Keyboards in the hands of many are mightier than swords

Rumors and word of mouth are a part of every culture, but I have always believed that in China, rumors have even stronger currency than other countries. In China, traditional media, for various reasons, is trusted less than other countries. This means that to get the "real" story, you have to go through unofficial channels. I remember my Chinese colleagues in November 2002 talking about a strange virus they read about on BBS which was causing a flood of patients in hospitals in Guangzhou. It was until April of 2003 that that rumor was officially reported in Chinese media and called SARS.

Rumors of course can have a huge impact on your business. Just in the last couple of weeks, I have come across several interesting cases of rumors on BBS and blogs:

HIV Watermelons: China Law Blog points to a Shanghai Daily story of rumor surrounding the Liquan 'brand' of watermelons being injected with HIV blood. "The police said it was possible that someone spread the rumor to reap commercial benefit." This story is now being spread on BBS sites like this.

Clark Kent and the Crazy Commentator: Danwei discusses text being zhuanzai'ed (copy/pasted) on BBS and blogs, supposedly from AP, that 30 Australians surrounded the Australian Embassy in Beijing, demanding that the ambassador make a formal complaint to the Chinese government regarding the overtly Italy biased commentary by sports broadcaster Huang Jianxiang (黄健翔) during the controversial Italy vs. Australia football match. Interestingly, Danwei could never find the original AP story, which was suspiciously written by Clark Kent. Clearly, someone, disguised as Superman, is out to get Mr. Huang?

Don't get mad, just spread rumors: Two weeks ago, a company in Beijing requested we submit a proposal to monitor their brand on BBS and blogs. The reason? Negotiations for a new contract with an existing partner had turned ugly, and the partner was threatening to spread nasty rumors on the niche (and influential) BBS and blogs forums covering their industry.

Certainly, false, misleading and/or planted articles in mainstream media are nothing new to China and other countries.

What's different now with social media such as BBS and blogs is that ANYONE is a publisher. Anyone can write about your brands, products or services. And thanks to things like RSS and copy and paste, rumors are now created, amplified, and perpetuated with an incredible efficiency and extent and companies absolutely no control. To add even more salt to the wounds, thanks to search engines, these rumors are archived and can be found for years to come with Google, Baidu, Qihoo and the like.

So what can companies do? First, be prepared. What forums or blogs discuss your brands, products and services the most? These are the place where rumors are most likely to appear first or at least early. Learn what these and monitor them on a regular basis coupled with searches on Qihoo or Teein.

If a crisis is brewing or becomes full blown, it is essential to work with a PR firm or an agency like CIC data (cough... shameless plug) with a deep understanding of Chinese social media to determine how (or if) to react and to really measure and understand the true impact. (For more than you ever wanted to know about Big Agency vs. Specialized Agency for social media servives, see here).

One word of caution: Responding directly to negative posts on BBS and blogs can be a very dangerous approach if not carefully managed. You don't want to get into a shouting match with a consumer in a public space.

Each situation is different, and the strategy can vary according to how well known the brand is, if the rumors are being orchestrated by a competitor, or if it is a single, unhappy customer....There are many factors to consider (a discussion for another time)


Related article: Mob rule on China's Internet: The keyboard as weapon

Thanks to Shanghai Peace Maternity & Child Health Hospital

My company helps clients listen and learn from consumers sharing their experiences and opinions about companies, brands, products and services with others on BBS and blogs.

Now it's my turn to share....

As some of you may know, my wife and I just had our first child, Leo. From the get-go, we wanted to have natural birth. We had heard that in China that this would be a challenge as upwards of 50% of all births in China are Caesarian, a figure much higher than the West (see here for some background).

Leo was delivered at Peace Maternity hospital in Shanghai (国际和平妇婴保健医院). During labor, Leo was not positioned perfectly for natural birth. At this point, the hospital would have had justification for suggesting a C-section, and at that point in time, we probably would have accepted the suggestion from simply not knowing any better.

But Dr. Fan (范 医生), our doctor and director of the maternity ward, reassured us that it could be done if my wife relaxed. She made it clear to all the staff that she strongly believed that my wife could and should have a natural birth. Later, Mid-Wife Li (李 苑助产士), who actually delivered the baby, spent over 45 minutes talking to my wife, soothing her, and massaging her belly to gradually make the baby turn to the proper position. Her presence and actions made my wife truly believe it was possible. And in the end, it happened, and it was amazing.

Based on the attitude and professionalism of the entire staff, it is clear to me that Peace Maternity has developed both the culture and the people of a world class maternity hospital. Kudos and thanks to Dr. Fan and the entire team that worked with us. I am now a big fan of this hospital and happily recommend it to anyone who is looking for a maternity hospital in Shanghai. Tell them that Sam sent ya.

On being Shanghai'ed and the power of Zhuanzai

In his post describing how I had been "Shanghai-ed" by the China Daily, Jeremy from Danwei mentions that "copy/paste" is an essential part of the culture of blogs and BBS.

There is a word in Chinese zhuanzai (转载) which means reprint, and is also used on the Internet to mean copying and republishing, invariably without permission. Because of the zhuanzai habit, all kinds of text and media can quickly get distributed on the Internet on hundreds of websites. This happens with news items, blog posts, photos, essays and articles. The content thus republished runs the gamut from pictures of MM (girlie pics) to political debate.

In the west, it is not uncommon for bloggers to copy/paste part of a news story or a blog (just as I did with Danwei above), but it is unusual for the copy/paste to be the entire post or news item without comment.

Virtual China, in a recent post, demonstrated how Chinese BBS forums become user controlled news distribution channels for "breaking news." Zhuanzai is big part of this naturally occurring, uncontrollable distribution "service," particularly for brands that experience crisis.

A typical brand crisis breaks online like this: an article from the Western media (sometimes one that is barely noticed in the country of origin) is translated/mistranslated/sensationalized by Sina or other portals who then create a "Crisis" page such as this for Colgate last summer. Then netizens, who want to be the "first" to tell such a salacious story to their online friends, will copy/paste the story in their favorite forums.



Looking at one crisis we analyzed for a US client, we can see that copy/paste makes up for a significant percentage of messages.


For blogs, the percentage was even higher.


To determine this, we identified all of the news articles from the period on the crisis subject and searched within the blog and BBS data collected to identify those which were copied. Interestingly, we found that negative sentiment was LESS during the peak of the buzz volume for the crisis than at pre-crisis and or early in the crisis because many of the mentions were zhuanzai with no real discussion. In other words, there was an inverse relationship between pure buzz volume (including zhuanzai) and sentiment.

Choosing a baby's name in modern China: e-feng shui

David in the comments section asked what Leo's Chinese name is. We finally decided and it is 沈泓仁 (Shen Hong Ren). 沈 is my wife's surname and 仁 is part of my wife's father's name. The middle character, 泓,was chosen because according to Chinese feng shui, Leo's birth date and time had too little "water." Also, it was recommended that we should add a little "gold." This character "泓" solves these issues.

Now, you may ask, how did we determine this? The internet, of course! You should not be surprised that the Chinese internet is abound with baby related and feng shui related resources. The two we consulted are http://zyname.com.cn and http://www.superfate.com.tw/22_free_8word. I actually had very little to do with the selection process, so I can't go into details, but I can tell you that 沈泓仁 rates a 90/100 in the world of feng shui.

Please welcome Leo into the world.

Please welcome Samuel Leonard Flemming, Jr. into the world. You can call this little guy Leo. He was born on June 9, 2006, 8:33 PM Beijing Standard Time, 7:33 AM Alabama Standard Time. He weighs 7.5 lbs.

Light blogging ahead...

CIC data featured in The Standard

The article can be found here.

CIC data featured in AdAgeChina

See http://www.adage.com/china/ or http://www.adage.com/china/article.php?article_id=109727

Did you know that I write for the China Daily? I didn't...

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well, I feel really flattered, because the China Daily copy and pasted my last post on 'net stars pretty much in it entirety here. At least they gave me the byline...



I checked with Jeremy from Danwei about this. He said China Daily has done it before to him as well as to ESWN. I am honored to be in the company of such China blog technorati.

I could be angry, but....naah, there's not much I can do. I guess it doesn't really hurt me, but I do wish they would have linked to this blog or refer to my company (at least changing the "we" to "CIC data"), then it would've helped me. Also, if I had known they were going to publish it, I would have worked on my writing a bit more. I really didn't fine tune this one like I should have.

Sage from Pacific Epoch writes about the incident here and picked up on the irony of the banner advertising for English language copy-editors and writers.