The key finding from the 2018 China Brand Relevance Index^TM by Prophet is that two years ago 64% of the top 50 most relevant brands to Chinese consumers were multinational.  This year that number is down to 40%.  The 24% drop in relevance reflects consumer recognition of the growing sophistication of local brands in both production quality and messaging.

IKEA, BMW and Nike were the biggest losers dropping out of the Top 10 to positions close to the list’s bottom.  Notably, almost all the top 10 brands are tech companies.

Leon Zhang, co-author of the report said, “We are glad to see more home-grown brands making striking progress in being pervasively innovative while remaining ruthlessly pragmatic. However, global brands still play a leading role in ‘distinctive inspiration’ and ‘customer obsession’.”  Source: Marketing-Interactive

Lest we get stuck in the old thinking that China may be catching the US economically, but it is still a relative slow learner intellectually, these data tell a different tale.  Measured by the output of scientific papers China now rivals the US.  They did it by growing their output four fold since 2000.  That defines the present.

Looking at the future, we see that China is now home to 11% of the world’s top 100 universities while they are sending loads of students to the best schools in the US.  Of foreign born students in the US, China is number one with 32.5% of the total followed by India, which sends 17.3%.  Source: Bloomberg

Chinese women are makeup hounds.  Cosmetics are one of the top selling consumer products in the country and web enablers that help women create facial artistry are some of the most important apps.

Along comes Marie Dalgar, a cosmetics company founded by Cui Xiaohong whose mission is to “help Chinese ladies find their own unique beauty.”  Cui views makeup as art and that idea has found lots of fans.  The company’s mascara product sold within 15 seconds of its online launch.

Though the brand’s focus is enhancing Chinese beauty, it has no border limitations as evidenced by its international success at French cosmetics chain SEPHORA.  Marie Dalgar stands as another example of China’s next stage, one where it moves from being the piece workers of the world to one where locally developed businesses go global.  Source: Wersm.com

According to Forrester Research analysis, video ad spending will continue to grow because four evolving factors:

1. McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” continues to resonate in the modern world as the biggest players, Google and Facebook, begin to recognize that mobile is a different medium than desktop. Research says that attention span among mobile users is about eight seconds.  Result: Both companies are encouraging advertisers to limit the length of their mobile video ads to six seconds to better fit user preferences.
2. Facebook and Instragram have initiatives dedicated to drive more revenue from video advertising by better integrating the ads into content.
3. The medium itself is changing as bigger mobile screens are becoming more common making all video more appealing.  In addition to which providers are using hot spots and unlimited data plans to lower the cost of use.
4. The promise of emerging technologies – 360-degree video, augmented reality, and virtual reality – will affect, in a positive way, the mobile user experience.

Sources: Destination CRM; Forrester