LOokOut China!! Outdoor Media in China

I had planned a trip to Egypt for this 2011 Chinese New Year ( CNY) as many Chinese citizens did as well. My flight to Cairo was on the 28th of January so you can imagine how worry we were before going there. We did hesitate to go and eventually after many hours of reflection we decided to go as we really wanted to leave Beijing for CNY.( That was a bad call...) So here we were in Cairo on the morning of the 29th and realizing that while we were in the plane The Tahrir place was starting its revolution.

Sorry, not too much time these days to write on the blog; as you know NOW is the time when all budgets for 2011 are being decided so work is reaaaaallllyyy busy. Good luck for all the ones in the same situation or if you are preparing your budget for 2011: DO NOT Forget to include airport advertising in your budget !!! ;.)

I went to the Beijing China open last weekend in Beijing during the major pollution fog but well even I could not see very clearly at the other side of the court through the fog; I could still see that the court was half-full or half-empty depding on your mood.

LOOK AT THAT!!!!

Barbie and CCB joint credit card

Funny thing! On my way to Shanghai to actually meet the Mattel Marketing manager China; I came across this ad the same morning. Barbie and CCB launched their first joint credit cards and launched a strong outdoor cammpaign within several airports: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou at least according to my sources. You can also certainly find this campaign on many other formats and of course within the CCB outlets.

All the Car brands want their share of the Giant China car market and they are all thinking of new ways to attract new costumers. In addition to classic TV ads, print or outdoor billboards, the new trend is to Exhibition stand like the one above in some key spots of Beijing cities.

The above exhibition stand was done in Beijing Airport T3 for Benz.

This location is a pure exhibition stand but most of the brands are also choosing downtown spots to showcase their new models and even perfom sales on site.

To celebrate and promote the arrival of the A380 in Beijing Capital International Airport, Lufthansa Airlines is going on a road show with its promotion team to let the Beijinger have a flair of the A380 cockpit.

The 1st Lufthansa A380 flight between Frankffurt and Beijing is planned to be launched on the 1st of September according to latest news.

Along with some catwalk from some of the Lufthansa stewardesses; you will be able to experience a flight simulation of the A380 and get a certificate afterwards.

Beijing or Shanghai? Where is the luxury demand of China?

Following a study done by MSN China; Liu Shu, chief editor and executive producer of MSN China Portal, said 38 percent of Beijingers are regular customers of luxury products, higher than 37.3 percent in Shanghai and 33 percent in Guangzhou.

Agnes B outdoor AD- teaser for the shop within the center

She revealed that almost 63 percent of Beijing white-collar workers buy luxury cosmetics, 48 percent purchase luxury bags, 45 percent wear luxury watches, and 40 percent have premium-brand clothing. This may sound surprising as internationally most of the medias, newspapers and TV always focus on Shanghai as the heart of luxury in China.

Indeed after personnally sharing this information with some of my luxury clients; they all confirmed that the real heart of consumption for luxury brand in Mainland is not only Beijing but North China. Except some niche products (like Rolls Royce in Ningbo), most brands have the best sales in cities like Dalian, Beijing and Tianjin. So it's not a surprise that we can see new luxury shops opening in Beijing every month and one of the big luxury aera ready to open fully end of this year is located (again...) in Sanlitun North Village( Swire properties).

Of course Shanghai is still where the trends migh raise, where the marketing campaigns are decided and will remain a great place for Fashionistas but the middle class hungry for luxury products seem more dynamix in North China indeed.

Following our brief article on Puma, here we go with Adidas where we can really feel the budget power that Adidas is putting with this world Cup.

Not only because of the nice cover of Adidas flasgship store with the national players of various team; like Messi below:

But because of the amazing installation they made in the heart of Sanlitun village for the whole period of the World Cup.

IT'S HERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

But what's her name?? Who haven't seen that advertising in Beijing? Still the same visual for the last 5 years, this is definitly the most popular ad from Touch Media in Beijing taxis.

You can find it on the magazine holder and within the magazines once in a while. So I believe this ad does not need a thorough explanation... but I am still going to give you one. :.)

While I was in Nepal, since the country was on strike we had a lot of spare time to discover the country and its culture by discussing with the people in the local people in the streets or in our hotels who like us were quite powerless about the event so I took some time to discuss with them about advertising.

I won't go into too much details but a few things can be remembered:

- Nepal media industry ( TV, radio etc...) is really free of speech as Nepal is a democracy and they really defend those rights.

- For the advertising industry, it means they are really free to broadcast whatever message they want or really be innovative on the creative but by looking around or looking at TV, you can really see an obvious lack of creativity here

I wanted to share with you the last information published by CTR regarding the ad spending in Q1 2010 for China.

The Ad spending for Q1 2010 has reached 130,2Bn RMB, a 22 % increased compared to Q1 2009. What is very striking is that Q1 2009 only saw a 2% increase compared to Q1 2008 so we can really say the Ad spending growth is back on track FULL SPEED.

As you can see below, all medias revenues are increasing big times. This is not due only to an increase of inventory but mainly because media operators did increase their rate cards quite a lot from 2009 and the Q1 2010 sales have been surprisingly good.