Nike: write your headline

As the World Cup fever continues, Nike has made sure to familiarize everyone with its Ad “write the future.” And now Nike takes a step further to introduce an interactive activity “write your headline.” The idea is for football fans to, via Facebook, Twitter, and other websites, write a 55-character headline for one of the best 50 football players. Nike will choose 100 headlines in random and display them on the top of one of the tallest building in Johannesburg through the “world’s largest LED installation ever.” The lucky fans will receive a video replica of what was projected as a gift.

Nike always seems to be a step ahead in breaking out new ideas, publicizing itself, and putting a twist on current trends. Its “interaction” technique for reaching online users both fosters creativity from its target audience without much effort and provokes enthusiasm from potential and existing costumers.

LePhone brand new AD

The Lenovo version of the iPhone – LePhone, has arrived with a new TV commercial. It attempts to depict a minimalist message, just like the “Apple-New Soul“  Ad, which conveys a powerful message through simple visuals and a catchy tune. However, after watching the LePhone commercial, I saw nothing memorable, with poorly designed visuals, the only attraction was the background music by “mainland Jay Chou” – Xu Song, but honestly, there is nothing special to it.

This failed commercial only makes LePhone look like a shanzhai product. So now, despite the quality of the product, people will only think of  Lephone as a shanzhai product.

Jack, a former English teacher fondly nicknamed “ET” by his employees after the Spielberg character, started Alibaba.com in his hometown Hangzhou in 1999 with a team of 18 founders. Since then Alibaba has grown to become the world’s largest E-commerce Company and Alibaba.com now houses the world’s largest business-to-business marketplace for both global and Chinese domestic trade. Susie explains that Jack chose Hangzhou because of its closeness to small and medium size cities and the fact that Zhejiang province is especially active in export business.

Susie wasn’t the only employee I met that was beaming with Alibaba pride. Even though the company Starbucks is closed on Saturdays, many employees were still hard at work. Inside, offices are equipped with large drums to communally celebrate workers’ successful deals and keep the office energy high. Chinese medicine stations and jump ropes were abundant as were mirrors on desks, which call center employees use to make sure that they are smiling and giving off friendly vibes to clients. Alibaba works to provide real home for its employees; Alibaba couples and families are common and even encouraged by company leadership.





As I walked past the naked man statue for the second time—this time with the rear view, I started thinking about ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics.’ I learned that Alibaba currently provides the government with free CPI (consumer price index) data from smaller regions. Before Alibaba, it took a very long time for local heads to get back to Beijing with this information. I thought about Google and EBay’s Sino misadventures. Despite investing enormous amounts of money and hiring local Chinese talent, no major American Internet company has been able to find footing in the Chinese market. Alibaba and other successful Chinese Internet companies have all realized that on some level they must cooperate and work with the government. Maybe it’s my American Cowboy roots but from my perspective in enovate’s one-room office, working with the government seems about as far from ‘start-up’ as you get. It will be harder for Alibaba and other companies as they get bigger to retain the independent innovative spirit of a young company as their guanxi with the big man develops.

World Cup Doctor's Note

Speaking as someone who has played with and against Chinese football players, I know that’s its not skill or knowledge of the game that they lack (although they can be prone to the odd bit of petulance). However, the expectation that China should have a national team, inline with the rapid growth of their economy and overall size of their population, is an argument that is shortsighted.

Rowan Simmons is a long serving British expatriate in China who has dedicated himself to building a culture for football to thrive in China. In his book Bamboo Goalposts he reiterates the idea that the sport must be built from the bottom up. This means, establishing youth leagues and the amateur game which all in turn feed into professional development and at the top of this, a world class National team. I agree with him to a point but this is all based on a very Euro-centric view.





Building a passion for playing football should be first and foremost. Why? This desire to play is something that is in the very roots of most European and South American cultures; the youth in these countries are seemingly born into worlds where football is life and life is football. In a Euro-centric football pyramid structure, where youth football is at the bottom, leading up to development leagues, and finally the professional level, there is no need to build any awareness or instill passion in the youth. It already exists. However in China, this step is actually the first step needed to build a Chinese youth football army. And where does this start? Passionate kids.

In our research we’ve met kids who are passionate about so many things and these passions become all encompassing, even life changing. It can be the reason people move to new cities, meet their husband or wife and start families. When you have people who often strive to dedicate their lives to something; this is when it transcends beyond being a hobby or pastime. Football can be one of these passions。

We talked about photography as a gateway hobby, but is there footballing equivalent? Five-a-side football and in particular its South American counterpart, futsal, has established itself as it’s own sporting entity in Asian countries such as Japan in the past decade.





Futsal, is a smaller, faster and more skill filled mutation of football. The game is played with 5 instead of 11 and the ball is slightly heavier and smaller, to emphasize close control and fast-passing as opposed to long high lobs from end to end. Futsal has its origins in the South American streets but as is often the case with passionate Japanese hobbyist, they have reappropriated and repackaged this activity for more efficient and wholesome consumption. Rooftop futsal stadiums with late night schedules better cater to drab urban environments and have more flexible opening hours for those with unrelenting work schedules.

Furthermore, brands such as Nike have tried to capture the peripheral lifestyle elements of this offshoot sport, giving the sport a more cool street element. Rounding out these lifestyle elements is a further way to help build a sense of culture and identity around the activity and helps ensure more long term commitment. It serves as an initial draw for those maybe put off by more traditional notions of the sport.





Despite very little publicity, China’s national futsal team has already qualified for 3 FIFA world tournaments and the official futsal online community has over 6000 members. The basis for growth is there. This is where brands can do something to really invest and help build a football culture. If they can help bring attention to these fostering activities and sow the seeds to help turn these hobbies into full blown passions then I fully expect football to blossom.

We recently also mentioned how Chinese parents are slowly starting to see merit in letting their children follow their passions to find success. Football player could be one of these careers.

I have faith in Chinese football, now if only brands and the rest of China would.

Many young Chinese were previously unaware of the X Games and the sports involved. Compared to music festivals and other events geared toward young people, the X Games is a very new concept for most Chinese youth.  We noticed a large portion of the attendees were there for the first time, and had never before seen such a massive aggregation of international athletes and musicians all working together.  Many of them, while amazed by the impressive skill and daring of the athletes, were far too nervous, and understandably so, to attempt these sports themselves.  Many people were content to wait in line for up to half an hour to play basketball, something they could do any day of the week, than watch some of the best athletes in the world do ridiculously mind-boggling things.

Furthering the ignorance was the organizers’ failure to successfully market the event.  Even the scalpers had no idea what was going on!  The “Huang Niu” (ticket scalpers) were selling tickets at less than 10% of their face value outside the venue.  Perhaps they thought it was the only way to convince potential attendees to buy them.

Showing a Chao Identity

Since extreme sports is part of the Chinese youth chao (hip, trendy) culture, going to the X Games is a good way of demonstrating how chao one can be, even though one may not be very knowledgeable about any of the activities.  The X Games provide a great opportunity for young Chinese to take pictures of themselves and your friends, all wearing their trendiest gear at a cool sporty event, and later post them Renren, Kaixin, Weibo, and various other blogs, so everyone can see how chao they are.

There were also plenty of meinu (beautiful girls) to be found at the Games, as it can be at most any promotional event geared toward a primarily male audience.  Kia car models, Pony show girls and Mountain Dew girls definitely were a highlight for the male audience.  Observe how Nero tweeted his picture (below) with one of the Kia car models.

Brand Presence

All the brands’ advertising booths shared a black background, but beyond that, they were free to customize.  Mountain Dew, for example, earned lot of traffic with their ball game.

Pony was one of the busiest booths because of their basketball machine as well as their free product give-aways.

Over the past 3 months, core members of the enovate insights team were immersed in a research project investigating the RC Hobby community in Shanghai. This community is a tight-knit group of passionate tinkerers and adventure-seeking garage dwellers spanning all ages and demographics. In our research findings, we noticed a key pattern across most high-level RC Hobby enthusiasts: a strong passion for all things photography.

It’s common to conjure images of the stereotypical Chinese man, traveling with his trusty Canon strapped around his neck, carefully directing his family to the precise spot for the perfect picture. We’re not here to erase that image (as any tourist destination in China upholds this). However, after analyzing findings pertaining to this extremely niche category of RC Hobbies, the parallel affection for photography leads us to another question: What factors enable photography to act as a “gateway hobby”? And what exactly is a “gateway hobby”?

A gateway hobby is simple to understand. Interest in one particular hobby (i.e. Photography), ultimately leads to a more passionate and fulfilling interest (i.e. RC Hobbies). So why is photography such a strong protagonist in developing further and more defined personal interests? Let’s examine further.

1. Photography has sustainable cultures and communities, both online and offline.

Photography has a way of transcending style, geekery, hipsterdom, career and casual. Its role and use among each of its different types of users creates many separate cultures and communities, online and offline.

A pass through the camera groups on popular Chinese youth social networking site, Douban.com illustrates the diverse camera passions of its members. There are Lomography groups with thousands of members, Lieca groups with thousands more, groups dedicated to old-school Chinese Seagull cameras, and groups centered on the latest and greatest camera technology. Each group acts as a hub for camera and general photography discussion, lined with the connotations and individual make-up of each type of camera user.

2. Photography is more than a simple “point and click”.

Though digital cameras, multi-functional camera phones, and instant photo sharing are the photography industry’s Edisonial lightbulb moment, the fact still exists that photography is more about the pleasure of interacting with photos taken through editing, manipulating, sharing, and displaying online and offline.

A photograph is a thin waif of nothingness. However what’s displayed on that nothingness is a lasting memory, a visual experience with details, colors and objects. It’s a story mixed with emotion and narrative.

Chinese youth interact with photographs by creating artistic displays, sharing with friends on Weibo or a personal blog, editing for humorous effect on Photoshop and disseminating on BBS’, and most importantly, use photography as means of exploring nuances and intricacies of other passions.

Another great example in this category is the Chinese youth led company, fanfancan. fanfancan is a photographic publishing company bringing to life your photos in physical and shareable booklets. They embody the strong emotional appeal physical photos can bring to other people.

3. Photography creates new opportunities to see beyond what’s in front of you.

We were seated on the back of a bus filled with young Chinese strangers, eager to travel to the outskirts of Shanghai for a night walking excursion. Photographs were snapped at every opportunity, bringing together complete strangers and creating new friends. The purpose of this trip was not for photographic exploration, but for making new friends and general adventuring. However, the presence of cameras created an initial icebreaker for shy individuals.

The brilliance of photography is that those interested create opportunities and excuses to take photos. Night journey’s in a Shanghai water town, architectural tours of an old Chinese city, strolling streets to find hip Chinese fashionistas, cataloguing minute RC Hobby parts to share in online forums; these are all passion areas enhanced by photography. This leads back to the main point at hand: photography is a gateway, a lens through which these other passions and interests are magnified, stored, and shared.

Photography is a common bond that users all over the world adhere to. Each photographer seeks to capture their own unique glimpse of the world. In China, the lens zooms further forward.

For those of you still new to Weibo, it’s Sina’s Twitter-like, micro-blogging platform that allows Chinese users to type up to 140 characters and disseminate the information onto the interwebs. (The name Weibo or in Chinese, 微博 translates to “micro-blog,” however its pronunciation is the same as 围脖  or “scarf” in English. The “scarf” translation is the “Weibo” of choice for young Chinese netizens.) It is truly an online force to reckon with. It’s usage is blossoming both online and on mobile platforms. It’s also a great way to keep an instant pulse on Chinese netizens and cultural youth topics. Thus, we’ve set our top Chinese voice, Beibei, into the rapid-fire Sina Weibo world to capture hot Weibo topics and to provide an enovate Chinese voice in this youth dominated platform.

With no further ado, we bring you enovate’s Weekly Weibo Roundup.

1. No Land, No Game!

Not getting any attention from the fairer sex? Buy some property! According to a survey titled The Effect of High Price Property on Single Youths in Guangzhou, only 10% of men cared if a girl had property; meanwhile, 67% of female respondents stated they’d only date guys who either had property, or could afford to buy property. Seeing as Guangzhou’s real estate market prices hit record highs throughout 2009, I offer my sincerest condolences to Guangzhou’s millions of bachelors.

Some have taken the hint, like this Shanghai resident whose vanity has earned him 5 minutes of cyber-fame. He has taken to the web to flaunt multiple properties and calling all guys who can’t afford a similar lifestyle losers.

2. A Lifetime in 90 seconds – a successful viral video from John Lewis

John Lewis’s latest commerical (below) is becoming a hit with Chinese netizens. It artfully and seamlessly chronicles the entire life of a woman in 90 seconds. Since being picked up by the Weibo community, it’s been “Weiboed”  well over 2000 times with positive comments such as “very creative” and “very touching.” Since the video’s release, sales have gone up an astounding 40%. Not too shabby, but I suppose that’s what you’d hope for when dropping an estimated £6 million on producing the commercial. We all think this deserves a tip of the hat. Well done John Lewis.

3. Guangzhou’s Communist Youth League Digs at Generational Differences

Seems like Guangzhou has been busy monitoring its youth lately. Real estate and dating aside, another popular Guangzhou survey has been making its rounds on Weibo. Guangzhou’s Communist Youth League released a report detailing generational differences between those born in the 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s. We’re not sure how necessary surveys were in coming to these general conclusions, but nevertheless, here are some “key findings” that have received the most attention on Weibo:

70′s Generation: workaholics

80′s Generation: celebrate divorce as regularly as marriage

90′s Generation: first kiss in middle school, but want to keep their “first time” for their wedding night.

4. In case you didn’t know…

And just so you know Weibo users have an affinity for humor and design, I bring you one of the most popular images circulating around Weibo these last couple days. They’re by Brazilian designer / illustrator Sergio Bergocce.

5. Nike keeps the buzz going

Nike sure does know how to create a buzz. Their classic line, Nike Sportswear, has a RenRen page boasting over 70,000 friends. In order to leverage and engage this massive community, they’ve teamed NikeiD up with RenRen.com to bring a “creative” feature where RenRen users can flex their creative muscles using some Nike high tops as virtual canvases. Weibo users have been quick to show off their designs to the world. Check out other designs on Nike’s RenRen page, here.

Students don’t necessarily dislike the idea of a uniform. Following the trends of popular TV shows like Gossip Girls and Meteor Garden (Taiwan), many appreciate the preppy uniforms associated with American and European private schools, as well as schools in Taiwan. However, Chinese students find their own uniforms to be mundane, and lacking style. Can you blame us? Others get to dress up, we have to dress down. Essentially, the only variety in uniform is color. Schools either have a green, red, white, or blue uniform.

Girls especially hate this uniform, as it obscures one’s personality so much as to sometimes make gender indecipherable: an adolescent girl’s worst nightmare!

Despite a generally strict dress-code enforcement, we do have our personal, day-to-day victories. In our quest to express individuality, we’ve come up with several ways to “beat the system,” with some of the more common ways being:

• Leaving a couple buttons undone, or zipper low on your jacket to give attention to other layers you may have. We’re generally limited to white t-shirts, but depending on the weather, we can sometimes add a vest or sweater.
• If the weather is cold enough, we can get away with another layer on-top of the jacket because classrooms don’t usually have AC / heaters. Cold days tend to be our more “fashion forward” days.
• Boys who are after an edgier, more unruly look rely on the international bad boy’s call sign: the Popped Collar. The popped collar is also a great way to hide longer hair, since teachers will usually force you to get a cut if your hair hangs below your collar.
• Accessories help. Scarves, belt, glasses, watches, and occasionally necklaces are permissible ways to express one’s individuality.
• Shoes! Converse, Nike, Adidas, Clark’s, etc… that one’s up to us to decide. If you’re a cool guy, you’re going to be wearing LeBrons or Air Jordans, while girls still love their Converse.
• And if your really feeling lucky, you can tell your teacher your uniformed suffer some irreparable damage, and that you are forced to wear something in the meantime. Worked once for me, but got sent home the second time…

Fortunately for younger generations, the powers-that-be are showing signs that they’ve picked up on our discontent. Word has it that students will be given incremental fashion freedoms. For one, students in certain districts will be given multiple options for uniforms. In some schools, students will be allowed to collaboratively design their own uniforms. Others are talking about a possible “no uniform friday.” Lucky!

Who knows… if our dress code is relaxed enough to permit us to where branded apparel like Nike, Adidas, Kappa this may turn into a lucrative market for sports brands.

From the beginning, Tudou has focused their efforts to support the UGC (user-generated content) online community of creative Chinese youth, and they plan to continue to expand these efforts. Gary Wang, Founder and CEO of Tuodou says: “Its what we believe in and Tudou’s role is evolving into the areas of investing, financing, producing, as well as distributing made-for-internet original video content.” Their commitment to support this unique online community of producers/bloggers is resulting in a large group of young Tudou brand enthusiasts.

The Chinese youth view sites like Tudou or Youku as a platform to showcase their creativity and thoughts, as well as an opportunity to gain recognition, and with enough luck, maybe even make a career out of it.   Remember our featured Pixie Tea with her song ABCD Said? She was there in her black and white checkered tights and red army boots, accepting her award for Best Music Video, expressing ” I never thought this would happen by doing something I like to do.”  While at a Tudou sponsored luncheon, video blogger, KEnnanZhou, told me, “In China ‘Everybody’ is really big, so to be special among ‘Everybody’ is really hard. But within the gaming or video sharing community, you have an opportunity to be recognized and be special within this sub-culture.”

Nominated content spanned many genres, from DIY horror special-effects videos and funny animations, to edgy, expressive and thought provoking shorts.  To highlight a few:

• It Seems to Rain is a poetic short about a high school boy’s journey of self discovery, and coping with aspects of life that can not be changed; namely his homosexuality. Directed by 25 year old Taipei native, Chen Shu Cai.
• Adventure of Li, Xian-Ji is an action-packed, adult animation featuring Li: a young man seeking the meaning of life, but gets caught up in drug-dealing. During his misadventures, Li bumps into a colorful array of characters like an Osama bin Laden look-a-like and a heroin that looks like Angelina Jolie. The movie’s director, 29 year old Beijing native Yang Li, was very popular with the festival attendees.
• War of Internet Addiction is 26 year-old blogger Changsha native, Sexy Corn’s hour-long video game movie about authority crackdowns. Interestingly, ‘War of Internet Addiction’ was temporarily banned on other websites while Tudou.com kept the video up from the beginning.

I was very impressed by how efficient these bloggers were, both in terms of time and cost. War of Internet Addiction took 3 months to produce and cost virtually nothing except for “broadband connections, electricity bills, cigarettes, beers and snacks to get through the long hours” says blogger, Sexy Corn. The Internet and video sharing sites like Tudou and Youku provide an accessible and cost-effective way to distribute content. “Compared with the year I graduated from school 7 years ago, young people nowadays enjoy a much more open, audience-driven, low cost channel to show what they got via the online video sites like Tudou.com.  It is almost impossible to dream about getting on TV,” said Hai-peng Sun, a Tudou video blogger who created a popular xiao-long-bao kung fu series and now has started his own animation studio.

Last year the annual Tudou Video Festival received 1,920 entries, this year the entries nearly tripled. According to Tudou, there are over 4,500 active independent video producers and production teams from first and second tier cities in China – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing, Changsha, Hangzhou, Nanjing, etc. creating original made-for-internet content every day with the average age being 24.
Oh and if your curious, the Tudou hand gesture is done with using your left index and left middle finger and your right index finger to create what looks like a play button. Now throw up those hands and show your love for Tudou.

**Drum Roll**

And the awards went to:

Water Brain by Ani7me (Best Short Feature)

Chicken Flowers Escaping by Miss Bowl of Rice (Best Team Work)

Give Me 5 Minutes by KEnnanZhou (Best Actor/Actress)

Ke-en Brother -Sister Movie Show (Best Creativity)

It Seems to Rain by Love Vacation (Best Director)

Adventure of Li Xian-Ji By Tank Driver (Best Animation)

ABCD Said by YanXuan Zhang (Best Music Video)

War of Internet Addiction by Sexy Corn (Best Video of the Year “Golden Tudou”)

Just a couple days ago, I purchased a new mobile phone — a white Sharp 9110C flip phone. It’s not as advanced as a smartphone, but it looks good and it’s practical. Why Sharp 9110C? First, I prefer Japanese style flip phones, and Sharp generally makes consistently stylish phones. So I hopped online to browse the various Sharp mobiles, and read up on user reviews. Personally, I don’t put much stock into overly multi-function phones; so long as a phone can make calls, send text messages, and have a touch of style, I’m happy. My new Sharp 9110C fits those three criteria.

Enough with the product endorsement, and back to the point: with so many cell phone options in China (real, fake, flip, smartphone, iPhone, etc.) how do youth go about picking their cell phone? I have posed three questions to seven young undergraduate students about their cell phone purchasing habits:

(1) What type of mobile phone do you prefer?

(2) What factors do you consider when purchasing a mobile phone?

(3) What are the steps when purchasing a mobile phone?

First and foremost, Chinese youth require A LOT of entertainment apps. It’s, therefore, little surprise that Smart phones like the iPhone, HTC Hero, and Nokia N97 were favorites among the students. As Leon’s post suggests, we need our apps and features to kill time, and to record and share our daily lives. It’s generally as easy as snapping a photo and uploading to social networking sites like RenRen, or micro-blogging platforms such as Sina’s twitter platform, Weibo.

Looks and style is also a crucial factor. Everyone I spoke to particularly likes iPhones and Japanese-style flip phones. For many Chinese youth, a mobile becomes an extension of their personality — a way to show the world who they are. Some youth relate to a sleek iPhone, some prefer a more ordinary phone enhanced with a multitude of dangling toys, the options are endless. Even individual toys people choose to add to their phones can tell you a lot about them.

For them, brand, function and durability are the most important considerations in choosing a mobile phone.

Online research is the first step in choosing a phone. The Chiense internet has a wealth of resources for consumers. Many people turn to website like PConline or the most popular forum for mobile devices, Symbian. Symbian’s Chinese forum is host to a very lively conversation about mobiles. If you’re brand / phone doesn’t get mentioned, or receives negative press on such forums, you’re reputation is at risk.

Despite advanced online shopping options, the respondents tended to buy their phones in retail stores. Yenan, one of the respondents, stated: “I check the popularity and user experience of the mobile that I prefer on PConline first, and then try the real phone in a retail store.” The internet is perceived as a source of information, but when buying a phone, youth seem to want to buy it form a physical location. It’s reassuring. They know what they’ll be receiving, and if they ever have an issue with their device, they know they can go back to the store.

Other demographics may have very different methodologies when choosing a phone, but for many Chinese youth, the general break down is:

1. Personal Preferences (features, apps, brand)

2. Online Research

3. In-shop testing & purchasing

A mobile celebrity is born! Zhang Xuanyan (aka Pixie Tea) has become an overnight sensation using 3 now rudimentary tools: an iPhone, a camera, and the internet. The song, ABCD Said, was made using only an iPhone 3Gs, while the video is said to be made using only a single camera. For an entirely DIY project, the production value is surprisingly high.

Last month, the nationally syndicated pop music TV program, “Music Fengyun Bang,” recommended her music video. Three weeks later her song became their number 2 audience favorite.

This is also turning into great publicity for Apple. Her MacBook is featured prominently throughout the video; meanwhile, Sina’s micro-blogging platform, Weibo, is going ablaze with people talking about her and her iPhone.

The video is also very interesting as it shows a growing segment in Chinese youth — one that is creative, “Apple-savy,” DIY-crafty, and trendsetting.