Let the Chinese eat what they can afford?

According to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group food brands, quick service chains and grocery retailers stand to benefit from a huge surge in sales across China. They describe this trend as an "unprecedented shift" in eating habits, largely fuelled by higher disposable incomes.

However, though productivity levels are expected to increase, there is also a genuine risk of price inflation all the way through the price chain and those suppliers who cannot act flexibly or nimbly risk losing out altogether if they are unable to keep up with rapidly changing spending patterns on food.

China second in the future, but Japan first in the here and now

Not sure if you saw the piece in WARC News today or WPP media coverage last week, but GroupM, the media arm of WPP Group, is forecasting that China could become the world's second largest advertising market in 2011.

Japan currently holds second spot, behind the US, but the tragic events in Japan are already having major repercssions in the financial markets and decline in revenue growth is almost certain.

In leapfrogging Japan, GroupM is predicting a 10% increase in Chinese advertising expenditure in 2011 after reaching $45bn (€32.4bn; £28.1bn) at the close of 2010.

China might soon be second in adspend terms, but clearly our combined skills and resources should be targeted at helping Japan first - in any way we can. What a great advertisement for global co-operation that would be?

Smartphones 4 u?

I was reading a piece in WARC News this morning about the growth of the smartphone market in the Asia Pacific region.

It has been estimated that smartphones will represent 60% of the market by 2015, compared to just 20% in 2010. Growth in Chnia is especially pronounced. Accenture recently suggested that 53% of Chinese citizens living in urban areas already own a smartphone and 38% of those surveyed by Accenture intending to buy one in the next 12 months.

Coincidentally I also came across a statistic in the April edition of .Net that the number of daily views on YouTube via mobile devices is around 200 million. three times greater than at this point last year and largely driven by sales of smartphones.

Looks like it's a smart thing to be upwardly mobile.

We like green

I was reading a piece in WARC News this morning about UK brands reaping measurable, commercial benefits from green marketing.

Kingfisher Group, parent of DIY chains B&Q, Castorama, Brico Dépôt, Screwfix and Koçtaş, believes this segment will be a key growth area in the future and is planning an 'eco-squad' where by green experts will assess homes and suggest energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly enhancements to customers, materials for which can be purchased via group companies.

Marks & Spencer has an M&S Energy arm, which is selling energy services into the £40bn UK energy market and has a head - Mike Barry - of sustainable business.

Unlilever too has been looking at the lifecycle impact of 1,500 products in 14 countries and seeking ways to reduce their harmful effects on the environment through e.g. developing detergents that use less water and energy - according to Gavin Neath, Unilever svp, sustainability.

It's good to see these initiatives becoming core parts of brand marketing with real commercial benefits isn't it? At the IPA we have long-since embraced the benefits of sustainable marketing, We have a partner deal with Envido, whereby IPA members can get commercial discounts on specialist advice on ISO 14001 certification, which enables companies to cut energy bills and reduce their carbon emissions

Our members have also created sustainable marketing campaigns for clients which have been submitted as case studies to our Effectiveness Awards programme. These effectiveness case studies include British Glass, Tesco and, last year, Kenco

We like green, do you?

Globally sociable

I was reading a piece in WARC News this morning about the world's top brands now using at least one social media channel as a key part of their marketing portfolios.

Burson-Marsteller have updated a study on the Fortune Global 100 brands' use of microblogs such as Twitter, social networks including Facebook and video-sharing platforms like YouTube and corporate blogs - which showed the slowest rates of growth of all of the social media channels covered.

Overall, 84% of the companies surveyed now use at least one of these channels, which is up 5% year-on-year. The equivalent figure in Asia was up 17% but no significant movement up or down in Europe. That's not so surprising given European brands' early adoption of social media marketing and brands such as China Mobile tweeting to catch up!

Made in Hong Kong

Those of us of a certain age will remember the 'made in Hong Kong' tag which was marketing shorthand for 'cheap, plastic, shoddy.'

Of course the economic and political landscape has changed over a generation such that Hong Kong and China now occupy a very different place in global marketing. Such easy, lazy disparagement has as much place these days as Britain's car industry leading the world. While it went into reverse, the Chinese hit the accelerator pedals but consider the journey rather than just the destination these days.

All of this comes from an article I read in WARC News this morning. It was entitled 'China set for luxury boom' and details the growth of the luxury goods market in that country including such brands as Louis Vuitton and China's own up and coming luxury brands.

According to the researchers, CLSA, China could account for 44% of total premium products and travel sales by 2020. It's only 15% at the moment. Interestingly, though still male-dominated, spending by female consumers is increasing so global brands such as Gucci and Prada stand to benefit in the short and longer term.

It may once have been a slow boat to and from China but not anymore, now it's a speedboat - and made in Hong Kong.

Will the face of 2011 be social media?

I suppose we all know that the answer to that question will in some way be 'yes.'

Social media platforms are now more widely used than their railway equivalents - and you don't have to hang around waiting for a dirty, one-way journey, packed in with strangers. Social media offers conversations with friends wherever and whenever you want to hold them.

For many in the west, India is synonymous with the image of packed trains on a largely unreliable service. Interesting, then, that WARC News is reporting this morning on the popularity of social networks in India too. According to WATConsult, the social media agency, total penetration is some 60% which, when you consider the vast population of friends and strangers in that country, is pretty impressive.

In an article in yesterday's Guardian it was reported that almost half of the global online population visited Facebook at some point in 2009. Already the largest UK display advertising publisher, showing 24.4bn ad impressions to about 30 million web users, Facebook is also the world's biggest photo site. An average of 2.7 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every 20 minutes. In an online comment on this article it is suggested that over 750 million photos were uploaded in the first 48 hours of 2011 - or over a million photos every four minutes on average!

So yes, one way or another, social media will be the face of 2011

Navigating the amazon

I was reading in WARC News this morning that amazon is among the online retailers receiving the highest satisfaction scores from UK consumers.

This is according to a recent survey from ForeSee who surveyed almost 10,000 respondents, and found that "highly satisfied" shoppers registered a 57% improvement in their commitment to specific retailers.

This is obviously great for online retail and I'm personally not surprised that amazon do so well. In the early days of online I found it difficult to accept that there was no telephone support but the e-mail system amazon have in place as well as direct order tracking via the Post Office is great and effective. Or perhaps it is just that like my fellow netizens I am more used to and confident in a system that has finally clicked with me!

John Lewis also do well in the ForeSee survey and I was again reminded of amazon when thinking of the 'never knowingly undersold' slogan. Having bought an item from amazon - and yes it arrived without delay - I got a follow-up e-mail to say that it had subsequently been reduced online and they had paid an amount equivalent to the saving directly back to my credit card. I didn't know about the price reduction so didn't need to ask and certainly didn't need to 'make a claim' with all the bureaucratic red tape that phrase conjures up.

If you run a transparent operation online you have nowhere to hide and it never gets personal. I used to think that the lack of a real person in retail sales was a problem but, as ForeSee are demonstrating, it's actually its biggest advantage.

Have mobile, will travel?

Looking through WARC News this morning there were two related stories on mobile 'phone growth in Asia:

Market Research company GfK Asia are reporting that smartphones are becoming the handsets of choice in Asia with one in five mobile 'phones bought in the last quarter being smart purchases.

Of course it's sparked a war among suppliers of operating systems, such as Symbian and long-term growth may have to wait for a market shake-out and common platforms.

However, Informa Telecoms & Media are also expecting massive growth in mobile adspend, from $2.3bn in 2009 to around $24.1bn by 2015, again with much of that growth coming from the chattering masses of India and China.

Analysts here expect advertising expenditure on mobile 'phones in the Asia-Pacific region to be representing over 30% of the market by 2015 with North America at around 18% and Western Europe 8%.

It's good to talk isn't it, but though the language barriers of global marketing have long been addressed, let's hope the multiple languages used by the computers running mobile 'phone operating systems and applications to talk to each other, don't take their place.