China was the focus during the first half of Day two at Cannes. 2008 festival. Fittingly so, perhaps with the Beijing Olympics just around the corner. The world will be watching to see how China leverages the Games. All discussions about China invariably include references to scale so numbers formed a big par, thats t of the discussion. Sample this: China accounts for the biggest mobile subscriber base in the world, with China Mobile billed as the largest telecom company in terms of number of mobile users in the world today. At 225 million Internet subscribers, Pully Chau, CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi, (pictured) surmised that China was ahead of USA in the number of online users today. Chau had some advice for western brands looking at tapping into the Chinese market. She said there was a chance of rebirth or reframing in China for any international brand and urged companies to think ahead and plan keeping in mind, the mobile platform.
Chau felt that China’s paradox lay in the country being a global player in scale but with local execution. Referring to the Leapfrog syndrome that has characterized the exponential growth of the Chinese economy, Chau pointed out that while mobile penetration was very high in China, the rural Chinese market only had 12% penetration in mobile telephony, which presented an opportunity waiting to be tapped. P&G’s Ricardi showcased some examples of Chinese Advertising that had been created for P&G in that market.
Pitch management consultants R3 were on a mission to dispel myths about Chinese Advertising. The primary of these, they felt was in believing that China is still playing catch up, that Chinese advertising is backward and that it is all about Guanxi (relationships) in China. R3 is in the process of launching its 2008 China Agency Image Study, which threw up some interesting insights into the agency- client relationship in China.For example: the survey shows that the Agency-Marketer relationships are only about 2.5 years old in China and explained that this was where players like the R3 were able to help. Thenetworkone’s Julian Boulding chaired the next session along with three of his partners from around the world. This included Brazil’s Otavio Dias who owns the independent agency R.Pense in Sao Paulo, India’s Pradeep Kashyap, Founder, MART and Russia’s Dmitry Levteev of IQ Marketing, who each spoke about the motivation behind starting their own shop. Proximity’s Kevin Allen and Christine Hannis delved into a study of the Lost Generation, dividing it into three different subsets that make the understanding of this group much simpler. These subsets included ‘Cruisers’, ‘Nesters’ and ‘Super Breeders’ which classified people on the basis of their choice of lifestyle habits. This should lead to better understanding of how to communicate to this generation that is averse to advertising, said Kevin Allen. Tuesday promises to be a packed day with participants such as Isobar, Profero, Wunderman, Zentih Optimedia and G2. China was the focus during the first half of Day two at Cannes. 2008 festival. Fittingly so, perhaps with the Beijing Olympics just around the corner. The world will be watching to see how China leverages the Games. All discussions about China invariably include references to scale so numbers formed a big par, thats t of the discussion. Sample this: China accounts for the biggest mobile subscriber base in the world, with China Mobile billed as the largest telecom company in terms of number of mobile users in the world today. At 225 million Internet subscribers, Pully Chau, CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi, (pictured) surmised that China was ahead of USA in the number of online users today. Chau had some advice for western brands looking at tapping into the Chinese market. She said there was a chance of rebirth or reframing in China for any international brand and urged companies to think ahead and plan keeping in mind, the mobile platform. Chau felt that China’s paradox lay in the country being a global player in scale but with local execution. Referring to the Leapfrog syndrome that has characterized the exponential growth of the Chinese economy, Chau pointed out that while mobile penetration was very high in China, the rural Chinese market only had 12% penetration in mobile telephony, which presented an opportunity waiting to be tapped. P&G’s Ricardi showcased some examples of Chinese Advertising that had been created for P&G in that market.