Q3 WP Topic Four-Reshaping the Relationship between Brands and Consumers

Reshaping the Relationship between Brands and Consumers Editorial Summary The Chinese Internet population is now the largest in the world with 253 million users and the Community is a major element of the Internet experience. The Community is reshaping and revolutionizing relationships that individuals have with each other as well the relationships they have with institutions such as companies. This white paper, “Reshaping the Relationship between Brands and Consumers,” is Topic 4 of our “The Internet is THE Community” series of reports. In this white paper, we offer a number of case studies of how brands can connect and learn from the Chinese Internet Community. The full “The Internet is THE Community” series of reports can be downloaded here. © 2008 CIC 2

THE POWER OF COMMUNITY: The Internet Community accomplishes what traditional institutions cannot The Netease Model Internet Worker Award (link) is one of the most interesting artifacts of the Internet Community serving as a sort of “Oscars” for service to the community. With netizens voting in an ongoing election, the Internet Community “Subtitle Gangs” are currently in first place, just ahead of the “I ‘HEART’ CHINA” initiative. The “Subtitle Gangs” are competing groups of volunteers which organize themselves online to create Chinese subtitles for popular foreign movies and TV shows. As we wrote about in Topic One, the I ‘HEART’ CHINA initiative inspired Chinese netizens to almost universally place a “heart” icon by their MSN name Subtitle Gangs I ‘HEART’ CHINA to demonstrate their love of China in spring of 2008. • The Internet Community levels the playing field The power of the Internet Community is that it between institutions and individuals removes the need for institutions, like TV studios to accomplish tasks -- like quick turn-around • The Internet Community accomplishes tasks translations -- that could not or would not be which institutions are either ill suited or not accomplished without it. motivated to accomplish © 2008 CIC 3

THE POWER OF THE INTERNET COMMUNITY: IWOM is redefining the brand/consumer relationship The power of the Internet Community levels the playing field between brands and consumers. This means that traditional agencies are no longer a necessity for brands to aggregate and connect with consumers. Brands can directly learn from and connect to targeted, relevant, communicative and empowered consumers by going to the Internet Community. Brands can look to consumers directly for Insight, for Inspiration and for Collaboration. Online Gaming E-Commerce Video RSS Sharing Q&A Customer Review Wiki BBS Internet Consumers Brands Blogs Community BBS Aggregator Social Instant Bookmarks Messaging Photo Micro-blogging Music Life Stream Social Networks Social Media prism inspired by Brian Solis and JESS3, 2008; see full size Chinese Social Media Prism here. © 2008 CIC 4

CONSUMERS AS INSIGHT PROVIDERS Buzz Incidence of Overall Notebook Attributes in Q3, 2007 * Whether brands are listening or not, consumers 32.4% Quote: “4th Centrino Platform, nVIDIA 8400 independent graphic card, all these are are expressing their opinion in massive standard configurations for middle-high end numbers in the Internet Community. For notebooks…For family entertainment users, this notebook is a good choice as it is a middle-end example, in our Q3 2007 “Tuning into Notebook 22.3% price with high-end configuration.” IWOM” white paper, we found that 32.4% of the 411,445 mentions of notebooks on leading BBS communities referenced configuration. 11.0% Digging deeper, we found that mentions of 9.9% 8.7% 7.9% independent graphic cards drove configuration 6.4% buzz, indicating a trend towards consumers using notebooks to replace desktops as home PC’s in order to play games and watch videos. Configuration Price Design & Service & Performance Function Marketing & Appearance Channel Promotion Base: Total number of brand and product posts is 411,445 *Note: Buzz incidence of attribute is the percentage of attribute posts among total brand and product posts. See here for CIC white papers on various categories including notebook computers, automobiles and mobile phones. © 2008 CIC 5

CONSUMERS AS INSPIRATION Sports Athlete Nick Names Nick Name Interpretation 四克拉 Four carat Luis Scola 影帝 Movie king 大姚 Big Yao When passionate sports fans talk about their 姚哥 Big Bro Yao favorite players, they use creative nicknames like “King Ming”（明王）for Yao Ming and “The Yao Ming 明王 King Ming Prince of the Zebras （斑马王子） for 点球皮 Piero for penalty goal Alessandro del Piero. Inspired by this passion, when Chinese local sports apparel brand Anta wanted to create a new line of apparel for its 斑马王子 Prince of the Zebras spokesperson Luis Scola, it looked to his fans’ Alessandro del Piero nickname “4 Carat,” a phonetic play on his name in Chinese. Anta created a 4 Carat logo See here for CIC white which was integrated into a line of 4 Carat papers on various industry shoes, caps and shirts. Similarly, Lining categories including sports. created a line of shoes inspired by the Chinese character “Jiong”(囧). © 2008 CIC 6

CONSUMERS AS COLLABORATORS The Internet Community offers unprecedented opportunity to connect and collaborate with the most informed and most passionate of your consumers. In 2007, when Intel wanted to launch its first Chinese language packaging, it worked with a forum administrator to post a topic on a popular DIY (do it yourself) BBS forum inviting forum members to submit their ideas for a Chinese slogan. Over the course of a month, thousands of quality slogans were posted and awards, including two processors and a watch, were given as gifts to the submissions deemed the most humorous and the most creative. Sample Consumer Submissions 中国盒，世界芯！ link The Chinese package, the world’s core! 中国形酷睿心 link The Chinese style, the Conroe heart. © 2008 CIC 7 See more information about the case, you can refer to Sam’s blog IWOM centered marketing in China

THE INTERNET COMMUNITY: Do they want brands to participate? The Internet Community actively discusses, and even builds community, around brands. But do consumers welcome brands to participate in the community? According to our survey of “efluencers”, the participants on leading communities, the answer is yes. Of course, participation should be done with transparency and respect of community culture. The response to cooperate with brands * Attitude of cooperating Frequency of being contacted with brands 11% 6% Brand Interaction 38% 45% Netizens 49% 55% 89% 51% Ever contacted Positive to by brand cooperate Often Seldom Never Support Cooperative Dislike Base: 315 valid responses © 2008 CIC 8 *Data source: CIC Efluencer survey, 2008 Q3

MAKING SENSE OF THE BUZZ: The L-K-PTM framework As an independent provider of Internet Word of Mouth intelligence, CIC has been using its “Listen-Know- Participate” framework to help brands leverage the power of IWOM and bring value to the Internet Community. CIC services Fortune 500 brands in China by providing a thorough, systematic, objective and strategic understanding of Internet Word of Mouth. Listen听 Know识 Participate融 Topic E-Culture Communication Listen to consumer Know the communities Participate to bring feedback and cultures value and appreciation - Systematically analyze millions - Develop understanding about - Based on IWOM understanding of unsolicited, naturally occurring who they are, where they are, why and insights, participate in the comments about your brand, they talk, what is their language, Internet Community in effective, products, services and industry and what motivates them to innovative and appropriate ways participate… © 2008 CIC 9

THE IWOM MINDSET: Creating an internal/external ecosystem for leveraging IWOM 1. Consider IWOM as a strategy/mindset (not a tactic) • Express your voice (not your message) • Develop platforms, not only campaigns • Hire a dedicated person or team for vision/execution (i.e. IWOM manager) 2. Leverage IWOM strategy across the marketing organization (not siloed, i.e. not only PR tracking) 3. Utilize an execution agency with real understanding of IWOM 4. Utilize trusted, 3rd-Party Research/Consulting for non-biased strategy and measurement © 2008 CIC 10

ABOUT CIC CIC is the leading Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) research and consulting firm in China. Since 2004, CIC has pioneered the concept of Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) that is redefining the relationship between brands and consumers. CIC coined the term Internet Word of Mouth and is the thought leader in utilizing it for strategy planning and application in marketing communications. CIC is committed to both providing objective third party strategic advice to clients and promoting the healthy development of the Internet Community in China. CIC’s research and discussion of IWOM’s impact and best practices can be found on company blogs, IWOM white papers and IWOM watch reports and through its IWOM roundtable events such as IWOM summit and IWOM classroom. CIC offers customized research and consulting service to its stable of retainer clients through its expert IWOM analysts supported by proprietary Chinese language based text mining technology (patent pending), data processing technology and data visualization technology. CIC’s retainer relationships stretch over multiple years with multinational clients from Fortune 500 companies. CIC’s continual development and evolution is driven by a unique, powerful and open mindset and learning culture which at its foundation continually seeks to understand how the Internet, and Internet Word of mouth, is redefining the relationships between brands and consumers. For more information, please visit www.cicdata.com (CIC website), www.seeisee.com (CIC Company blog in Chinese) and www.seeisee.com/sam (CEO's company blog in English). © 2008 CIC 11

OUR BLOGS: www.seeisee.com (Chinese) www.seeisee.com/sam (English) OUR WEBSITE: www.cicdata.com CONTACT US: Thank You info@cicdata.com This report is copyrighted material owned by CIC. Any improper use of this document or its content will be considered a violation of CIC IP copyright and CIC has the right to take legal action. 本研究报告归CIC公司版权所有。任何对本研究报告或报告中任何内容的不当使用都将被视为对CIC知识产权的侵犯，CIC有权诉诸于法律。

Q3 WP Topic Four-Reshaping the Relationship between Brands and Consumers

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