Member Stories

Club China members share their business experiences with you! How did they get their start? What were their key learnings in setting up their business in China?

China Connect: all about challenges and opportunities

How to get into the heads of China’s 500 million web users

When marketing western products in China, every marketer’s and product manager´s big question will be: how can I get into the heads of 500 million Chinese web users and 1 billion phone users? It´s this question that intrigues Laure de Carayon in such a way, that she started China Connect, a platform about marketing and digital life in China. On March 22 and 23, China Connect will host its second annual conference in Paris about connecting with the Chinese, making them discover new brands, and buy their products.

Laure de Carayon is a brand content consultant in France, who has worked for advertising and media agencies for many years. She has a blog with articles on branded content, digital, media, design in China. “Western companies have a great need for expertise in this area. There are opportunities on the market, now that many Chinese have better wages. Their standard of living is improving and so internet and mobile phone usage are ‘exploding’, giving access to consumption in a very fragmented country. There is a huge growth potential”, says Laure. Recent surveys show that there are 513 million web users, 1 billion mobile phone users and 356 million mobile internet users in China.

Challenges and opportunities

The 2012 China Connect Convention is all about these challenges and opportunities. Laure de Carayon invited speakers who are pioneering China’s digital arena, like Lee Li of Youku, China’s leading online video site. Its TV-like ad solution and creative content marketing is used by many international fashion and beauty brands like Coach, Bulgari, Benefit, Clinique to FMCG and tech brands like Lenovo and Philips. De Carayon: “Youku is very popular among Chinese that like to watch brand channels and thus start to learn about – and: like – the brands and the products that are featured on it.”

A ‘coffee moment’ in China’s offices

Laure de Carayon has numerous of examples of western products – like Lipton Tea – that do well in China and have put popular Chinese social media to good use. She particularly likes the way Nescafé introduced the western idea of a ‘coffee moment’ into the lives of young and trend-sensitive Chinese. “The company has successfully exported the French concept of ‘Caméra Café’ – a four minutes TV-soap about office life, with a camera fixed into a automated coffee machine. The show was featured on Youku in 2010, and on QQ.com in 2011.

“The Chinese consumer loved it”, says Laure. The Chinese version of ‘Caméra Café’ – local title: Kafei Jian Feng Yun – had 13 million video views. Over 115.000 fans had registered on China’s social network Kaixin in 2010. The shows managed to raise the buying intention among viewers of 8%. “Figures that prove that connecting to the Chinese consumer via internet can be very successful. You just have to know how. We can guess Nescafé new 2012 campaign, endorsed by China’s famous blogger Han Han, will help them spread the coffee culture into China.”