Welcome to the Red Card 2019 report, now in its 8th year of publication. The report identifies the number one European Football Club, League and Player online in China according to 8 metrics. The Red Card also includes the ‘China Digital Football Awards’ voted for by a panel of independent judges. The last 12 months have seen consistent growth in the football industry. Sports IPs no longer simply target brand awareness online, the challenge has been to balance this with digit

In recent years, China’s growing passion for football has drawn the attention of the world’s top football clubs. The incomparable population, alone, make China the ultimate frontier for European clubs to nurture new-era fans and steeply increase revenues. What’s more, the political and economic superpower still owns a potential fan-base of several hundreds of million of people without a defined football team to support. Unlike European fans, who mainly choose their teams eith

Leading Chinese digital company Mailman have just released the ‘must have’ guide to a football club wanting to make it in China’s sporting wilderness.  Whether you are Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool or even Stockport County, the question is the same:  How do you convince 450 million Chinese internet users to follow your club? Having managed the Chinese fan bases of major sporting organizations around the world, Mailman have reviewed the China strategies of the world’

We’re here at last….. I can now reveal Mailman’s favorite campaign of the last 5 years… VW Fox – “Planeta Terra” Twitter Zoom As official sponsor of the popular Sao Paolo music festival ‘Planeta Terra’, ‘Volkswagen’ saw a great opportunity to drive consumer interest in the launch of their new car, the Fox. As the festival had sold out in a very short space of time, the one thing the youth of Brazil wanted….was tickets! Objective To come up with a highly targeted, innovative a

How does a brand speak of the competition in public?  Its not such an obscure question with today’s online trends, ease of chatter and likelihood of debates that you should consider a framework for how to do this most effectively. Anything worth doing will encounter competition – if not its unlikely to be worthwhile enough. The most common and easiest ways of doing this are typically either to ‘bash’ the competition; make loud obnoxious statements about how poor they are and

Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing the Top 5 social media campaigns from the last 5 years. Here is number 4. Drink Driving PSA – Designated Driver Campaign Watch video here… Objective To create a Public Service Announcement which really sticks in the memory. To really connect with viewers in a way that the most PSA’s fail to do. To create a wave of realization about the dangers of Drink Driving which would spread all over cyberspace. Concept The Texas Department of Transpo

Science can play its role in shaping your online strategy.  A viral hit is what all marketers aim for, yet so few campaigns take into account the key forces needed to create your best chance for viral propensity.  If you can apply Mailman’s 5 Factors to Viral propensity to your campaign you will give yourself the best chance at viral success. Let’s begin… with this image in mind. 5 Forces for Viral Propensity 1. Media – You must ask yourself ‘what about our online initiative

If today you’re not talking to a Chinese consumer seriously, with a dedicated channel push you are simply missing out on the biggest market opportunity since the gold rush.  Yes that’s true and it’s time to really pay attention.Chinese represent almost a third of the worlds population, they speak a language more than anyone else and their coming to a city near you; with migration exploding in the past 5 years.  Embrace it and they will also embrace you. Tom Peters keeps it ve

Or as I like to call it ‘ePR 4 ROI 4 EVA’… As the spread of peer to peer referral blossoms to galactic proportions; companies are aggressively considering online PR alternatives.  Progressive consumer driven brands are certainly attacking head on, yet at what accountability?  The challenge marketers need to address is how to turn those positive online conversations into a tangible return. Recently we (at Mailman) have taken the time to really study the effectiveness and like

Alarming, troubling and yet so ultimately predictable is the assumption Facebook will eventually charge fees for accounts held by corporations. This is based on simple business paradigms.  Leverage is now heavily weighted towards one party (Facebook) which implies the other must pay (companies).  Yet those most alarming thing about this is that the corporates don’t see it.Build your own property or lease?  Essentially the decision one makes when investing in a online communit

With the sheer size of China’s booming luxury market, one can easily be fooled into thinking your product will produce a certain success.  As we’re learning more and more the type of luxury buyer you are in fact selling too are far different between one another than you think.  More so, if you are not familiar with whom you are selling to within this luxury buying group; it’s simply bad business. Analyzing the typology of the luxury consumer in China is difficult at the best