No.1 female director in China’s box office

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中国票房第一的女导演 – No.1 female director in China’s box office

By Wilson Lin(Target China)
23 Feb 2021

2021年2月15日，电影《你好李焕英》总票房超过15亿，导演贾玲成为了中国影史票房最高的女导演。

On 15 February 2021, the film named ‘Hi Mom’ grossed over $1.5 billion, making director Jia Ling the highest-grossing female director in the Chinese film history.

这是一部意外穿越，回到过去的电影。回去并不是拯救世界，也不是谈情说爱，而是和本已过世的妈妈相遇。

 

贾玲是中国内地目前最受欢迎的喜剧演员，这是她第一次当导演，这部电影能如此成功除了她的努力，离不开她的真诚。真诚、善良这样的品质，来源于贾玲充满爱与温暖的家庭，是父母给予的。

 

This is a film that accidentally travels back in time. Going back is not about saving the world or having a love affair, but about meeting up with her mother who has already passed away.

 

Jia Ling is the most popular comedian in China, and this is her first time directing a film. ‘Hi Mom’ could not have been so successful without her sincerity, in addition to her hard work. Such qualities as sincerity and kindness come from Jia Ling’s loving family.

家境贫寒加上长相不出众的贾玲，虽然很努力却也一直没有成名，她能一直坚持下来，也离不开家人背后的默默支持。

 

这部电影的英文名叫Hi Mom，而中文名叫你好，李焕英。李焕英是贾玲的母亲的名字，她在贾玲19岁时意外去世，成了贾玲心中永远的伤痛。

 

She is from a not very wealthy family and not a good-looking girl. Despite working very hard, he never became famous. But she was able to keep going with the support of her family.

 

The film is called ‘Hi, Li Huanying’ in Chinese. Li Huanying is the name of Jia Ling’s mother, who died unexpectedly when she was 19 and became a permanent sorrow in Jia Ling’s heart.

如今她已经功成名就，尽自己最大的努力回报家人，但永远无法回报已过世的母亲。她创作了这部电影，自己也亲自参演，希望借这部电影纪念母亲，也传达观众要多花时间陪伴自己的父母和家人。

Now, she has achieved fame and fortune, she does her best to give back to her father and sister but can never repay her mom. She created this film and acted in it herself, hoping to use it to honour her mother and also tell the audience to spend more time with their parents and family.

 

如果您对明星/红人品牌代言的相关业务感兴趣，欢迎联系我们获得更多信息～

If you are interested in celebrity/influencer brand endorsement, please contact us for more information!

Little Red Book – the emerging marketing trend you shouldn’t miss out!

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Little Red Book – the emerging marketing trend you shouldn’t miss out!

By Wilson Lin(Target China)
17 Feb 2021

What is RED?

Started in 2014, Xiaohongshu, also known as Little Red Book, or simply Red, has grown to become China’s foremost fashion and luxury shopping platform. This innovative app now attracts over 100 million users – mostly young Chinese shoppers to share their shopping know-how and product reviews. This represents an amazing opportunity for brands to build their market presence in Chinese people. It’s why big players like Chanel, Dior, and Louis Vuitton are paying so much attention to this emerging platform.

 

And now, the tricky part: Little Red Book isn’t really a shopping platform at all.

It’s first and foremost a content-sharing site, where users can post product photos with reviews and tips for other users to read, comment, and save to their boards – just like Pinterest. In contrast with other e-commerce platforms, Little Red Book focuses on a unique blend of trusted user-generated content, word of mouth advertising, and online community-building.

 

Little Red Book focuses heavily on building trust and reliability between the platform and consumers, rewarding users for posting suggestions and advice to followers.

 

Why is it important?

China’s e-commerce industry is predicted to be worth $1.8 trillion RMB (Chinese dollar) by 2022, and a large chunk of this growth is expected to come from the fashion and luxury goods market. Thus, this is an awesome opportunity for brands to promote their products or services, and Little Red Book gradually becomes a “must-have” social media platform.

 

The popularity of these kinds of posts indicated the value of authenticity on the platform, with users rewarding influencers for realism, accessibility, and being relatable.

 

Target Audience

In Sydney, almost 80% of these users are middle or upper-class women between ages of 25-35 with higher degrees of disposable income. This is an incredibly lucrative market for fashion, beauty, luxury and cosmetics brands.

Since its launch, Little Red Book has hit some amazing stats. For example, on June 6, 2017, Little Red Book held a shopping festival to celebrate the anniversary of its founding, and the sales revenue of the day exceeding 100 million RMB in just two hours (WOW)!

 

 

 

So… How can we help? 

With extensive experience in the media/marketing fields, Target China holds a mature RED celebrity operation system with 100+ celebrities, KOLs and KOCs to assist you in reaching the brand promotional goal!

Our hassle-free service includes:

  • RED account/official account set-up
  • Professional copywriting and content creation
  • Account operation, customer service, and management
  • Influencer marketing – KOL/KOC management
  • Vlog creation
  • RED store and Livestream set-up
  • Seamlessly connect RED and WeChat

 

Speak to us today if you have any queries about Little Red Book, we are more than happy to help!  🙂

Target China Celebrity Series – Liu Yifei

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Target China Celebrity Series – Liu Yifei

By Wilson Lin(Target China)
17 Feb 2021

 

刘亦菲拿下LV全球代言，“菲”常之旅，就此开启！

2021年1月29日，全球知名奢侈品牌路易威登正式宣布演员刘亦菲成为品牌代言人，“菲”常之旅，就此开启。
与此同时，由品牌女装创意总监 Nicolas Ghesquière 执导、刘亦菲出镜演绎的Louis Vuitton 2021春夏系列广告特辑也即将发布。

On January 29th, 2021, the world-renowned luxury brand Louis Vuitton announced that actress Liu Yifei has become the brand’s spokesperson.
Meanwhile, the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2021 campaign, directed by Nicolas Ghesquière and featuring Liu Yifei, will also be released.

 

去年《花木兰》的上映，让刘亦菲得到了更多的关注。大片中的刘亦菲更兼具了女性的帅气与温柔，与路易威登品牌追求硬朗和柔美糅合的气质恰好契合。

The release of Mulan last year brought more attention to Liu Yifei. In the film, Liu Yifei is both handsome and feminine, a perfect match for the Louis Vuitton brand.

 

 

在官宣之后的两天（1月29日-1月30日），路易威登的品牌热度指数达到95.70，超过去年12月所有新增代言与同品类（服装服饰）新增代言品牌热度指数均值。在官宣后获得的声量中，有55.02%的热度由品牌代言人刘亦菲贡献，超过了去年12月所有新增代言以及同品类新增代言的热度贡献均值。

In the two days following the announcement (January 29th – 30th), Louis Vuitton’s brand buzz index reached 95.70, exceeding the average value of all new endorsements and new endorsements in the same category (apparel) in December last year. The brand’s spokesperson Liu Yifei contributed 55.02% of the buzz generated by the announcement, more than the average of all new endorsements and new endorsements in the same category in December last year.

 

 

如果您对明星/红人品牌代言的相关业务感兴趣，欢迎联系我们获得更多信息～

If you are interested in celebrity/influencer brand endorsement, please contact us for more information!

Going Places – The future of China’s advertising and endorsement industry is thriving

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Going Places – The future of China’s advertising and endorsement industry is thriving.

By Wilson (Target China)
27 Oct 2019

The event was organised by the Advertising Endorsement Committee of the China Advertising Association and co-organised by M-CC Beijing, Target China (M-CC Sydney) and AIMan data technology. The topic of this summit forum is “Entertainment empowerment, tribute to the new era of advertising”.

 

It kicked off on the 27th of October 2019 in Nanchang, the venue of the 26th China International Advertising Festival. With the first commercial recognition release of “sunshine endorsement”, and Mr. Huang Xiaoming was invited to be the ambassador of the event.

President Zhang Guohua, China Advertising Association

President Zhang from China Advertising Association (CAA) stated that celebrity plays a prominent role in advertising creativity, branding, marketing effects, awareness-raising and other business practices.

 

With the development of society, the communication value and star effect of advertising spokespersons are highlighted. As a national industry organisation, CAA provides systematic and perfect services and guidance with the purpose of serving the development of the industry, safeguarding legitimate rights and interests, and advocating industry self-discipline.

 

Secretary General – Zhang Zhipeng, Advertising Endorsement Committee of CAA

Mr. Zhang Zhipeng announced the selection criteria for the 2018-2019 “Sunshine Spokesperson” image ambassador, and after voting by the big data company and the judging panel, Mr. Huang Xiaoming finally stood out and became final winner.

 

Huang Xiaoming said: “I like the word ‘sunshine’ because our lives are sometimes full of fog, but only sunshine can wash away the fog. As an actor and public figures, we have an obligation to take on more social responsibility. We will spread more excellent public service commercials that touch the hearts of people, so that we can input more positive energy and bring more sunshine to the society.”

Zhang Guohua issued a certificate to “Sunshine Spokesman” ambassador Huang Xiaoming.

President of AIMan Beijing – Cao Yongshou

Mr. Cao Yongshou presented the “Top 10 Trends of Star Spokespersons in 2019”, with the following core ideas: more international brands are gradually using Chinese as spokespersons, brands are cooperating with spokespersons more frequently, more closely and more internationally, the birth of new idols poses new challenges to brands’ marketing and creates new business opportunities, and refined management and optimisation of spokespersons are the key to success. This maximises the effectiveness of the endorsement.

Wang Shaoxi, Legal Counsel from Nestle China

The legal counsel, Wang Shaoxi from Nestle China believes that advertising spokesperson marketing plays a pivotal role in the healthy development of a brand. The goal of both advertisers and spokespersons is the same, and how to achieve win-win and healthy development depends on how to choose the artist and advertiser.

Sabrina Pang, Head of Business Operations at Sina Entertainment

As a marketing model on the internet, micro-blog marketing for celebrities have its own characteristics of the “star effect” in the advertising process. Ms. Pang Suer, head of Business Operations at Sina Entertainment said: “Microblogging Stars, Growth and Win-Win” that microblogging and micro-endorsement products are a path for brands to follow their fans and help celebrities and brands to build a common brand image in the future.

Kaoyuan, Managing Director of M-CC

Ms. Kaoyuan explained how entertainment marketing can occupy the C-suite in the new landscape of Generation Z marketing. She said that artist attributes are becoming more prevalent and marketing is becoming more integrated. With the rise of new idols, fans are willing to pay more money and energy for endorsements, instead of the traditional “idol” fans. For brands, stars and fans of the brand to do mutual resources to break the power of cooperation, in order to achieve a real win-win situation.

Wang Dong, Deputy General Manager of Cheerwin Group

Wang Dong led many integrated marketing projects such as “I am a singer” and “Libai Health and Happiness Project”, said that in the situation where consumers have aesthetic fatigue with advertisements one after another and the product, terminal and advertising battles are fiercely fought. It is necessary to find marketing points that consumers are interested in and express them in the form of humour in order to open the market and then win the market if we want our brand to spread to the target consumers quickly.

Zhang Zhipeng, Xu Weibing, Huang Xiaoming, Qiao Xue, Wei Hong, Cao Yongshou, Wu He and Kevin Wang

In recent years, the entertainment market has strongly empowered the advertising ecology, and more and more brand owners prefer win-win cooperation in entertainment marketing. In the round-table salon themed “Advertising Ecology, Entertainment Empowerment”, Zhang Zhipeng of the Advertising Spokesperson Committee of China Advertising Association, Xu Weibing, founder of Shanghai Tao Xi Digital Media, Huang Xiaoming, ambassador of “Sunshine Spokesperson” and China Advertising Association Advertising Spokesperson Qiao Xue, Executive Committee Member of the Committee, Wei Hong, Director of Alibaba Group’s Social Good Department, Cao Yongshou, President of Aimedia, Wu He, Senior Director of Sina Weibo, and Kevin, Head of the Australian Base of China Advertising Association’s Advertising Spokesperson Committee, had an in-depth discussion on the public welfare trend of advertising spokespersons in the new era and how the spokesperson industry can develop in a healthy and orderly manner.

 

This summit forum released the list of “Sunshine Spokesperson Commercial Recognition” for the first time and launched the group of “Sunshine Spokespersons” with commercial value in the year of 2018-2019. The list is based on industry big data, and provides a fair and impartial assessment of the advertising spokespersons’ commercial value from four dimensions: heat index, reputation index, work index, and endorsement index, which provides an objective assessment basis for enterprises and brands when choosing entertainment and business cooperation and star advertising endorsement in the early stage.

THE IPHONE AND THE SELFIE IN THE CHINESE SMARTPHONE MARKET

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THE IPHONE AND THE SELFIE IN THE CHINESE SMARTPHONE MARKET

By Cyril (Target China)
20 April 2018


As the leader in China’s smartphone market, Apple brings in large profits. But although it has the largest smartphone market share in China, Apple’s market share is in decline. Research indicates that more and more Chinese customers see Chinese brands as alternatives to iPhone. Several Chinese brands have even surpassed Samsung, once the iPhone’s strongest competitor.

Apple’s main competitive advantages are the iPhone’s independent IOS system, its complete iCloud service and the effective applications. The weakness that lets the Chinese brands gradually increase their market share is the iPhone’s poor camera performance, especially the selfie function. Chinese customer surveys show negative feedback on the iPhone camera, with reports that many customers use software or apps to fix or edit iPhone photos. Chinese brands Vivo, Huawei and Oppo for example have poured resources into enhancing their camera functions, especially for selfies. Their gains in competitive position are of course at the expense of the iPhone.

Since the end of last year, Apple has launched a series of iPhone promotion activities. In one CBD shopping centre promotion, celebrities were asked to take an ‘authentic’ selfie that was not edited or adjusted. Unfortunately for Apple, there was a definite level of negative feedback from ths promotion event. To see a Chinese cultural and social trend brought out by the promotion, it appears that consumers are insisting on a selfie photo that is not only authentic but brings out the esthetic qualities of the subject’s face. Consumers demand beauty as well as realism.

Quite simply, the iPhone camera, especially for selfies, does not perform as well as its competitors in the Chinese market.

MARKETING MYOPIA

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MARKETING MYOPIA

By Cyril Chen、Chelsea Jia
26 March 2018


Theodore Levitt (1925-2006) of the Harvard Business School wrote an article in 1960 entitled ‘Marketing Myopia,’ where he argued that is short-sighted for a business to focus on selling. Selling is concerned with ‘techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product.’ A business needs to focus on the whole market, in a broad perspective where the needs of the buyer are prominent. Marketing stresses ‘satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it.’

Half a century later. Professor John Deighton of the Harvard Business School commented on Levitt’s article:

The genius of the original article is that it is so easy to be myopic when it comes to marketing… Unfortunately, the clock never stops long enough to answer the question, ‘Why are you doing what you are doing?’…it’s far too easy to lose sight of the big picture.¹

‘Marketing Myopia’ has been republished several times and 850,000 reprints have been sold. It has been the Harvard Business Review’s best-selling articles ever. Its consumer-centred argument is undiminished.

Does marketing myopia hold any cues for Australian companies in doing business with China? Cyril Chen and Chelsea Jia in their blog of 26 March 2018 take up Levitt’s question that any manager must be able to answer: ‘What business are you in?’ Levitt wrote, “The railroads let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business instead of the transportation business.’ He argued that management must think of itself not as producing products but as discovering and satisfying consumer needs. Cyril Chen and Chelsea Jia point to companies in China which have met market needs, but have kept transforming and innovating: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent and have succeeded because they have followed customer-oriented marketing policies.

A joint study by scholars in the United States and China² compares Chinese users’ views of Google and Baidu search engines, to see how country, industry and firm contexts relate to brand performance. The article finds that the source country affects the way a particular industry is viewed, and then users tend to focus on the particular firm in terms of satisfaction, loyalty and perceived success, assessing a firm’s resources and its ability to back a product. Google is a global brand, the sophisticated with quality services, and it performs well in China. Yet Baidu has the most comprehensive Chinese search engine and has a special capacity to understand the demands of Chinese users; it is proactive in following Government regulations and creating a positive environment for its business success.

In the early 2000s, Chinese consumers preferred to pay in cash and negotiate face-to-face. Reputation is still extremely important in China. What Alibaba has done is to create models of trust in the buyer-seller relationship and the buyer-platform relationship, with two-way instant communication available on the platform. Alibaba’s Taobao online shopping site with its Alipay system ‘dramatically changed the business paradigm from a seller-dominant to a buyer-oriented model’ where buyer satisfaction is guaranteed, or money is refunded. In 2014 Alibaba launched Tmall Global for overseas purchases.³

WeChat (Weixin in Chinese), launched in 2011 by Tencent, offers multiple services to individuals and organizations, including communication services via text messages and voices as well as social networking services (SNS). By the first quarter of 2017, the number of monthly active WeChat users had reached 938 million. A survey of 297 young WeChat users in China showed that media appeal has the greatest effect on the intention to continue to use WeChat, followed by perceived enjoyment, then information sharing.4

Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are not the whole Chinese market, but their success tends to justify Levitt’s argument that understanding consumer needs and wants is critical to market success. These three innovative entrepreneurial giants in the digital economy have prospered in China in recent years. They hold out promise for Australian business people who want to market their services in China.


1Professor John Deighton in an interview with Paul Garbett in the Harvard Business Review, 22 August 2016.

2Deli Yang, Mahmut (Maho) Sonmez, Qinghai Li & Yibing Duan (2015) The power of triple contexts on customer-based brand performance: A comparative study of Baidu and Google from Chinese netizens’ perspective. International Business Review 24, pages 11–22.

3Jonyoung Kwak, Yue Zhang & Jiang Yu (2018) Legitimacy building and e-commerce development in China: The experience of Alibaba. Technical Forecasting & Social Change (article in press).

4Chunmei Gan & Hongxiu Li (2018) Understanding the effects of gratifications on the continuance intention to use WeChat in China: A perspective on uses and gratifications. Computers in Human Behaviour 78 (2018), pages 306-315.