Ecommerce livestreaming was already one of the biggest marketing and ecommerce trends of 2019. Thanks to the coronavirus, it has truly gone mainstream in China. Everywhere you turn, there is an announcement about some platform launching livestreaming or adding new livestreaming features. Top streamers on ecommerce platforms have become household names. The top hosts are excellent salespeople, using specific tactics to engage and persuade their audiences. They are very careful about what they...

Today’s episode features an in-depth discussion on programmatic advertising in China with David Nottingham, the EU general manager at iPinYou, a digital advertising technology company and the largest demand-side platform in China. To kick off the conversation, David provides an overview of China’s programmatic ecosystem and how it is different from that in the West. Then, the conversation moves to:Do you need to know about Chinese media to be able to run programmatic paid media campaigns?Can...

Tom Kruger is the Shanghai managing director of Chatly, a WeChat social CRM platform for global brands. In this interview, he explains why brands need to rethink their WeChat strategies and position WeChat as their core customer engagement hub in China. Many brands are still treating WeChat as the same platform it was several years ago. But in reality, it has been constantly adding features and has morphed into a complex ecosystem, allowing brands to bring the entire customer journey from...

Are you thinking about entering the China market? Or are you currently trying to gain a foothold in China but are struggling? This episode with Josh Gardner, the CEO of Kung Fu Data, is sure to give you food for thought. Kung Fu Data helps international brands with China market entry and advisory, Tmall store activation and optimization, and daily operations support. Josh has a no-BS, super-honest approach. He knows how to make brands succeed in China, but he is also not afraid to turn down...

This week, Lauren is joined by Olivia Plotnick, a WeChat marketing specialist. She and her team work with small businesses and startups to produce effective content and drive community engagement on WeChat. Olivia discusses how the role of WeChat articles has evolved and why formatting is extremely important, particularly for B2C brands. Later in the conversation, she shares some of her favorite brand accounts to follow and points out some key takeaways for each of the brands. WeChat...

Today’s conversation is with Dao Nguyen, the founder of ESSENZIA, a boutique marketing creative strategy agency that helps fragrance and cosmetics brands reach young Chinese consumers. Lauren and Dao dive deep into China’s rapidly growing fragrance market, which has changed dramatically over the past five years. In this episode, Dao gives an overview of the market, answering questions such as: ·      Who are the main consumers?  ·      What types of fragrances tend to appeal to a Chinese...

In this episode of the China Marketing Podcast, Lauren and her guest discuss a topic that has never been talked about on this podcast before but is relevant for many listeners — how to manage a Chinese team, particularly a team in the marketing industry.  The guest today is Elisa Harca, the CEO and co-founder of Red Ant Asia, a China marketing agency in Shanghai and Hong Kong, which was founded in 2012. It works with lifestyle and luxury brands such as Lush, Charlotte Tilbury, Lane Crawford,...

The rise of Chinese domestic brands is one of the defining business stories of the last decade. Listening to Mia Wang, the CEO of the popular Chinese women’s fitness apparel brand MAIA ACTIVE, it is easy to see why domestic brands are doing so well.  This episode will be particularly useful for brands that are just entering the China market, as Mia shares a lot of the tactics her team used to take the company from 0 in 2016 to having over 300 different products, a very successful Tmall...

With China on lockdown due to the COVID-19 epidemic, offline retail is nearly nonexistent and ecommerce has slowed, since logistics companies are unable to deliver goods. But industries such as gaming, health and fitness, and online education are booming.  How should brands handle these complex times? What can they do to support consumers and set themselves up to recoup losses once the crisis has passed?    Resources mentioned in this episode:  疫情之下，企业该如何做营销? (“How to do business under...

In 2019, male beauty and skincare was one of China's fastest-growing consumer product segments. In fact, data from Euromonitor shows that the Chinese male beauty market is growing at over double the global average (13.5 percent vs. 5.8 percent). In this episode, Lauren and her guest, Joyce Sheng, give an overview of the male beauty industry in China, including its size, products, and consumer demographics, as well as the cultural drivers of the trend.  In addition, Joyce — a Chinese...

This week’s guest is Arnold Ma, the founder of Qumin, a Chinese digital marketing agency with a mission to open the world to China, specializing in Chinese creative branding and marketing. In this episode, Lauren speaks with Arnold about what he sees as some of the biggest trends that could shake up the marketing industry this year in China. What to look for:Content-led platforms, like TikTok, could potentially overtake network-led platforms like Twitter, Weibo, and Facebook. Influencers...

This episode features Ron Wardle, the CEO of China ecommerce trade partner and digital marketing services agency Export Now, who gives an inside look at one of China's biggest marketing trends — ecommerce livestreaming. While using livestreamed video to promote ecommerce has existed in China for several years, it really took off in 2019 during last year’s Singles’ Day shopping festival, when livestreaming on Alibaba’s Taobao platform generated $2.85 billion in sales — around 7.5 percent of...

Description: Today I’m chatting with Charlie Gu, Founder of the agency Kollective Influence which helps brands reach Chinese travelers and Chinese young professionals and students living abroad, mainly through working with local Chinese influencers. ­To […]

Today we’re talking all about KOCs or key opinion consumers with my guest, Ray Veras, co-founder of the KOC marketing platform Pingjia Daren (评价达人). This episode will give you an overview of the topic: who […]

Today we’re talking all about KOCs or key opinion consumers with my guest, Ray Veras, co-founder of the KOC marketing platform Pingjia Daren (评价达人). This episode will give you an overview of the topic: who are KOCs, how are they different than KOLs, why has KOC marketing become so popular, and what kind of goals and ROI expectations brands should have when running KOC campaigns. At the end we also chat a bit about a great report that Pingjia Daren put out ahead of 11.11 where they surveyed...

Description: In last week’s episode I spoke with the COO of Becky’s Fantasy, the company of top Chinese fashion influencer Becky Li.  Today we’re going to give you another perspective into Becky’s business. My assistant and frequent co-host Kejie interned at Becky’s Fantasy in 2017 and today she shares what that experience was like.  We first discuss the basics such as the size of the company, what are the main teams, how does Becky’s editorial process work, and then later on she shares what...

Description: In last week’s episode I spoke with the COO of Becky’s Fantasy, the company of top Chinese fashion influencer Becky Li.  Today we’re going to give you another perspective into Becky’s business. My assistant […]

Description: About two months ago when I was in Guangzhou I had the great honor of visiting the headquarters of Becky’s Fantasy, the company owned and operated by top WeChat fashion influencer Becky Li. While […]

Description: About two months ago when I was in Guangzhou I had the great honor of visiting the headquarters of Becky’s Fantasy, the company owned and operated by top WeChat fashion influencer Becky Li. While I was there, I got to sit down with Becky’s COO and close friend Tristan Cui and pry into the inner workings of a company and KOL I really admire. Just for some context – if you don’t know who Becky Li is, you might remember a KOL campaign with Mini Cooper a couple years ago that went...

There’s a lot of hype about 11.11 in Western media, but does everyone really love the holiday as much as the reports would have you think? Today we chat with a Chinese millennial Kejie who […]

There’s a lot of hype about 11.11 in Western media, but does everyone really love the holiday as much as the reports would have you think? Today we chat with a Chinese millennial Kejie who shares how her feelings on 11.11 have changed over the years, the Alibaba shopping game that her friends keep trying to get her to play, and what she and her friends are buying this year. To learn more about influencer marketing in China, sign up for our newsletter: The China Influencer Update!   Notes: ...

As online traffic is becoming more and more expensive in China, the term ‘private traffic’ (私域流量) has become one of 2019’s content creation buzzwords. The western equivalent of private traffic would be a blog or […]

As online traffic is becoming more and more expensive in China, the term ‘private traffic’ (私域流量) has become one of 2019’s content creation buzzwords. The western equivalent of private traffic would be a blog or an email list, which are owned channels, however, in China, people rarely visit websites or use email, so influencers and brands are seeking out ways to have private traffic, although still on social media sites. For example, we hear of influencers who have hundreds of private WeChat...

Today we hear from Zak Dychtwald, author of the book “Young China” and Founder of the think tank Young China Group. In this episode we dive deep, trying to understand young Chinese people and what […]

Today we hear from Zak Dychtwald, author of the book “Young China” and Founder of the think tank Young China Group. In this episode we dive deep, trying to understand young Chinese people and what they are all about. Zak shares some of the defining characteristics of the post 80s, post 90s and post 00s consumers, how they differ from older generations, as well as common misperceptions international companies have about this highly sought-after consumer group. If you’re working for an...