Which tools can you use to reach Chinese as they vengeance shop post COVID?

On the 19th of June 1995, I opened the offices for EastWest Public Relations. I sold my house, quit my job, and moved to Asia to start the agency. I arrived in Singapore on the 14th of June 1995 and opened the office. I spent 12 years there, and then I opened an office in Beijing, China in 2006, and then an office in Bangalore in 2009. In 2019, I moved back to England. It's been an amazing journey over these last 25 years. I've managed to open four offices, so what I want to reflect on today in PR terms is what I've learned from managing my own public relations and starting my own companies in those different countries as well as managing the PR for over 500 clients. One of the recurring themes about international public relations which I think is valuable is that it's not just about the international nature; it's also about just communicating to different audience types. When I was in Asia, I lived in countries that are somewhat religious and non-secular. The first point that comes to mind is the importance of cultural sensitivities. Living in Southeast Asia, we are surrounded, in Singapore, by Muslim countries like Indonesia, for example. The Philippines has a predominantly Catholic population. Malaysia is also Muslim. We had to be aware of cultural sensitivities around, for example, shaking hands. We didn't shake hands; we would touch our heart when we met people. The relationship between men and women was very different between foreigners, or "farang," as we were called, and between the locals, it was also different. Things have changed significantly since 1995, but the need to respect the local cultures, the local dialect, and the local religious mores is still very much in play. This is also true while I was working in the Middle East. For example, when I was working on a product in Indonesia, it was the halal products and the halal meant that they were able to be consumed by Muslim followers. This was a key point of difference, since we had this cosmetic product which was developed specifically for Indonesian and Malaysian women because of the ingredient mix. A second theme is the languages and the variations between languages. I mentioned Singapore; that country had decided after the race riots of the 1960s to make English as a national language under Lee Kuan Yew. I mentioned setting up an office in Bangalore. That was a very interesting case, because actually, in the Indian market, when it comes to things like banking, they adopt English, but when it comes to public relations and other activities, there are 121 recognized languages and some 1500 different dialects. Hindi is the main language with over 500 million speakers, but if one is working in southern India, you may need a different language compared to if you're working up in the north or to the west of India. What we would find when we're doing press relations is you would need very much to have regional and local teams, not just for the practicalities but for the translation into the different dialects. One of the nicest ways perhaps of looking at the difference in international variations is on Mother's Day and holidays. Now often, companies will use holidays as platforms for activities. Mother's Day actually doesn't happen on the same day around the world at all. Mother's Day in Norway is celebrated on the second Sunday of February. In Libya, it's March the 21st. In the UK, it's the fourth Sunday of Lent, which means that it changes every year, which is a great excuse for getting it wrong. Sunday was the second day in May, so fully a month after the UK. Indonesian Mother's Day is on the 22nd of December, so each country has got its own Mother's Day. Whilst we think about our own countries and our own cultures, when we're launching public relations campaigns even across our own markets, if you think about the UK and the number of dialects that we've got and even the languages like Welsh, for example, one language does not necessarily fit all. Certainly, that applies to humor as well, but also possibly to anything with a religious implication, etc. What I have been thinking about now is how we have opportunities as companies to market ourselves internationally. Thanks to technology, we have the ability to market to overseas clients. At the same time, logistics has become global, and now we can buy things on Amazon, or we can have things shipped from all over the world to China through Taobao. We've got global sourcing, and that means that there's an opportunity but also a challenge as business owners to be both consistent globally or nationally and to respect local variations. Finally, I'd like to just highlight one that I like, which is that in the West, we have politicians who have grey hair and we think that that means wisdom. But in China, we have politicians who dye their hair so that they look young. Here's a classic example of how two different cultures approach the same class of people but with different values. I thought that it might be an interesting opportunity to share with you some insights about the Chinese market. And to do that, I asked a very special young man called Charles Young in our Beijing office to share his insights on the Chinese media scene. Charles says that media is very important `in China.

traditional and social media. Some consider traditional media to be somewhat out of fashion, but Charles still considers it to be an important news resource. Examples of this type of media are TV, brokers, newspapers, and magazines. Basically, these are TV- or paper-based media. Within about 8-10 years of development, the popularity of social media in China has been growing and it continues to grow. According to the 45th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China released by China Internet Network Information Center or CNNIC, in March 2020, the number of Chinese internet users has reached 940 million with an internet penetration rate of 64.5%, and the number of mobile internet users as reached almost 900 million with the proportion of internet users reaching 99.3%. Charles says that all the companies in China are using social media to get themselves noticed. It is said that they have five categories. WeChat is the most important. WeChat serves multiple functions when it comes to social media. There are subscription accounts, service accounts, enterprise accounts, and mini-programs. There are also moments and advertisement on WeChat. Almost all the companies in China and companies that want to enter China market have an official account with verification. WeChat is the first step in social media, and it is a very important one. Next is microblog profile from cnet.com. Charles says it's somehow like Twitter (which they don't have in China). A microblog serves as a window into the company and as a search engine. In China, there's no Google. There, they have Baidu, they have 360, and they have Sogou. These are top three search engines in China on which advertising, search engine management (such as keyword speed), and search engine optimization or SEO can be done. The last two categories have reached the fastest speed of growth in social media. They include short videos and live streaming. For short videos, there is Tiktok while Kuaishou for live streaming. Theese always come with e-businesses for online shopping, for example, JD, Taobao, and Pinduoduo. Because of the coronavirus, many enterprises found a new way of selling products which is by live streaming. It's a convenient method as there's no need to pay a rental fee, there's no need to decorate a physical store. According to Charles, all you need are the presenter and the product. This has prompted may celebrities such as movie stars, singers, and actors to do live streams to help promote products for enterprises. It's not only going into China that is the opportunity for companies around the world; it's also the Chinese coming out of China. There are a growing number of Chinese companies that are looking for direct investment overseas. They'd be partnering with companies at all stages of the of the supply Chain, and it's also the tens of millions of Chinese that are going overseas now, well, not now because of COVID-19. The growing trend, especially in ASEAN, and increasingly in Europe, has been the growth of the middle-class Chinese tourists. The application that they are looking at is Dazhong Dianping which basically means "public comments." It's a bit like TripAdvisor for the Chinese. It has four and a half million merchants and 310 million monthly active users. As Charles was saying, the number of people on the internet and in China is phenomenal. Remember, there are 1.4 billion people there. The other key statistic about China, as Charles mentioned, is the use of mobile phones. With over 900 million mobile phone devices out there and with mobile apps that are geography- or location-specific, being sensitive to the opportunity arising from the mobile traveller is now more and more important. Dianping enables you to basically publish everything about your company in Chinese. This can be especially for things like restaurants, hotels, sports and activities, leisure centers, obviously shopping for tourism, and so on. What's interesting about Dianping is you can start an account from overseas or companies like ours, EastWest, can help a client to set up an account and to populate it with video and all the things that one would expect to have for a consumer review site. Dianping was purchased in 2014 by Tencent, and in China, the three big companies are Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. They call them the BAT. Tencent bought Dianping because what they've enabled you to do is to post reviews on your WeChat and on your Dianping and have them go back and forth. Many companies are using WeChat for commerce, because it is an integrated communication platform where people are sharing videos, photographs, either one-to-one or one-to-many in groups. Aside from that, they also have mini-programs which are being used for shopping and for applications like food delivery, package delivery, etc. Another great feature of Tencent's WeChat is that it offers payment as well. So from a PR point of view, what's amazing about Dianping integrated with WeChat is that really, you're getting your consumer, if it's an outbound traveller, all the way from their messaging and their sharing and their purchasing, and then also placing their reviews and sharing those reviews in real time. This is a platform being used very heavily in the Middle East by the Tourism Board of Dubai. They're getting Chinese tourists to post pictures of themselves and share those back home so that it would encourage other tourists come to the Middle East. If you have a business that is going to be attracting people or companies from overseas, it's important then to think about the cultural sensitivities, the language sensitivities, the holiday sensitivities, the timing, if you like, and, of course, issues like currency, and most importantly, you must consider the platform. The Holy Trinity here of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter don't translate in many markets at the world, so we have to also look at adopting different platforms, and those platforms are not only essential for going outbound, but also for attracting the inbound audience. How do we address this complexity as entrepreneurs and business owners? I think that the answer lies in simplicity. I talk in our SPEAK|pr program about the need to Storify, to Personalize, to Engage, to Amplify, and to Know. Companies like Apple and Nike do, in my view, some of the best work here. They keep the brand essence simple and at the same time allow the marketing to take place in-country. What you'll see is the brand essence is the same, but it'll be Chinese. For example, Chinese consumers, Chinese messaging, Chinese holidays that are all the key parts of the message. It's not a localization of a Western message into an Asian market. I think the other thing that one has to do is to ensure that the message is simple too. In our press release recently, I wrote that we are everywhere virtually, which in English seemed to make sense and be nice. But for the team in China, when translating that, there are a number of different options that they could take. So as we build complexity into our message, we need to remember that the opportunity for miscommunication then becomes magnified. This bring us all the way back to Wiio's law, which I've previously talked about. Simplicity really is the key. I'd like to leave you with a thought when you're dealing with public relations. A man once said that if you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head, but if you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. These were words spoken by Nelson Mandela. As we take his words and we think about public relations, the messaging that we have for our clients, for our staff, and for our partners, we must communicate in a language that they understand, but also in a language that goes straight to their heart.