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Tips and Tricks for Advertising in China There are very few deep technology companies for whom China is irrelevant. In fact, if McBru's clients are anything to go by, China, Taiwan and Korea are rapidly becoming the most important geographical regions in the world, both in terms of market opportunity and vis-à-vis expanding operations. It follows then that Asia is also becoming a top priority in terms of marketing communications. While developing global ad programs is nothing new, the increasing focus on Asia and the decreasing emphasis on traditional markets such as Europe and even North America (for many of our clients at least) has an impact on how we approach international advertising. What is so special about Asia? For one thing, it is evolving so rapidly as to be dizzying. In some respects, the media landscape is like the Wild, Wild West, making up rules as it grows and develops. All of this is to say, it pays to take a slightly different approach to global programs that include a healthy dose of China, Taiwan and/or Korea. Media Planning When it comes to media planning for Asia, there are a few important things to keep in mind:
When researching and evaluating media in North America and Europe, we take for granted the availability of audits, circulation profiles, readership studies, etc. In China, Taiwan and Korea, these tools are few and far between (see Wild, Wild West comment above). I have no doubt that the coming months, certainly the next couple of years, will bring Asia up to speed with the rest of the media world in this arena. And certainly the global publishers, with experience and properties outside of Asia, are well along the path already. Meantime, conducting thorough, data-based analyses on media options can be a challenge. Please join us in pushing the publishers to provide this data: Our collective voices will be heard. In the absence of data, many indigenous, Chinese publishers aren't yet accustomed to thinking about strategic programs. Instead, they rely on price-cutting to make the sale. While few seasoned media planners will turn away price discounts, the reliance on price instead of program substance isn't something to encourage. My last point in this section is this: Prepare to spend twice as long as usual in media planning and negotiating, given the realities outlined above. It simply takes longer to try to ferret out useful information with which to make decisions. That said, if you can afford to take a flier on many different media outlets, you can circumvent all of the above by buying from several folks and using DoubleClick to develop your own data for online, while commissioning or negotiating awareness studies for print. Creative Development You would think it goes without saying that local language ads are the way to go in Asia, right? Then why are there so many English-language ads in Chinese and other Asian regional publications and Web sites? Ads already have an uphill battle: grab the reader/viewer's interest, get them to stop and engage in the midst of a noisy, crowded environment. Running in local languages is one less hurdle to ask the reader/viewer to overcome and, quite frankly, is simply common courtesy. You can use a translation service or ask the publisher to provide translation (which most of them will offer gratis), but do build in time for a local-language speaker (e.g., employee, distributor, partner) to review the translations for you. And keep in mind: If you ask five Chinese speaking individuals to translate the same sentence, you'll likely get five different versions back. It is a language of nuance and variety, which can make approval of translations tricky. Lastly, when possible, develop creative specifically for the geographical region. At a minimum, it's a good idea to fine-tune global creative to suit the unique requirements of each market. Which brings us back to one of my personal favorite topics: understanding your audience. There is some decent research available from global publishers such as CMP and Reed about demographic differences among geographies, as well as good data about how each region consumes media (the differences aren't all that surprising). And this summer, McBru will partner with Hearst to augment its North American psychographic study of engineers with a similar study of Chinese engineers. But in the meantime, here are a few tidbits from existing research to consider when developing creative:
Once you have factored in the above information, and custom-developed or at least customized your creative for the geography in which it will run, it's also a good idea to run it by regional natives. At McBru, we've set up an informal advisory board of Chinese-born engineers that we can run creative by for cultural sensitivity checks and to solicit feedback on things like color, imagery and concept relevance. Leveraging regional employees, distributors or partners for this is a possibility, but we find that independent third parties who have no vested interest in the ads themselves can be a bit more objective. Managing the Program Once your media has been selected and the creative produced and successfully translated and placed, the rest is easy, right? Not exactly. First, a serious word to the wise: DO NOT take for granted that your creative actually appears or that it appears correctly. Make certain you ask for print pubs to be over-nighted to you for verification. You don't want to rely on regular distribution—and find out weeks after your target customers in the region do—that your spread ad appeared with the pages reversed (true story). And, make certain you receive screen grabs that verify your online ads are running per specification so that you don't end up paying for weeks of online media that never included your ads AT ALL (another sad but true story, which generated the mother of all make-goods). So once everything is up and running as it should be, that leaves reporting. And reporting is neither simple nor easy when it comes to China, Taiwan and Korea. After some trial and error, we at McBru determined the most effective and efficient mechanism for managing reporting was to develop our own spreadsheet that publishers populate. This gives us apples-to-apples comparison data (or as close to that as you can get in Asia) and ensures we receive reporting on the aspects of the program we care most about. Subscribing to DoubleClick can certainly add a dimension of accuracy and analysis as well. Don't assume you will get the same types of goodies you get in your North America reporting, such as domain names. Clarify your expectations repeatedly and quite specifically. Ask for sample reporting before ever approving a media buy with an Asian technology publication; indeed, the devil does reside in the details. Online reporting is a very complex process with many moving parts, and it requires a great deal of vigilance in order to ensure accuracy. Last and probably least, make sure you get a calendar of Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean holidays. It's a simple move that can prevent the frustration of phone calls and emails going unreturned for a week due to a national holiday you knew nothing about. Plus, it adds to your overall understanding of those cultures. If you've got your own tips and tricks to share about advertising in Asia, I'd love to hear them. Thanks for reading, Next month's topic: lead generation for deep-technology companies. |
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