LOokOut China!! Outdoor Media in China

China will start its 6th mational census on the 1st of November 2010. From what I understandd, the census will be based on face to face interviews for the Chinese population and also some volunteer declaration especially in the biggest cities and for the foreigners.

It will survey population, age, nationality, levels of education, profession and population migration.

All the foreigners that have been resident in China over 6 months shall register; I ll share with you more information about this once i actually know how.

How I found out about this is by a clear and efficient outdoor campaign that has florished all over town in Beijing that I believe have spread nationally.

China 2nd AD Market in 2015

According to the latest media outllook from PWC which reflects the development of the Ad industry within Asia from 2010 to 2014, China is to overtake Japan by 2015.

I like this ad which educates the country side to drink more milk: Remember every day to drink more milk", taken in Yunnan in 2006 during one of my backpacking trip.

While Asia average growth per year during that period is expecting to reach 6,4%; China will grow by 12% per year and Japan only by 2,8%. This is good news for the Ad industry actors in China.

China Ad market growth forecast

Still according to the study, the main drivers for China will be:

- Online: 25,1% growth per year

- TV: 14,6%

- Outdoor: + 15%   (compared to -1,5% in Japan) WOUWOUWOU!!!!!!

- Magazine: 12,6%

- Newspaper: 4,6%

It's everywhere_ Right out of a Japanese cute manga we can see this little girl who seems like she wants to educate us on how to build a Civilized and harmonious society in Beijing :.)

how sweet...

Between modernism and propaganda, this campaign is all around Chaoyang district in Beijing, one of the most dynamic district of the Mega city.

In the famous Sanlitun Village where all sports brands have their shops, we can find various brands message to support the 2010 South Africa World Cup. The first outdoor format I want to introduce you is Puma.

Puma which is famous to support African teams and football within Africa is not putting forward any team sponsoring in front of his store but has created a visual to support Africa as a whole and the football as a way of love: " Love equals Football" ... Anyway, great colorful visual printed on a large sticker to fit the store front side. about 4 meters wide and 5 meters high.

What is an Air Bridge media package?

For those who are not familiar with OOH media or Airport media, one of the TOP media within an airport is the Air Bridge Media. The Air bridge is the structure that connects directly the plane door to the terminal so most of the passengers have to go through an air brdige within an airport except in case of remote boarding or arrival where you might walk or take a bus to get to the terminal entrance.

Wanted to share with you a brief interview I gave for our friends of China Business Connect, specialist of e-learning in China.

You can find my interview on http://china-business-connect.com/interview-outdoor-advertising.htm

It actually gave me an idea and in the comming weeks, I will interview some of the persons I know in the outdoor advertising in China to share with you their insights.

From Kathmandou international airport, my trip continued by bus to Chitwan Natural Park about 5 hours drive from Kathmandou; then from Chitwan we went to Pokhara (another 4 hours drive) where we were stuck for 4 days as we could not make our next move and we ended up to drive to Kathmandou before flying back to Beijing.

We did spend some time on the orad mountains where we saw a lot of ads actually, PAINT ADS. Indeed, like what we can find in the countryside of China or I believe in many areas less developed, the best way for advertisers to have space is to rent a space directly on Walls of buildings or home or even directly on the mountain road stone protection to paint your ad.

For the buildings or personal homes, I believe the media company may directly discuss with the owner and pay them a yearly rent and then re-sell the location but I am not sure.

Seeing that the country is not that huge and cities have a reasonable size, I also thought that maybe the brands have staff who can directly go discuss with the owners to rent the space on their buildings or home.
Unfortunately, I was too sleepy on the bus to have the chance to take pictures of those ads but I think my friend might have some, I'll post them in the coming days. but for now, I can share with you the painted ads that you can see inside the city.

Here you can see the Total logo painted on a store that looks like a lubricant store:

For the shops, we can ask ourselves the same thing. In a typical Nepalese street, you will have the shopes entrance directly on the streets and the entrances are all Steel doors (see picture_ i am not sure of the english word for this kind of thing). On the top of each door, you can find an AD panel that may or may have not something to do with what the shop actually sells.

Here you can see Castrol as well which is a big outdoor advertiser in Nepal.

After a first launch of Touch Media screens in Beijing taxis about 3/4 years ago; they kind of disappeared for a while due to a lack of content and advertisers. Touch Media this last year seemed to focus more on the launch of the Taxi magazine that you can find monthly in every cab in Beijing in the Magazine holder at the back of the passenger seat. And I would say it was a great move from Touch Media who managed to realize that maybe focusing on Print and on their magazine holder format (see also the article about the Asian Games beginning of April) while waiting for the market to be more mature for touch screens medias.

Thanks to the Auto-show and to the World Expo, we can now see that touch screens came back last month in the Beijing taxis with much more content and also an improved version of the screens with higher sensitivity and higher resolution (from my own experience, maybe the same screen than 3 years ago, but i feel it's working much better).

Hard for the 2010 GuangZhou Asian games to exist when the whole world and the whole Asia eyes are looking towards the Shanghai World Expo.

All the sponsors of the World Expo are invading literally all outdoor formats in Beijing so we can feel that the GuangZhou Asian Games here tried to take what was left and I bet at a very affordable price.

Indeed, in the taxis of Beijing, it is not rare to see ads on air still from 2009 or even 2008 campaigns on those magazines holders; which you may think is quite surprising actually as the visibility is really striking.

Well the truth might be harsh but my idea would be that brands do not want to take the risk to be associated to the reputation of the Beijing taxis: stinky, rude, "Fast & Furious"...

Also the formats might be easily damaged by the passenger himself, or even written on without any control.