China Trends: WeChat Could be China’s First Well-Known Global Brand

Like Heraclitus said, the only constant is change. And in the digital age, change comes fast and furious, indeed. When we last left WeChat, their registration numbers for 2012 had just come out and the service was making its first forays into the West. There were over 300 million users of the free messaging service in China, and the first few million users outside of China had started signing up.

Six months on from our mention, WeChat (or “WeiXin” (微信) as it’s known domestically), has boomed steadily within China and has put up absolutely remarkable numbers outside of it. The Tencent-owned service now boasts a 400 million-strong user base and they have just announced that they have signed up 70 million users outside of China since their global launch last year. This international total represents an increase of over 20 million in the last 2 months alone, while overall the app’s user base has doubled in just 9 months.

Just as Western media was getting used to Weibo and QQ and monitoring them to get a glimpse of what is going on in China, this new social media phenomenon has risen to the top of the heap in China (at least in cool factor if not total usage), only this time it doesn’t look like it will stay confined to the country itself. At least not if Tencent has anything to say about it.

Unlike other big technology companies, Tencent is making a concerted effort to bring its brand (via WeChat) out into to the world and establish itself as a global player in the social media arena. For all of the manufacturing that China does for export, they have yet to produce a global brand that is recognizable throughout the world. WeChat aims to change all that.

With their innovative, immersive messaging software having proven that it can catch on in non-Chinese markets, Tencent has launched a wide-ranging marketing campaign to try to grow its foreign user base. Last week it unveiled this new ad, featuring soccer megastar Lionel Messi, that will be broadcast in 15 different countries, including the fast-growing markets of India and Brazil.

Tencent has even opened offices in Silicon Valley and Malaysia recently.

What makes WeChat different is that it’s not just for the Chinese market. It has been explicitly designed to act more like apps that are familiar to Western users, such as What’s App and Viber, but they’ve built-up their Chinese user base first. This makes it the first potential crossover app that will allow Chinese and those outside of China to connect within the same social network without restriction. And with features like push-to-talk, video chatting and group chats, the options for dynamic interaction amongst individuals and groups is beyond what any single Western app can offer (at the moment).

Furthermore, with WeChat, companies can set up outward-facing distribution lists, turning the social media tool into a direct marketing platform in a way that does not intrude on users’ feeds. This makes it very attractive to potential advertisers.

With an enormous population of ever-more connected citizens driving it, WeChat’s development prospects are very bright. Soon-to-be-unveiled additions include a payment feature, allowing users to transfer funds between themselves instantly. The implications for cross-border, person-to-person transactions are obvious and exciting. Suddenly, the roads into the Chinese market are getting smoother and smoother.