The secret of marketing?
An Interview with Ben Veechai (Regional Director, International Marketing, UBM Asia) As marketers, we strive to learn more all the time – learn more about the customers, the latest technology, our competitors, the macro-economy, our business & new products, and so much more. One of the things I enjoy as the marketer for PR Newswire is that I get to know and meet communications professionals from all types of industries, and I thought it would be useful if I can ask them to share their secret source of marketing, so we can all learn and be better at what we do. On a quest to find the secret source, I’ve interviewed Ben Veechai, the Regional Director of International Marketing for UBM Asia, who has a wealth of experience in trade show marketing, to share his views. Although he said ‘There are no secrets’ upfront, he did mention the key skill to be a good marketer - Storytelling. Below is what Ben shared with me. (‘S’ is from me, ‘B’ is from Ben) S: Hi Ben, can you tell us a bit about yourself? B: Sure, I head the International Marketing Department at UBM Asia where we work with marketing and product teams across Asia to help increase the number of international visitors to our fairs, as well as adopt marketing best practices. Prior to joining UBM Asia, I worked at UBM TechWeb/Think Services/CMP Game Group for nearly 5 years, serving as the Marketing Director for UBM's Game Developer Division, which produces such products as the Game Developer Conferences (GDC), Gamasutra network of Sites, and Game Developer Magazine. Prior to joining UBM, I worked for International Data Group (IDG) under several brands including PC World/Macworld Magazines and their websites, and InfoWorld Media under marketing/ project management roles. I moved to Hong Kong from San Francisco, grew up in Boston Massachusetts and was born in Bangkok, Thailand. S: Thanks Ben. Let’s get to the question - what is the secret of marketing? B: I always say there are no secrets, just well thought-out and executed strategies and plans. However, there are many many tips and tricks for how to optimize the techniques and gain the skills a marketer need in order to create great marketing. S: What are the fundamental skills needed to be a good marketer? B: In today’s day and age, there are so many facets to marketing that are expected as part of the package. There is online marketing, social media marketing, research, database analysis and so forth. However I feel that a fundamental skill of any good marketer is the ability to tell a good story. Of course, I am not talking about making up false statements, exaggerations, or the like. What I am talking about is your critical thinking ability and writing skills to analyze the worthwhile reasons to buy or subscribe to your product, service, or attend your event. To me it’s a marketer’s job to come up with something to say. Repeating statements like, "We are the #1 show, a million exhibitors, and a billion attendees", is not good story telling at all, it's not even marketing, it is salesy "spiel" with a limited shelf life, and over time sounds more like propaganda to the audience than it does a convincing story. A true marketing skill, is the ability to create an impactful story by understanding the needs of our target market, the market conditions, and the unique value proposition that your product or service can deliver to prospective customers. S: With the many trade shows and events you have worked on, can you give us an example of how “story-telling” helped? B: One of the shows I worked on last year was Food Ingredients Asia, specifically the 2012 edition that was held in Jakarta, Indonesia. The initial content on the webpage was pretty good, but not sufficient for the long marketing cycle. We had content that was very basic, and we didn't really have product shots to show the audience what they might expect to see at the event. So what we did was to make something interesting out of the contacts and resources available to us – exhibitors’ product information, our creativity, and a little elbow grease. The sales team helped the marketing team to collect ‘first to debut’ and exciting products with photos and descriptions, and then the local team created some dynamic pages on the website that displayed those items in an interesting manner. Creating good and interesting content on the website then allowed the team to generate some additional specific industry speaking points to highlight in their marketing materials, and which they could then use in other marketing channels like newsletters, social posts, and press releases to draw people back to the website and learn more about the event. My philosophy is that it is never a waste of time to develop good content on your website. Why? That content is yours and will be on the site forever, or until one refreshes it; Creating good content on the website gives the casual online visitor more information to read and educate themselves on their own; Adding good and business specific content on a website helps to drive up SEO or natural search results; Finally, by creating good content on your website, you actually create the foundation for better (and not to mention easier to create) content for your other marketing channels, such as e-newsletters and social media posts. You can literally just cut and paste a smaller teaser of the article into a promotion and hyperlink back to the source content – thereby gaining more readers and engaging the target audience more fully. S: You constantly educate your colleagues about the value of content marketing, why do you think this is relevant to your team-mates in Asia? B: As marketers we have to think about “the story” all the time, and ask ourselves questions like: can you deliver and recite an elegant 30 second synopsis of why the stakeholders should care about your product or event? Can you say why sub-markets within the industry should care? What opportunities are available to them? If you can't answer questions like these then you know you have some work to do. S: Any practical tips or example you can share? B: A recent example for one of our shows in Thailand. Some of our events are quite well-known in the market they operate in Asia; however, we are now in a good position to focus on more international visitor promotion. One of our events is INTERMACH Thailand, where the team wanted to further strengthen this long running event’s image as ASEAN's leading machinery & subcontracting exhibition. I visited the Thailand office and met with the event director, and we decided that within the short amount of time we had to market the show, we needed to work on a marketing and mass communications strategy to create a picture and story of opportunity for the show. Traditional audiences know of the event, but what about the rest of the world? And what better way to tell a story than with press releases? In the Western World (where the concept was first invented), the purpose of press releases is to give public information, to make a statement. Originally its purpose is to send immediate information to news outlets that is newsworthy. Now of course press releases have evolved over the years and in syndication formats, as well as with different regional styles. I won't make this a discussion, instead, I will tell you what I think makes poor press releases – the ones that will "turn-off" an audience. Poor press releases are ones that do not contain any news or information of importance for a mass audience/or specific group. Poor press releases are ones that contain just a sales pitch/marketing messaging. If you find your press releases falling in the latter category, save yourself from alienating your audience and hurting your brand by putting that message in a marketing promotion piece where it belongs, and not in a press release. S: What results did you get from this PR campaign? B: We are evaluating our success. What I do know at this point is that this release received over 450 online searches and 311 reposts across different news channels, with the top performers being Yahoo! Finance, Reuters, and Bloomberg Business Week. I can also tell you that if you did a search for "Fiber Lasers" in Google, this was in the top 1-4 search results over about five months. We distributed two more releases after this one before the exhibition took place, and the show had a record year in terms of sales and international visitors. ------ If you're interested to share your 'secrets' in marketing, please do contact me, I'm interested to learn more from you. Sarah Tam is the Regional Marketing Director for PR Newswire. Follow her on Twitter at @sarah_tam.
eBook: New School Press Release Tactics That Grab Attention & Get Results
Press releases do not get enough credit on what it can do for businesses. It provides the latest news and information to the relevant audience, as long as it is done the correct way. According to PR Newswire’s Web analytics, the press releases on PRNewswire.com were read almost 42 million times in 2012. So, we are happy to say press releases still matter, however with the fierce competition for attention everywhere, it is vital to produce high value and useful content and understand the desired outcomes businesses would like their targeted audience to take. The formula for a successful press release has changed and Sarah Skerik, our vice president of content marketing shares with us some ways to freshen the news releases your organization publishes, and get more results for your campaigns. Make generating social interaction a priority, because that triggers amplification. Serve your audience first. Frame the brand message in the context the audience craves. Content needs to do more than inform. It has to be interesting and useful to the audience if they’re going to amplify your message by sharing it. Re-think links. Use them strategically to provide more information for journalists and potential customers. Link the name of the person quoted in the press release to their bio or a related blog post they authored. Embed a call to action for potential customers toward the top of the press release. Real-world example: PR Newswire client Jive Software, Inc. reported a 200% increase in web site traffic to a specific page when they moved a call to action for readers toward the top of the press release, embedding it right after the lead paragraph. Encourage on-the-spot social sharing. Highlight the key message or best piece of advice in your press release, and then embed a Click-to-Tweet link within. Format the press release to maximize sharing. Write a perfectly tweetable headline and keep it to 100 characters. (Use a subhead to add more detail.) Employ bullet points to highlight key points, and draw the readers’ eyes deeper into the copy. Develop a visual communications habit. Including visuals can increase visibility. (social networks and search engines both give visual content preference.) Visuals extend the reach of your messages into channels like Pinterest, which requires a visual element and other visual-centric social networks. Incorporate storytelling into press releases to make the messages more memorable and interesting. Include a quote from someone other than an executive. Quote a customer service person noting how a new product has reduced support calls, a happy customer or a member of the team that designed the product. Break the formula for the press release, and dive into the value propositions, case studies and benefits that your audience really wants to know about. You can find out more press release tips and a variety of case studies from Sarah Skerik in PR Newswire’s eBook: New School Press Release Tactics. Download the free eBook here. Joanna Yip is the Marketing Communications Manager for PR Newswire.
Video Comes Out On Top [Infographic]
A few months back, I wrote a blog about How Effective Is Video For Your Business? To take it further, we reached out to a group of marketing and communications professionals and invited them to participate in our Video Marketing in Asia survey. Well, the results are in and according to the survey, the majority (81%) of the respondents agree that video is an effective marketing tool. Marketers are taking notice that video is a powerful tool to engage with their audience in ways that can only be explained effectively using a visual medium. Below is an Infographic taken from our 2013 Survey Report on Video Marketing in Asia that highlights some key findings. These findings show that almost half (45%) of the respondents produced more videos this year than they did last year. In addition, the survey indicated that the video marketing budget of the respondents had increased (by 38%). As such, it is safe to say that videos are increasingly being used for campaigns. Download the 2013 Survey Report on Video Marketing in Asia here! The State of Video Marketing Use in AsiaAccording to the survey results, only around a third (34%) of respondents had created a video strategy. Many communications professionals have created/produced videos for their audiences. However, without a video strategy aligned with their business goals, marketers may find it hard to measure the ROI for video and determine how to improve video content. In this report, it was also discovered that most communications professionals are distributing video content through their owned media channels (vs. paid and earned channels). Only 3% of those surveyed had other ways of distributing their video content. You can read a Marketing Interactive article Content is king, but distribution is queen which discusses the importance of content distribution that I found compelling. Therefore, it is also paramount that video content be easily discoverable across the media landscape, which is why we believe search, social and mobile media are the future, transcending paid, earned and owned media, with content driving them all. To get more valuable insight and findings, download the free report here. Enjoy! Joanna Yip is the Marketing Communications Manager for PR Newswire.
![Video Comes Out On Top [Infographic]](http://en.prnasia.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Video-Infographic-One-Page.jpg)
Debuting in Malaysia
Earlier this month, PR Newswire was invited to speak at the KL Social Media Event which was held at Marche, The Curve Damansara, Malaysia on 21st September. Yitung Liw, our Business Development Manager was the first speaker, his presentation on “Global Content Marketing’ caught much attention during and after his session. [caption id="attachment_1233" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Yitung Liw from PR Newswire's Malaysia office, speaking at KL Social Media event.[/caption] Yitung talked about how brands leveraged PR Newswire’s global network of media and influencers, citing client examples including Porsche, LG, Pandora, Wynn, Johnnie Walker and CNN, and discussed how these brands targeted media and journalists with their tailored messages, and leveraged the power of their multimedia content (shareable video, inspirational photos) to increase the visibility of their release by up to 77%. A brief introduction on KL Social Media, it is a congregation of social media gurus, industry players and enthusiasts coming together to exchange best practices, share compelling case studies and to pick one another's brain on social media that is rapidly transforming the digital landscape. It is a community event to meet the like-minded in social media, digital marketing, media, PR, advertising, creative arts and everything in-between. Other speakers including Nicholas Chay, Head of E-Commerce at DiGi Telecommunication (one of the major telecommunications companies in Malaysia), Jimmy Low , Technical Manager at Kaspersky Lab, Gun Suk Ling at Starworks Entertainment, Mohammed Ihsan at Simplify360 Social Media, and Elton Kuah at Enrich Social Media. We met more than 60 digital marketing practitioners and entrepreneurs from various industries, and the audience gave us positive responses after hearing how PR Newswire could help with their global, regional and local content distribution. If you're interested to learn how content marketing can help you achieve your business goals, download our latest insight report on "Content: The marketing currency in the digital world" here. Thank you KL Social Media for inviting us to speak at the event, our first public speaking event in Malaysia and we are looking forward to participate at more events like this! Esther Ayun is the Audience Development & Client Services Executive for PR Newswire.
What is the best thing I have learned at SES HK?
Yesterday when I was leaving the SES Conference hoping to catch-up on my emails which piled up after a week-long vacation and a few events, I saw an email from a colleague, who tried to alert me to answer a question on Twitter, posted by Joshua Steimle, a contributor at Forbes. His question was "What's the best thing you've learned at #seshk"? He also wrote "Give me a good answer and I'll quote you in the Forbes article I'm writing." That's pretty attractive. With my mobile battery emptied after seeing this email, and an iPad with no mobile connection (it was a prize from a lucky draw, can’t complain), I got off from the MTR and went up to the platform to one of those internet kiosk and answered his question on Twitter. As a speaker and an attendee myself, I have learned a lot and realize as a marketing communications professional nowadays, you really cannot stop learning. My answer to his question was “Data-driven marketing will push brands to provide better customer service & targeted content if they want to win over competitors.” I of course learned more than that. [caption id="attachment_1221" align="aligncenter" width="238"] Jamshed Wadia, Head of Digital and Social Media, Intel APAC at SES HK[/caption] "There's no integrated marketing agency" I put this in quotations because this is from the first keynote panel discussion on the first day of the conference. SAP, Starwood & Hotel Club all agreed that if an agency claims they can do everything they are probably lying. Rather than stereotyping agencies and judging subjectively, my thought on this is, marketers should really focus on customers & clients to integrate their marketing communications efforts. Before we go to any agency, we should have a plan on how to integrate those efforts, resources, and content — inside and outside of the marketing organization. If brands could spread this integrated 'DNA' across the entire organization, it doesn't matter if there is no integrated marketing agency, because you're integrated in the first place. Burberry is a great example, they probably never talk about integration, because they are aligned towards the ultimate business goal - to build a better brand. And to be honest, people working for agencies are also human, if we hope agencies could help us integrate our internal efforts, we're just hoping they have some sort of superpower. Marketing should be about dialogues From PR Newswire's standpoint, and from our experience distributing an average of 400,000 pieces of content each year for 60,000+ customers across the globe, producing valuable content to drive awareness means you have to listen to your target audiences, be them journalists, industry influencers, customers - so you understand what they need and meet their needs with your products or services. And on their decision-making or purchasing journeys, you create and distribute relevant and valuable content, engage them via various channels, amplify word-of-mouth and creditable reviews, deal with the negative ones, so they do end up doing business with you, not your competitor. If it sounds like a lot, because there is a lot to do if you believe in marketing. I cannot agree more with what Jamshed Wadia, Head of Digital and Social Media at Intel APAC said, "Consumers expect daily interaction & conversation, and marketers need to get out of the 'campaign' mode". The fact is customers are increasingly well-informed and thus demanding, they want dialogues (we are customers too and we know that!). If we keep pushing out one-way messages and not build a listening mechanism to what we do, chances are we will become irrelevant. If you are not distributing your content, you are not doing content marketing Jamshed also mentioned marketers have to distribute their content. (And I have to thank him for bringing this up because content distribution is what we do here at PR Newswire.) He mentioned how important it is to distribute content, because no matter how good your content is, if you don’t distribute your content and hope the traffic will come to you out of the blue, you’re just gambling. Brian Hiu, VP, Marketing at Amazon China kept the audience awake after lunch with data-orientated marketing and humor, he reminded us the role of data, because they do not lie, and is probably the best tool to test if your marketing people are lying. That brings us back to the marketing cycle, first we have to have an integrated mindset towards how we do marketing, second we have to listen proactively to understand the market, third we have to get out of the campaign mode to open dialogues, then we have to keep doing this and evaluate how effective our efforts are by looking at data generated from this cycle. And there is no end to this marketing cycle. Data-driven marketing is the future I am a big believer of data. Big data is a buzz word for me and many people. Ultimately, data is just a simplified form of information, which means you have to understand what you’re trying to get out of data, before you look at data. And data can be found everywhere, they can be structured and unstructured, they can be gathered from sales, customer service, finance, marketing…etc. Napoleon Biggs, Chief Strategy Officer at Gravitas gave us a lot of useful data during his presentation on SoLoMo, yet how we utilize his insight and the data he shared, combine them with data from our own organization to better our products or services, is always a challenge. That’s the same with the sea of data we already have internally within the marketing organization. And Brian’s take on making the marketing leaders like entrepreneurs to look at data and return on investment on the dollars they spend, will probably be the future of most of the marketers. Thus, my most important learning from SES HK is, “Data-driven marketing will push brands to provide better customer service & targeted content if they want to win over competitors.” Thoughts? Sarah Tam is the Regional Marketing Director for PR Newswire. Follow her on Twitter at @sarah_tam.
Content: The Marketing Currency in the Digital World
On a daily basis, I am constantly inundated with lots of information through my inbox and I am a victim of someone that signs up to a number of newsletters and promotional materials. However with that in mind, I am less inclined to give out my email since I end up deleting most of the content I receive. I’m sure I am among millions of people that have this problem and because of this, it is ever so important in this world that we live in, that businesses provide relevant and valuable content to their customers. This brings me to what was discussed at PR Newswire 2013 Best Practices Forum, held in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. “Relevant” and “valuable” were echoed a numerous of times at these events. If you’re not familiar with the Best Practices Forum, it is an invitation-only event for business communicators to gather and discuss latest best practices on topics related to online influence, content PR & Marketing, multimedia engagement and the media landscape that are relevant to audiences in Asia. The latest topic was on “Content: The Marketing Currency in the Digital World” where we had experienced speakers share their valuable insights with us. [caption id="attachment_1187" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] PR Newswire's 2013 Best Practices Forum Singapore panel discussion on “Content: The Marketing Currency in the Digital World.”[/caption] Speakers included our Global CEO Ninan Chacko and Global Director of Emerging Media Michael Pranikoff. Not only that, but we were pleased to also have Peter Bakker, Commercial Director Asia at King Content and Zaheer Nooruddin, VP Digital, WE Studio D Asia-Pacific Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. The guests were an eclectic mix of senior marketers and PR from different industries attending the seminars in anticipation to hear our speakers give their perspective on this topic. Going back to the words “relevant” and “valuable”, both Michael and Ninan brought them up at the event and told us there should be “value exchange” between brand and customer, meaning that the brand and customer must have something of value to exchange with each other. From the content marketing perspective, the audience’s currency (value) is their “contact details”, and the brand’s currency (value) is their “content”. So it is important that the brand delivers relevant and useful content that has value, in order for the customers to trust the brand and willingly identify themselves and engage in further interactions. Not only is it important to provide valuable content to reach customers, but in these three seminars, we looked at how the media landscape has changed, why businesses need a content strategy and how content is the driving force to a business’s objectives. At the panel discussion in Singapore, our guest speakers named a few brands that have produced good content marketing. Ninan named Red Bull as a fantastic, prolific publisher of content and has done very well in terms of highlighting the narrative and reputation that the brand offers. He also mentioned Oreo as a company that takes advantage of real-time marketing based on consumers’ feedback on summer trends. Some other examples discussed included Lego and from the B2B world AMEX, IBM and PWC. What’s more, we discussed the importance of integrated marketing with an emphasis on mobile and multimedia, and tackled a topic that is always on the mind of businesses: measurement. Watch the video below on some key areas that the speakers shared at the events To conclude, it is nothing new when I say content has always been about producing high value, engaging and relevant content, however if we’re not changing how and where you are delivering your messages today and not have a content strategy in place, then you are going to create problems for your audiences to be able to view and discover your content. To learn more about what was discussed and shared at the Best Practices Forum 2013, we’ve created an Insight Report on Content: The Marketing Currency in the Digital World – Collective Insights from PR Newswire 2013 Best Practices Forum in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. To download, click here. Joanna Yip is the Marketing Communications Manager for PR Newswire.
Forbes: PR Newswire ranked #1
The below article was originally published by Bradley Smith on the "Building Shareholder Confidence" blog on 28 Aug 2013. Even if you're not working for a public company, Forbes's article will tell you why "press releases still matter, but not for the reasons you think" from a public relations & SEO perspective. ------------ Wow. It’s always nice to be surprised with good news – and I certainly consider the Forbes article “The Press Release Revolution: A Wire Services Comparison Test” as “good news.” [caption id="attachment_1152" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Forbes: The Press Release Revolution: A Wire Services Comparison Test[/caption] From Forbes: “Now for our overall results for the wire services who successfully achieve WSJ postings. A drumroll, please: First Place: For number of pickups, PR Newswire – at the time of this writing, they had 37,000 WSJ results. (Note: These results are for WSJ pickups only. Other sources have noted that on the whole, PR Newswire and Business Wire are roughly equal for overall press posting results.) Second Place: Business Wire, with 27,400 results. Third Place: Marketwired, with 14,100 results. Fourth Place: Globe Newswire, with 7,400 results. Fifth Place: Thomson Reuters, with 2,090 results.” For investor relations, the article brought up a very important reminder regarding news distribution to major financial portals – and for us, the discussion is in context to “web disclosure” (which is the practice of sending a truncated news release or even NO release.) Public company newsflow is ticker database driven. If you are practicing pure web disclosure and only posting news to your IR website, you are not getting into the stream. As you will read here, only one-third of investors receive news directly (web disclosure) from the company. If you need to truncated your news from a full-text releases (…mostly earnings), AOK, but I would suggest speaking with your account representative too. Perhaps you are not “strategically shopping” for services correctly. Many thanks to the authors of the Forbes article and their research. Have a great day. Author Bradley Smith is the Director of Marketing, Investor Relations & Compliance Solutions for PR Newswire.
The Changing Media Landscape and Why Content-Marketing Matters
I must confess that nowadays it is a rare event indeed should I pick up a printed magazine or newspaper. Everything is online and easily accessible via a mobile phone or tablet, and these occupy enough space in my handbag that I do not even want to pack an additional lipstick, not to mention anything bigger than that! There is one occasion though when I usually have one or more items of reading material with me, and that is when I travel. Because I do not have a connection on the flight and all electronic devices must be off during the first and last 10-20 minutes of the journey, this gives me a good excuse to buy the latest paper magazine and newspaper hot from the shelf, and I usually get the local editions which always have something different from the ones I get back home (or so I thought). I’m sure that this is the case for a lot of the people around us. So much has changed over the years in technology and the media, and everything in between, PR Newswire has changed in many ways too. We have great initiatives to keep our business ahead of time, but what goes on in the minds of the journalists, business communications professionals and the public will shape our business in the years to come. [caption id="attachment_1119" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Campaign Asia interviewed Ninan Chacko from PR Newswire and discussed how search, social and mobile transcend paid, earned and owned media[/caption] Traditionally we have transmitted news to journalists and media organizations via the wire, and they were the only key news source for the general public. Now, with aggressive media startups, booming social media platforms and an increasing number of citizen journalists, the way we find, consume and spread news has changed. Bloggers, industry-leaders, business communicators (public relations and marketing professionals) and the general public are all publishing and curating content. How could we survive if we only target journalists and traditional media outlets in this changing media landscape, and most importantly, how could we fulfill the mission we promised our clients – to spread their news far and wide? Our Global CEO, Ninan Chacko, was interviewed by Campaign Asia in Singapore last week. This is one of the key trade magazines covering the region’s marketing-communications industry, and the discussions covered how search, social and mobile transcend paid, earned and owned media. They also discussed how our company, a 60-year old business, transformed from a content supplier for news organizations to a content-marketing platform. The expansion of our influencer database (including but not limited to journalists) and online syndication network as future goals was also outlined by our CEO. You can read more on his visions and plans to serve the corporate communications and marketing community in Asia, and on how we adapt to the heterogeneous market in the region by clicking the image above, or click here. Sarah Tam is the Regional Marketing Director for PR Newswire. Follow her on Twitter at @sarah_tam.
How Effective Is Video For Your Business? Contribute to our regional survey and get priority access to the report
How important is video for your organization? How do you share video content on social and mobile channels? In today’s digital world, there are so many ways for a business to communicate a message to their audience. Video is proving to be one of the most effective online marketing tools for businesses, not only for creating brand awareness but for driving engagement which leads to sales. Our own research shows a 77% increase in engagement if video and multimedia are embedded in a press release. Internet users are not only looking at search engines such as Google to find information online, but they are turning to YouTube too, which became the world’s second largest search engine in recent years. Take a look at this powerful video which highlights the key facts and benefits of video and the impact of YouTube: In Asia, China and India are increasingly consuming more video in the last few years. According to comScore, online video consumption in India has doubled in the past two years to 3.7 billion videos per month due to a dramatic growth of online video viewers and consumption with over 137 million internet users currently. And in China, a report showed in Marketingmag.com.au that 95% of metro Chinese online adults are watching videos on a computer at least monthly, compared with 49% in the US. I too consume a lot of video; not only for entertainment, but for useful content and we see a lot of internet users also spending a large percentage of their time using video too. With such a big growth of video consumption around the world and even more so in China, more and more companies are catching on that online video plays an important role in growing their business. Are you one of them? Here at PR Newswire, we produced close to 1,000 webcasts for communicators in Asia. We stream videos real-time, host live virtual events, connecting thousands of audiences with video worldwide. We want to further understand how video is utilized by marketing professionals in Asia, and connect this with the findings on video consumption. That’s why we are running a video marketing survey in the region. Share your thoughts on the subject and how it has impacted your business. If you are based in Asia and look after marketing or communications activities for your organization, we want your response. Take the PR Newswire Video Marketing Survey and get a free copy of the results. Joanna Yip is the Marketing Communications Manager for PR Newswire.
Every Company is a Media Company
Any company can become a media company, and any individual can become a publisher. In an era where there are abundant channels and tools to create, publish, distribute and re-use content, we as individuals are no doubt part of the reason why brands and businesses are pushed to publish media-quality content to engage us. We consume content not only from traditional media, but also from businesses and people. Every company is catching up with (or even better, embracing) digital channels, fueling online avenues with branded content, trying to maximize their reach and fighting for the diminishing attention span of their audience. Brands are publishing content as would media companies. They create and publish company news, commentaries, articles, infographics, whitepapers and researches. Some even interview thought-leaders in their fields and have a calendar for content publishing. This is nothing new, actually. Brands have been doing that for a long time. Look at this great infographics that provides a brief history of content marketing. Content marketing became the latest trend again because of the increasing number of digital channels. It’s social media, it’s mobile devices, it’s search engines that helped content travel and encouraged real-time engagement whenever sharing and commenting are possible. As the marketer for PR Newswire, I am also trying to engage our audience with content, like this piece of blog post you’re reading. Yet the important question for me and many marketers and communications practitioners is how to improve our content and turn our PR & Marketing teams into a mini-media company within the organization. And translate these attention and interest into revenue for the business. Last week, our Vice President, Commercial Operations (Asia Pacific) Dan Ye, spoke at “Marketing Insights”, an event organized by Marketing Interactive magazine and shared his insight on the "New Ecosystem of Content". We pioneered the commercial news distribution industry 59 years ago and distributed an average of 400,000 plus pieces of content each year for over 60,000 customers across the globe. With the rise of digital channels, we see more and more companies produce high-quality content, pushing the boundaries of traditional media and creating opportunities and challenges for modern business communicators. Watch the video below to hear why “every company is a media company.” Dan highlighted the convergence across paid, owned and earned media, and how the lines between them are blurred. He also talked about content as an opportunity for businesses to engage in conversations, which now happens across all kinds of media. Yet the opportunity is only valid if businesses are sharing valuable high-quality content, and that they have to have a strategy to meet their ultimate business goal. He ended the presentation with 3 key takeaways: 1. Content needs to work together as part of a larger strategy in order to deliver business goals. 2. A steady stream of high-quality content keeps conversations going and growing. 3. The distribution and syndication of your content enable discovery and pull new leads into your sales funnel. Sarah Tam is the Regional Marketing Director for PR Newswire. Follow her on Twitter at @sarah_tam.
Use QR Codes to Bolster the Effectiveness of Your Release
Going the safe route with your press releases does little to separate your release from the countless thousands of others going out each day. The proven, safe way lacks innovation, while shaking things up a bit by including QR codes in marketing materials can reap massive benefits. While you don’t have to create the world’s largest QR code, you can still effectively utilize one by plugging it into a press release. Invented a bit before their time, QR codes didn’t make much of an impact at first, but they are now being better utilized with the ever-increasing number of smartphone users around the world. According to one estimate, there are now over one billion smartphone users worldwide, with 415 million smartphone users being located in China. Over half of US mobile customers are smartphone users too, meaning that there are plenty of people with QR scanners who may decide to scan your QR code! To Scan or Not to Scan What makes someone expend the energy required to take out their smartphone and scan a QR code? Everyone has seen QR codes, but those that aren’t properly presented end up being ignored. This is one of the drawbacks of QR codes; you need to be very precise about how you employ them, otherwise there will be little-to-no interest from the average Joe. To avoid this, companies need to remember two things: Provide a reason for readers to scan the code Eschew generic pages and have the QR code link to something exclusive. No one will bother scanning a QR code if it’s just going to take them to a company’s home page. The correct approach is to have the QR code link to a special deal that those who fail to scan the code are not able to find. An extra 10% discount off of a popular, high-priced product would be more than enough motivation for many readers, while a free napkin with your cheeseburger won’t. Cater your company’s webpage to mobile users Nothing ruins things more than linking to a webpage for PCs as opposed to mobile phones. It’s not very fun trying to navigate around a webpage that seems as big as the Sahara when all someone wants to do is read a few sentences. Therefore, it is essential that the webpage that a QR code links to is optimized for mobile phones. Link to Wechat WeChat boasts 300 million users in China and 70 million users abroad; the program also has a large corporate presence, with many companies, including PRNewswire, setting up WeChat accounts. Linking to these accounts via QR codes allows users who wish to keep abreast of the latest news regarding the company to follow them on WeChat -- a service that most of its users use every day. Which brings us to… Analyze, Don’t Just Theorize The effectiveness of QR codes can be measured quite precisely due to analytics programs like Google Analytics and Google Urchin. The latter was discontinued in 2012, but the former will be going strong for quite some time. For the sake of keeping this short, let’s look at just some of what Google Analytics can tell you about how well your QR code is performing. Bounce Rate Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people who access your website via an outside channel such as a QR code, search engine or other source and leave after viewing just one page. This metric allows for adjustments to be made to your website and also the hook in your press release so that you can better draw in your target market. Unique Visitors Some people visit a website every day, multiple times a day, inflating visitor numbers. I may visit Yahoo! Sports 100 times a year, but in the end I am just one unique – albeit very loyal – user. I might also scan a QR code 3 or 4 times due to being busy with something else. Unique visitors allow you to see how many actual visitors you have so that you can gain a better insight into the appeal of your website. Time on Site Time on site is an important barometer of how locked in your content is to those that you are targeting. A low time-on-site average from your QR code visitors means that you need to enhance your content, whether that means connecting your press release to your site’s message better or doing a bit of digital slash and burn. Traffic Source Comparing where all your traffic comes from is a way to analyze your marketing method in depth. If your QR code-enhanced press release is hitting the correct media points and communicating a solid message, it will be the source of a significant percentage of your site traffic directly following its distribution. This metric can be utilized to compare QR code effectiveness with that of search engine ads and other marketing methods. Popular Content Knowing where your traffic is coming from and how long each visitor spends on the site is just part of the equation. Knowing which pages are more popular gives you a base to work from when beginning to strengthen your site’s weaker sections. Marketing without the Huge Overhead QR codes are cheap and can be effective when used correctly. There is no need to take on a ton of risk when choosing what to include in your marketing campaign. In 1976, several airlines actually decided to use free drinks as a way to attract more business. This resulted in full, probably very interesting and invigorating flights, but also hurt the companies’ bottom lines as the party in the sky carried with it an exorbitant cost negating any additional revenue. The time and money that one must invest to create a QR code is negligible. You won’t have to risk a flight full of inebriated passengers to add this tool to your marketing arsenal. Bridging the divide between print and digital requires a connector and in this way QR Codes can be the perfect “bridge” to more revenues and new marketing realms.
To Live and Die in Beijing: The China Expat Narrative
There’s an interesting debate going on among the expat community in China these days. The conversation is focused on the merits of living in this country and its ebb and flow is a great example of how people in small communities (there are only about 250,000 expats in Beijing & Shanghai combined) speak with themselves and how trends evolve and change as a result. Back in August of 2012, a longtime expat with a great story (and friends in the media) opined in an essay, “You’ll Never be Chinese,” that he was leaving China because he was fed up with, among other things, economic roadblocks put up in front of foreigners here. It bounced around the expat social media sphere and got mentioned by Western media outlets (it even got some traction in Chinese media), causing quite a stir. More blog posts popped up. It seemed as if somebody had spoken about a dirty little secret, but now that word was out others felt safe coming forward with their reasons for leaving. Over on Lost Laowai, writer GabrielC titled his piece, “On the ‘Exodus of Expats from China’” and in it he lamented that people seemed to be giving up on China as a place where they could achieve their goals, even though it still has many great qualities: It also seems to me that many long-term expats in China become so frustrated with their surroundings that they are no longer able to recognize some of the perks of life in China, for instance the fact that Chinese cities remain eminently safe to walk around in late at night, in contrast to many other cities around the world. Then, in January, the Air Quality Index in Beijing, which measures the amount of pollutants in the air, reached well over 700. Some surrounding areas even reported measurements of near 1,000. For reference, anything over 100 is deemed as “unhealthy”, while anything over 25 is seen as unacceptable by the World Health Organization. Almost overnight the exiting expats seemed vindicated. It felt as if more and more people were tweeting and blogging about how the record pollution levels of the winter were the final straw. They were packing their things and heading for greener (or less gray) pastures. The story had new legs and the media ate it up. Instead of covering a regular cycle of exit lambasts, there was now a narrative that readers around the world could relate to: It’s dirtier in China than in the (developed) West, so all of the people who have been flocking there to take advantage of the endless economic opportunities there were now heading home. The problem with this narrative? It wasn’t true. Not by a long shot. Sure, people were leaving, but more still were coming. In droves. Shanghai’s expat population alone jumped 6.7% in 2012, just when all of the media hype about people leaving was gaining steam. If anything, being able to call yourself a “China Expat” was becoming less of a special thing, as Tea Leaf Nation lamented in February: China’s expat population has grown every year since 2000… [Expats] are less and less a novelty. Once upon a time, they were asked to pose for photos wherever they went. While this is still true in most areas, they are now hardly given a second glance in the trendier areas of big cities. With more of them around, expats have been demystified – and more opportunities for interaction have perhaps led local Chinese to a startling revelation: that many foreigners are poor students, or are struggling to make ends meet, while China’s middle class is only growing more and more wealthy. More and more, the voice of people who were choosing to live in China - and loving it - started to come to the fore. There were backlash blog posts and podcasts. And with stagnating employment numbers in the West, the media could not ignore the draw of an economy that is growing at rates around 7% and still needs foreign help. The most effecting arguments, however, have come from some innovative teams who have put their words into action and produced some very memorable media to try to explain their decision to stay. In March there was this tribute to Xi’an: And just this week a new video went viral among expats. Set to Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind” it is a touching love letter to Beijing: The discussion has come full circle. Within the space of a single year the story has gone from one of expats leaving in droves, to more than ever coming and loving it here. This blogger will keep reading intently to see what twists and turns the narrative has in store next.
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.
13 Tactics for PR to Influence SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is gaining increasing importance for PR professionals and those who seek to maximize a brand’s online visibility. Besides having a SEO-friendly website structure, creating and populating quality online content – what we practice in PR, is also critical for SEO. Based on Cheryl Conner’s The 15 Steps To 'Power SEO' (PR Is The New SEO) on Forbes.com, we created this inforgraphic to provide a quick step-by-step guide on some of the useful tactics you could practice to power SEO. [caption id="attachment_970" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Click on the infographic to view a high-definition PDF version.[/caption]
The Anatomy of a Press Release
Our team came up with a tactical guide for formatting press releases, we created this anatomy of a press release infographic with insights from press release results and search engine optimization professionals. From adding a catchy headline, to incorporating visuals and quotes, this is all explained in the diagram to help you draw readers to your press release. [caption id="attachment_964" align="aligncenter" width="734"] Click on the infographic to view the whole two-page guide.[/caption] Joanna Yip is the Marketing Communications Manager for PR Newswire.
Language Isn’t the Only Barrier
In any business transaction it’s important to do thorough due diligence before signing on the dotted line. And when you’re considering entering the Chinese market there is a LOT of diligence to do. Beyond market research and economic analysis, there’s much more that potential investors or entrepreneurs need to familiarize themselves with to get a real grip on the business potential that China offers… and its dangers. For those considering making the move to China, the amount of information flowing from here to the West can seem like a tsunami. Who should you follow for the best local information? Who are the voices inside this vast, complex country that can shed more light on the situation on the ground more than spreadsheets and earnings reports can? How can you take your knowledge a step further and go beyond simply knowing about events, and start moving towards truly understanding the economy and culture? There are people who have spent the better part of their lives trying to decode the enigma that is Chinese society, and while we won’t pretend to have any magic crystal balls to offer that can lighten the workload required to gain even a rudimentary understanding, we can offer some direction. News The cohort of Western media based in China exploded in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics and it has barely subsided since. Given China’s early (remarkable!) recovery from the global financial crisis that followed those Games and its subsequent meteoric rise onto the world stage, it’s little wonder why. With all of the reporters here there are lots of stories coming out of the country via lots of different news organizations. There are a few of them, however, that stand out not only for their consistent quality, but for their intense focus and dedication to the “China beat”. We think that you won’t go wrong with these sites on your daily “To Read” list. Arguably the standard-bearer of world business news, The Economist’s team in China has vast experience and always presents stories in a global context. This Wall Street Journal site combines the newspaper’s in-depth business coverage with commentary and analysis from a stable of very talented China-based writers with an unmistakably American point of view. A repository of their always insightful China coverage, this section of The Atlantic’s website is a great source for thoughtful writing on issues in China. Their perspective is decidedly Western, but their analysis is balanced. Expats The best translators of a culture are often the people who have already chosen to live there. Complex issues can get simplified by Western media that struggles to explain things to a notoriously short-on-attention audience back home. And while it may seem that everybody has a blog these days, there is a growing stable of dedicated expats who are passionate about not only informing those on the outside of what’s going on within China, but also of making sure that everything is put into proper context. A local blog, this site mixes in news and events out of Beijing with wry commentary on national stories. While deep insight into political or economic issues is scarce, what shows up on this site is a good barometer of what expats and locals are focusing on inside of China. A site with a decidedly more national view than Beijing Cream, it still has its feet planted firmly in Mainland China’s most international city. What shows up here is often the topic du jour in China. There’s more mature observation going on here, but plenty of sarcasm, too. Long-time expat Bill Bishop’s labor of love has morphed from a simple news clipping service for fellow market analysts into THE must-read daily newsletter for China watchers. Browsing through his morning round-up of stories from all over the Western and Chinese internet - coupled with brief, insightful commentary - is a necessary part of many expats’ daily routines. A partner with The Atlantic, Tea Leaf Nation bills itself as an “e-magazine” rather than a blog. Here you can find really insightful opinion on issues that affect China from an inside perspective. Their stable of writers in China and the US makes an effort to focus on the news through then lens of what’s trending on Chinese media - both institutional and social. They’re wonky enough to satisfy the most devoted China hounds, yet light-hearted enough to be accessible to even the most neophyte observers. Sinica (produced by Popup Chinese) is actually a podcast and not a blog, but it’s on the list because legendary Chinese-American rocker Kaiser Kuo is a longtime China hand who has gone from national rock 'n' roll icon to spokesman for Baidu- the country’s answer to Google. His deep experience bridging divides and longtime friendships with many in Western media and academic circles makes his weekly guest list a who’s who of Western thinkers and observers of China. Local Flavor Just how much do you want to know about China? If you’re thinking of doing business here, you really can’t learn enough about the people who call this country home. Alas, this is where the language barrier starts to become a problem, as all of China’s top sites are written in Chinese. But if you’ve got a translation app in your browser and a lot of patience, you can try wading through sites such as Hsu’s Blog, Letters from De Day and Lao Sha. For those who maybe don’t have the time, there is still one more place for you to try: These purveyors of Chinese culture make it their mission to translate the hottest internet memes and most polarizing discussion topics for an English-speaking audience. While this site tends to focus on cultural ephemera and is incredibly light on business news, it is an essential starting point for anybody who wants to learn more about China from the “man on the street” perspective. And it’s endlessly fascinating. Of course the story doesn’t end here. But if you put these sites on your radar you'll be well on your way towards getting a handle on what China is all about.
Be Brief!
If content is king, then a consumer’s attention span is his fickle, cruel mistress. The always entertaining Farhad Manjoo over at Slate recently explored just how much content is actually consumed by visitors to their website every day, and the results are startling. Here are the big highlights of what they found (because we don’t want you leaving before getting to the good stuff): 5% of visitors to a web page will not look at anything other than a headline or photo. 43% of visitors will leave after reading just the headline or when they are required to scroll to get additional content. 64% of readers who engage will only make it halfway through most posts. Most readers consume supplementary media and little more. Some of that sounds very scary to content producers. To make things a little clearer, here’s one of the many graphics that was put together for the analysis by the site’s partner, Chartbeat: The Slate piece is definitely worth a read; it goes into detail about things like social media interaction vs. read-through and when/why links are shared in the first place. Here, though, we’d like to focus on how you can use this information to better generate copy that is more likely to inform and engage with the greatest possible number of readers. Because within this data is the key to creating content that has an impact. 1) Get to the point quickly: Your headline and lead are your first impression. This is where you hook the reader and entice them to keep going. Immediately after that you’ve got to give them a reason to continue sticking around. 2) Include media: In addition to the information generated by Chartbeat for the Slate story, every study that PR Newswire has done has shown that when your content includes media, you get more eyeballs and more engagement. Some kind of infographic is best, but any photo that illustrates your point will do. There is little that is as boring on the web as a screen with nothing but lines of text. 3) Don’t bury the lead: With an expected reader drop-off of 50% after your content’s halfway point, you’ve got to get all of your information out as quickly as possible. Even if you can’t be brief (i.e. if you’ve got a lot of information to convey), get to your point fast. The readers who stick with you will most likely only do so until the halfway point. Use bullet points and graphs right at the top, if possible. You’ll not only inform the maximum number of people that way, but you’ll also increase your chances of keeping them engaged longer. 4) Photos first, video for dessert: Post photos or graphs at the top, but leave video near the end. Readers who might not have otherwise will be more likely to scroll through to the embedded content. And finally... 5) Learn from your past: Enlist the help of a competent analytics company to track who is reading what and for how long. Even basic information can be incredibly helpful. For instance, the people who stay with your content “below the fold” (i.e. they need to scroll or jump to a second page) are much more engaged. This is your target audience, and their size at that point can be used to gauge the overall quality of your content. Great content will always draw readers, but in this day and age you need more than that. The old saying was, “Even the best writers need the editors.” In today’s world it seems that they also need good statistical analysis and UX designers.
How to Optimize your Press Release for Google
Imagine Google as a beautiful girl. You want to win her heart, so you shower her with attention and ply her with gifts in hopes that she will ignore her other suitors and pick you. But things go wrong. You grow obsessed, appearing at her door in the middle of the night with a brain surgeon after she complained earlier of a slight headache, and she ditches you. Instead, she falls for the man who charms her grandmother and wins over her friends. That is how search engine optimization (SEO) used to work with Google, and how things have changed. Previously, getting on page one of the tech giant’s search results involved spamming your press release with countless links and filling it with more keywords than a wannabe socialite namedropping her famous friends. But since 2012, with an update in May 2013, Google has changed its search algorithm to penalize underhanded SEO practices, while rewarding content created “primarily for your users, not search engines.” Helpfully, they provided a list of things that your release should do in order to achieve this: Use natural language Be easy to share Have “compelling and useful content” Be focused on a topic Include images or videos Using natural language Past SEO practices involved stuffing a release with the same keyword over and over again. For example, if you’re selling cars, and you want everyone and Google to know that your cars are the best cars on the market, you would insert cars in every sentence, thinking the search engine would pick up on the word cars and associate your press release about cars with every "cars" search term. This, however, comes across as clunky marketing speak that no one likes, especially not Google. Instead, speak to your audience by writing in the language they use. This includes colloquial terms, synonyms, and even slang, which flows more naturally. Your goal is to write for the man, not the machine. Making it easy to share Chances are that when you enter a search term into Google, social media sites would be the first few results that are spat back at you. And this comes as no surprise, as a survey from McKinsey found that 91 percent of Internet users in China have visited a social media site in the past six months, compared to 67 percent in the U.S. Additionally, the report found social media had “a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in China than for those anywhere else in the world.” If this isn’t a greater incentive to get Renren or Facebook talking about your products or services, you might as well close down already. To drum up social media hype, Google embraces content that would create a “word-of-mouth buzz,” driving readers “to direct other users to it.” As the search engine considers interaction on social media relevant and up-to-date, this increases the chances of your release being ranked higher in search results, which results in more visibility. Creating “compelling and useful content” No one, however, would read your release if it was boring. To get readers onboard, Google recommends creating “compelling and useful content” that appeals to your audience. This includes pandering to their interests, or carving out a niche that is unique to you. Most importantly, you should keep your content fresh. Nothing screams laziness like a post from two years ago. Focus on a topic Some press releases try to cover a wide range of topics in the hopes of reaching to a broad audience. But unless you’re Wikipedia, doing so will cause your message to lose focus and readers along with it. Instead, Google believes organizing your content in a way that “visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends.” And there’s always something called a paragraph. Use it. Include images and videos Your content may be captivating, but nothing brings a release to life like an image or video illustrating it, as research confirms. Having graphics also allows your release to be easily shared on social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Weibo. If all else fails, everyone loves a good cat video. Have relevant anchor text links As important as your audience is to your release, Google needs to be shown some love too. This can be achieved by including relevant anchor texts, or clickable words that appears as links. Unlike the gorging of press releases with links during SEO’s yesteryears, proper and judicious use of anchor texts can help Google determine your content through the links you provide, and rank it in their search results depending on the validity of those links. These anchor texts can be sources, links to more information, or a way to buy whatever you’re selling. However, keep anchor text to a minimum; any more than two and you risk Google’s scorn. Photo by Flickr user Staciaann Photography
China Trends: Go West!
Westerners of a certain age who follow economic trends in China these days could be forgiven if they’ve had 80s synth-pop tunes stuck in their heads of late. While the Chinese government has been promoting the movement of people towards growing cities in the interior instead of the already bulging megalopolises on the east coast, the explicit economic shift in terms of development dollars and infrastructure projects only started to ramp up last year. As a result, this is a region that is just now taking off. Western brands are taking note. As The Economist pointed out recently, luxury brands, long the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to economic trends, are finding that they may be hitting their peaks in the developed eastern cities. It seems that China remains the biggest prize in the luxury industry, but the low-hanging fruit is gone. Luxury firms must now venture beyond the coastal cities where they have made easy fortunes, cultivate new types of customers and market niches, and experiment with new business models. As the big costal - and very international - cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, have gotten saturated with Western brands, the room for growth in those places is shrinking. Out west, however, things are quite different. Chongqing, for example, is the biggest megacity in China’s west, and the numbers coming out if its Liangjiang New Area development zone of late are indicative of the kind of potential that the interior markets have for growth. The 20.4% jump in annual GDP that they reported for 2012 was staggering in its success. Housing is more affordable in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, while wages have been rising, meaning that consumers there tend to have a little more disposable income to spend than many of their eastern compatriots. The government is shifting more and more development dollars to the region; they’re expanding highways and high speed rail lines to accommodate the burgeoning populations there. Consulting firms are getting into the game, as well. Groups like Sichuan Delegations & Internships have started popping up all over the region in an effort to cash in on the need that Western companies have as they explore entering the area. Firms need to think about more than just Beijing and Shanghai when they look at entering the China market. Those may be the easiest cities to land in but they’re not where the most growth is going to be over the next few years. While economic expansion slows in the most developed places, it's in China’s vast interior, where there is still a growing need for more schools hospitals and all other kinds of urban infrastructure, where growth is going to be the most robust. In their recent broad analysis paper, “China’s Great Rebalancing Act”, The Eurasia Group lays our several areas where the government will have to make adjustments in the economy in order to maintain growth. One of these is shifting development attention from the east to the west. Beijing will have little trouble pushing economic activity from the coast to central and western China. That initiative should gain support from local and provincial officials since it will mean additional investments in infrastructure, expanding regional development plans, and adopting investor-friendly regulations. China still has incredible potential no matter where you go, but for those willing to take a chance in western China, there are more opportunities to be had than there are in the east.
Reaching the ‘gold standard’ in public affairs and corporate communications in Asia – an interview with Elizabeth Hernandez
As the second half of the year draws nearer, it is time to review what we have done so far and to reflect on how to utilize the rest of 2013. This is especially true for public affairs and corporate communications professionals, they have to tackling important issues timely without losing sight of the strategic goals such as forming partnerships, strengthening relationships and building trust which takes time. Balancing the two and be able to measure results are common challenges. To succeed in public affairs in this ever-changing business, financial and political environment is not easy, and arguably even more difficult in Asia Pacific which is home to some of the most closed and repressive regimes, not to mention the diverse population and rapid changes in the media landscape here. We have supported the Gold Standard Awards organized by PublicAffairsAsia for some years now. The Awards recognize excellence in corporate communications, stakeholder management, social media innovation and diplomatic engagement. Now in their fifth year, they receive well over 200 entries every year from a wide range of organizations, including corporations, consultancies, state-owned enterprises, government bodies, embassies, NGOs, think tanks, universities, chambers of commerce, trade promotion agencies and members of the government affairs, corporate communications and public affairs industries. We invited Elizabeth Hernandez (VP, Government Relations, Asia Pacific & Japan at Hewlett-Packard, also the Chair of the 2013 Gold Standard Awards) to the PR Newswire studio to talk about what it takes to achieve the 'gold standard' in public affairs and corporate communications, and to share her views on the changes in government and public affairs in recent years in Asia. Watch the interview with Elizabeth, and learn more about the Awards from Craig Hoy (Executive Director at PublicAffairsAsia) in the video below: Highlights from the interview with Elizabeth Hernandez (VP, Government Relations, Asia Pacific & Japan at Hewlett-Packard): Q: With your wealth of experience in government relations and public affairs, has anything changed over the past few years? A: Here in Asia, it has evolved quite a bit in the last 10 years. Before, it was mostly people from outside Asia that came here to practice. Now, you have a lot more homegrown public affairs professionals, people who learn their skills here in Asia, understand the region and are actually from the Asia Pacific area; that is the big difference I think. But also, it’s a matter of where they are positioned in the company; 10 years ago they probably provided more of a support and fire-fighting function. You call on the public affairs professional or the government affairs communicator when there is a crisis. But today, what is happening is there is recognition from companies that this is actually a much more strategic function, that it should be present at the leadership table, and be involved much earlier on in decision-making for the development of company strategy here in Asia. And so I think you will see many more companies investing in this function, and you will also see the role and the stature of the function perhaps being even further enhanced than it has already been in the last 10 years. Q: Technology has influenced the way people and organizations communicate. Has technology make our jobs easier or harder as business communicators? A: I think technology has certainly played a role and I think it’s both. It does make it easier and harder. On the one hand, technology has a way of leveling the playing field so that no single stakeholder has full control of the information today. But at the same time, it also becomes harder for communications or public affairs professionals because you are always on the go, and we have news 24/7 now. There used to be a bit of lead time if something happened, for example, if something happened in the U.S. headquarters of a multinational company, it would take a few days for news to travel across Asia. There is no such lead time anymore, and now you have to be on your toes; further, with social media – everybody has a voice, everybody is contributing to the debate, to the issue, so it is even harder for us as communication professionals or public affairs professionals to cut through all that noise and to really get your message across to the stakeholders you are targeting. Sarah Tam is the Regional Marketing Director for PR Newswire. Follow her on Twitter at @sarah_tam.