The recent controversy over a case of an alleged KOL and a multi-channel network (MCN) agency manipulating account data has caused a stir in marketing circles. The MCN agency helped the entrepreneur get a verified “Big V” influencer account with over 3 million followers, and the KOL's campaign video received
With 2020 rapidly drawing to a close, brands and marketers should be looking ahead to 2021 and formulating plans for getting ahead of the curve. Here are ten KOL marketing trends we’re keeping tabs on in China for the coming year. 1. Influencer marketing will be more popular—and more effective
Few can do business in China without hearing about guanxi, an integral aspect of Chinese culture when it comes to forging and maintaining relationships. Marketers should certainly approach the subject with curiosity by learning and observing the ways that guanxi feeds into consumer behavior. After all, the success of KOLs
How to stand out on China's enormous, noisy, and fast-evolving social networks is a puzzle brands are constantly striving to solve. While there is no one-size-fits-all formula, brands' success stories seem to suggest time and again that creativity wins—and is amplified when it's paired with the appropriate influencer marketing strategies.
Geo-tagged content is set to be one of the defining trends for location marketing in the coming years—and it's not even on the radar of many marketers. Location-based content and search are rising in importance all over the world. In the West, this is happening principally via Google Maps. In
China's KOL landscape can seem like an endless vortex of options. But, to really understand the KOL world means having a handle on a growing management phenomenon that essentially makes up its core: Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs). In the U.S., the MCN is synonymous with failure. Marketers might remember that the
Any travel brand on top of its marketing strategy is no doubt comfortable working with influencers who specialise in travel and tourism. But beyond this pool of travel influencers are social media mavens across a wide range of categories with tremendous untapped potential to work their content magic to reach
The content is great, the KOL is an effective communicator, and the brand has considered its target audience across multiple apps. But in China's current social media environment where platforms and KOL marketing rules are constantly evolving, these efforts alone, unfortunately, may not always cut it. It helps brands to
It was tough deciding which Chinese KOL marketing case studies we wanted to feature from 2018. In the end, we decided to highlight five brands which stood out for a variety of reasons, whether it was their willingness to experiment with new platforms and campaign mechanisms, their increasingly sophisticated understanding
Edward Bernays formalised the influencer marketing approach 100 years ago, although he wouldn’t call it that nor imagine today’s digital mediums. Since then, it has become a staple in marketing and advertising. However, modern-day influencer marketing on social media is still in its infancy. The typical approach is relatively unsophisticated,