By Yann Lombard-Platet
Let's talk about what it takes to be a good Internet marketing or advertising client in China.

It's actually not difficult at all. There are two types of clients. The ones who have a clear idea as to what they want to achieve online. Then there are those who have no idea at all but want to be online because of their competitors are online or because they are hearing the increasing importance of being online.

I am not saying that either relationship is easy to manage, however, with the first type, you can have a constructive discussion between the agency and the client. The discussion helps us understand the kind of experience that they had online, where they were satisfied or in what way they were not. This will often lead us to good briefs, what their brand stands for offline and if they know what it should be online. We would also understand what kind of audience they are looking at because in most cases online and offline audiences vary slightly in their composition.

All these will enable us to come up with a good strategy, good creativity, a good tactical direction and a call for action to reach the right audience, engaging them and in some cases, converting them into registered members. They will become e-advocates of the brand forwarding messages or contacts to their friends or relatives.

Clients who have had negative online experiences
However, from time to time those who already have online experience can make our lives very, very difficult. They may have encountered very bad online experiences and are more doubtful, worried and afraid of what online can achieve. It's true online can achieve very good results and very bad results. There really is nothing in between.

Here is an example; a client who had a failed email marketing campaign in the past will say to us, “No, an email campaign cannot be used. It doesn't work, we have already tried it”. There are so many factors to take into consideration. The email campaign may have failed because it was not the right tactic of communication at that time. Then again it might have been the right tactic but the key message, subject matter, and call for action, email content or the mechanics of the campaign may not have been right. The client needs to realize this.

The online world is changing very fast and successful work at one point of time does not necessary work, not with the same tremendous result. Six, seven years ago, the quality of the databases in China was starting to be fairly okay online, emailing was not as huge as it is now. A well targeted campaign with a good call for action was generating very good results. Nowadays, even if you target it well with a good call for action, with all the spam and the abuse of online data, response rate is lower than in the past. It doesn't mean that we should scrap emailing from our campaigns. We simply need to consider the facts and let the client know that it still works but not in the same way as before.

When we suggest an email marketing campaign for a particular project, we would have looked at all possible tactical approaches and know that it will certainly work. What we need is the trust from the client as we have had years of experience and knowledge of what works and what doesn't. A good client who had a bad online experience needs to share his understanding with the agency as to why it failed and it may reveal some other factors that were not obvious.

Key criteria of a good client
One key criteria to being a good client is to keep an open attitude to digital marketing and interaction marketing, as it is changing so very often. He has to be able to listen proactively to what the agency has to say or recommend. Another key point is being courageous. With the ever changing face of the Internet and constant new development of information technology, it often takes a lot of courage to try new strategies; new angles other than what they have tried or their competitors have done before. Courage ultimately pays when it is applied consistently both on trying new things as well as being able to honestly analyse why something fails.

We have many good clients but I have a great example to share. In 2003, the Web was still considered the ‘bad guy' in the marketing mix and nobody wanted to consider the web. Some brands had mini websites because they knew there were people going online and felt they should be present.

Yu Sai lipstick campaign
Yu Sai was trying to reposition themselves among a younger audience rather than their traditional 40+ women. We convinced them that their targeted audience, women between 18 and 25, were online and were ready to interact with brands such as theirs. We managed to convince them to convert and invest a small amount of their budget from the traditional advertising such as the press, magazines, in store promotions; into an online campaign. We managed to persuade them that to engage the audience online, they would have to offer something. Since they were launching a new lipstick, it would be smart to offer a sample of that particular lipstick. Yu Sai was not against the idea but they were against the idea of ‘mass' sampling, worried about the abuse on sampling. However we advised them that if you go online and reach the online audience especially those who interact, they will definitely not be over 40 years old as these older women will hardly be on the web. The audience you will get are students or young adults who are always on the web and once they interact with you, then these are your audience. They believed us.

When we executed the campaign, we were monitored very thoroughly by the Yu Sai marketing team because this was the first time they did something like this and they were a bit scared. In one month there were one million visitors to the website. One million! This was amazing especially in 2003 when the web audience was probably half of what it is now. 50,000 registered, 35,000 actually downloaded the coupon and went to the stores to redeem the sample of the lipstick. Essentially a week after the campaign had started, the client realized they had not produced enough samples for such an overwhelming response. They had to quickly go into massive production of the samples to accommodate the demand.

The results were tremendous for such a small amount spent online. Since then, Yu Sai never stopped investing significantly online and reaching their kind of audience. Once again, a great client! Yu Sai was open to a good rationale that the audience was online and courageous enough to say, “Okay, we are going to give a sample away” even when they have never done that at such a scale. One key ROI indicator there is that the average cost per sample redeemed was 8 times less than what would have been spent on traditional advertising.

This example created a ‘first' in China for us. The client was courageous and open-minded enough to listen and trust the agency, daring to go for something new, daring to be different. That's what I mean by good clients!

About the author:
Yann Lombard-Platet is Nurun's President, Asia. Yann was previously CEO of the Shanghai-based interactive marketing agency he co-founded in 1998. During his years as head of China Interactive, Yann engaged in many leading interactive marketing campaigns for international clients established in China, such as L'Oréal, Fiat, Pepsi, Standard Chartered Bank, Citibank and Siemens.

Nurun China is part of the global Nurun Inc. with offices in Canada, US, France, Italy, Spain, and now China. Nurun Inc., founded in 1985 is the world's second independent Interactive Agency with 11 offices in 6 countries. It is also well established as No.1 in Canada, No. 2 in Europe and in the top 15 in the US, with over 750 employees worldwide. Nurun is 58% owned by the Canadian media giant, Quebecor Media and is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Website: www.nurun.com

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One Response to “Being A Good Online Advertising Client In China”

1. By Uri – August 27th, 2007 at 11:30 am

   Does the average advertiser in China care much about metrics? My experience has been they care about clearing out their budget, getting a hongbao on the side, and then getting ready for the next campaign.

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