August 06 , 2009 , ThuSNS and the Changing Chinese Youth
Just back from a trip in Shanghai and Shenyang where we spoke to boys and girls of 12 – 18 yrs. Different from approximately half year ago, Xiaonei is no longer ‘unfamiliar’ to high school teens (15 – 17 yrs) of both cities. Maybe not majority yet, but many teens start to use Xiaonei now. What surprised me most is middle school teens (12 – 14 yrs) are having fun on Kaixin now (while in the impression of many people, Kaixin has been mainly for white collars in Shanghai and Beijing).
We have been researching on the role of SNS since a while ago(click here for more), but couldn’t finish the report on one hand because we’ve been constantly occupied by various ad hoc projects on the other hand because the SNS scene has been developing/ changing in China almost every month.
While continuing our research on it, we have decided to share the working draft and discuss with the friends here on how we can understand SNS beyond surface and translate the understanding into best marketing initiatives.
(Pls find the slideshare deck below. If you have trouble viewing it, you may download the deck here.
View more documents from chinayouthology.
Among the many ‘innovative’ use of SNS by marketers, I want to especially mention McDonald’s. As we discussed in the deck, the real challenge for marketers is to NOT understand SNS as another ‘touch point’ but as a crucial part of youth’s life (and NOT virtual life but real life) and a changing mindset.
McDonald’s recent initiative really spoke the youth’s language (‘add me’), manifest the understanding of youth’s life and aspirations (about the joy and needs gap of moderate socializing with friends on SNS), communicate through both online and offline touch points (TVC, SNS and non-SNS websites), link the SNS lifestyle with category needs (connect with your buddies at McDonald’s and enjoying new products). We are glad to hear from Ellen (head of planning in TBWA China) that they were inspired by our post on ‘moderate socializing’. It’s an impressive case on how the the youth insights can be translated into creative actions.
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August 11th, 2009 at 2:57 am
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August 12th, 2009 at 9:04 am
[...] Friday 5 brief on Chinese bridge bloggers. China Youth Watch recently featured an article titled SNS and the Changing Chinese Youth, as well as an interview with 360quan.com editor Hui Wang. 56minus1 interviewed CYW co-founder [...]
August 14th, 2009 at 10:10 am