Weibo, Scarf, and Microblogging

Since Day One of microblogging, many questions have been raised about current and potential organizational usage, a major one being how can organizations achieve two-way symmetrical communication when using microblogging? I want to share a success story of VANCL, an online fashion retailer in China, as its microblogging strategies have gained many thumbs-up from PR and marketing professionals.

In 2009, Sina.com, one of the biggest online portals in China launched a microblogging service called Sina Weibo (Sina Microblogging). Sina cleverly punned on the likeness of “wēi bó” (microblogging) and “wéi bó” (scarf) in Chinese pronunciation. Thus, instead of asking people “have you microblogged today?” Sina asks “got your scarf today?” The naming created a buzz, and attracted thousands of netizens to come and get their scarves.

VANCL were among the first companies on Weibo. Their first updates were about giving free VANCL scarves to new followers. Relevant and fun, the campaign helped VANCL gain initial attention and followership. Many of VANCL’s updates later were also about freebies and bargains- giving gifts, time-limited ￥1 purchase for some ￥888 apparel for followers who leave comments the earliest, etc.

But that was not all. Besides good at giving away scarves, VANCL also made efforts to connect with followers/consumers emotionally. What they did included:
- Sharing designers’ new creative ideas for new seasons
- Sharing photos of office, studios, team activities and energetic friendly looking new VANCL employees
- Answering followers’ questions in a timely manner
- Asking for and rewarding design suggestions
- Recruiting catalog models
- Reminding people to dress warm and travel safe for Chinese New Year.

Several good lessons could be learned from VANCL on organizational usage of microblogging to interact with key audience in dialogues and interactions:

1. Find a good bonding point between your organization and the microblog. For VANCL, it was on Weibo because its target consumers (young people in the early years of career who like to shop online) are comfortable with microblogging. What makes the reason for your organization to be on Twitter?

2. Introduce yourself. Tell organizational stories. Help people know what you do and what you believe. Build emotional ties.

3. Listen and be responsive. Microblogging is not another place to put news and news releases. It enables organizations to directly communicate/interact with the audience. Value their feedback by ingratiating and responding it on time.

4. Prepare incentive packages to encourage participation. Everyone can use a giveaway or a few coupons, so give a wéi bó (scarf) for their “wēi bó” (microblogging)!

Eat up Pizza Hut

I’d like to share a story about Pizza Hut in China, but before I do, I’d give some background information: 1) with many remarkable efforts, Pizza Hut has successfully upmarketed itself in China. It is relatively expensive, but offers happy exotic dining experience. Therefore it is typical to find young couples going on a date or celebrating Valentine’s in Pizza Hut (to get a feel of its branding strategy and target consumers in China, here are some commercials of Pizza Hut China); 2) on its menu, there is this all-you-can-eat fruit salad. It is self-served, comes with a tiny bowl, can be fetched from the salad bar only once, and costs ￥30 which is not inexpensive at all considering its regular amount.

Anyway, some three years ago, a post titled “How to Eat up Pizza Hut” became extremely popular and got forwarded onto thousands of discussion forums, blogs and SNSs in China. In fact, a search of the title in Chinese still generates 48,300 exact results now.

The post begins by complaining that Pizza Hut’s all-you-can-eat fruit salad is ridiculously expensive. Then it gives detailed instructions on how to take steps to pile up the salad really high so as to maximize the amount. Here are some crazy pictures from the post-







So the post became sensationally viral, and everyone after reading the post wanted to go and try eat up Pizza Hut. It wasn’t learned until last year that the one that called on eating up Pizza Hut was Pizza Hut itself.

In my opinion, the most amazing part of this social media campaign is that NOBODY, for two years, felt it was a campaign! People went to Pizza Hut out of curiosity. They believed it was one of them that had sent the original message.

Three lessons I’ve learned from Pizza Hut:

Research Comes First.
Pizza Hut obviously had learned what held their consumers back from buying the yummy salad (i.e., the price/amount ratio). When it becomes so tempting to just use the social media to make a buzz (as if such a function were automatic), it is important to make sure that you have carefully listened to and thoroughly understood your consumers.

Choose the Right Channel.
Being able to differentiate various social media technologies and employ them appropriately is also crucial. Pizza Hut ‘made the wave’ (thanks everyone for liking the metaphor!) through discussion forums, blogs and SNS as these social media spread entertaining contents very rapidly, and congregate the most young audience among whom many are Pizza Hut’s target consumers.

It’s a Conversation.
Social media is about communication, connecting, and sharing. Thus, instead of treating it as a one-way marketing channel and directly pushing messages across the board, organizations need to engage in conversations with the audience. Like the post by Pizza Hut, it encourages people to come with ideas of how to pile up the salad higher. In response, many netizens posted their Pizza Hut triumphs. Some even posted salad piling structural charts to teach people how to build a stable salad foundation! The orange bars in the second chart were supposed to mean carrot sticks :)





FYI, the campaign was so successful that recently Pizza Hut China had to take all-you-can-eat fruit salad off the menu. Pizza Hut is happily eaten up.

Into the Groundswell

Imagine a sea of information.

Imagine your Facebook pages, your Twitter updates, your blogs, your comments and reviews being small drops of water in that sea. What would you think if you are told that you have a good chance of making a very big wave, a groundswell in the sea?

That’s what Li and Bernoff try to tell today’s corporations, governments, and all other kinds of organizations in their book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. A negative ZAGAT review could influence or change someone’s decision making on where to dine; a Tweet calling on supporting disaster relief in Haiti could be retweeted many times to spread the word and motivate action among thousands of people; a big thumb-up to M.A.C. Brush 187 in some Japanese girl’s makeup vlog (boys, feel free to replace it with, say, Ford Mustang in car blogs) may make you curious enough to get to a local Sephora in Raleigh and try it out. Today’s consumers are no longer their own islands. Between them and the information in traditional forms of pitches from salespersons, commercials, advertorials, news releases and so on, there are fellow consumers that inform, educate, share experience with, and bring changes to one another, making big waves together. Social media is definitely changing the social/economic/political dynamics locally and globally. Thus, traditional institutions like corporations must learn how to become wave makers, or at least decent surfers.

As a marketing communication analyst in a PR agency, my constant interest lies in helping businesses understand, communicate, and manage relationships with consumers. Since most target audience today is in the groundswell made possible by social media, it is thus natural to feature in my blog three key players- consumers, social media, and public relations. I’d keep exploring how businesses can effectively establish and maintain relationship with consumers using social media. I’d look for insights into how leaders of organizations can jump out of comfort zones, and genuinely embrace the groundswell.

Welcome aboard, and let's start the exploration!