A report on the increasing use of wechat in consumer public relations in china

University of Westminster

A Report on the Increasing Use of Wechat in Consumer Public Relations in China

Name:Ting Xia Student Number:14754702 Module: Understanding Public Relations MA Public Relations

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Table of Content

1.

Table of Content.......................................................................................................................2 1.Introduction...........................................................................................................................4 2. Background...........................................................................................................................5 2.1 The Chinese Social Media Market...................................................................................5 2.2 Consumer PR and Social media in China.........................................................................6 3. Consumer PR and Wechat....................................................................................................6 3.1 About Wechat.................................................................................................................6 3.2 Consumer Brands and Wechat.......................................................................................7 3.2.1 One-To-One Communication...................................................................................7 3.2.2 Display Products and Service...................................................................................8 3.2.3 Customised Content.................................................................................................9 3.2.4 Build Word of Mouth.............................................................................................10 3.3 Case Studies..................................................................................................................11 3.3.1 Burberry’s Customised Fashion Show Experience..................................................11 3.3.2 Yoshinoya’s“Eat Me the Way You Like” Campaign.................................................12 4. Conclusion and Predictions.................................................................................................14 5. References .........................................................................................................................15 6. Reflection............................................................................................................................17

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1. Introduction These years, public relations become more and more important in the marketing mix.

Due to the diversification of media and information fragmentation, consumers can easily access to different platforms to get information and express their own ideas. As Willis (2009) points out, the conventional methods of marketing are being challenged and the role of advertising will be diminished in the future. Marketing professionals have to seek for more sophisticated ways to engage their consumers. Accordingly, consumer PR expands rapidly and has gradually been placed at the centre of many brands’ marketing plans.

Social media is a key drive in changing the face of traditional public relations activities, which enables companies to communicate with consumers more effectively.

In the past, PR practitioners have to rely on mass media to reach their target audiences, which may costs a lot of money and its results are not always desirable.

However, the rise of social media offers an alternative channel to have conversations with consumers and promote brand values to them directly without big investment (Brown, 2013). Nowadays, social media and PR have become much more integrated.

The technical advancement in social media also has strong impacts on the public relation industry.

Wechat, as a mobile-oriented and all-in-one social media, quickly becomes the most loved social media platform in China since it launched in 2012. Its popularity among the public and powerful built-in functions attracts more and more PR practitioners’ attention. They use Wechat to create content and communicate with consumers. Super brand Burberry, Pepsi and McDonald's all successfully launched social marketing

campaigns through this 3-year-old social platform. This report will focus on this recent trend and explore how Chinese PR practitioners use Wechat to communicate with consumers by looking at both academic sources and practical texts. In addition,

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the impacts this trend might have on consumer PR sector over the next 2- 5 years will be discussed as well.

2. Background 2.1 The Chinese Social Media Market As the world’s largest social media market, China has approximately 597 million active social networking users, out of which 91% of the internet users have an account on at least one social media platform. The Chinese social media market is different from many Western markets. Since it is unable to use Facebook and Twitter in China, a number of local versions was specially designed for the Chinese market and grew tremendously.

Social media began in China in 1994 with online forums. In 2009, a microblogging website Weibo firstly launched, which is perceived as a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook (Rapoza, 2011). It grew rapidly and led the Chinese social media market into an unprecedented prosperity. Nevertheless, once celebrities began to open up accounts and companies began to use Weibo as a promotion platform, Weibo quickly turns to be a publicity platform full of adverts and junk information. Anyone using Weibo can see almost all other users’ tweets and retweet them, so those advertising tweets can also spread very quickly. In 2012, netizens who have tired of receiving lots of promotional messages fled to another emerging social app Wechat which offers comparatively private forms of communication (Gordian, 2014).

According to Liu et al (2014), the number of Weibo users has sharply declined in 2013 and the activeness of remaining users is also decreasing with it. Oppositely, WeChat now has 396 million monthly active users and take over from Weibo as the most popular and powerful social network in China. The Chinese social media landscape is experiencing a huge shift: the fall of transparent public information

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forums and the rise of more private and closed social platforms (Johnson, 2014).

Moreover, the increased access of mobile internet also has fast and deep impacts in China. This also contributes to the rapid development of Wechat which is mobilebased.

2.2 Consumer PR and Social media in China In today’s Chinese market, social media is regarded as the backbone of consumer engagement. Zhang (2014) believes that Chinese users are less likely to post their personal information on social media, but tend to be much more likely to share their opinions such as which products to buy and how to use them effectively. Go-Globe’s research (2013) also reveals that 38% of Chinese netizens make shopping decisions based on recommendations from friends on social networking sites. On average, each of them follows at least 8 brands on social media. Hence, Chinese social media has great potential in engaging consumers and facilitating consumer PR’s effectiveness.

After the emergence of Weibo, social media gradually becomes one of main vehicles for consumer PR to spread information and reach audiences in China. According to SinaWeibo and CIC’s report on corporate accounts (2012), over 130 thousand domestic and international companies or brands have verified accounts on Weibo.

Nonetheless, with the ongoing migration of active users, more and more brands join Wechat to tap its fast-growing user base.

3. Consumer PR and Wechat 3.1 About Wechat Basically, Wechat is a mobile messaging app similar to What’sapp which combines instant text and audio messaging, but it also integrates features of social media: multimedia content creation and sharing called “moments” like twitter and facebook, location-based social plug-ins like Foursquare, video calling like Skype. It even has

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built-in tools that enable users to play mini-games, issue coupons and buying things.

Users can also scan or create their own QR codes within the app.

Different from traditional social media, Wechat resembles more of a personal social network as content can only be shared among small circles of friends. Organisations can create their official public account, but only subscribers to the account will receive their feeds automatically. If a subscriber forwards a post, only that subscriber’s circle of friends can see it. In addition to pushing content, public accounts users can also customise interactive feeds and offer mobile payments service. As MSL Group (2013) clarifies in its report, Wechat users’ relationship with companies are built individually, so it is more practical for PR practitioners to use it to engage consumers and build direct communications with them.

With a history of 3 years, the application developed by Tencent already has over 600 million registered users and is striving for global expansion (Hoffman, 2014).

According to Liu et al (2014), there are more than 2 million official accounts on Wechat until now and the number continues to increase.

3.2 Consumer Brands and Wechat Consumer brands in China utilize Wechat in many different ways. In this section, the researcher will look at how PR practitioners can take advantages of Wechat and use it as a tool to manage consumer engagement.

3.2.1 One-To-One Communication Chinese people are passionate content creators and only 20% of them are willing to be passive spectators (Digonnet, 2014), which implies that companies should not simply push information to their audiences, but establish a two-way communication with them. As a messaging app primarily, Wechat is great for such one-on-one interactions between a brand and a consumer. This means of communication can humanise the

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brand and deliver a message to consumers that our brand want to hear from you and care about your opinions. Even though consumers can also express their opinions through traditional social media, their comments may easily be drowned in vast junk information. Nevertheless, Wechat’s one-to-one chat function can ensure that consumers’ concerns won’t be ignored and their problems can be solved effectively.

Louis Vuitton is an example which offers mobile customer care on its public account.

A customer service assistant will answer customers’ enquiries on a daily basis. This becomes the main selling point of LV’s Wechat account, so even its welcome message goes like: “Hello! Thanks for following Louis Vuitton official channel. We are here daily, 10:00 to 19:30, to answer your questions, explore Louis Vuitton and embark on a wonderful journey!” (Ghedin, 2013).

(Picture 1: Welcome screen of Louis Vuitton’s Wechat accout)

3.2.2 Display Products and Service Different from other channels, not all users on Wechat can freely access to certain

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brand’s account. Only those who have subscribed to an account can receive the company’s feeds, so these groups can also be regarded as those who are more likely to be or have already been loyal to a brand. They are willing to acquire information about the brand. Therefore, many brands use Wechat to showcase their product and service and provide more vivid picture of what they can offer to consumers. Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing brand, has created a product showcase on its official Wechat account (see picture 2)

(Picture 2: Uniqlo’s product catalog on Weichat) 3.2.3 Customised Content According to Doland (2014), Chinese consumers have a high demand for customised products and experiences, many of whom believe that personalisation can highlight their status and make them look unique. As a one-to-one communication channel,

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Wechat exactly offers up potential for innovating on customisation, so Chinese PR practitioners seize this opportunity and change their conventional maxim of social content creation that push out viral messages to reach the masses, but begin to create more targeted customised content. As one of the early Wechat adopters, Starbucks launched a campaign for its Refresha promotion in 2012. When users sent their emotions to the public account, Starbucks will respond with corresponding songs which reflect the mood of the emoticons. In only one month, the campaign attracted 62,000 fans and received averagely 22,000 messages per day (Shayon, 2014). Such customized content endows the brand with human emotions and allow it closer to consumers.

(Picture 3: Starbucks’ customised content on Wechat)

3.2.4 Build Word of Mouth Wechat is personal social network to some extent and only a small circle of friends can see the users’ posts. Without viral information, it is perceived as a relatively

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reliable platform for most social media users. Hence, its potential for building word of mouth is enormous. If a celebrity or public account endorses a brand, people may not always believe it, but if a friend or a relative of them share the same post, people will think it should be a trusted brand. During the Lunar New Year period this year, Pepsi launched a campaign called "Bring Happiness Home”. People were encouraged to record an audio message to their family and friends by Wechat and then send to Pepsi’s official account, where will mix their message with the well-known "Bring Happiness Home" theme song and sound effects like galloping horses or trains. .

When users sent the final audio message to their friends or relatives, the brand messages were also delivered along with the song. Consequently, Pepsi’s brand value was spread by word of mouth.

3.3 Case Studies This section will focus on two key examples of how brands integrate advantages of Wechat and launch social campaigns on it as a part of their communication mix.

3.3.1 Burberry’s Customised Fashion Show Experience During the Autumn/Winter 2014 Womenswear show in April, the British luxury brand Burberry offered Wechat users an opportunity to experience behind the scenes at its London runway show. Subscribers can receive Wechat-only audio content from the creative team to explore the inspiration behind the collections and personalise looks from the catwalk. They can also track the show with two Chinese celebrities in attendance, which means fans can access exclusive VIP content as show guests.

Furthermore, Burberry followers were able to create personalized AW14 Runway Made to Order plaques by replying "Made For" with their names. The innovative campaign designs an exclusive and responsive show experience for audiences which help the brand to engage its Chinese customer base better and build their loyalty. This also creates a more interactive way for PR practitioners to tell stories of their brands.

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(Picture 4: Burberry’s customised fashion show experience on Wechat)

3.3.2 Yoshinoya’s“Eat Me the Way You Like” Campaign The Japanese restaurant chain Yoshinoya’s Wechat campaign can be seen as a good example for how to harmonize varied elements of the platform into a single campaign.

By using Wechat’s customised plug-ins, the brand offers an interactive experience in which users could upload a personal photo to obtain a mobile coupon customized with his/her photo. QR code is attached to each coupon so that consumers can share it with their friends.

In the first phase, the official Wechat channel invited all fans to upload a selfie to in exchange for a digital coupon with their personal photo. The activity information was also available in every restaurant, so customers can scan the QR code on the table and take a selfie to take part in. Then, Yoshinoya’s PR team use a Chinese rising TV star Ren Zhong and other social media influencers such as food bloggers to endorse the campaign and expand it. In addition, when followers shared the information through the “Moments” feature on WeChat, a digital version of a word-of-mouth channel was

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established. At the end of this campaign, the custom plug-ins was downloaded 26,663 times, More than 7,000 photos were uploaded and the number of Wechat followers rose from 3,000 to more than 18,000 (Hoffman, 2014).It should be noticed that “eat me the way you like” is not a purely PR campaign, but an integrated marketing campaign which involves a number of PR elements.

(Picture 5, Yoshinoya’s“Eat Me The Way You Like” Campaign)

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(Picture 6, word of mouth on Wechat’s “moments” feature)

4. Conclusion and Predictions On the basis of discussions above, Wechat’s role in consumer PR is becoming increasingly significant due to its vast user base. Nonetheless, since technologies develop in warp speed, it is extremly hard to specifically predict the growing trend of Wechat and how will it impact the Chinese Public Relations indudtry over the next two to five years. But it is certain that moblie-oriented social media like Wechat will continue to present challenges and opportunities for PR practitioners (CIPR, 2014).

As Gordian (2014) states, China has 618 million netizens in total and 500 million of them access to the internet via mobile which is expected to reach 800 million by the end of 2015, so mobile-based social media’s influence will be enhanced continuously.

Chinese PR practitioners have to follow the up-to-date trend and use mobile channel more actively.

The trend also requires PR professionals to improve their skills so as to manage mobile communication effectively. In order to achieve this, practitioners should make themselves master of digital device. mobile-based communication channel like Wechat is more private and closed, so the first and the most tough task for PR is to attract followers. On Wechat, for example, QR code is the most effective tool to attract users to do a quick scan and become a fan, so knowing how to create and spread QR code is vital. There are also many other functions availiable for PR practitioners to explore. Secondly, professionals should have ablility to create more targeted content and tailored messages to make them more relevant and personal since mobile channel send information to individual users or specific groups. Then, one-toone structure makes it possible to build more interactive communication with audiences, so to be more creative is another requirement for PR professionals .

Finally, with the rapid development of technologies, more and more functions will be added to mobile-based social media. PR activities may reply more on mobile

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applications, so it is likely that software programming overlaps into the PR world.

5. References Brown, R. (2013) Digital PR Is Dead: Social Goes Mainstream. In Waddington, S. (ed). Share This – the social media handbook for PR professionals. CIPR: John Wiley & Sons

Doland, A. (2014) How McDonalds, Pepsi, Burberry Are Going Big on China's WeChat. Available from <http://adage.com/article/digital/mcdonald-s-pepsi-burberry-big-china-s-wechat/291918/ > [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Ghedin, G.(2014) Marketing on Wechat: How to Create a Full Brand Experience. Available from <http://www.digitalintheround.com/marketing-wechat-brand-experience/ > [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Gordian, G. (2014) Weibo, WeChat and the Future of Chinese Social Media. Available from <https://blog.percolate.com/2014/04/weibo-wechat-future-chinese-social-media/ > [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Go-Globe (2013) Social Media in China: Statistics and Trends. Available from <http://www.goglobe.com/blog/social-media-china/ > [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Hoffman, L. (2014) WeChat Campaign in China Offers Glimpse into the Future of Communications. Available from <http://www.ishmaelscorner.com/2014/01/21/wechat-campaignin-china-offers-glimpse-into-the-future-of-communications/> [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Johnson, I.(2014) From Weibo to Wechat: the Transformarion of Chinese Social Media. Available from< http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20140707/c07wechat/ > [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Liu,P. et al. (2014) Annual Report on Development of New Media in China. Available from

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<http://yuqing.people.com.cn/n/2014/0627/c364391-25210278.html>[Accessed1December 2014].

MSLGroup (2013) We Chat About WeChat . Available from<http://www.mslgroup.cn/whitepapers/MSLGROUP_We_Chat_about_WeChat_Dec2013_E N.pdf> [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Rapoza, K.(2011) China's Weibos vs US's Twitter: And the Winner Is? Available from <http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/05/17/chinas-weibos-vs-uss-twitter-and-the-winneris/ > [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Shayon,S.(2014) Why Western Brands Love China's WeChat Mobile Platform. Available from <http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/140807-WeChat-Western-Brands.aspx> [Accessed 1 December 2014].

SinaWeibo and C&C. (2012) 2012 Corporate Weibo White Paper. Available from <http://www.slideshare.net/CIC_China/2012-cic> [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Vincent Digonnet 2014, Why China is 10 Years Ahead at Social Commerce, Thoughtful China, online video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK5B25MdXCE&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 1 December 2014].

Willis,P. (2009) Public Relations and the Consumer. In: Yeomans, L. and Tench, R. (eds.)

Exploring Public Relations. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.ed. London: Routledge, pp. 409425.

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6. Reflection I chose the increasing use of Wechat in consumer PR in China because that it would be easier for me to explore something about my own countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s PR industry. Also, Wechat is one of my most frequently used social media, so I know much about how brands use it to communicate with consumers from the persepective of an audience. I was confident about completing the research smoothly when I made the decision.

However, things donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work out as hoped.

The process of writing this report is a little bit tough for me because there is no sufficient academic source about my chosen trend. Firstly, the use of Wechat in consumer PR is a extremely new phenomenon, so no western academic studies specially examine this topic. Then, Wechat is really different from other existing social media, so those accademic texts on other platforms are not very useful for my report. Finally, it is very hard to find accademic sources about the Chinese PR industry and new media since academic research in this area is still not well developed in China.

Therefore, I decided to use more practical sources such as industry body websites and authoritative bloggers. I do found some relevant articles and bloggs, but most of them focus more on marketing other than PR. In fact, this is a common phenomenon that a number of Chinese people and even PR professionals blur the line between PR and marketing. Also, it is impossible to discuss consumer PR in spite of the presence of marketing as the two always co-exist and interact with each other. In my report, I have tried my best to distinguish the two and pay more attention on those PR elements in a marketing plan.

Another problem is that the industry websites and bloggers are not as objective as scholars, so I had to be very careful about using these sources and bore in mind that

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no text is completely objective. I was concentrated on my own analysis and used these sources to support my own statement but led by them.

In my dissertation, I will be more careful about choosing topic. Before deciding the topic, I will do more research on it instead of mainly reply on my own knowledge and experiences. Then, I will make a detailed plan to help me to manage time. Besides, I hope that my dissertation report will contain more reliable academic books other than internet sources.