360DigitalInfluence

I caught up with our own Thomas Crampton last week in Istanbul. Thomas runs our teams across Asia and one of the big events coming up this year is the Shanghai World Expo.  To help inform our work and our clients who will participate in some way or another, Thomas developed some great research on the current buzz throughout Chinese social media on the Expo. I had a chance to ask him about what he found:

Q: Can you tell us briefly what the Shanghai World Expo is and what it may mean to China, its government, business leaders and even the people there?
A: Shanghai Expo has been billed as one of the largest events of its kind in China. While people outside of China may not have heard of the event, the organizers expect a extremely large domestic audience.

Q: You did a unique survey of what the Chinese people were saying online via social media about the Expo, what surprised you most?
A: One of the biggest surprises about the discussions online was the intensity of discussion taking place more than three months before the event began. While you might expect sponsor and the government to speak about the event, it was interesting to see the level of discussion going on among China’s netizens.

Q: Can you tell two of the insights in the survey?
A: The report gives insights into how individual citizens and companies are already gearing up for the Expo. In terms of Chinese citizens, the report shows that they are concerned about ticket prices and taking action. Among the initiatives are group purchasing of tickets and rural citizens asking for advice on how to buy tickets.

Q: How could brands engaging in the Expo use this survey to their advantage?
A: By understanding the concerns of consumers looking at the Expo, companies can find ways of offering value to those who may visit the Expo. One interesting example in relation to the ticket prices is one company, , that is offering tickets to Expo at the original price. The promotion costs them very little - the difference in ticket price is very small - but the publicity and discussion about it has been fairly extensive. As we follow the Expo with these publicly available reports, companies will be able to see possible hooks for their own Social Media strategy.