GOSTELOW REPORT—“Communicating to Chinese requires a completely different Internet language, and an acceptance of gigantic numbers,” says Cecilia Lui, regional director of communications, Greater China, The Peninsula Hotels.
First, it is no use just working with servers and apps that the rest of the world uses. It is reckoned about 10,000 domain names are blocked in mainland China under the country’s Internet censorship policy. The list includes Facebook, Google and Gmail, Instagram, Pinterest, Wikipedia and western media including Bloomberg and the New York Times.
Next, you need to think big. China’s pre-eminent communication tool is Tencent-owned WeChat, which has over a billion followers, or 86% of all smartphone owners. All ages use WeChat to work, and play – and pay, for a cup of tea through to hotel stays, and online retail. WeChat has Mini Programs, roughly the equivalent of Apps, a name protected by Apple.
She uses WeChat Official Account and Mini Program to communicate, about twice a week, directly with her hotels’ followers (both the Beijing and Shanghai hotels have over 20,000 loyalists).
“H5 WeChat Mini Program definitely increases engagement with the public, especially females in the 26-40 age group. The most-read postings of our official account are on awards and accolades, followed by features on our people – say, our F&B customer services manager,” she said. Next on the popularity list are food promotions.
And there are special events. Chinese love mooncakes, round, two-bite dough pies filled with sesame paste that are produced and sold for only about a month around China’s Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar (this year it was September 24). “In 2017 we built a virtual store on WeChat Mini Program to sell mooncakes, and we made a very significant amount of revenue, as well as gaining massive publicity. This year we added e-gifting, and the final sales will be even higher,” she forecast.
Gifting real money in red envelopes, at holiday times, and weddings, is a Chinese tradition known as hongbao, and now e-gifting, virtually sending money, online, is becoming huge. WeChat claimed 768 million hongbao were sent over the last lunar holiday, with one recipient in Nanchang getting 3,429 red “envelopes.” “This July we launched six Peninsula e-gift cards, at a cost merely of commissioning a designer, and doing back-end architecture on a WeChat MiniApp,” Lui explained. WeChat is top in both Beijing and Shanghai – in Hong Kong, WhatsApp tops social platforms.
Courting influencers
Because of the size of China, wanghong (Internet-famous) online influencers know their worth, and Lui’s ideals are beyond budget. “I would love to work with such top bloggers as Gogoboi, but he has over 7 million followers, and we cannot afford him,” she admitted. (Gogoboi, real name Ye Si, is a former English teacher who, to extend his fan base, has learned Japanese and Korean, both of which he speaks fluently. He is rumored to charge 180,000 renminbi (US$25,920) for a single WeChat post: He has to support a Shanghai-based staff of 20 who run his Missionary agency, to tutor and promote fledgling bloggers, and they also manage Gogoboi’s online store, selling such items as Gogoboi’s preferred Gucci perfumes.)
Lui, who was born in Hong Kong, is also based in Shanghai but she is continually traveling to Beijing and Hong Kong. “Overall, this commute has more advantages than disadvantages. I like to talk face to face to my own 16-strong team, based more or less evenly in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as to corporate colleagues in the Hong Kong headquarters of The Peninsula’s parent company, The Hongkong & Shanghai Hotels Limited. I do not mind getting up early or traveling at weekends. I usually fly between the destinations, allowing half a day all-in, although during the typhoon season, June to August, I may well switch to rail between Beijing to Shanghai, which takes around five hours,” she shared.
It does seem that all this technology substantially adds to Lui’s professional load rather than helping her. “I also like to talk face-to-face with traditional media in all three destinations, although to be honest, in mainland China all old-fashioned journalists must also be bloggers to survive. Traditional media really want to be at such events as the squash tournament we hold every year in a temporary, glass-sided court on an upper terrace at The Peninsula Shanghai.
“Also, 2018 is the 90th anniversary of The Peninsula Hong Kong, as well as the 65th birthday of its Gaddi’s restaurant, and we are planning a one-off dinner on December 15, which will attract attention of our mainstream followers and, who knows, perhaps China’s bloggers as well.”