Special Feature | June 2009
Upstream without a paddle "Without a Paddle" describes how many of us feel when confronted with the challenges, contradictions and vagaries of modern communications in this part of the world. All too often, particularly when applying purely traditional approaches and experience, we find ourselves feeling stranded in deep and often treacherous waters. So inspired, we hope each post in this new blog by Upstream Asia will help keep you on course, whether like us you're paddling hard upstream or just going with the flow. Upstream China Ranked as One of the 20 Fastest Growing Firms  Upstream has been named as one of the 20 Fastest Growing Firms in 2008 by China International Public Relations Association (CIPRA), a leading Chinese industry association. The judging process for this authoritative award involves a comprehensive evaluation and audit by CIPRA. Judging criteria include brand awareness, network capability clients serviced and professionalism.
Upstream Australia's Roger Marshall Featured in the Sydney Morning Herald 
Upstream Australia's Roger Marshall discussed the importance of companies investing in public relations during the current financial climate in Australia's highest circulation daily newspaper, Sydney Morning Herald.Conferences, seminars and events
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Selling Seoul In recent years, "Hallyu" or Korean fever has grown in many parts of the world, particularly in East Asia and Southeast Asia, where Korean movie and TV actors are wildly popular, and all things Korean are followed avidly. Today, South Korea, and Seoul in particular, is seen as a center of fashion, music, entertainment, lifestyle, culture and beauty trends. Yet despite its popularity, South Korea is still not a top tourist and travel destination, and most Asians only know the country through Korean dramas and movies. In order to increase awareness of this multifaceted and vibrant city, the Seoul Metropolitan Government will be sponsoring a series of media visits to Seoul by journalists from Southeast Asia and Australia throughout 2009, beginning with the Hi-Seoul Festival in May. Upstream is working with partners PRAIN in Seoul to organize press tours to present a picture of Seoul in all its varied beauty, seasonal highlights, and the grace and beauty of Korea itself, to audiences in Southeast Asia and Australia. |
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| Mantise shakes up the advertising landscape in Asia Hong Kong's Mantise Media hit two home runs in June, launching what is not only Asia-Pacific’s first geo-targeting digital out-of-home media solution, but also the first such system to be seen outside the US. Incorporating taxi-top LCD panels and GPS technology, the system displays location-, time- and even temperature-based advertising. Within a week of the event, Mantise had scored tier-one media articles in AdAgeChina, Marketing, Media and South China Morning Post and 15 other pieces of coverage. |
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TriOptima spreads the word about post-trade processing Any company that reduces financial risk is in demand these days and TriOptima, a provider of post-trading processing services, is no different. However, the Swedish firm felt it wanted to raise its profile in Asia, so it contracted Upstream Hong Kong to carry out a media-outreach project in late April. Peter Weibel, TriOptima's head of Asia Pacific, and Susan Hinko, global head of industry relations, gave interviews to top tier media in Hong Kong. |
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Green economy promoted in China Mayors and deputy mayors from 38 medium-sized and large Chinese cities recently attended a mayoral training course on energy policymaking, co-organized by the Joint US-China Cooperation on Clean Energy (JUCCCE) and China's Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. Upstream publicized the event as a platform for the views of Dr. Stephen Hammer, the principal architect of of this training program, and mayors from Salt Lake City and Dongguan, China. JUCCCE is a non-profit organization that aims to accelerate the greening of China. |
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BPA uncovers low levels of trust in circulation numbers in China Do you trust the circulation numbers provided by the media themselves? Actually, almost all Chinese media buyers don't, according to recent market research completed for BPA Worldwide by Upstream Asa.The research was conducted in April through both focus groups and multiple one-on-one interviews. The research targeted Chinese media buyers, advertisers and ad agencies, and analyzed local awareness of media auditing and media auditing organizations. Through in-depth research with interviewees, a clear picture of the current situation emerged, along with important insights into which messages and channels will be most effective in BPA's marketing communications. Upstream will continue to work with BPA Worldwide in rolling out its Buy Safe Media campaign in China. |
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Magic in motion With the smartphone handset market blossoming as traditional mobile phone sales decline, HTC needed to position its second Android device, the HTC Magic, as the latest in lifestyle accessories, not just another phone. Ultimately, the launch had to illustrate exactly how and where the Magic fits into everyday life, and a combination of print and online media tactics and social media tools were required.Upstream took the smartphone away from its technology roots and used a waterfront Sydney venue and an exclusive screening of a two minute Parkour (athletic street art) video to reveal the device's everyday uses to lifestyle, travel, retail, business, mainstream and gadget media. Coverage was streamed live from the event over Twitter and onto leading news sites like cnet Australia, Gizmodo, and apcmag. Even two weeks before in-store availability, Upstream generated over 45 pieces of coverage and one HTC telco partner established an online pre-ordering facility to help manage customer demand. |
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The Carbon Trust spreads the environmental word in China The Carbon Trust recently signed a £10 million agreement with the China Energy Conservation Investment Corporation in May to develop and deploy low-carbon technologies in China. Upstream will help manage media publicity and increase public awareness of the Carbon Trust's initiative to accelerate low-carbon innovation in China, one of the fastest growing markets for low-carbon technologies. The Carbon Trust is an independent company set up and funded by the UK government to work with organizations to reduce carbon emissions and develop commercial low-carbon technologies. It launched in the Asia Pacific region in October 2008. |
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A SWIFT response to Viewpoint Communications For the financial services industry, the world has changed a great deal in the past year or so. SWIFT, the financial messaging and connectivity enabler, held a lively interactive messaging workshop in May involving senior SWIFT executives from around Asia which was facilitated by Upstream in Hong Kong to identify viewpoints and messages that reflect the new financial climate. The outcomes of the workshop will inform not only SWIFT's ongoing media relations campaigns, but also provide context and content for SWIFT executives' contributions to the organization's swiftcommunity.net social network, and not least the Asia-focused sessions at the annual financial industry conference Sibos, being held this year in Hong Kong. |
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Special Feature | ||
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The ADMA Yearbook 2009 is packed with relevant and sometimes surprising data. Here's a sample of what you'll find inside: 2009: Connections Triumph Over InterruptionAsia Pacific is home to the majority of the world's internet users, with 41% of the total 32% of Asian users say the online advertising they saw "significantly increased" their interest in using the brand More than 450 million consumers across the region participate in social media and Facebook's Asia Pacific visitors to the site jumped 458% between mid-2007 and mid-2008 More than half of the region's entire internet traffic is from users making repeat visits to gaming sites, and online gaming is expected to account for 75% of the US$9.2 billion premium and paid content market by 2013 17 trillion SMS messages originated in Asia Pacific in 2008 (74% of the world total) In the past year, the development of digital marketing took some exciting new turns, reaching not only new levels of growth and penetration, but also new levels of sophistication. Marketers who started with websites, banner ads and email now have an increasingly wide choice of platforms on which to engage their target customers. Search, social media, blogs, sponsored content, mobile, email, and gaming all offer opportunities for innovation and differentiation online. Online media is increasingly gaining the trust of consumers around Asia. A recent TNS survey revealed that of the top twenty-five most trusted forms of both on and offline media, fourteen were online. And increasingly, the trusted online media include user generated content. Overall, the third most trusted media is expert product reviews from websites, with consumer product reviews from websites at #5 and consumer opinions on blogs and message boards at #7 and #12 respectively. In the early days of digital marketing, offline advertising was used as the model: interruptive messages were placed in front of (or disrupted) the content in ways that grabbed the user's attention. Now we're seeing a truly interactive model arise, in which brands engage their consumers online, either by joining the conversation, or creating a platform for a community to gather around the brand. Some of this new online communication looks more like public relations than advertising, and clearly the lines are blurring between sales promotion, customer relationship management and brand building. Whatever it will eventually develop into, it's exciting. It's clear that internet users have adopted the new media faster than most of the advertisers who are trying to reach them. Advertisers need to do some catching up. Although there are some definitive case studies that demonstrate the power of using social media, the ADMA's 2009 Survey of the region's advertisers, marketers and agencies uncovered that most marketers and advertisers still predominantly use websites, online advertising and email. Why these relatively conservative approaches when the internet changes continuously and offers so many opportunities for innovation? In some cases, advertisers may be concerned about the relative lack of control over their messaging and positioning on social media platforms, and in other cases they may not yet have discovered a credible way to connect with the community of their target customers online. In any event, there is no doubt that 2009 is the year of social media. Owners of social media platforms have not figured out a way to make money from the huge communities they have created online, but even brands with no clear social media strategy know that they must engage by joining networks and conversations. Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Bebo, MySpace and LinkedIn have built large scale user bases in Asia Pacific but these global players don't dominate in every market. New patterns of usage and local behaviour are emerging across the region, with clear distinctions from country to country where consumers spend time online, and how they behave. For example, 48% of all South Koreans have a Cyworld account, and the site has slightly fewer than 18 million users, of whom 30% are in their 20s. China's 51.com has 14 million average weekly unique browsers, and 150 million Qzone users actively update their accounts at least once a month. In the Philippines more than 74% of the online population participates in social networking; Friendster has 10.7 million subscribers and Facebook has more than 1 million. The imperative for marketers now is to join these networks and interact directly with their communities of customers online. Rich media, banner ads, pop up ads, sponsored content and search may continue to command the lion's share of online advertising dollars, but brands must now master the art of connecting with consumers, as well as -- or in many cases instead of -- interrupting their online experience with advertising messages. Two years ago, the big news in digital marketing was the scale of the opportunity, as the number of users in Asia Pacific surpassed all other regions for the first time. Last year the dominant theme was putting the consumer back at the center of the equation, as marketers and advertisers refocused on customers' profiles and needs, rather than the tools and technologies available to reach them. In 2009, the focus is on connecting brands and consumers, and deeply engaging with target audiences across a wide variety of platforms. Gaming too can be considered part of the social media phenomenon: in a survey more than 50% of respondents said "meeting other gamers online" was important for their overall experience, and more than 60% of users said they also kept in touch with these friends on other social networking platforms. The numbers for online gaming are big and growing. Games.com attracts nearly 200,000 unique visitors a month in Asia Pacific, each of whom spends an average 86.8 minutes on the site, and QQ.com Games in China draws more than 44,000 visitors monthly, each spending an average of 46.5 minutes. Looking beyond social media, online advertising expenditure continues to grow, despite the recession. Yahoo! predicts Asia's annual online ad spend will eclipse Western Europe's by 2010 to reach US$ 122 billion. According to the TNS survey referenced earlier, dedicated websites (53%), sponsored content (50%), pop up ads (46%), banner ads (39%) and email (19%) are the most common types of digital media seen being used in Asia. Online branding efforts appear to be paying off, with nearly a third of users saying that the brand advertising they have seen across all forms of digital media significantly increased their interest in using the brand in question. China is number one in search, with 12.8 million searches performed in a month by nearly 150,000 searchers - that's 85 searches per searcher. Japan is the second largest search market, with 5.9 million searchers. However, Korea's searchers are most prolific, with 109 searches per searcher. Singapore is not far behind with 106. Mobile continues to gain, both as a text messaging and voice call channel, but also for internet access. Asia Pacific (ex Japan) has 97.6 million mobile online gamers, with more than half of them residing in China. There is 60% mobile phone penetration in the Philippines. Filipinos spend an hour a day chatting on their mobiles, and send the highest number of SMS messages per subscriber in the world. Mobile site page views grew 1120% YOY. 2008 Asia Pacific-wide mobile data revenues topped US$ 65 billion, and an estimated 473 million handsets were sold. With usage of all elements of the online marketing mix growing and becoming more sophisticated, all the stakeholders in the digital marketing industry -- from marketers and advertisers to publishers, agencies, hardware and technology solutions providers -- have a unique opportunity in 2009 to pioneer new ways to engage consumers and built their brands and sales online. David Ketchum is Chairman, Asia Digital Marketing Association and CEO Upstream Asia |
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Copyright © 2009 Upstream Marketing and Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
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