Weblog with daily updates of the news on a frugal, fair and beautiful China, from the perspective of internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and president of the China Speakers Bureau Fons Tuinstra
Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more branding experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
More than 50 platforms in China offer live streaming as a highly sophisticated tool, say innovation expert Ashley Dudarenok at her vlog. Compared to their counterparts in the West, live streaming in China offers a wide range of tools the reach out to their viewers.
Entering the China market means you have to be extremely active on social media, says marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok, although you do not need to be on all 60+ media platforms, she adds.
China is number one in e-commerce, online shopping, payment, logistics, and much more. No wonder foreign brands love the second largest economy in the world, says e-commerce expert Ashley Dudarenok on her vlog.
Fashion firm Shein belongs to a new breed of ultra-fast fashion brands that keeps an edge on its more traditional competitors, says innovation expert Matthew Brennanat the Vox. Why is Shein going to crunch fashion companies like Zara?
The Vox:
Toward the tail end of the 2010s, “ultra-fast” fashion brands — Asos, Boohoo, Fashion Nova, and now Shein — emerged as viable competitors to the dominant fashion empires of the previous decade. Last October, Reuters reported that investors think “Zara … is going to be crushed by fast fashion 2.0.” These ultra-fast fashion companies are able to reach millions of young shoppers directly through social media without the need for physical retail space, and relied on search traffic and customer data to foreshadow trends.
But by virtue of Shein’s location and software technology, the retailer developed a speedy edge on its competitors. Matthew Brennan, a Beijing-based writer and analyst of Chinese technology, likened its pace to “real-time” retail. That means Shein is constantly gathering and analyzing customer data and uses that knowledge to craft new designs — within as little as three days.
“Each new design is basically a bet because Shein can estimate how well a product is going to do, but it doesn’t know for sure until it sells,” Brennan explained. “Compared to its fast fashion competitors, Shein is able to take more bets, but at a lower risk. It’s able to place very small initial orders with these factories, about 100 or even smaller.” These batches were much smaller than Zara’s and that of ultra-fast fashion retailers like Boohoo, which reportedly ordered about 300 to 500 units per style. If a specific top goes viral overnight on TikTok, for example, Shein will be able to instantaneously ramp up production on the garment and place additional orders depending on demand.
Shein has spent years cultivating relationships with Chinese garment factories and manufacturers, whereas most Western brands generally outsource this work. Inditex is similarly situated close to a garment production center in the northeast region of Spain, but according to Brennan, business in China moves much faster.
“Shein doesn’t work with very large factories but [with] small to mid-sized workshops that pick up orders daily,” Brennan said. “It’s very much like an Uber system, where new orders are coming into factory owners’ phones and they receive the order. It’s very scrappy, but efficient.”
China’s economy is booming and foreign brands see engaging influencers as the ideal way to enter the market. But those influencers do no come cheap, says marketing expert Ashley Dudarenokat Marketing-interactive. “You can’t enter China with $10,000 US and expect to succeed,” she says.
Marketing-interactive:
With China’s rapid economic and social bounceback amid the ongoing global pandemic, more and more brands are feeling a sense of urgency when it comes to breaking into that market — one with a completely different set of rules and platforms when it comes to social media and how influence works. Ashley Galina Dudarenok is the founder of Alarice & ChoZan, specializing in digital marketing and strategy for brands in the Chinese market. Her 500+ page quarterly report on all things marketing in China is highly respected, and offers insights for brands who want to do exactly that.
When it comes to breaking into China’s influencer market, Dudarenok is firm: It won’t be cheap.
“You can’t enter China with $10,000 US and expect to succeed,” she says. Brands are playing a whole different ballgame with influencers there, many of whom have even launched their own brands to control all elements of the business in-house…
Influencer marketing has evolved quickly in China, and with influencer incubators becoming a regular step to a career in the country,, there is a larger crop of “micro-KOLs” available for brands who wish to sell themselves across platforms like WeChat, Douyin, and Taobao.
In her book, Working with Bloggers, Influencers and KOLs, Dudarenok notes that micro-KOLs are “attractive to younger consumers who see themselves as more independent and less prone to the influence of commercial interests and personalities.”
However, it’s true in China as it is elsewhere that it’s a combination of top-tier, mid-tier and micro-KOLs that offers the best solution, so, be prepared to spend.
In China bloggers sell better than brands because they can make use of the digital ecosystem the country has developed, says branding expert Ashley Dudarenok on her weblog.
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.
Foreign brands used to be an asset on the China market, but those days are over, says marketing guru Ashley Dudarenok on her weblog. You need to bring a firm budget and take time to convince consumers your products is worth their money, she adds.
Western brands are often shocked by the fees they have to pay to retain bloggers in China. Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok explains why bloggers in China work differently and actually do no need brands for their operation. They can create their own brands, so do not need the Western ones, unless they pay, she says.
“Why are moms using Tiktok? Why is anyone using Tiktok?” shouted the world’s most popular Youtuber towards the camera. It was late 2018 and Swedish gamer Pewdiepie was recording his second of fifteen “Tiktok Cringe Compilation” videos after the first had proved to be a hit. Each episode was ten minutes of him reacting to painfully embarrassing Tiktok videos.
Tiktok hadn’t paid anything to Pewdiepie. The A-list global internet mega-celebrity was creating video after video about Tiktok because his audience loved it. This should have been the kind of authentic influencer promotion that online marketers dreamed of. Every video was essentially a free ten-minute advert for Tiktok distributed out to a loyal 80 million follower base. Yet, at the same time, Pewdiepie wasn’t exactly endorsing the app.
Tiktok was bizarre. An endless stream of people posting weird content with almost a total lack of self-awareness. Mindless comedy skits, lip-syncing, and just outright wacky oddball creations. The kids making these videos could be forgiven; they were just kids. But the adults posting on the app came off simply as creepy and weird. Countless numbers of Tiktok cringe compilations started appearing on Youtube, many with millions of views. Criticism of the app became widespread, with the shaming of Tiktok users becoming a regular occurrence on Twitter and Reddit.
In China, Douyin, the domestic version of Tiktok also operated by Bytedance, had first garnered attention as a popular app for urban youths, associating itself with art students and fashionable hip-hop lovers. Yet in America, it was the absolute opposite. Tiktok had entered the public consciousness as a cringe app for losers and misfits. What was going on?
Influencers are an emerging force in branding, but in most of the world they are lagging compared to China, explains marketing guru Ashley Dudarenok. Audiences, culture, and platforms are ideal for influencers, she tells at her vlog.
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.
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. Are you looking for more branding experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
Marketing veteran Ashley Dudarenok explains how she joined the social media bandwagon in China post-2009 for her marketing ventures, interviewed by 852 Reboot HK. With remarks on the future of Hong Kong and the fallout of the coronavirus. And why companies need at least seven business models to survive 2020.
Li-Ning and Anta, two Chinese shoe sport manufacturers, took a nationalistic twist in their marketing after the US National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Houston Rockets triggered off criticism from China's government. Marketing expert Tom Doctoroff comments on the slippery slope of nationalism in China marketing for Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera:
These companies have also made efforts to tap into rising nationalism among China's youth.
In the case of Li-Ning, the company rebranded itself and began running advertisements rooted in national pride in an effort to capitalise on political tensions with other countries, Tom Doctoroff, senior global advisor at Prophet, a global brand and marketing consultancy, told Al Jazeera.
The controversy surrounding the US National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Houston Rockets earlier this year also provided Li-Ning's domestic competitor, Anta, with an opening to burnish its credentials as a patriotic Chinese company, says Doctoroff.
Anta severedits relationship with the NBA after the general manager of the Rockets, Daryl Morey, tweeted a message in October supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. The tweet provoked a fierce response in mainland China, where state television stopped broadcasts of the league, multiple companies suspended or terminated cooperation and social media was flooded with criticism.
Both Anta and Li-Ning are trying to "make inroads driven by nationalist sentiments", said Doctoroff.
The Houston Rockets incident was a "shot across the bows" of the sneaker industry, the sports teams connected to it, and business in general, he said.
"If a brand makes a hint at supporting dissolution of what China considers to be its legitimate territory, then the brand will suffer," Doctoroff noted.
Every brand will have to grapple with balancing "freedom of expression and commitment to maintaining China sales," he said. "Most will be cautious … These are delicate times."
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.
Zhihu, China's popular Q&A site comparable to Quora, can be a good place to launch your product, says China marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok at the Jing Daily. But the content-driven platform needs - not surprisingly - also a content-driven strategy, she explains.
Jing Daily:
“Brands on Zhihu need to be able to provide knowledge-driven content, and not be self-promotional. This is how they will reach the consumers who use it,” says Ashley Galina Dudarenok, founder of research platform ChoZan.co.
A focus on knowledge — not sales — is the key to success. For brands launching on Zhihu, you should be seeking to build trusted relationships with the platform’s users. “Don’t just sell your product or brand,” Dudarenok says, “These consumers want to hear your in-depth expertise. For example, if you’re a cosmetics brand, don’t just talk about what the product is, but how it is made, and where the ingredients come from.”
Ensure there is a trusted personality attached to the brand and keep your audience in mind.
Sustainability might have been high on the agenda of major fashion brands, most consumers in China still not buy into the concept, says marketing expert Ashley Dudarenokat the Jing Daily. But there is hope for the future as brands focus on the young and future consumers.
Jing Daily:
Chinese consumers often face barriers when they attempt to purchase sustainable products. Consumer research from the Chinese fashion media Luxe.co found that 21 percent of shoppers don’t know where to find sustainable fashion, and another 19 percent “do not understand what sustainability means.” Founder of the research platform ChoZan.co, Ashley Galina Dudarenok, explains that “sustainable fashion faces a lot of problems in the Chinese market. It is simply not the first concern when consumers make a purchase.”...
Swarovski’s Waterschool environmental stewardship initiative has reached over 100 schools and 350,000 students across China, smartly targeting the next generation of China’s young and sustainably-savvy consumer. And according to the experts, it is this generation of young advocates who will be demanding more from brands in the future while also expecting proof of ethical sourcing and manufacturing standards. Galina Dudarenok explains that these consumers will expect sustainability to be a standard feature of brands’ product offerings in the future, claiming that “sustainable luxury does have a future in the Chinese market, and it is with post-90s consumers.” Far from being a passing trend, smart brands ought to be preparing for the eventual emergence of China’s environmentally conscious consumers now rather than when it’s too late.
