Copenhagen INK

Cool stuff, similar to the Nintendo Wii execution done in YouTube a while back, this one is from China Mobile: http://minisite.youku.com/chinamobileg3/

An update on how some of the big digital players are doing in Asia:

Searches on Yahoo! sites grew 13% year-over-year in January in Japan. Google sites, including YouTube grew just 5%, however the comScore data does not count mobile searches, which is big in Japan. So who said that Yahoo! was down and out? Yahoo! may find themselves behind the ball game in N.America and Europe, but in APAC, it’s an entirely different ball game. Similar to Japan, Yahoo! finds themselves as the top search engine in Hong Kong and Taiwan. We’ve also seen local players take strong footholds of being number 1. - for example, Baidu in China and Naver in South Korea.

Talking about China - in this massively growing internet market, international giants like Google and Facebook are having trouble making gains with the 300 million Chinese online users.  While these companies struggle to conquer market share in China and to create viable business models everywhere, their Chinese clones have built lucrative cash machines literally earning billions of dollars a year relying more on micropayments. Unfortunately, adopting Chinese methods may not help American social networks due both to cultural differences in Chinese user behavior and industry practices. Social networking has increased rapidly in the last year across the world. China is a case in point. China’s leading SNS are local players that are driven by users engaged heavily in applications, which is very different from the US. Whereby branded pages work well in one market, they may not have as great an impact in another.

So understanding cultural norms and market differences will directly affect how advertisers engage with the audience. Marketers should review the best mix of top and secondary sites and search engines to fully intercept the audience.

Source: UM newsletter May

One of my colleagues gave me these insights into Asian youth culture, during a brainstorm for a pitch…  Thought I would share it with you:

In north Asian beauty point of view, cuteness/ innocent power is greater than sexiness…BUT IF YOU ARE CUTE AND SEXY (look at those Japanese AV idols), then you definitely sell. The Asians grew up with Japanese manga, plus they have the cuteness complex even when they grow up.

With such audience mindset, “figure” (See picture) actually starts from toy collection ex. Hello Kitty / Doraemon… And almost every adult do not want to fully grow up, even when they physically grow up, they still tend to collect something cute to present they are still child like sometimes.

Figure doll was initially started in HK, then spread out to Taiwan and China, south east Asia… (http://www.figureexchange.com/). You can go into the figure store and tailor made your own figures, based on your feature, personality, and they can even make the scene with your own figure in it.

Figure has become a common marketing tool for brands / celebrities to engage their consumers, almost every idol / singer in Asia north has their own figure when they launch campaign / release album, and  fans collect, trade and even auction them. Gwen Stefani’s 2nd parfume  ”Harajuku Lovers” also adopted this trend: http://www.hlfragrance.com/ Even young adults will… Keroro and Tuziki are 2 recent popular iconic figures as well, they were created by students then got popular.

If we can base on such trend / behavior of why North Asians are crazy about such little things, then maybe we can find relevant elements to engage consumers. Just wait and see, soon South East Asia might follow this trend…at least it has blown to Thailand recently already….