Engaging Chinese audiences through video
The popularity of vlogs and other video content amongst young people has become a global phenomenon since 2005. Statistics show that 50% of users aged between 16 and 34 have watched vlogs. In the West, vlogging has become an important marketing approach. For instance, more than half of the UK consumers note that the opinion of bloggers/vloggers is more important in their buying decision process compared to other sources of information. Mirroring this global trend, more and more young people in China participate in vlogging activities and consume video content from businesses and organisations. Video serves a useful platform for global businesses to engage with Chinese users as well.
In the West, YouTube has dominated the market with Facebook challenging for views and live broadcasting. Yet, the Chinese market is shared by three popular video-sharing websites: Youku, Tencent Video, and iQIY.
In particular, Youku and Tencent Video have a monopoly on the video-sharing website market. While the former has a business partnership with Weibo (the most popular Chinese micro-blogging sites), the latter is directly owned by the Chinese Internet giant – Tencent, which launched WeChat (the most popular Chinese mobile social media). Users who wish to post video content to those social networks must upload their videos to these two sites and then share on their personal accounts on Weibo and WeChat. Thus, these two sites have become the main platforms for Chinese vloggers.
As with the West, vlogging has become more popular in China in recent years. Mirroring the popularity of YouTube celebrities such as Zoella, Alfie Deynes, Joe Suggs and others, vlogging has become an important way for young people around the world to try and achieve “15 minutes of fame”.
The first famous vlogger in China was Ge Hu. His maiden work, released in 2005, told a humorous story by re-editing the episodes of films. The vlog was so successful that it paved him a path to a career as a film director.
10 years later, vlogging has increased in popularity in China. Famous Chinese vloggers are also known as online monikers. Papi Jiang is probably the Chinese vlogger who attracts the most attention. Her Youku personal channel has almost 3 million followers. The content that she unloaded to the channel has been viewed more than 220 million times.
Papi Jiang’s vlogs are often monologues in which she pokes fun at everyday life topics. The most trending vlogs of hers include ‘Someone has no idea how to talk to others’(3 million views), ‘How Chinese people urge someone to drink’(2 million views), and ‘How to mix English words in a sentence (in Chinese)’ (750,000 views).
Guamo is a Taiwan online moniker who produces popular vlogs on Chinese video websites. His Youku personal channel has 489,000 followers and received 210 million clicks.
Guamo produces content with a specific focus on film. Most of his videos are entitled ‘watching (a specific film) within several minutes’, which rephrase the stories of famous/trending films. The most watched videos made by Guamo include ‘The Twilight Saga’ (3 million views), ‘Harry Potter’ (1.5 million views), and ‘Titanic’ (1 million views).
Different from the above two vloggers, Mike Sui is a Westerner who speaks excellent Mandarin Chinese. His expertise is in imitating the accents of people coming from different parts of the world. In his most famous humorous video, Mike Sui acted the ways in which 12 different people coming from different parts of the world speak Mandarin/English. The video went virus on the Internet; it was watched over 8.5 million times and made him an extremely popular online moniker in China as well.
Interestingly, these famous vloggers’ personal channels also serve business interests. We can see various product placements in Papi Jiang and Guamo’s vlogs. In particular, the value of Papi Jiang’s personal brand was estimated to be $1.84 million by VC firms.
The marketing potential of vlogging has attracted business attention. Many organisations, including universities, have set up official channels on video-sharing websites to engage with audiences and customers.
An early adopter of this is Fudan University, a top university located in Shanghai. To celebrate its 110th anniversary, the university created an official channel on Youku and uploaded a series of self-made videos to address the event. One of the videos – “Fudan’s Lucky Cookie” – captured a flash mob organised by Fudan students. This video highlighted students’ love for their alma mater from their own point of view. It was watched more than 60,000 times and demonstrates a youthful and approachable image of the university. It successfully raises the profile of the university, which encourages Chinese students to apply for the university.
Pioneers, such as Loughborough University, have started exploring the production of video content specifically for their Chinese audiences. Loughborough University shared a publicity video with Mandarin Chinese subtitles for the establishment of its London campus on the popular Chinese social media Weibo. The video was viewed over 700 times. This provides a valuable asset to the university’s publicity, benefiting its student recruitment activities in China.
Loughborough University’s use of video is not an isolated example. For instance, City University, London uploaded a similar publicity video for its CASS Business School, whilst Cardiff shared a video profile of a Chinese student studying at the university.
For UK universities, video content is no longer a new concept – it’s a core part of the marketing mix. However, using this technique to engage Chinese followers can bring language challenges and cultural differences for Western institutions. If you need any help with your video strategy in China, please don’t hesitate to contact us.