BlueFocus brought China's No. 1 vlogger onto the stage of Cannes Lions, talking about content creation in China

In response to the close attention paid by world's advertising and communications professionals to Chinese creativity, China Day is set to be a featured one-day forum at Cannes Lion this year to showcase leading edge creative thinking and innovation trends in the China market. The forum inspires ideas for global communications and creative industries.

Holly ZHENG, CEO & President of BlueFocus International, commented on choosing "content creation" as the topic for panel discussions. "There has been a shortage of quality content for a long time. In recent years, vlog-based content has emerged and matured at astonishing speed, bringing massive attention to people like Papi Jiang who has become the most influential online celebrity in China in less than a year. We would like to talk with Papi at Cannes to understand her perspectives as a popular content creator on what makes quality content, and what is the role of agencies in content production in the mobile age. We hope the discussions could provide valuable takeaways to the communications industry in China and internationally," said Zheng.

Papi Jiang's story of becoming a household name overnight caused a surge in content creation in China. As a first-time panelist at Cannes, she interested keen and curious communications professionals from both China and the rest of the world.

Attracting fans

Holly kicked off the panel discussion by asking Papi "As a vlogger who has earned tens of millions of fans in less than a year, what personalities do you think you have that appeal to fans? How do you make your content continuously appealing to most people?"

Papi said, "My colleagues often think of me as comical, but I don't think so myself. It is likely that the topics I care about resonate with a wider population. I make videos based on my own choices, such as my observations about life and people, and I share them. My audience may identify from these videos similar stories that have happened to themselves."

 "We create what appears to be interesting to us, not what we think may be interesting to our audience. The content we keep making is based on our observations about life and hot social issues as well. However, instead of just borrowing a headline, we create something original." Papi added.

Synergy between content creation and branding

Commenting on cooperation between content creators and brands, Holly said, "Content marketing is at the center of a whirlwind and has received widespread attention from brands. It is not an easy task to develop an effective model to create synergy between quality content and branding. Brands rely on good content to attract and retain targets, inspire engagement and sharing, build long-term interaction with users, and even influence their lifestyles. Most good content creators are very cautious when committing to a business collaboration and would treat 'a win-win solution' as their priority."

Papi said, "In terms of business collaboration, we prefer interesting ideas which help increase both video views and brand awareness. We promote products in a subtle manner. First and foremost, make sure the content of advertisements is interesting and resonating. It would be very difficult to take the "second step" in the flow of communication if the brand information is promoted in a straightforward and rigid manner."

 "We once worked with a leading cosmetic company in China to promote facial masks. The entire video was a roast of keyboard warriors, which resonated with a lot of our audience. In the bonus scene, we mocked foulmouthed video game players and joked that they would become civilized after putting on the facial mask as it detoxes. The video reached 100 million views on Weibo in two weeks. Brand awareness increased, and more importantly, the embedded brand information did not spoil the content," Papi pointed out.

The power of capital should not be underestimated in a blooming "we media" scene in the China market over the past two years. Holly believed that capital is in fact a double-edged sword. On one hand, it enables the scale effect of we media - capital helps content creators focus on creating quality content and increase distribution channels. On the other hand, capital brings risks and could cause over-exploitation of creators. It is important to keep balanced development of we media.

Papi and her agent Ming YANG also shared the plan and ideas about the MCN platform Papitube, which is currently in operation.

Holly said that BlueFocus is honored to host a session during the China Day program at Cannes. BlueFocus is engaged in long-term monitoring of China's communications industry dynamics and trends, and has in-depth understanding of Chinese brands. More importantly, being the only China-based communications firm with a global reach, BlueFocus is committed to helping Chinese enterprises build globally recognized brands and helping global brands enter the China market through more effective marketing and communication services. Cannes Lions is the world's most renowned annual creative conference for global advertising industries. We hope that the unique creativity and development trends in the China market are better known to global counterparts through Cannes.

About BlueFocus

BlueFocus Communication Group, founded in 1996, is China's leading advertising, PR, digital marketing and communications company, and is also the top communications company in Asia by revenues. It was ranked No. 9 in the 2016 Top 10 Global PR Agency Rankings by the Holmes Report. Headquartered in Beijing, China, with over 6,000 professionals globally, BlueFocus provides intelligent marketing services covering digital marketing, public relations, mobile and traditional advertising, creative media production and media buying, E-commerce solutions, cloud based CRM, big data intelligence and social media insights & marketing. BlueFocus went public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SHE: 300058) in 2010 and has been expanding its digital and operational footprint globally serving over 1,500 brands in China and worldwide.

BlueFocus International, heaquartered in Mountain View, California overseas international investments and manages a portfolio of award-winning agencies including We Are Social, fuseproject, Cossette, Vision 7 Media, Citizen Relations, The Camps Collective and Jungle Media.

For more information and a list of BlueFocus subsidiaries, visit www.bluefocusgroup.com/en/gylb/

SOURCE BlueFocus Communication Group