Outmaneuvering Super Girl and the Great Firewall
Eighty attendees, an 8:30am starting time and a tight seven-hour schedule. These were the details of my final Beijing lecture for CCTV (China Central Television), during which I was requested to cover the topics of brand platform development, creative strategy, market positioning and social media wrangling. Needless to say, it was a tall order.
Knowing that I personally would slide into a deep coma if seated in a dark and warm conference room this early, without being completely engaged in the topic, I incorporated examples and anecdotes from my U.S. and Chinese clients. I also threw in a simple interactive brainstorming exercise to get everyone moving, talking and thinking. It is not my speaking style to inflict group activities, but I’ve found them to be very effective in China and used them accordingly. I always prefer a group discussion, but I realized that this time, I’d have to settle for a pin-drop quiet room of diligent note takers if I didn’t force a little interaction.
My host, CCTV, is China’s largest media company, and its news and entertainment channels are the official face and voice of China. Though competition for viewers comes to it from other national and provincial channels, the repercussions of dwindling audiences have had little effect on its size or reach.
In one example, the much-ballyhooed success, with 400 million viewers, of competitor Hunan Satellite Television’s “American Idol”-like “Super Girl” singing contest set a few tongues wagging and drummed up hometown Zhejiang provincial pride for this David in its fight against CCTV’s Goliath. In response, CCTV produced its own talent competition titled “The Dream China,” shortly afterwards. It failed, however, to attract the level of viewers enjoyed by “Super Girl,” which remains the top-watched show in China.
In the end, though, the internet gives Chinese television channels like CCTV the biggest run for their money. Despite the fact that YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and most popular international blog sites are blocked by the “great firewall,” high-speed internet connections are available almost everywhere in major cities and industrious users have found a myriad of ways to download and view nearly every television show and movie worth watching from around the world.
Pirated or “shared” video, as the Chinese like to refer to it, is translated into Mandarin and posted for download within days, hours or even minutes of the original broadcast, and without charge or commercial interruption. The hodgepodge of melodramatic soap operas and repetitive historical war-themed pulp that make up the majority of Chinese produced programming are no match, unsurprisingly, for newly released Hollywood blockbusters and top-rated television content from Europe and the United States.
As in Wuhan before, the CCTV attendees in Beijing were from news and entertainment divisions. Brand strategy and the use of social media for Chinese markets were, for the above mentioned reasons, highly anticipated topics and were well received. The interactive exercise brought the group to life as planned, many ideas were exchanged and a lengthy question and answer session was followed by an invitation to return in 2010. ”Super Girl” and the pull of the web notwithstanding, CCTV’s creative and marketing teams are definitely ahead of the game.
© Markus Horak, 2010
