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How China’s social media differ from the West – Arnold Ma

Arnold Ma

Marketing expert Arnold Ma of Qumin joins a panel explaining why social media in China fundamentally differ from those in the West, and (later) why China will lead the future path for new social media innovations in the rest of the world.

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How can brands sell in China? – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

Newcomers come often with a romanticized idea of how to sell their brand products in China. Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok puts them straight at her weblog.

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The splintering of the global internet – Kaiser Kuo

 

Kaiser Kuo

China veteran Kaiser Kuo discusses the relations between the US and China, and here focuses on the splintering of the internet, at a wide-ranging interview at the Wire China. “I also think we need to recognize that our worries are more about us than they are about China. We have in this country a real problem with surveillance capitalism, as it’s been called,” says Kaiser Kuo.

Wire China:

Given that first narrative switch you described — the now-accepted idea that technology has not led to a more open political system in China — many people talk about the splintering of the global internet. Do you think a splintering is inevitable?

To some extent, we have to recognize that there has already been a splintering when it comes to a lot of popular services on the internet. A lot of that owes to China’s very severe regime of internet censorship. But I worry about the United States accepting this as a norm and simply going along with it and imposing these same types of objectionable ideas that run so counter to our core values. I think the impact of it is not so much economic as it is moral, and it would be a betrayal of our values to embrace this. I think we should all be working to have a more open internet rather than acquiescing, and proactively helping it toward this other outcome — a splintered, fragmented, and decoupled internet.

I also think we need to recognize that our worries are more about us than they are about China. We have in this country a real problem with surveillance capitalism, as it’s been called. Our concerns over Chinese tech have been amplified in large measures by our worries about how American tech companies are treating our data, and following our every click online and targeting us with greater and greater precision.

Let me put it this way: the Trump administration and its moves against companies like Tencent’s WeChat and Bytedance’s TikTok were clearly never about national security. They were never about data privacy. We’ve seen that now. It’s clear, at least to me, that they were about this broader project of suppressing China’s technology prowess, and were very much of a piece with what we’ve done with Huawei. There are important differences between them, of course. And I think from a national security point of view, you could certainly make a stronger case for Huawei being of concern. But when you look at WeChat, which has users only in the single digit millions in the United States, almost all of them are either Americans with strong connections to China or are Chinese nationals or ethnic Chinese. That national security case is very weak. With TikTok, it’s almost laughable.

The WeChat and TikTok ban is a good example of how many American lawmakers view the U.S.-China tech competition as a zero-sum game. Are there areas where you could imagine productive cooperation in technology between the two countries?

I think if you look back over the last 30 years, cooperation in technology has been fantastically fruitful. Let’s start with immigration policy. The Trump administration is going after H-1B visas and trying to restrict the ability of ethnically Chinese scientists, researchers or technologists to participate in research in the United States. All these things are shooting ourselves in the foot and surrendering, or deliberately blowing up, what is probably the single greatest advantage that this country has had in technology. You only have to look at the great companies of Silicon Valley, Seattle, or Boston, and look at a list of the surnames to realize what kind of contribution is being made by people who the Trump administration’s Department of Justice is targeting through its China initiative, that Homeland Security is trying to prevent from entering this country, and that the Trump administration is attempting to demonize. Part of productive technology cooperation would be stopping this utterly feckless policy and reversing it. We can do that and still protect American national security interests if we put a little more trust into the natural immune system of an open society.

More at the Wire China.

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Will China approve the Tiktok deal, and what is next? – Shirley Yu

 

Shirley Yu

A US judge has delayed US President Trump’s action on Tiktok, and now the Chinese government is watching closely what happens after November 12, the next deadline, says political economist Shirley Yu at Bloomberg. And what will Tencent do, now a ban on WeChat is still pending?

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How can the US win an economic war with China? – Shirley Ze Yu

Shirley Ze Yu

Derailing China’s economic reforms is the only way the US can stop losing its leverage as the largest economy in the world, says political economist Shirley Ze Yu in the South China Morning Post. Improved market liberalization has every time helped China to improve its economic position, and the US has no other alternative to win this fight instead of blocking market forces in China, she argues.

Shirley Ze Yu:

It is understandable that the world’s predominant economic power wants to win an economic war against China, but how? One way is for the US economy to rise faster than China’s. The other is to stifle China’s rise.

It is hard to see any major technological breakthrough on the horizon in the US that would induce a significant economic take-off. Until that happens, the second-best strategy for the US is to damage

the Chinese economy.

Some of China’s hi-tech companies are under siege. TikTok and WeChat have been put on the White House 45-day banned list on August 6. Trump administration officials have also suggested that Chinese companies listed in the US should be delisted by January 2022 if they cannot comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s audit requirements.

Sifting through more than 70 years of the People’s Republic of China’s history, every period in which the Chinese economy has thrived has been accompanied by deeper liberal market reforms. Every major round of liberal market reform has unleashed enormous amounts of economic vitality.

Greater market liberalisation will therefore put China on a more robust economic growth track, pushing the nation towards the commanding heights of the global economy even faster than current projections.

The US, in principle, wants to see a more liberal China. In practice, though, it will benefit from an illiberal China by winning the economic war.

Ultimately, it is better to defeat an enemy without having to fight, rather than winning every battle, according to ancient wisdom. Thus, the most expedient way of winning for the US would be to derail the liberal market reform
process in China.

More at the South China Morning Post.

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Why China's apps (mostly) lack a global impact - Kaiser Kuo

Kaiser Kuo

Donald Trump's plan to ban Tiktok from the US is straight-up Sinophobia, says former Baidu communications director Kaiser Kuo to Slate. Most successful apps in China will not make a decent following among consumers in the rest of the world, he argues, just because they are too much adjusted to China's internet rules and customs, he adds.

Slate:

Kaiser Kuo, a Chinese American tech journalist and podcaster, and former spokesperson for the Chinese search engine Baidu, agrees that TikTok’s data collection has been aggressive but feels surveillance fears are overblown. “We have not seen any evidence so far that they’ve done anything nefarious. This is about our deeply emotional response to China. It’s straight-up Sinophobia,” he said in an interview prior to Trump’s ban threat. “If TikTok, which is just pure greasy kids’ stuff, is drawing so much fire, it’s hard to believe that anything wouldn’t.”

It’s also not clear that China really wants to develop globally successful consumer tech products. Kuo notes that TikTok’s success is something of an anomaly, since “the really successful apps in China, the very things that made them successful would hinder them from success in other markets.” Baidu, for instance, may be an excellent search engine but its compliance with Chinese censorship laws makes it difficult to export. 

The messaging service WeChat is an all-in-one swiss army knife app for its Chinese users, facilitating everything from payment to ridesharing to food ordering. Given its ubiquity, it’s also a powerful tool for surveillance and censorship, which is why the international edition is so pared down that it’s essentially a WhatsApp knock-off. 

TikTok’s domestic Chinese counterpart, Douyin, also boasts some micropayment and search features—in addition to censorship compliance—that are absent from the global version.

More in Slate.

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Tencent: fighting for its dominance - Matthew Brennan

Matthew Brennan

Tencent might still dominate social media in China with WeChat and QQ, but competition is heating up, and the internet giant is preparing for more competition, says Tencent watcher Matthew Brennan in Asia One. 

Asia One:

"WeChat and QQ are like huge ships … too big to change course to catch a new trend before others," said Matthew Brennan, managing director of consulting firm China Channel. 

WeChat and QQ both saw quarter-on-quarter declines in monthly active users in September, while in the same month Chinese netizens spent 42 per cent of their online time using Tencent apps, down 4.2 per cent from the same month last year, according to a report from Chinese data analytics firm Quest Mobile... 

Tencent also fends off potential competition by blocking access to its ubiquitous WeChat, which has resulted in accusations of monopoly practices. 

Early this year, links to three social media apps - Matong, Duoshan and Liaotianbao - were blocked from opening within WeChat's browser for "containing unsafe content and receiving user complaints", according to Tencent. None of the three potential competitors has been able to pose a serious challenge to WeChat. 

"Social applications have a high rate of failure. Hundreds of WeChat challengers fizzle out, but it doesn't mean Tencent can stop trying," China Channel's Brennan said. "Innovations can still appear, often unexpectedly, so it's sensible for a company like Tencent to have new teams out in the field to explore the boundaries."

More in Asia One.

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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.

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

Add caption

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.

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How does Alipay works for foreign tourists? - Ashley Dudarenok

Ashley Dudarenok

Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok is enthusiastic about the announcement of Alipay to open up for tourists visiting China, followed shortly by a similar move by WeChat. On her vlog, she explains how visitors without a Chinese bank account can now use Alipay. Details on WeChat were not yet known at the moment of recording.

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Alipay, WeChat at last opened for foreigners - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

Alipay and WeChat, China's largest payment options, opened their services for foreign credit card holders, and it was about time too, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein, author of the bestseller The War for China's Wallet: Profiting from New World Order to the South China Morning Post.

The South China Morning Post:

“A lot of restaurants now in China now only accept Alipay or WeChat Pay, and so the problem is you can’t go and eat in a lot of restaurants you want to go to,” said Shaun Rein, founder of the China Market Research Group and author of “The War for China’s Wallet.”

“The other thing that foreigners complain about is that it’s very difficult for them to book taxis or to arrange for tickets, like at the Forbidden City and a lot of national attractions.”

Unlike in the West, China’s consumers leapfrogged credit cards and have gone straight from cash to smartphones. One reason is that Chinese apps have embraced the QR code — a far simpler, cheaper and more accessible payment method compared to NFC, adopted by Western apps like Apple Pay... 

“A lot of supermarkets might have one cash-only counter — very often they never even open it — or you might have a hundred people over the age of 70 standing in line trying to buy items because they don’t know how to use a mobile phone,” said Rein... 

Rein... thinks privacy concerns won’t stop foreigners from using these apps in China, where alternatives like Apple Pay are far less popular. 

“When they’re in China, if they don’t have the apps, they can’t function,” he said. “So the convenience of it outweighs any privacy concerns. And that’s what you’re seeing with mainland Chinese consumers as well.”

“Alibaba and Tencent have way too much data on every individual mainlander. They know exactly where we’re traveling, what we’re buying, who we’re going with, what we’re watching… But mainlanders still use [the apps] because of the convenience. And I expect that foreigners are going to do the same once they’re in China.”

More at the South China Morning Post.

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WeChat: still expanding, despite its dominance - Matthew Brennan

Matthew Brennan

Tencent's WeChat and its mini-programs are still very much in the expansion mode, says WeChat expert Matthew Brennan, even though two out of three Chinese use the tool, he tells the Asia Nikkei Review.

 Asia Nikkei Review:

Consumers, often, are all but forced to use some super apps, like it or not. In Hangzhou, the birthplace of Alipay, a number of restaurants, coffee shops and supermarkets only accept the e-payment service. Similarly, few people bring stacks of business cards to conferences in China -- they simply add each other on WeChat. 

With two out of three Chinese on WeChat, the app "is so ubiquitous" that it has essentially become a "public utility," said Matthew Brennan, managing director of Shanghai-based tech consultancy China Channel, who specializes in WeChat-based marketing. 

"It is like your phone number, water, gas and electricity," Brennan said. 

As popular as it is now, WeChat is still in expansion mode. Tencent has made companies and developers an offer that is hard to refuse: They can build a mini-app for WeChat cheaper and faster than a conventional app... 

Companies that helped drive WeChat's rise are showing they are not necessarily wedded to it. Brennan, who is writing a book about the super app, said top Chinese ride hailer Didi Chuxing used to rely on WeChat to attract passengers. Now, he said Didi -- which is also backed by Tencent -- gets about 90% of its orders through its own app. 

"They want direct access [to users]," Brennan said. "Otherwise, their business is at risk."

More in the Asia Nikkei Review.

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How to compete in China - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean in Minsk

In China, the internet is the economy. SOSV managing director William Bao Bean explains how international firms can enter the China market. With magic information on how Tencent and their WeChat dominate the playing field, and how you can win that war. And how Chinese companies are conquering the world.

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Facebook Groups go private, copying WeChat - Ben Cavender

Ben Cavender

Facebook is struggling to remain relevant for its users and has a good look at China's WeChat where group interactions are more private than the chaotic mess Facebook offers. But business analyst Ben Cavender wonders if the Chinese approach works at Facebook, he tells the South China Morning Post.

The South China Morning Post:

“Facebook has struggled to find ways for its users to feel that they have valuable ways to share and engage in interesting discussions with relevant groups of people versus the wider platform in recent years,” said Ben Cavender, a Shanghai-based analyst at China Market Research Group.

“They've seen just how popular WeChat has become as a platform for sharing within smaller, more private groups and realised that this is something that might work similarly well for them ... the challenge though is that in more mature markets like the US, consumer trust in the platform is very low.”

WeChat, developed by Tencent Holdings and with over a billion users, is heavily centred around the basic functions of messaging and social media. Moments, its social media space that Messenger’s new ‘close friends circle’ resembles, is open only to WeChat friends.

Compared to Facebook’s efforts to help users discover new groups by recommendation, WeChat employs a more hands-off process. Users can only join groups by invitation of an existing member, but the group can boost its visibility by sharing a QR code that works as a link to the group.

More at the South China Morning Post.

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