A source of light

Interestingly, a couple of days after I stumbled upon the media report on Foursquare and came up with a paranoid conspiracy theory, I did find the first Chinese clone of Foursquare… No, I’m not promoting myself as sort of oracle or fortune teller. From the look of it, it’s been there for some time, not long, but definitely before April 8th. In fact it seems to be born on March 18th.

The clone, or technically half-clone or double-clone, depends on your perspective, is called 拉手 (la1 shou3, “holding hands”). It’s about 50% Groupon clone, 50% Foursquare clone. You can find the website here.

Sorry, you will have to register to do anything on the website. I’ve tried it a little bit though, and the hands-on report comes as this:

Interesting name. The name of the Foursquare-clone part is “拉手四方” (La1 “holding”, Shou3 “hands”, Si4 “four”, Fang1 “square”). Actually I was thinking 四方 was a good name if Foursquare makes a Chinese manifestation. Four is 四, square makes 方, and combined the two characters mean “everywhere in the world”. Now it seems the initiative is lost. If Lashou has registered the term, there will likely be an unpleasant fight over a simple name. Meanwhile, the “Check-in” function of Foursquare has been mapped into a bilingual term, with English aspect exactly “Check-in” and Chinese facet “踩点”. Coincidentally, this is also what I thought best translation for the function of THE Foursquare. Another initiative lost.

Limited but essential client support. Lashou’s Foursquare-ish client comes on S60, iPhone, and also on web if you don’t have the right phone. Both clients are downloadable on official site, with the iPhone version also available in Apple’s App Store. My HD2 is rendered rather useless in this case, thus all tests has been done on its web version.

The game rules are pretty much the same as Foursquare’s, with extra tweaks to support the other (Groupon-ish) half of Lashou:

• At least the web interface has absolutely nothing to do with GPS. You can check-in to anywhere sitting in your office. And those check-in all count.
• Each check-in grants 6 points. Check-in and leave a tip gives 8 points.
• Users who have bought stuff with this website’s Groupon Clone service have extra treat. Adjusted points granted = 6 + (6*0.3*how many times you bought stuff on Lashou). You bought three items there, your average check-in will be worth 6+(6*0.3*3)=11.4 points
• Active user who SPENT MORE MONEY on its Groupon aspects also has a 1% extra bonus to check-in points.
• Users who installed the client on iPhone, and bound the account to a Sina Weibo (the leading Twitter clone), and have over 1,000 followers on Weibo, also gets 1% bonus to check-in points.
• The website ranks users in accordance with check-in points every 24 hours (0:00 to 24:00). Top 3 point bandits get CNY 25 coupon at a rather popular hotpot franchise (呷卟呷卟, if you are interested). User points are cleared every midnight.
• Yes, there are also badges to unlock, you bet. It’s not clear how many badges are available and how exactly to unlock them yet.

Some interesting findings during the experiment:

• For the lack of GPS factor, you can check into wherever you like, or invent places out of thin air to check-in. I saw funny venue called “Abcd” with an address “asdf, Beijing”. And sure, there are duplicated venues.
• There doesn’t seem to be any check-in limit counter. You can check-in every single venue available everyday.
• The real-time check-in board pops up at least 1 new check-in message every 2 seconds. The board was still rolling rapidly after 3 hours into the observation.
• Threw a peek at leader scores during the process: top star had 974.9 points. Big white hot “WHUT?!”.  Dare you challenge this record on THE Foursquare, man?
• After one morning’s observation, there were at least 10 new users popped up in the check-in board.

Conclusion

Pro:

• One-two punch, nice. Rally Groupon-clone users into Foursquare-clone, and maybe vice a little versa.
• Great choice of client platform. iPhone is getting popular, and S60 is the emperor. Let’s forget WinMo (sort of minority), Android (absolutely minority), BlackBerry (you ever heard of this thingie, bro?).
• Solid stimulation. Hotpot coupon! Yay! And that’s from the service provider, it’s always available.
• Encourage cheating. Heats up user competition for the current stage. Users were dedicating a whole morning checking into hundreds of places.
• Chinese UI for everything. Of course.
• It’s getting media heat! Dubbed as “the Foursquare of China” and kind of regarded as the next golden boy.

Con:

• Encourage cheating. This is bound to be bad in the long run.
• Badges seem to be limited, and lack of interesting ones like “Jobs”. Actually, I failed to find a complete badge list anywhere. Not knowing what’s around the corner isn’t good.
• Limited phone support. In case, just in case, some day Android or WinPho7 devices gain popularity here…

That’s about the size of it. Good over bad, by quite far. I don’t think it’s time to worry about the genuine Foursquare though. Initiatives are lost, yes; the clone is doing good, yes; the war is far from over though. According to my previous timeline, they are still in phase 2. The first clone is only less than 2 months old, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten any venture capital. For quite some time Foursquare doesn’t have to worry about clone swarm. Given proper action and timing, everything could be changed.

But this Lashou should not be overlooked either. As previously mentioned, Chinese netizens are super faithful to the 1st thing they stick to. Like the Parking War and Friend for Sale game module on Facebook, they were cloned into Chinese websites, too. Unlike elsewhere, those two petty “games” went through “popular” stage into “frenzy” land. People were giving up sleep time trying to outdo their buddies over a virtual parking slot. This phenomenon (right after World of Warcraft) contributed to the “internet addiction” fuss haunting the whole society. That’s how far dedicated Chinese users can go. Things can be quite tricky if Lashou reaches that goal.

OK. So far, I’ve written a big chunk of subjective observation and assumption. Personally I’m rather interesting in what direction this not-really-competition would go. Lashou will be paid close attention. Interesting twists and turns will be covered.

Post by Kane Gao, Illuminant’s head of research

This post is about internet, business, and China. Not how to do internet business here, but rather discussing how to ready yourself if you happen to own an internet business, and may someday want to try your luck in the Orient.

It’s going to be lengthy, and mostly I will spin the whole thing around the case of Foursquare, the rapidly emerging location-based social network, or I’d rather call it a social game. In case you feel bored in the reading process (I’m quite positive you will), I guess it’s better to put my conclusion before the actual body, to save you some time, or maybe create a little suspension. I believe that:

China is not a piece of virgin land with infinite opportunity. Actually it’s sort of a closed parallel universe. Everything has a counterpart here, or will soon have a couple of them if there isn’t one already. Residents seldom get out, but whoever ventures inside the border must fight its shadow self before anything. Shadow self here means those who clones foreign services atom-to-atom, in order to duplicate their international success.

Now let’s cut into the boring part.

On the morning of April 16th (Beijing time), 163 Tech, one of the major tech portal sites in China, posted a story about Foursquare. Link here.

It’s not even worth translating. The whole article is about Foursquare releasing a new version of client pack and gave a thorough instruction on what Foursquare is. To my knowledge, this is so far the first time Chinese web media covers Foursquare. 1:54pm the same day, QQ tech, another major tech portal here picked up a similar story from Forbes. This time it’s not on the front page though. But given the copy/paste spreading nature of Chinese portals, with some luck, there will be a chain-reaction soon. And unlike the western world, portals are what’s big here. SNS and micro-blogging fall into the secondary team.

Media coverage is good, however, not always so. Current stories about Foursquare on our portals emphasize that Foursquare is “fresh start, fun, growing at stunning speed”, and most importantly, “been shown a lot of love by venture investors”. According to 163 Tech story, it has already got 1 million US dollars from VC. Typical Chinese chemistry of business works like this: you get a glass of pure business, put in 1 pinch of venture investor love, 1 teaspoon of rapid growth, 0.5 gram of fresh start, and finally add 0.1 gram media coverage. Boom! You get an assembly of nice carbon-clones. Foursquare has already got everything. Give a little more here and there, a swarm of clone legion will shut it out of China for good, in case it may want to join the “let’s conquer China singlehandedly” team somewhere in the future.

The thing is, overgrown population leads to heat competition (for everything), which in turn leads to the high demand on response speed, ready-for-use business model and cash support for mere survival. Thus Chinese start-up businessmen are always keen on internet sector (fast to deploy and profit), on venture capital (to make start-up business boom a.s.a.p.), and successful templates from the western (saves a ton of feasibility research, also works as material for lobbying more and more careful venture investors).

The now-massive Instant Messaging giant QQ started off as an ICQ clone. World-dominating Alibaba (Taobao) was an eBay clone (good job though, it got much better than eBay in the long run), Dangdang was an Amazon duplicate, and the earliest 3 portals (Sohu, Sina, 163) were all “inspired” by Yahoo. That’s only the early days of Chinese internet sector. Facebook was cloned as Kaixin001.com, which was later further cloned by a couple of other companies into Xiaonei.com, 51.com, etc. Now Facebook the GFWed is said to be plotting a China entry, guess who’s daddy when it lands here? Twitter was cloned as Sina Weibo even before it got GFWed. Not to mention the micro-blogging frenzy rallied by 163, Tencent, and Sohu. Craigslist inspired a swarm of classified information sites a couple of years ago which unfortunately all died out. With everyone getting into the clone-VC-marketing-dominate model, newbie starters are more than ever paying attention to foreign examples of success. Chatroulette was discovered by majority of Chinese netizens about a month ago, and its stories spread rather wide. Now there is at least one Chatroulette clone working full force to duplicate its success and attract VC here in China already.

Now Foursquare has been proven to have remarkable growth, and VC-charm. I’m quite positive Foursquare clones will begin to show up in about 3 months (it’s technically harder to clone than Chatroulette). My suggestion is, if Foursquare would ever possibly consider gaining a share of Chinese market in the short or long future, it should get into action now, to defend its not-really-presence here. Chinese internet users have some unique natures: A) as a group, they tend to pick up new stuff much slower than westerners B) once they do, it will be harder than moving mountains to make them switch to any other equivalent, except if God wills so. It would be a good idea to start the defense battle right now, gain some distance before the Attack of the Clones could ever hit the big screen. I’m not talking about all those trouble incorporating here. It could be achieved easily: make a Chinese UI for Foursquare client.

English-only is a hell of a deal breaker here. Why so little Chinese (consider the population) use Twitter even before it’s GFWed? Why, despite the fatal lack of utilities on that platform, are Chinese Android users refusing to install Advanced Task Manager? More on Android’s case, why users here tend to avoid the stock app market at all? It’s all about language barrier. Chinese are mandated to learn English from junior high, and we can’t get a bachelor diploma without passing CET level 4 English test. Getting master degree requires even higher marks. The majority of Chinese are *forced* to swallow it, and they resent this language once they no longer need it, which in most people’s case means right after graduation. And you know people lose language skill faster than a free falling hippo when they don’t use it, or even hate it, right? With years spent on game/software localization and movie subtitle making, I’m rather confident to say that a general Chinese will automatically reject any software with more than 5 English words, or 1 full English sentence on its UI.

If that is done, they could do some extra work to sweeten the situation up: the phone client. Right now Foursquare has a client for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, webOS, and Windows Mobile (this buggy WinMoSquare thing doesn’t seem to be official release though). Of all the major smartphone platforms the only one missing is Symbian S60. I know Americans in general and geeks everywhere laughs at Nokia. Me, too, thinks S60 is a pathetic piece of cultural relic. However, not even 65,536 gigawatts of distain can warp the reality. Outside the United States, Nokia and its S60 legion rules, reigns, and kills, particularly in China. I’ve been doing a hobby project #PhoneWatch on twitter (@chassit). Put it simply, I identify every single smartphone or other smart-looking gadget bumps into my sight on my evening subway trip back home (Beijing, Sanlitun – Dawanglu, Line 10 then Line 1 through the busiest CBD area), and count them as groups. Not a long trip, but quite good timing IMO. Actually I’ve been doing this for kind of an occupational disease for a couple of years, only not keeping clear record. To my knowledge, Nokia S60 is always the winner. Now I’m 2 days into data-keeping, each day ending up with S60 topping the list, with a number as good as all other groups combined (groups are: S60, WinMo, Android, BlackBerry, Palm OS/webOS, iPhone, Moto Linux, shanzhai phones, Kindle, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS/DSi/DSL/DSi XL, tablets). As to why S60 beats iPhone by so far, I think I’ve got some reasonable theory, but that’s story for maybe another day. Anyway, not supporting S60 in China is quite far from a wise move.

What’s done is done. Under the current situation, which is not bad actually, if Foursquare will someday be interested in a China-entry, my suggest plan is (as in phases):

Phase 1 – right now: Grant the software a Chinese UI, also give a Chinese facelift to the website if possible. Stop here, wait for to-be cloner’s move. Do this as early as possible. Save energy, stay alert. Develop a S60 client pack if time allows.

Phase 2 – marked by the 1st sign of cloners: Post the install package (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android) on pirate app sharing hubs. BlackBerry users are the minority. iPhone users (those who actually use them as a smartphone) all rely on jailbreaking. Android users, as mentioned before, resent the stock market as a whole. Pirate app sites (mostly BBS) are the major resource of phone applications here. Foursquare doesn’t count on sales of app for revenue anyway, so no hard feelings.

Phase 3 – marked by any cloner getting the 1st batch of venture capital: Dig further into Chinese smartphone user communities. Influence them in QQ chat groups in addition to piracy share BBS. Offer prize to most active Chinese users. Incorporate in China if necessary, as required to start further cooperation with venue owners.

Phase 4 – marked by Tencent joining the war: Unlikely, but highly dangerous if it happens. All-out war is required. More viral marketing. Spread advertisements if things are not going well. Tencent is the most horrible enemy out there. Their QQ IM service has hundreds of millions of users, and they are surprisingly faithful. Spiraling from IM service, Tecent has attached online games, SNS, blogging, search engine, C2C sales platform, email, file sharing, news portal, and various “big things” at different times to the QQ client. Stimulate QQ IM users -> rally them to the new (closely bound) service -> instant boom -> kill competitor in mere months. This is the normal routine for it. Up to date, their clone products have claimed kings of hills, with only less than a handful of unbeaten opponents namely Google, Baidu, and Taobao. Foursquare could stand on an even ground with those three giants? I doubt so. QQ mobile client is a must-have for Chinese smartphone users, and Foursquare sound like a rather nice and easy-to-implement add-on to its current clients. They don’t even have to do any marketing, just send a system notification “have you updated your QQ to the latest version?” Without the human power and user base of Tencent, response speed is the only weapon if Foursquare ever gets in a toe-to-toe deathmatch with it.

Well, that’s it. If Foursquare marks China-entry as a mere possibility, they should start making small things happen right now. Here the key rule is: the 1st to capture the flag always have a better chance of succeeding. The same also applies to other rapidly emerging service providers. If you have a plan of getting a Chinese branch down your schedule, start planning *right now*. Do not treat China as just another country. It’s more like a parallel universe where things tend to be self-dependent and seldom go out. Always be prepared for your shadow self.

Post by Kane Gao, Illuminant’s head of research.

Beijing was one of the first of major cities to lead and implement the recent idea to globally celebrate“Foursquare Day” on April 16^th, and our team at Illuminant is super excited to champion the event in China’s capital. Our chief executive, Simon Cousins, has been a key driver on the global Foursquare Day organizing team from our new office in Tampa, Florida.  The Beijing Illuminant team has been responsible for organizing and promoting the Beijing day’s activities, and we’re getting help from local bloggers, Twitter users,and businesses.

Foursquare, for those who don’t know, is a location-based, geo-social networking website and mobile application available for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Palm devices (with more platforms currently under development). The app is rapidly gaining popularity in a city where we are continuously and voraciously on the hunt for hip new restaurants, shops, nightlife, and drinking establishments. Users rack up points on a weekly leaderboard as they “check-in” to venues, categorising, tagging, and tacking helpful tips on them along the way. Special “badges” are unlocked for certain milestones or achievements, such as numbers of “check-ins” on a weeknight,or “checking-in” to specifically tagged venues such as gyms, aiports, and ferry terminals. By frequenting their favourite haunts, users in the local community often generate friendly competition among venue clientele by attempting to earn and hold down the title of “Mayor”. It’s rather amusing (if not discouraging) to be “ousted” by a more active user when they steal the title!

Foursquare.com describes the application as “a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. We aim to build things to not only help you keep up with the places your friends go, but that encourage you to discover new places and challenge you to explore your neighborhood in new ways.”

So, you might ask, why April 16?

Well, to put it plainly, April is the fourth month, and 4²=16 = 4/16 

The idea for Foursquare Day was dreamed up in Tampa, Florida, by optometrist and social-media maven Nate Bonilla-Warford. He posted the idea on Foursquare’s feedback site, GetSatisfaction.com, and within weeks, dozens of cities around the world had jumped on board to get involved in the grass-roots planning.

One of the most exciting challenges on this day is to unlock the “Swarm” badge, which is achieved when more than 50 users are “checked-in” to the same venue at (or around) the same time, and for the third time in history, Foursquare Inc.  have decided to open the “Super Swarm” badge especially for Foursquare Day. This may be unlocked and awarded at any venue that draws 250+ “check-ins” over a 3-hour period on Foursquare Day. We are all feeling the excitement about Foursquare users meeting up aftercrossing paths (and stealing Mayorships from each other) all around town, from Wudaokou and  Zhongguancun to Sanlitun and the CBD.

We’re set to gather at The Village in Sanlitun and begin our round of “Swarm check-ins”at the Apple Store at 8.30pm, with drink specials available at Blue Frog (also in The Village), Purple Haze’s new Bistro location (at Dongsiliutiao), and at Fubar after 9pm for the wrap-up party. Additional specials may pop up through the week.

Like many other cities and venues participating in Foursquare Day, (#4sqday on Twitter), Fubar has issued a friendly “challenge” to the infamous The VIPER Room club on LA’s Sunset Strip, to see who will reach the highest number of “check-ins”, and we’re hoping to blow the roof off Beijing with the Super Swarm badge (can we pull it off?)

This is a fantastic opportunity for small/medium businesses to engage the rapidly expanding social-media savvy clientele with free advertising and exposure by creating and promoting special offers. Geo-social media is increasingly on the top of the trend, andbusiness owners would be wiseto jump on board and check out atFoursquare.com/businesses.

Follow @4sqdayBeijing on Twitter and visit http://4sqday.comfor more information.  And talk to Illuminant Partners for a world class social media campaign for your business!

北京_­

An introductory note from the author:  Firstly, ladies and gentlemen, it should be made clear that everything in this post is discussed within the scope of the Chinese marketplace, and that the opinions expressed herein are mine personally.

Think with foot. GWEAT

Brand is an interesting thing. Brand is many things, including the personification of a product or service.  Brand is like the name or nickname of a person for the product or service.

Branding gives others something to remember and address this very person by, especially when he has done something great and expect others to be grateful.  Thus the fundamental purpose of brand marketing is to make consumers remember it, consume it, and continue to consume it.  This should be very easy in theory.  Just expend your effort build something really fantastic, and go around shouting “hey guys, please be aware that this piece of work is proudly brought to you by [insert your brand here], and we will do even better in the future!”  But in the China marketplace, things always have some tendency to go wrong, especially in a market where everyone speaks a language very much different from most other languages available.

One such occasion is when one company has too many brands. In a recent market research project for an Illuminant client, I was surprised to learn that most consumers we interacted with did not know that Gatorade is a Pepsi brand. This isn’t necessarily bad, but in China, attaching a small brand to a globally respected name could have even better effect.

Or on other occasions when there are so many brands involved, it’s rather hard to maintain one single brand from the hellish brand warfare.  An example would be the computer industry in China.  In early 1990s, when Great Wall was the dominant PC brand, everyone was referring to computers as “386” and “486” (as in 80X86).  Manufacturers such as Great Wall and Compaq were so easily overshadowed by the processor maker. Things didn’t go better until, according to my observation, the coming of Lenovo (then named Legend: they changed their name years later when sued). Even “Intel” and “Pentium” went lost in the initial communication where the new processor brand was simply called “586” for habit’s sake. The problem was later solved by Intel’s carpet-bombing campaign of “Intel Inside” advertisements. And that’s good.

Things get even more confusing as time goes by and global collaboration becomes commonplace. Still taking our power-eating buddies for example, smart phones are the big thing right now. Currently there are brands for RAM, processors, OS providers, OSes themselves, phone manufacturers, cellular carriers. Putting them together, the a given handset’s brand profile could get really chaotic.

Take Android phones. The OS is called Android, and the maker goes by the name of Google. The ground-breaking phone manufacturer is HTC, and HTC’s phones are sold under a wide range of carrier brands such as T-Mobile (America), TIM (Italy), MTN (South Africa), and HTC itself. Product model names could also vary such as the first generation is called “T-Mobile G1” and “HTC Dream”, the second “T-Mobile MyTouch” and “HTC Magic”, while the latest two generations are simply “HTC Hero” and “HTC Tatoo”.  The chaos redoubles when it officially gets into China under HTC’s sub-brand Dopod. Consumers can now buy a Dopod A6188 (in other sense “HTC Dream”) and Dopod A6288 (in other words “HTC Hero”).  Arguably, the problems are: A) Too many brand names blind people. The brand-blind could be very serious when there are multiple mega-names among them. B) Language barrier. Chinese consumers are not so sensitive to English words or letters.

In many countries this shouldn’t be much of a problem since most people only care about their local version. But this is China, where local release, especially for phones, tends to be an expensive undertaking with newness equating to premium pricing, while consumers simultaneously have wide access to a black market. The brand war turns out to have an interesting effect. Here people always address all phones that works upon Android platform as “Google Phones”, and HTC’s great works are named in an unintended fashion as G1 (HTC Dream), G2 (HTC Magic), G3 (HTC Hero), G4 (HTC Tatoo). With HTC announcing or leaking new plans, I’m already expecting the wide usage of G5, G6, and probably G7. Gadget collectors are talking about the difference between “T-Mobile G1”, “TIM G1”, “MTN G1”, oh, and “HTC G1” only when they don’t know how this particular phone should be categorized. Poor HTC becomes the invisible man, and everyone is feverishly thanking Google for the hardware as well as software. This isn’t so great, by my standard, when HTC is selling phones under its own name and the Dopod alterna-brand.

The point here is, it’s necessary to have a brand identity, but it’s also important to make sure the brand is put into proper usage. You’ve got to pay attention to how people are talking about your stuff. Not only comments, but also how they recognize it. Advertising and other above-the-line marketing is one way to sort that out, however effective management of media exposure and other below-the-line techniques are of high importance. A failure media management program could result in something like this:

iPhone. This is the name that completely changed the smartphone business. Even before it’s much belated release in China, there were already around one million smuggled units running on the GSM networks of various carriers here. For traditional lack of creativity and marketing-oriented thinking, both China Mobile and China Unicom now are busy developing their home-grown (although technically on Android) smart phone OSes called “OPhone” and “UPhone” respectively in order to catch up with the trend begun by Apple. Intended unimaginative branding caused a brand avalanche. Since there are “iPhone”, “OPhone” and “UPhone” already, Chinese journalists begin to automatically re-brand every other player in the field on their own accord. In this fashion, Microsoft, who so proudly announced its “Windows Phone” campaign not so long ago, is now called “WPhones”. And Android is now commonly addressed as “GPhone”. Multiple tech portal websites (Chinese) have worked out thrilling big headlines going like “FIVE [X]Phones fight to be king of the hill in China!”

Although every bit true in OPhone’s and UPhone’s cases, this isn’t so good for Microsoft or Google (well, and HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, etc passively represented by these two giants) because such unofficial branding renders them instantly, in the minds of millions of consumers as little more than iPhone copycats. You will see this concern stands when you see so frequently Chinese netizens commenting like “to hell with WPhones and GPhones. Our iPhone is the first and best!” A fundamental rule to market competition is, if you want to do better than iPhone, you first declare very clearly “we are definitely not an iPhone, and we don’t want to be”. Things will look much better if vendors are more serious about their media work, and spend 5 more minutes talking to the journalists which can simultaneously influence public opinion and help clarify these muddy waters.

Another solution to achieving brand integrity in China includes defining a real Chinese brand name that makes some vague sense rather than being plain transliteration. Then, and the most important, ensure that brand name is correctly used. Contributing all your good reputation to a partner is bad, but making yourself look like a no-brainer is worse.

So, behold, BlackBerry and Palm. You guys are talking with China Telecom for China entry right the moment. Do not make yourself into “BPhone” (or “BBPhone”) and “PPhone” by doing nothing! This is China, where many things could go wrong at the least unlikely point. Know what you are dealing with. Keep yourself known in a preferable way. And make sure the message is delivered correctly through the whole process.

Authored by Illuminant’s Head of Research, Kane Gao

BEIJING, CHINA 15th June 2009 SinoTech Group (www.sinotechgroup.com.cn), the leading Chinese full service digital marketing company, announced today that has entered into a strategic partnership with Illuminant Partners, a Beijing-based multidisciplinary public relations and strategic communications agency. Under this agreement, SinoTech Group will provide Illuminant Partners with digital marketing products and services for their clients in China and the Asian Pacific region.

“I am excited about this partnership with Illuminant Partners. They are an independent PR firm of a similar age to that of SinoTech Group and have a very professional approach to their clients. I am pleased that SinoTech Group can provide Illuminant Partners with digital solutions such as Online Reputation Management, Search and Social Media Marketing as well as Online Analytics and Measurement tools,” said Dr. Mathew McDougall, Chief Executive Officer of SinoTech Group.

“With a trend towards more digital integration within PR, especially social media, we are one of a movement of new-style PR agencies offering highly-digitally integrated campaigns to our clients. Staying ahead of the digital curve is the differentiating factor in our ability to achieve superior communications outcomes for our clients, so it is important for Illuminant Partners to work with likeminded strategic partners” said Simon Cousins, Chief Executive of Illuminant Partners, “SinoTech Group has an outstanding history of innovation and creative approaches within the digital media market, and we expect their approach to add tremendous value in achieving and exceeding the communications objectives of our clients.”, continued Mr. Cousins.

For media enquiries, please contact Ms Chen ZHU at Illuminant Partners, +86 10 5879-4050 or chen.zhu-at-illuminantpartners.com

Ends.

Or, Baidu done it in the datacentre with the walking frame.

Yesterday the Chinese internet search giant announced its brand new product, 百度老年搜索 (literally “Baidu Senior Citizen Search”).  An exciting day for increasing numbers of Chinese silver surfers!

According to Baidu, China has around 14 million silver surfers. They’ve been dubbed silver surfers, of course, due to hair which is often rendered silver-white by the flowing years, however they still like to keep up with current technology.  A great many of China’s silver surfers have been enriched by new China’s economic miracle and the part their kids’ have played in it, so to marketers, they’re actually a pretty interesting consumer segment.

At the launch of “Baidu Senior Citizen Search” Li Yanhong, the company’s CEO said “Despite their age, our parents, just like us, need to absorb information from the web. As the search engine provider which owns 90% of Chinese market, we must offer more convenience to silver surfers. So [Baidu] decided to make a new search engine, specially designed for them. Aside from information, the new engine is utterly easy to use, enabling our fathers and mothers to surf the web without relying on a mouse. Meanwhile, considering there are 14 million silver surfers in China, it’s quite a remarkable market.”

[Illuminant's summarized translation - read the original Chinese here]

Okay. Great idea, Baidu.  China now has a search engine to specicially serve retired netizens.  Lets now leap into this modern-as-tomorrow future and see how the service works!

Hmm. The new search engine is a little bit hard to find. It seems to us that it can only be visited from a small text link on the front page of Baidu.com. A single click took me to a yellow-page with very, very, very huge fonts. The big font is a good idea (well, a no-brainer, actually.  What else does the specialist search engine provide?  Somewhat disappointingly, we couldn’t find anything innovative, or even new.

Firstly, a yellow web-page is nothing new to Baidu. Years ago the company acquired a catalogue (name: hao123) of the most frequently visited websites to help web starters who are not yet familiar with a real search engine (this, of course, was originally a Yahoo! innovation back in the 20th century). The new Baidu “search engine” for silver surfers looks pretty much the same as hao123, only with a ton of stuff for youngsters removed. The catalogue includes weather, tourism, hospitals, traditional arts, senior citizen communities, web portals, and so on. But… despite the convenience of a heirarchichal link aggregation, is this by any standard a “search engine”?

At the top, beside the Baidu logo, there is a textbox emphasizing the facility of a search engine. The textbox, like everything else, is also extra large, of course.

According to Mr. Li’s speech, one might be led to believe that there is a great deal of new code behind the page to generate optimized and carefully selected entries to silver surfers. So, we tried the new engine with something tricky: a Mandarin-Chinese slang term in current use amongst China’s young netizens. This slang term is definitely not something silver surfers would be interested in. We expected that the search results would feature an explanation of the term, and several news stories addressing the rise of netizen slang. OK, type the term, click the button, and see what we’ve got here.

If my computer works all right, what I’m look at now is a very long list of the term being put into normal daily usage. Say, if I’m born long before the information era of China and only got to use computer in my old age, this list will confuse the hell out of me. Out of curiosity, I tried the term in the regular Baidu search engine. And… what the… I’ve got a completely identical list here.

Our inexpert conclusion is: except for super large fonts, the “new” search engine is nothing but a magnified version of old stuff. We’re scratching our heads.  Why would a good company bother spending money on creating buzz for an advanced new technology solution which could be easily replaced by buying my Mom a pair of glasses?

Interestingly, we’ve found that the new silver surfer’s “search engine” is (at the time of writing) totally advertisement-free. To be fair to Baidu, this is actually a pretty good thing: presumably China’s silver surfers possess minimal internet security understanding as well as high trust in new technology.  Silver surfers would be easy targets of the Chinese web’s ubiquitous phishing-attacks, Trojan horses, and virus-bearing malware.

Perhaps fault lies with us, for expecting too much of a leading Chinese web business.  After all, CEO Li did promise “a new search engine, specially designed for them“, and no court or judge would penalize Baidu for its “over-promise under-deliver” approach to this “new product” launch.

As a marketing agency working in China, we really shouldn’t be surprised at any part of yesterday’s buzz-creating activity, except at the lack of advertising on the “new search engine”.

Baidu, we’ll gladly be proven wrong.

Article by Illuminant’s head of research, Kane Gao

SARFT.Headquarters, via Flickr

Last year China’s State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) caused a great deal of panic among the mainland’s video sharing websites by threatening to kick any operator without an online broadcasting license off the intertubes. Eventually, every video sharing website had a license granted, and the initial climate of panic tapered off and quietly died.

Yesterday, SARFT again unleashed its power, announcing a new set of regulations to further govern China’s online video sharing sector. Under the new rules, all films, TV series, cartoons and documentaries must obtain offline broadcasting licenses before being transmitted via internet media (and yes, mobile networks are included), even if the broadcaster has already licensed necessary copyrights from distributors. For the full story please refer to this helpful overview from Pacific Epoch, who we beleive scooped the story.

The new regulations instantly caused another panic amongst China’s netizens. Unlike YouTube, which relies on short video clips and user-generated content, its many Chinese clone-sites mainly live on (pirated) films and TV series. Obtaining an offline license for every single film would take more time than is left until the heat-death of the universe. Needless to say, offline licenses are based on the correct licensing of copyrights, which in many parts of the Chinese web do not outweigh the low cost/huge profit charms of piracy. If SARFT is really serious about this, then the whole business seems to be pretty much terminated.

But from my perception, we don’t have to be too serious about SARFT’s latest moves. Parallel with the new regulations, there is something called the “haven principle” in the whole Chinese internet sector (including video sharing). The principle works like this: an online broadcaster does not have any responsibility if any user-uploaded content causes trouble (such as violation of intellectual property rights). So long as the offending content is simply removed from the website, on notification, every problem is solved in a civilized and harmonious way.

This “uploaded-protested-notified-removed” principle has saved many Chinese video sharing websites from lawsuits they absolutely could not afford to defend.

From our perspective, it seems pretty obvious that in pursuit of almighty page-view, a large number of “helpful users” who upload tons of  stuff on daily basis are actually website editors in disguise, taking advantage of the haven principle to dodge ethical, legal and moral responsibilities. Personally I’ve formerly worked for a market-leading WAP site whose main business is was to “share” pirated (dumped, cracked, regged) mobile phone games totally free of charge, much like video sharing websites. An eye-catching disclaimer was placed on every download page saying “all content is uploaded by users, thus the provider has no responsibility for violation of intellectual property”. But guess what? They didn’t even have a user upload interface. All editors worked on a 8 hours/6 days schedule to collect, upload, and organize pirated games. The WAP site even established different servers and purchased different domain names for file storage to enhance the impression that all those games were located by its fictional “super advanced game search engine”. Gaming, indeed.

Sorry for spinning off topic.

Back to China’s haven principle. Under the user-upload umbrella, China’s video sharing websites do not have to pay anything for violating SARFT’s new regulations. On the other hand, SARFT has to manually monitor every single video on each website to check if there’s any illegal broadcasting activity. In a country of 243 million broadband users, this is a monstrous job. And considering the normal slow speed for takedown notices to be generated, there will be enough time for users to have their fun and for websites to gain almighty page-view between the video’s upload and a demanded removal (if it ever gets found and put on notice).  Of course, even if an offending video upload is terminated, another “helpful user” will upload the video again under a different URL.

Some observers believe that SARFT should be extra-careful in the implementation of its new regulations. Practically all YouTube clones in China are launched, nurtured and generate page-view via pirated content. An overdose of administration may easily snuff the whole business out, and we don’t beleive that China would want to deliver this unto the nascent sector (which employs thousands) given the current condition of the world economy.

Disbelieving?  If you’re feeling in an IPR-violating mood, you might enjoy the 213th episode of popular Japanese cartoon Bleach, uploaded on April 1st 2009, which does absolutely not have an offline broadcasting license. Thanks, Tudou.com, for sharing!

NB: Imagethief’s view, well worth reading, is here.

Kane Gao, Head of Research, Illuminant Partners

DAN_Logo, originally uploaded by Illuminant Partners.

Illuminant Partners is excited to be working with our new client, Data Acquisitions Networks (DAN). DAN is a fast growing Australian company with a revolutionary technology that holds exceptionally strong promise for the Chinese market: a comprehensive, secure data logging system that protects the integrity of local data while allowing it to be monitored remotely from anywhere in the world.

We recently assisted DAN in its first China market visit to Beijing and Shanghai, and we were thrilled with the enthusiastic response its technology received from food industry and environmental protection officials, two sectors in which DAN’s technology has particular applicability.

DAN’s technology is two-fold: on-site hardware and web-based software hosted by DAN. The on-site hardware is comprised of a compact black box which can be configured to communicate wirelessly with up to six industrial probes. There are literally thousands of industrial probes commercially available, measuring variables from temperature to pollution levels and much more. Probes send their data back to the blackbox, which utilizes GPRS communication to transmit the data back to DAN’s server.

The web-based software gives users complete control over their data, allowing them to remotely change parameters, set alarm points, and monitor data collection. Using a secure login, users can see their data displayed in a simple format requiring no interpretation. Customized alarm points can be set, meaning that if data points fall outside of chosen parameters, SMS and e-mail alerts will be automatically sent immediately to as many as five designated recipients.

In Australia, DAN’s technology is used to measure everything from salinity in aquaculture – where it has substantially increased harvests – to monitoring chlorine levels in municipal swimming pools, ensuring safety. The advantage of DAN’s technology is not only the flexibility it offers, but also the security: data cannot be manipulated or changed, meaning central authorities can exercise remote oversight without fear of local tampering.

In China, the applicability of DAN’s technology is wide-ranging and exciting. Regulatory authorities constantly struggle with the challenge of centrally monitoring industry round-the-clock to ensure compliance with standards designed to protect safety, environmental quality, and efficiency. Data integrity is frequently suspect thanks to corruption, inappropriate monitoring techniques and tampering. DAN’s system takes the guesswork out of data collection and monitoring, meaning authorities can be independently assured of the integrity and reliability of data.

The disastrous results of faulty central oversight of industry have hit China particularly hard in the last year – from tainted food causing tragic infant deaths to faulty and dangerous products being exported around the world, never has the need for more reliable data logging and monitoring been so apparent. DAN’s comprehensive solutions would give authorities and regulators the oversight they need to ensure food safety, product integrity, and environmental protection. Illuminant is extremely excited to be working with this very promising new client!

Blog posting by Illuminant senior account manager Matt Doran.

SmartTrans Kooka Networking at BCA 2008-08-15 (6), originally uploaded by Illuminant Partners.

Illuminant is proud to have supported our client SmartTrans through its triumphant success at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

SmartTrans, an Australian Stock Exchange listed company (ASX: SMA), supplied Olympic sponsors with its fantastic EventTrack service – an all in one GPS navigation, VIP transportation, and translation tool. High profile clients including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Omega, BHP Billiton, Macquarie Bank, and DB Schenker relied on EventTrack for their Gamestime VIP transportation needs.

This fantastic achievement was the result of a months-long, intensive collaboration between SmartTrans and Illuminant.

Illuminant worked closely with SmartTrans to support its Gamestimes efforts, having secured the endorsement of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at his inaugural visit to China earlier this year. Rudd’s endorsement of EventTrack at its April 10 launch event marked the Mandarin-speaking prime minister’s only commercial endorsement during his trip. Illuminant’s support for SmartTrans continued right through Gamestime.

We’re extremely proud of our work for SmartTrans and look forward to continuing our collaboration, as SmartTrans furthers its success in the Chinese marketplace post-Games.

We’re pleased to have worked with the Australian Trade Commission to write up a case study for our fantastic transport technology client SmartTrans. The case study went live on the Austrade website on 5th June. You can read the whole case study by clicking here.