Marketing [“Digital,Marketing”Widespread,Among,Foreign,FMCG,Giants]

　　 　　American daily product manufacturer Proctor & Gamble (P&G) launched the largest brand marketing campaign worldwide in its 174 years of history. The campaign’s theme is “Thank you, Mom!”.
　　In this campaign, P&G attaches unprecedented importance to the digital marketing. Actually, Loreal, Unilever and other multinational daily products giants have already focused on digital marketing for long, while most of local daily products giants in China are staying on the level of traditional marketing and scratching their heads to get more TV resources or enjoying the said“championship” in the TV advertising bidding.
　　For this, marketing experts said that the biggest source of this situation is that foreign brands attach importance to how to spread the brand and how to better communicate with consumers. And local brands pay attention to how to improve sales and how to bind distributors and agencies firmly. But now the daily product industry has been in the age of “market created by consumers”. As the most innovative and revolutionary method, the digital media is going to be fully used, which is the tendency that cannot be denied.
　　“Digital Marketing” the New Battlefield
　　As one of the major sponsors for the London Olympic Games, P&G launched the “Thank you, Mom!” campaign worldwide. In China, P&G and China’s search engine giant Baidu built a mini official website with the theme of“Thank you, Mom! Cross the distance with love”. The website highlights users’participation and interaction during the campaign. Users can mark the locations of their mothers and send their gratitude and concernment to their mothers. Meanwhile, Baidu also integrated its allinclusive media promotion resources including Tieba (an SNS forum), map and MP3 to maximize the effect of the marketing campaign. Warner Geissler, vice board chairman of P&G said that the P&G could instantly touch consumers, quickly found what they need and built a one-on-one communication platform with them throught the digital media platforms like Baidu.
　　The cosmetics maker Loreal put forward the brand configuration idea of “Year of Digitalization” in 2010.“Through digital technologies, you can have direct connection with millions or even billions of consumers and share a complete world of brands with them,”said Loreal CEO Jean-Paul Agon. Digitalized world will completely change the marketing methods of brands and Loreal will have a growing budget in the digital media. As the SNS community and Microblog become more and more popular, “consumers have already had such a big influence upon brands that it never happened before. Brands must meet their demand and communicate with them,” said Marc Speichert, chief marketing officer of Loreal America.
　　Alan Jope, board chairman of Unilever Greater China, pointed out that the digital media is the most innovative and revolutionary method to communicate with vast consumers. Under his leadership, Unilever Greater China’s expenditure in the marketing with new media grows annually. It is particularly worthwhile to mention that Unilever launched the campaign of “innovative challenges for consumers – invite consumers to contribute ideas to 13 brands of Unilever and shoot the advertising video”. It specially sponsored the TV series “Unbeatable with A Number of Beauties” which also attracted a lot of eyes. Various evidences show that the daily product giants are moving towards the digital marketing at a fast pace in the age of new media.
　　 Local Brands Need to Hurry Up
　　While the international giants are speeding up to move the field of digital marketing, some local daily products manufacturers in China are largely making use of spreading and marketing with the new media. Genuine Pearl, Carslen Group’s two brands Carslen and Kafellon and the Miook brand owned by clothing retailer Vanke are the pioneers in that field. But more Chinese local brands have not begun their transformation of roles.
　　It is known that the said brand promotion of many enterprises is only to cater for the taste of entrepreneurs or agents. Simply speaking, they advertise just for advertising or recruiting agencies/distributors. This could be seen in their choice of promotion media – local brands only choose some magazines focusing on specific channels and the Expo of Cosmetics, which is a display platform for local daily products manufacturing, became a grand market where girls in strange clothes holding banners and walking around the site; manufacturers’promise of sending a car if the agents sign the contract on the spot. They do this for the sake of agents only and completely ignore the communication with consumers who is the final buyer of their products. They deliver ads on TV just to show their strength to their agents. At first local brands were busy contending for the “bidding campaign” (the one having spent the largest amount of money in earning an ads slot) in CCTV. Then the provincial TV stations also become their battlefields to earn the title of “bidding champion”. According to the statistical data, by September 2011, the delivery rate of daily brand ads increased by 46% year on year. In Hunan, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Anhui whose provincial TV stations are popular, the delivery rate increased by 50%.
　　Fortunately, many cosmetics web- sites have already realized the importance of consumers. They transformed their business pattern and changed their marketing measures. Miqi.com, a specialist online shopping mall for cosmetics, sees the completion of its upgrade with the new MeClub channel and the great promotion of membership system. The share of shopping experiences among users and the comment sector are seamlessly connected with each other. The specialist cosmetics commentary website Zhuangwang.com was re-launched after being modified. The new shopping guidance service was added. Its CEO Cheng Ge said that the new version of website attaches more importance to the commentary services of cosmetics and hairdressing products and the share of using experiences. It also uses SNS community for the interaction of users.
　　In addition, though the investment in ecommerce becomes less and less frequent, the cosmetics B2C website Lafaso.com raised the funds amounting to 40 million U.S. dollars recently. Some experts pointed out that this is related with the operating pattern of Lafaso.com and the abundant marketing resources behind it. “The hottest key words associated with socialized ecommerce are none other than share and individualized comments. The resources behind Lafaso.com give obvious advantages in marketing to the products it sells. Thus it conforms to the tendency of brand development of new media.
　　 Extended Reading:
　　What is digital marketing? It refers to a marketing method that makes use of the interactive network, computer communication technologies and digital interactive media to realize the marketing goal. The advanced computing and Internet technologies are largely used to expand the new market and grab the new consumers in the most efficient and least costly methods. The precise marketing and the quantitative market- ing effect could be realized through digital multimedia channels, like telephone, SMS, email, fax and online platform.
　　 Public Voices:
　　Lin Ziyi (marketing expert): The present day is featured with supply larger than demand. It is the age with the prosperity of Internet economy, information explosion and visual fatigue. It is also the age when consumers create the marketing. The trade process between enterprises and consumers is no longer featured with enterprises’ providing direct services for consumers; instead, the two parties exchange their dynamic value and grow up together. Companies not putting consumers in the first place can neither provide good products and services nor apperceive the consumers. Thus their brand communication measures will be- come invalid.
　　Lin Shuling (vice president of Goelia): I have been in the ecommerce for three years but I still cannot make clear of some problems in the operation. Basically, online platforms can get engaged in ecommerce and can be used as brand channels. Therefore, we hope the online ads we invest into can turn into the online sales. But the entire UV cost is increasing, not good for the improvement of our transformation rate. As for the brand construction, we also focus on Microblog, but we found that it only promotes the brand awareness and has a little help for brand construction.
　　Xiao Mingchao (vice general manger of Sinomonitor): In the past, consumers should have known some brands before selecting the brands they preferred and then became loyal to brands. But now the diversification of media segments the information. Consumers cannot remember the brands they have seen. How to continuously expose these brands to consumers is a key problem enterprises are facing.
　　Qiu Jiarong (general manager of Guangzhou Huanong Group): Subversion and innovation are somewhat risky and it is hard to stay ahead of the fashion. In addition, whether consumers can accept new things and how much they can accept them are not known until later. For cosmetics, how to integrate the information about innovation into the brand construction without causing the dislike of consumers needs careful and artful design. How to find the balance among innovation, acceptance and brand importation is always an issue for the marketers of cosmetics.

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