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Showing posts from June, 2015

Pinterest - a platform for aspirations or actions?

A pinterest lady came to the office presenting her ideas around how Pinterest could help on clients’ business. I know that Pinterest is a declining platform. Therefore I went for that session with curiosity. Frankly speaking most of her presentation was not new news to agency people --  We knew that Pinterest had been used as a collage to help people organize their ideas and inspirations. It’s about people’s life in the future, therefore aspirational contents worked well. What people did on Pinterest was to discover experiences, save ideas and put inspiration into practice. Unlike Twitter and Facebook posts, pints could normally ‘live’ for a long while through sharing. Brands should consider to optimize their website with Pinterest tools. Rich pin is a good format which could including more comprehensive context for the pints. Brand should also remember to provide links in the descriptions so as to allow users explore further.   Ok, here are the bits which made me th...

Shenzhou Car service (神州专车) 'Beat Uber' campaign: a exploratory of negative reputation marketing ...

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Shenzhou Car Service is a Chinese car service company which provide a variety of premium car for people to hire in the rate that is the same as the Taxis in the market. Its drivers are professional and well trained drivers. The business model is smart from my point of view. It sits in between traditional Taxi business and Uber business. Thursday morning (25 June), Shenzhou Car Service did something “crazy” on its Sina Weibo page – it delivered a post with 9 pictures of celebrities and professionals from different industries holding a card suggesting its fans stop using Uber. Its argument is quite simple – Uber drivers were not well trained and not well managed. Therefore passengers are facing danger of health and safety risks. And even just 1% risk could damage your life seriously.  The post generated huge chaos on Weibo and WeChat. People argued whether the challenge from Shenzhou to Uber was fair. Within a day the original post got 12,390 shares, 7,099 comment and...

Nuan nan 暖男 (Translation: sweet man / sunshine boy)

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Nuan nan is a word appeared in China more than half decade years ago. The type of dream men went mainstream when the Korean TV drama My Love From The Star hit China in 2012. The leading character Professor Du (starring Kim Soo-hyun) was seen as the classic role model of the archetype. What does Nuan Nan exactly means? Baidu provided an official definition: “Nuan Nan refers to sunshine men who make the others feel warm. They are able to provide very detailed care (e.g. put on a overcoat on you when you feel cold, pass you a cup of tea when you are tired, remind you to put on your socks when you step out of the shower room, etc.), they are responsible to their families, they are good at cooking, and more importantly they put the feeling of others beyond their own interests. They often look smooth and dress smart instead of trendy. Compared to the archetype of young and refreshing boy, they have much stronger inward world. They are often named family men.” Though in mos...

Fork, the new realm of Emoji

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My x-agency friend posted some photos on WeChat just now. They immediately captured my attention. Obviously she made it on her own. According to the clue on the image I found the APP in Apple store - Fork, a APP which allows you to create comic book of your own. Aren't they amazing! To me, this is absolutely a new realm of emoji, an upgraded version of ‘emotionalized’ life story telling -- instead of mixing your text with a string of emoji icons the text box, now you can add comic icons into your photos. Through the editing, normal photos are now transformed into an interesting comic book with a completely personalized story line. Naturally I start to think about the opportunities for brands. Some of the pioneer brands have already started working with WeChat in creating emoji which are often playing around the product. A good example is DoubleMint. If the Fork APP goes well, probably brands could consider working with them by providing fans more pr...