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Hong Kong: Interview Transcript
Jeremy Woolf
Senior VP and Greater China Director of PR Consultancy firm TEXT 100
www.publicrelationships.blogspot.com
Conducted March 2009
What is the social media scene in Hong Kong like?
Well, I’ve been looking at Hong Kong as a social media market for about three and a half, four years. And when I first started looking at the market there were discussions going on things like, “Is there’s a blogosphere in Hong Kong?” It was at that level where, there was one of the news network, ATV or TVB broadcast a documentary which was sort of very sceptical, who thought bloggers were a bunch of kids in their pyjamas sitting at home sprouting at home, and the blogosphere got quite angry at that, and that was one of the first moments that there was a realisation that there actually was a group of people who were blogging.
And Hong Kong is a very interesting market because it’s very technological; it’s very tech-savvy. The mobile phone penetration is world leading, it’s like 120% or something, and internet penetration will be up at 80, 90% so it’s very, very high. But when it comes to things like communication, it’s a relatively conservative market. And so people tend not to go beyond standard media relations. They communicate via the news media and people don’t often look to alternative ways of communicating with an audience. I think that’s largely because the news media are quite happy to receive corporate messages and effectively relay corporate messages. So there really isn’t a perceived need to go beyond.
What’s happened in the past three-and-a-half years has been the growth of English social networks, as an enabler – I’m not going to say a civil unrest, because that wouldn’t be fair – but certainly as a way of having a discussion that’s outside of the confines of mainstream media. And while there’s no direct censorship of media in Hong Kong, unlike [in] China, there is certainly a sense of self censorship, that people realise and know what, and the expression is “I know what side the bread is buttered on”. And you have to be self censoring to some extent, because your editor will not put a story through that’s too contentious or controversial. Not to say there’s no debate in Hong Kong, but it’s nowhere near as open as other markets.
So, people are now looking to social media channels as a way of encouraging debate and conversation. Going back in history, though, Hong Kong does have quite a good - even though it’s not truly democratic - it does have quite a good history of people’s democracy in action. Tung Chee-hwa, the former Chief Executive was ousted on the back of an sms-driven campaign, which essentially said, “the financial performance wasn’t good enough and you’ve got to go.” So using sms, people organised and took to the streets and moved on. So it’s one of the first examples of social media - medium - creating a change in Hong Kong.
In the past 3 years, discussion forums have grown and they’ve always been part of the Hong Kong society, but they’ve become more mainstream. And so DiscussHK, Nuance, HongKongGolden which makes it the top three. And they’ve grown in terms of prominence. The range of discussions has grown as well, so they’re coving more and more issues. As you know, forums they historically - they grew out of the tech age – and then it’s engineers talking about technical issues, but now you’ve got forums covering a range of topics.
Services such as OpenRice, which is a restaurant-reviewing service – a Chinese-restaurant reviewing service – it’s become very popular, as a way of deciding which restaurant you go to, because in Hong Kong, eating out, as is in Singapore, is a great hobby. So that’s something that’s relatively new and has become quite influential. These sorts of channels have grown in prominence over time, to a point now where they can’t be ignored. Blogging, if I look at that as a .... Historically, English Language blogging was largely an expat practice and it was expats writing about what funny – how funny life is in HK. There was a sign, and it was spelt wrong and it was just sort of, that sort of stuff. And while those guys still exists, there’s much, much more Chinese language blogging, talking about a range of issues, and blogs that become quite important as a means of communication. So much so that when there was an issue with the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce – the treasurer was being accused of something of financial mismanagement in her own company. And the former, I think, Chief Executive of that organisation, didn’t hold a press conference to announce his displeasure. He didn’t send out a press release, he blogged about it. On his blog, he said, she needs to leave – Winnie Chan, she needs to leave, because she’s not doing the right thing. And that was picked up by mainstream media. And for me, that was one of the first times that the market was taking social media seriously, is when there’s a transition from social media to mainstream. And so we’re seeing more and more instances of stories broken online, and then that goes to mainstream.
How mainstream media has reacted, is they as many markets start to adopt social media practices. So South China Morning Post, the grandmother of English Language journalism in Hong Kong is now doing things like, it’s got its own T.V. channel, video channel? So that’s working. They’ve got comments features on their stories, so you can comment as well? You can now use social bookmarking, so you can put it to digg, and del.icio.us and those sorts of things. So they’ve adapted their style – they’re also having journalists blog as well.
Apple Daily, part of Jimmy Lai’s mixed media group, has been quite aggressive in things like, web television, as a way of bringing people into its wider community. And so they’ve got some quite, I guess, revolutionary things. There’s a service called Apple Pie, which is essentially a webcam-based talkback show that they developed and rent. And so, yea, I think we’re starting to see more and more instances where mainstream media has adapted social media practices. And social media is coming up to challenge mainstream media as a source of information, and to me I think people’s desire for collaboration and community and all those other things.
Hong Kong is also quite a media heavy market. I mean, there are far too many daily newspapers, there are like 16, 17 newspapers. It’s too many. The population is only 7 million, and so, there’s a lot of - it’s over-mediaed as a market, and so that’s compounded by social media. So what we’re seeing now, as in most markets, is newspapers are struggling, the circulation is struggling to get classified advertising, and so people are moving to online. Similarly in terms of stories breaking, they’re typically breaking online and not breaking on mainstream media. So Hong Kong, like a number of other markets, is increasingly struggling - the news outlets are struggling to add value to stuff that can’t be Googled. You know? If you can get the story online through Google news, why then would I wait 12 hours to see it in the stand in the South China Morning Post or Ming Bao - why would you do it?
But in terms of business across borders that’s a different discussion. I mean they - Hong Kong, certainly sees itself as part of China, and China sees Hong Kong as a very critical piece of its equation as well. And so, certainly trade is under the Closer Economic Partnership trade [Agreement (CEPA)] is absolutely encouraged. It’s to Hong Kong’s advantage to continue to differentiate itself in China through its logistic … management services and so on. But I don’t think you’re going to see Hong Kong social media having any cut through in mainland China. Mainland China, it’s, I mean it’s the local version of twitter called FunFou, there’s a local version of Facebook called XiaoNei . I mean it’s just, every single of the global services have a mainland Chinese - at least one mainland Chinese equivalent.
The market is big enough, but it’s also the language. Even though in a couple of years, China will have the greatest number of English speakers in the world, it’s still - people are preferring to interact online naturally in their native language. So that’s where people like Google struggle against BaiDu, because BaiDu is China made, Chinese are very parochial folks, and it’s hard for Google to establish a niche. So it’s an interesting comparison, but again, I think Hong Kong is at the benefit of being able to manage multi languages.
And then you’ve got somewhere like Korea, where the because of the government’s investment in broadband infrastructure, the online news network, which has 50,000 citizen journalists, has become a news network. And there’s nothing like that in Australia, but that forum has enabled - has changed - the scope of news in Korea.
The blogging culture is very strong in Korea. The Japan mobile is the way of the future, because they’ve had online mobile before anybody had 3G. And so, they were doing micro-blogging and those sorts of things well before anybody else. And so, it’s a little hard to say one market is dominant over another. They’ve achieved differentiate.
Discussion forums, just look at Mainland China - the discussion forum market there, there are 500 000 forums, you know, it’s massive. There, they dominate blogs. So as opposed to most other markets, where blogs are the way to share, for China it’s forums. So it’s certainly hard to point one market out For video sharing, if you look at the University of McCann’s, study, I think the top market for video sharing by internet population was either Philippines or Taiwan. And so yea, it’s different.
I think Singapore is fortunate because it’s got a very good broadband infrastructure. It’s got very good mobile connectivity as well. And it’s also relatively discrete. And so, you’re not having to roll something out across a place the size of China, you know, 1.4 billion people, you know, you’re going to cross a much more discrete population.... I think mainstream media have a greater opportunity in a place like Singapore because it’s quite a tech-savvy population. To further adapt to these technologies. I know the Straits Times and their parent company, have made a lot of steps on video, for example in online technologies. And that’s something they could see Singapore taking a leadership role [in]. Also again the thing about video in a place the size of China [is] you’ve got some 50 cities with 1000 people - in terms of infrastructure, you’re not going to reach people in Eastern China.
Whereas in Singapore it’s relatively easy ‘cause everybody has access to a service. I think again Singapore it’s going to be easier to see the crossover between smart devices like that using … technologies and places like this, the coffee shop. So you’re going to see greater crossover of things like location based events. You know, you can go, and say, wanted to buy that yellow shirt that guy’s wearing, pick up my phone and point it at it and then go and send it to my ... So those types of, I mean, anything - new fields of communications. So those sorts of things Singapore going to have the opportunity because of its size and also obviously education and skill set and those sorts of things. But ,no ,I can’t think of any other specifics that Singapore can pick up on with every other market ..
The netizens of Hong Kong are still pretty much a tech geek community. It’s a good vibrant community within there, I mean we have Barcamps in Hong Kong. We’ve had a Twestival recently, there’s Web Wednesday – you have Wednesday in Singapore as well - which is a networking group for digital people. So those sorts of things are going on right now and there is quite a vibrant community, but that’s again a subset – it’s a microcosm. For those needs to go mainstream, I think it’s going to take a generational shift, where people like yourselves are in business decision making roles, are going, “why are we talking with newspapers? What’s the point? My friends, my peers don’t read newspapers – we need to change the way we communicate.”
So I think give it a little while.
One of the things that happens in markets I mentioned like Singapore, in particular Hong Kong, is that the decision makers are …, and they don’t really see this stuff as really important ‘cause it’s not part of their work. Their understanding of communications is television, newspapers and magazines. That’s how they see people communicate. So their own – there are very, very few who are actually seeing social media as really that influential. So, until those guys move on, I mean, you how it works, they go and everything trickles down – that’s how it goes. So until they get out, until guys like you are pushing up from the bottom, it’s going to be an evolution. But it’s interesting; I don’t think it’s going to take that long. I think we’re probably being five years away from, if not being, this conversation would not happen. You guys won’t be doing a wiki on digital media, because it’ll just be media, and these are the channels for communication. And it’ll be the Singapore newspapers that old people read; it’ll be just something made of something paper – we won’t use paper anymore – but that will be the discussion. So I image in the next 5, 6 years, we’re going to see that shift happen.
At the moment we’re seeing traditional media as one budget, and social media is over here. And there’s sort of this uneasy tension between the two. And that’s going to change – it’s already changed in the United States. Right now, in the US, it’s hard for us to sell, I don’t know, a blogger outreach programme, because it’s just outreach, it’s just what you do. And you’ve got media influences, and you’ve got social media influences. So yea, I think we’re going to see that transition happen relatively quickly, and I mean, talking about … here in Singapore, it’s happening now. And we presented 5 case studies, all Singaporeans, based around twitter outreach, based around discussion forums – you know SGforum. Based around blogger-relations programmes, I mean, it’s happening now.
I mean the realisation is, for many companies, unless we do it internally [and] officially, our people are going to do it. Just have a look at the number of Facebook sites around corporates. How many of those are actually sanctioned by the companies? Very, very few. And someone’s who’s gone to Facebook, oh I don’t know, put my company in? And suddenly they’ve got this site, they; got this page. And so it’s a bit like SMS becoming mainstream. SMS was always this sort of thing that kids do, and now it’s become a corporate tool because people say that’s how we want to communicate. So we’re going to see more and more cases of that.
I mean, at my company, we had a blogging infrastructure, [and we] didn’t really like it, and we went out and made a different one using Wordpress, and that became our infrastructure. And again, from an IT-system’s perspective, and security, we needs to be conscious and keep up with it. But this is where the people wanted to have their conversation, and I think corporates are going to have to find themselves being a little more flexible in the way that they align and assist these technology decisions. Because if it’s not friendly if it doesn’t feel like the environment that they have at home, they’re not going to use it, you know? If the corporate intranet isn’t as easy to use as Facebook, then... is hard, you know? This is done by engineers, it’s boring , it’s hard. It’s not fun. And so should an analyst who goes, you’ll probably meet if he comes to Singapore, a guy named, he’s with IDC, his name will come to me in a moment, and his area of speciality is social media. His area of expertise is social media, and he’s Claus Mortensen. But yeah, I mean, his area of expertise is adapting this, which is the difference between corporate adoption of social media. If you look at his name Claus Mortensen from IDC, you’ll see a study he put out, I think, the beginning of last year, that’s comparing corporate adoption of social media tools versus what people actually want, and it’s dramatically different. Corporates who put their money really in the wrong place, and for internal communications, you know it doesn’t work if you develop tools that people don’t like. Yeah, it’s one of those little battles that’s going on.
Well, it’s a big question because there’s awful lot of development coming out of Asia. Huge amount, I mean in Hong Kong, certainly mainland China, I mean, there’s more iPhone apps being developed in China than anywhere else in the world, and yet you can’t legally buy an iPhone in China, you know? You can’t run on the network because [Apple] haven’t signed a deal with China Mobile. So, yea, there’s an awful lot of development going on. But there’s a lot of skills here, the success in Asia, as everyone always knows, is local. And so you can take something – and again this is why people like Yahoo and Google have struggled in China – because they’re not seen to be local players, where BaiDu has essentially ripped out Google’s source code, put a new badge on it, that’s why their successful. Because it’s local language by people in China. And so there’s a lot of skills here.
I see some of the most interesting technology developments coming out of Asia and some of the most interesting applications. ‘Cause here we’re having to solve different problems. I mean, a lot of the markets in Asia, in particular emerging markets like Cambodia and Vietnam, internet penetration is relatively low, but mobile adoption is very high, and so you see some of the best mobile application development in the world done for Asian markets. Because, yea, there’s no point in investing in a lot of staid PC-type infrastructure if most of your users can’t actually do it – they can’t read it. They can’t’ get access to information. I mean there’s a case in Japan, which is obviously not Third World, where because of the mobile adoption – it’s a nice story actually – they’ve got a service – begins with ‘I’, a name I can’t remember. But basically if you’re a student, and you’re sitting at a place like this, a coffee shop, and you’ve got a couple of hours between lectures, you can go online, go to a particular website on your phone, and it’ll say, “Restaurant over there needs a dishwasher for two hours”. And you get a job, and you go and get your hours. And it’s become this sort of micro job-placement economy. Once you have mobile devices and ... locations. so you go I'm here, and obviously it knows through GPS where you are, and it'll say, "Spinelli needs someone behind the counter for an hour," And you go and work there. And it's a great example of how, a very Japanese example, of how mobile technology... technology is creating a new type of sort of social, mobile social structure. I think it's fascinating. Places like Cambodia, for example, there's no point in investing a lot in PCs. People don't communicate via PC. They communicate through the mobile phone, they have their facilities for mobile ... And so your developers and engineers are building things to solve that problem. So I think Asia will do what it's always done - it'll take the best of the rest and it will develop very, very good local applications. And it will continue to do that. I think, in terms of innovation, at this stage, the big breakthroughs are coming out of the US. I mean, facebook is a US thing, twitter is a US thing. I think it's quite hard to go the other way, especially when your development started in English. I can see that changing in time, but at this stage, Asia is essentially mimicking what's happening, a lot of what's happening in the US. Like I said, there’s three different twitter versions, all that look exactly like Twitter, in China.
Yeah, that's Xiaonei and Xu…, can’t remember that one. But yeah, there’s also a Wikipedia version in China, not just an official one, an unofficial one. There’s, the dating websites, I mean, they're all there. But It'll be interesting to see when something big comes out of China and it goes worldwide. And that might follow the model of the Japanese innovation, where big Japanese ideas and then wham, suddenly they're worldwide. So they might follow that , but I haven't seen examples of that yet. But give it time, I mean this is a … world, right?
According to the recent ICT reports, Europe had the highest mobile phone adoption compared to Asia. Why?
I mean, last time I looked it was, Hong Kong at 120% but I guess it's a lot of Asia. And even China you've got quite a high penetration. You got a population of 1.4 billion India, yea, I guess in the cities you've got quite a bit of mobile penetration, the population's 1.2 billion. So, I think Europe probably has a denser, more urbanised and ultimately more affluent population, that's why you’d see it high .But I think in terms of internet penetration, I mean, well the... numbers, China has overtaken the US as the largest internet market in the world.
But even then, what's interesting is that China, the growth isn’t coming from the cities, it's growing from rural areas. And so, I think cities are growing at something like 40% year on year, and in the rural areas it's 60% year on year. So yea, you're getting some big numbers, and in rural areas people are adopting mobile, so straight away, you're talking about a population base of 1.4 million. From an application development point of view, there are going to be a myriad of [sic] opportunities in a very, very high growth market like China. But the question is, can those applications be exported out of China? Are there going to be things that will appeal? I've seen some of the Hong Kong development that's gone global. Some of the ERP services. There's a company called Kingdee that was acquired by IBM a year and a half ago, and that was an ERP solution that is Hong Kong, China developed. But yea, those are pretty rare. So, I think, yea, it's going to take a little while, and again, the needs of different other markets. But give it time.
Business to business, it’s going to take people who are very senior within business to be used to using this type of communication, and that's how they share their reports. They don't write a whitepaper for example, or do an analysis document and then talk about it in a seminar, they'll do that virtually online. And when that starts to happen, and when other people, business decision makers start to look at that, then we'll see that transition. But that's going to take a little while, and again it's probably your generation going out - but it makes me sound so old - our generation going out. It's going to be the deciding factor. That's when I don't stand up in a conference here, talking to 25 older people about social media for 8 hours. What I do, is probably a virtual conference, where, I mean, if you have ever seen one of those? They're great! It's the best speeches from around the world! It's absolutely stunning. And you package it right, and you stream me as well on webcam or telecam or something like that. When that starts to become the norm, and I'll think you're going to see people acknowledging that this style and format of communication is genuinely influential.
And right now, if I took to my client base, they'll go - and quite rightly - they'll go, "Ok, I need to talk to, I don't know, I'm trying to sell telecommunications hardware to Singapore?" There are probably 6 individuals you'll need to talk to. Literally talk to, to get your routers sold into those business. And so [do] you invest in a big social media campaign? No you don't! There's virtually not much point. You can research the way you've always researched. But if I'm trying to sell these things, iPhones, absolutely. Because people think of these and go to a forum. They're not going to go to Apple. They're going to look at the pretty pictures at Apple's website, but they're going to talk to their peers, and go, "OK, well, iPhone 3G? Or, you know, should I go [with the] HTC Titan 2? I like the keyboard. I like the fact that it's a touch screen. And it's also a touch [screen], but it's a smaller screen." They want to have that conversation, and they know they're not going to get that type of dialogue and honesty from HTC’s site, from Apple’s site. They're going to get it through the forum, 'cause that's the consumer demand. So, yea, I think it's going to take the business decision makers adoption and use of these communication channels forward to be taken seriously as an influential medium.
Advertising, I must say, historically is a one-way, you know? There's a sign on the wall, there’s a sign on the cab, you know? There is an ad that runs for 30 seconds. That doesn't leave itself to discussion, and fundamentally, we've got a community that wants openness, collaboration. They want it to happen in real-time, you know? They want a community. And those things you don't get through necessarily through advertising.
So I see PR as incredibly influential in shaping these discussions, and sort of the work my company is doing it for us through the markets around the world, is showing, yea, PR is taking the leadership in this. So I think we've got a great opportunity as PR professionals to change the way people communicate.
The other thing within that, is that, I feel, every PR consultant needs to be able to do social media. Some business say, "This is our digital team." And that's wrong, 'cause we're going to get to a point very, very soon, where it's not a question of traditional media or digital media, it's just, "How do I reach my audience?" You might say, "I want to have x amount of traditional media, and x amount of social media." That's fine. But you need a consultant who's able to balance those different things. So our approach is very much empowering every consultant with the ability to manage social media as well as traditional media.
It's the same question. And so, that's my target audience. You ask yourself where do they live - do they live in the newspaper? Or do they live online? The answer is they're online, therefore you wage your programme that way. So it's never really one or the other. I think there is a perception that social media is somehow a silver bullet to communications problems - you know, it's going to solve all my illnesses. And it won't. And so, it's like saying traditional media will, and it won't. You might be better off having a meeting around a cup of coffee and talking to someone directly, than worrying about media at all. So essentially, communications hasn't changed, it just got more channels in which to communicate.
The biggest change, though, that does exist, is that it's now a dialogue-based model, it’s not a monologue. And that's something that older-school communicators will struggle with. Clients also struggle with that, because they feel they'll lose control of the message. Because, you guys are doing, what, communications to groups? Ok, old school is - Ok, we go to a media interview, say you're a journalist - I'll brief my executive: we've got 3 key messages we've got 4 talking points for each message. You've got to stay on message for this interview. If you communicate that well, there'll be a nice story that will run on page 4 of [The] Straits Times. Ok, that's the older model. And it still works, it still exists. But the reality is, the vast majority of people don't believe what they read in The Straits Times - they don't trust it as an institution that is old and is not relevant to me as a younger person. I'd much rather read a discussion in a forum. I would much rather see a blog post and some comments that follow that post, and the ongoing dialogue. And so, we need to change the way we structure our communication. And that's become very, very critical.
So I think the challenge for communicators, for older ones like me, is to sort of to get out of that mindset, or at least be willing to accept those two different things. Many companies have struggled with that. I mean, I've ... in China, what if someone says something bad about me? And it's a legitimate concern. Because for many years in China, news media have been relatively compliant, and will essentially do what they're told to do. And all of a sudden you've got this group called 'bloggers' and 'moderators' on forums and those things, who don't necessarily tow the corporate line, and that's quite a scary thing if you hitch your entire career in a place like China, where you are getting a lot of good news. Your press release will often end up in the newspaper. so it's a slightly different model. So what it's going to take, is not just a generational shift in terms of business, so it's going to take a generational shift in terms of communicators, to get to a point where people like you guys are doing this instinctively. I have to think about it; you probably won’t have to think about it. I think that's the advantage of getting young people in the business. That said, I go back to my original point: there is still a need for communications objective and still a need for strategy and those aren’t going to go away.
Point 2, it's not all going to be possible. That’s the nature of media, so you need to help executives understand that this is changing. Point 3, it's not anything that’s negative or positive. You treat it on its merits; if the story is incorrect or factually incorrect, you do what you can to perhaps comment, or offer a different opinion. Bloggers don't behave like journalists, nor should they. And so, they don't necessarily follow the same rules as journalists, so again you do it, .... But sure, you've got a large reply typically through a forum through a blog, or just to write a comment. so if someone say something that's blatantly defamatory, if you determine that this is an influential blogger or moderator, then I would advise my clients, "Ok, you'll need me to respond. I wouldn't do a big response on their blog, maybe a short one saying, 'thank you for your insights I do have several issues that I disagree with', maybe list those out. And link back to your own blog post where you can stick to your side of the story." You're doing exactly what social media is designed to do - encourage discussion. You don't always win. Some bloggers are moderated, some bloggers are paid off by different companies’ competitors, you know? This is all part of the game. But at least you've got an opportunity to reply.
For social media, if you do it properly, you can genuinely build a differentiating brand. And as a small business, often you're not constrained by the legal team, and corporate and those other things, so you can actually do quite - you can - the expression these days, is you can 'punch above your weight'. Suddenly you can establish a dynamic brand presence, if you have an opinion and can support that. And again, social media is relatively easy. Small business - Ok, where does my audience live? Ok, well they're on this blog, and this forum and they're on this social network. Ok, well I'm going to spend my time ... linking back to my place. I'm going to some new content to my facebook group, or my facebook page rather. I'm going to go to this forum, [and] I'm going to add some comments there and link back. And you can start to become quite an important person within that community, even if your business is relatively new and there's no brand reputation.
To get the same credentials through traditional advertising, for example, it's going to take years, and a huge investment. I think the realisation that you don't need to have a sign on the side of a taxi, and a billboard the size of this building to be seen. Because you can suddenly talk directly to your audience, as opposed to - I describe it like thrift net fishing - you know the big nets that go behind the fishing trawler, and they catch everything. They're going to get ...and they're going to get sharks and dolphins and everything else. Versus spear-gun fishing. You've got your spear gun, so that's my target, *chuk*, and you get it. And that's the analogy. You can actually target very specifically who you want to engage with. It's not longer, I think, for small to medium businesses, an argument of, I need to be in mass media. You don't. You need to be in narrow media, and you can own and grow a very critical space within that.
But I think what we're going to see is breaking news goes online, longer copy continues to be in newspapers. They become a premium product, as does the magazine. I don’t know about the role of e-paper, that sort of might become something of a hybrid, we'll see. And yea, we're going to see this greater increase in social media and social media behaviours. And even the traditional media as they are today, are starting to adapt social media techniques. Because they realise that’s what people want. And so we're going to see more and more online discussion forums that are tied in with the mainstream media brand. The television networks are going to be more and more real-time conversation. There’s going to be more webcast-type discussion. You're going to have set-top boxes with a camera, and you can engage in a real-time game show, for example.
So more and more social behaviours are going to be ingrained into what was traditional media, because if they don’t do that, it’s going to go online, and so if they fail to adapt, people are not just going to spend 4 hours a day online ,they're going to spend 6 hours a day online, and 1 hour a day with the television. And so, unless they can adapt to meet the needs of these audiences, they're going to die. Well, maybe not die, but they’re going to be something, to be honest, an older generation uses, and they're going to be a little novel. But yeah, I think we're already seeing that change, and I think there's been some very good first steps by a lot of media outlets to make these types of changes.
So, I mean you're already seeing flexi-time, this concept of part-time full-time, which basically means you work for half the time, but you have a career. Often, people who work, say, 2 days a week, [their jobs] become more administrative, but now they're reshaping careers, so they can actually manage on only a couple of days a week. And so people are able to get a better balance with family and other interests as well.
Working from home, the technology allows it today. It is increasingly, certainly for white-collar workers, there's no - there's less of a pressing desire for the person to be in the business. And in terms of infrastructure costs, it’s also a lot cheaper as an employer to have... in the office. So that change is coming in too. It's going to take a little while.
What people will have to do though, they'll have to master their online dynamic. Virtual teaming is actually quite hard. It's actually quite hard to empower and engage with people who are in different countries, and aren't necessarily sitting next to you. And you can't have that sort of water cooler type discussion that is at the heart of conversation. That said, there maybe is an old approach for somebody like me, and again, as a generation, we're very comfortable with that style of relationship. I know in China people have more online friends than physical friends. Literally, they, I think the number is like, they have 14 online friends for every 10 physical friends, or something. And that's become very, very common. And so, as that evolves, people are more comfortable working virtually, and perhaps we're going to see more and more people working at home, and those things. So the workplace of the future is going to be a very different place.
But I guess it's interesting to look at this, because, to answer your question, I don't know how real this is to you. but my perception of a lot of what’s happening in education today is like this. And so people aren’t perhaps being pushed into the right areas, but that's a very limited window. I know people like Michael, here, who must make a very forward-thinking educator are not very typical here. I used to meet regularly with universities in Hong Kong, and even when social media was really limited, but at least it found in the curriculum. It was worth our discussion. But I often find people who are pure PR graduates, the stuff that they’re doing is very outdated.
Senior VP and Greater China Director of PR Consultancy firm TEXT 100
www.publicrelationships.blogspot.com
Conducted March 2009
What is the social media scene in Hong Kong like?
Well, I’ve been looking at Hong Kong as a social media market for about three and a half, four years. And when I first started looking at the market there were discussions going on things like, “Is there’s a blogosphere in Hong Kong?” It was at that level where, there was one of the news network, ATV or TVB broadcast a documentary which was sort of very sceptical, who thought bloggers were a bunch of kids in their pyjamas sitting at home sprouting at home, and the blogosphere got quite angry at that, and that was one of the first moments that there was a realisation that there actually was a group of people who were blogging.
And Hong Kong is a very interesting market because it’s very technological; it’s very tech-savvy. The mobile phone penetration is world leading, it’s like 120% or something, and internet penetration will be up at 80, 90% so it’s very, very high. But when it comes to things like communication, it’s a relatively conservative market. And so people tend not to go beyond standard media relations. They communicate via the news media and people don’t often look to alternative ways of communicating with an audience. I think that’s largely because the news media are quite happy to receive corporate messages and effectively relay corporate messages. So there really isn’t a perceived need to go beyond.
What’s happened in the past three-and-a-half years has been the growth of English social networks, as an enabler – I’m not going to say a civil unrest, because that wouldn’t be fair – but certainly as a way of having a discussion that’s outside of the confines of mainstream media. And while there’s no direct censorship of media in Hong Kong, unlike [in] China, there is certainly a sense of self censorship, that people realise and know what, and the expression is “I know what side the bread is buttered on”. And you have to be self censoring to some extent, because your editor will not put a story through that’s too contentious or controversial. Not to say there’s no debate in Hong Kong, but it’s nowhere near as open as other markets.
So, people are now looking to social media channels as a way of encouraging debate and conversation. Going back in history, though, Hong Kong does have quite a good - even though it’s not truly democratic - it does have quite a good history of people’s democracy in action. Tung Chee-hwa, the former Chief Executive was ousted on the back of an sms-driven campaign, which essentially said, “the financial performance wasn’t good enough and you’ve got to go.” So using sms, people organised and took to the streets and moved on. So it’s one of the first examples of social media - medium - creating a change in Hong Kong.
In the past 3 years, discussion forums have grown and they’ve always been part of the Hong Kong society, but they’ve become more mainstream. And so DiscussHK, Nuance, HongKongGolden which makes it the top three. And they’ve grown in terms of prominence. The range of discussions has grown as well, so they’re coving more and more issues. As you know, forums they historically - they grew out of the tech age – and then it’s engineers talking about technical issues, but now you’ve got forums covering a range of topics.
Services such as OpenRice, which is a restaurant-reviewing service – a Chinese-restaurant reviewing service – it’s become very popular, as a way of deciding which restaurant you go to, because in Hong Kong, eating out, as is in Singapore, is a great hobby. So that’s something that’s relatively new and has become quite influential. These sorts of channels have grown in prominence over time, to a point now where they can’t be ignored. Blogging, if I look at that as a .... Historically, English Language blogging was largely an expat practice and it was expats writing about what funny – how funny life is in HK. There was a sign, and it was spelt wrong and it was just sort of, that sort of stuff. And while those guys still exists, there’s much, much more Chinese language blogging, talking about a range of issues, and blogs that become quite important as a means of communication. So much so that when there was an issue with the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce – the treasurer was being accused of something of financial mismanagement in her own company. And the former, I think, Chief Executive of that organisation, didn’t hold a press conference to announce his displeasure. He didn’t send out a press release, he blogged about it. On his blog, he said, she needs to leave – Winnie Chan, she needs to leave, because she’s not doing the right thing. And that was picked up by mainstream media. And for me, that was one of the first times that the market was taking social media seriously, is when there’s a transition from social media to mainstream. And so we’re seeing more and more instances of stories broken online, and then that goes to mainstream.
How mainstream media has reacted, is they as many markets start to adopt social media practices. So South China Morning Post, the grandmother of English Language journalism in Hong Kong is now doing things like, it’s got its own T.V. channel, video channel? So that’s working. They’ve got comments features on their stories, so you can comment as well? You can now use social bookmarking, so you can put it to digg, and del.icio.us and those sorts of things. So they’ve adapted their style – they’re also having journalists blog as well.
Apple Daily, part of Jimmy Lai’s mixed media group, has been quite aggressive in things like, web television, as a way of bringing people into its wider community. And so they’ve got some quite, I guess, revolutionary things. There’s a service called Apple Pie, which is essentially a webcam-based talkback show that they developed and rent. And so, yea, I think we’re starting to see more and more instances where mainstream media has adapted social media practices. And social media is coming up to challenge mainstream media as a source of information, and to me I think people’s desire for collaboration and community and all those other things.
With this increase of channels and there is social media, do you think there is a corresponding increase of media literacy?
I think we’re talking to the most media savvy generation in history. I mean, yea, I mean, every generation gets more savvy. But yea, I think the media literacy is very, very high. I think people’s inherent distrust of institutions is carrying over and getting worse. And so people aren’t trusting the government and the police, and those things. I mean, you’ve got mothers in china who don’t trust the milk they feed their babies. You’ve got banks who don’t trust their customers, you’ve got governments who don’t trust the banks, you know? There is a lot of mistrust. And these types of services and technologies are giving people another output, another source of information. Hong Kong is also quite a media heavy market. I mean, there are far too many daily newspapers, there are like 16, 17 newspapers. It’s too many. The population is only 7 million, and so, there’s a lot of - it’s over-mediaed as a market, and so that’s compounded by social media. So what we’re seeing now, as in most markets, is newspapers are struggling, the circulation is struggling to get classified advertising, and so people are moving to online. Similarly in terms of stories breaking, they’re typically breaking online and not breaking on mainstream media. So Hong Kong, like a number of other markets, is increasingly struggling - the news outlets are struggling to add value to stuff that can’t be Googled. You know? If you can get the story online through Google news, why then would I wait 12 hours to see it in the stand in the South China Morning Post or Ming Bao - why would you do it?
Earlier on you mentioned about self censorship as well, did this self censorship come about bottom up or top down?
Well, it’s the – I was talking about the individual journalist. I mean, most newspapers in Hong Kong are either China-Facing, or facing away from China, you know? So they’ll either be pro-China, or semi, quasi-anti – I mean, the one that is most anti would be Apple Daily and Jimmy Lai’s publications, ‘cause he’s quite aggressive. He’s very pro-democracy and very anti-Beijing. So now, the self censorship comes in normally at a journalistic level, ‘cause you know your editor’s going to throw something back that is too contentious and in particular when it’s talking about issues around China. And so, what journalists are doing is they’re subbing themselves before the subbing .. puts the story back to them? One thing that’s interesting, [is that] a lot of journalists are blogging under pseudonyms, so they’ve got their own blog name, and they’re writing stories that they want to write under that name, but for their day job, they’d probably pull the stories they know they couldn’t write. Comparing Hong Kong and Singapore, what are the differences in the social media landscape?
I think Singapore is a little more... because my knowledge of Hong Kong is really restricted to the English language stuff, so it’s a bit - but I feel that Singapore is a bit more sophisticated when it comes to the business blogging, and perhaps, some of the quasi-political blogging? [In] Hong Kong, not being able to read Chinese it’s a bit hard to say. I think social networks are very advanced in Hong Kong; I think very similar to Singapore. You look at the top 10 websites at both markets, I think you’re going to find Google, you’re going to find Facebook, you’re going to find Youtube. I mean, they’re all going to be in the top 10, so I think, in terms of where people are going for information it’s comparable. Hong Kong though, the discussion forums – DiscussHK, HKGolden, certainly are in the top 10 in terms of landing size. But I think it’s probably more through pornography distribution and music as opposed to necessarily discussion. But I think the markets are comparable, but I’ve always seen Singapore as a little but more active when it comes to blogging, and that’s probably just because I was more able to read the English Language stuff that comes out of Singapore. What is and how much involvement does the Government have when it comes to self censorship in Hong Kong?
I’m not an expert in Hong Kong’s legislation, but I think under Article 23 of the - was going to say Bill of Rights, but it’s not the right document – Article 23 of the founding document of the handover, whatever was signed in the handover, people have freedom of speech. And so they do have the right to potentially say whatever they like, and that was captured when Hong Kong was taken over by Beijing. But again, there is a sense of self-imposed thing, which is, I feel I need to say things in a particular way to keep them happy, yeah? But yeah, not to say that it’s not what’s happening in china. That’s a very, very different thing. What is it like doing business with these two countries? Hong Kong is part of the Greater China as well, and since Beijing has taken over Hong Kong administratively, how do you reconcile the differences between these two countries? Do they actually have a lot of cross border blogging?
Well in terms of blogging, it does. I think Hong Kong is quite lucky because most Hong Kongers are able to read and speak English, Pu Tong Hua and Cantonese. And able to read simplified and traditional Chinese. And so they can essentially tap into the social media in mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore. So they actually have the ability – and this is one of the good things about Hong Kong – to go where the content is. So let’s say you want to do video-sharing or something, and you don’t have enough bandwidth on a local server. You can very happily go to China servers or Taiwan servers. So Hong Kong is very able to flip between those relatively easily. So yea, I think they certainly can happen to. Some of the most popular websites are actually Taiwanese, for example. So they are using social media in other markets. It’s in Hong Kong it’s still pretty parochial, so they’ll still default to the Hong Kong, the Hong Kong version of YouTube, the Hong Kong version of Facebook and so on. Does that answer you? But that’s my thoughts on at least how they moving across borders. But in terms of business across borders that’s a different discussion. I mean they - Hong Kong, certainly sees itself as part of China, and China sees Hong Kong as a very critical piece of its equation as well. And so, certainly trade is under the Closer Economic Partnership trade [Agreement (CEPA)] is absolutely encouraged. It’s to Hong Kong’s advantage to continue to differentiate itself in China through its logistic … management services and so on. But I don’t think you’re going to see Hong Kong social media having any cut through in mainland China. Mainland China, it’s, I mean it’s the local version of twitter called FunFou, there’s a local version of Facebook called XiaoNei . I mean it’s just, every single of the global services have a mainland Chinese - at least one mainland Chinese equivalent.
The market is big enough, but it’s also the language. Even though in a couple of years, China will have the greatest number of English speakers in the world, it’s still - people are preferring to interact online naturally in their native language. So that’s where people like Google struggle against BaiDu, because BaiDu is China made, Chinese are very parochial folks, and it’s hard for Google to establish a niche. So it’s an interesting comparison, but again, I think Hong Kong is at the benefit of being able to manage multi languages.
Are there any countries in Asia, where you believe the social media scene is thriving?
Well, you look back at maturity, and it’s not the same maturity in terms of, I guess, new markets like Australia, but in terms of western practices, Australia is pretty mature. I mean, bloggers and blogging is mainstream, social networks are pretty mainstream and well established. The growth rates are lower because everybody’s essentially doing it. The nature of the work that they do in terms of communications, or the ways corporates use those types of channels of communication, is … it’s the sort of stuff you’ll see in the United States. And then you’ve got somewhere like Korea, where the because of the government’s investment in broadband infrastructure, the online news network, which has 50,000 citizen journalists, has become a news network. And there’s nothing like that in Australia, but that forum has enabled - has changed - the scope of news in Korea.
The blogging culture is very strong in Korea. The Japan mobile is the way of the future, because they’ve had online mobile before anybody had 3G. And so, they were doing micro-blogging and those sorts of things well before anybody else. And so, it’s a little hard to say one market is dominant over another. They’ve achieved differentiate.
Discussion forums, just look at Mainland China - the discussion forum market there, there are 500 000 forums, you know, it’s massive. There, they dominate blogs. So as opposed to most other markets, where blogs are the way to share, for China it’s forums. So it’s certainly hard to point one market out For video sharing, if you look at the University of McCann’s, study, I think the top market for video sharing by internet population was either Philippines or Taiwan. And so yea, it’s different.
How does Singapore market move towards countries like Korea or Australia?
You know, it’s a little hard for me to offer insight on Singapore ‘cause I don’t know the market that well. However, I have to assume that the self-censorship issue that I raised in Hong Kong is very similar here, because of the nature of government here. And so, I think, that will limit expression, and limit people’s ability to use these for very open discussions. So I can’t see that changing anytime soon. I think Singapore is fortunate because it’s got a very good broadband infrastructure. It’s got very good mobile connectivity as well. And it’s also relatively discrete. And so, you’re not having to roll something out across a place the size of China, you know, 1.4 billion people, you know, you’re going to cross a much more discrete population.... I think mainstream media have a greater opportunity in a place like Singapore because it’s quite a tech-savvy population. To further adapt to these technologies. I know the Straits Times and their parent company, have made a lot of steps on video, for example in online technologies. And that’s something they could see Singapore taking a leadership role [in]. Also again the thing about video in a place the size of China [is] you’ve got some 50 cities with 1000 people - in terms of infrastructure, you’re not going to reach people in Eastern China.
Whereas in Singapore it’s relatively easy ‘cause everybody has access to a service. I think again Singapore it’s going to be easier to see the crossover between smart devices like that using … technologies and places like this, the coffee shop. So you’re going to see greater crossover of things like location based events. You know, you can go, and say, wanted to buy that yellow shirt that guy’s wearing, pick up my phone and point it at it and then go and send it to my ... So those types of, I mean, anything - new fields of communications. So those sorts of things Singapore going to have the opportunity because of its size and also obviously education and skill set and those sorts of things. But ,no ,I can’t think of any other specifics that Singapore can pick up on with every other market ..
How do you personally think that the netizens or the Hong Kong government promote a more vibrant community online or increase social media literacy?
Well I mean I think it’s still not mainstream. I think, when these things become truly mainstream, then, it’ll just be something you do. It won’t be a question of do I do this - do I pick up my traditional newspaper this morning? Or do I look into my RSS feeds? You know, it won’t be one or the other. So till we get to that day, there’s still going to be a sense of us and them. It’s an age thing? Hong Kong’s got quite an old population. So until the younger generation coming out of university now gets into decision-making roles in companies, it’s going to be a longer transition. I mean, the problem we have in Hong Kong and the people ..... are in their mid 40s to their 50s. ‘Cause those people – there’s no way you’re going to bring them over to technology – it’s not going to happen. So, till they move out of the ... levels, it’s going to be an evolution. The netizens of Hong Kong are still pretty much a tech geek community. It’s a good vibrant community within there, I mean we have Barcamps in Hong Kong. We’ve had a Twestival recently, there’s Web Wednesday – you have Wednesday in Singapore as well - which is a networking group for digital people. So those sorts of things are going on right now and there is quite a vibrant community, but that’s again a subset – it’s a microcosm. For those needs to go mainstream, I think it’s going to take a generational shift, where people like yourselves are in business decision making roles, are going, “why are we talking with newspapers? What’s the point? My friends, my peers don’t read newspapers – we need to change the way we communicate.”
So I think give it a little while.
In your opinion how long would that take?
How long does it take to change a generation? I think it’s – oh I don’t know – I think, oh okay, if we’re talking about business being a driver for change, I mean how old are you guys – 25? Ok. Ok, I mean, I don’t know what your first role is let’s say you want to go into marketing? And you want to go with a company and you might become like a project manager in time. At which point you actually look after that line of business, and have a decision making role. That’s when you’re going to be able to say, “You know what guys, I love all these newspapers that you’ve been getting, but that’s not talking to my audience. My audience is online, and we need to change the way we work.” One of the things that happens in markets I mentioned like Singapore, in particular Hong Kong, is that the decision makers are …, and they don’t really see this stuff as really important ‘cause it’s not part of their work. Their understanding of communications is television, newspapers and magazines. That’s how they see people communicate. So their own – there are very, very few who are actually seeing social media as really that influential. So, until those guys move on, I mean, you how it works, they go and everything trickles down – that’s how it goes. So until they get out, until guys like you are pushing up from the bottom, it’s going to be an evolution. But it’s interesting; I don’t think it’s going to take that long. I think we’re probably being five years away from, if not being, this conversation would not happen. You guys won’t be doing a wiki on digital media, because it’ll just be media, and these are the channels for communication. And it’ll be the Singapore newspapers that old people read; it’ll be just something made of something paper – we won’t use paper anymore – but that will be the discussion. So I image in the next 5, 6 years, we’re going to see that shift happen.
How readily are Hong Kong companies adapting social media into their corporations?
It’s hard to generalise the question on Hong Kong companies. I think some are doing it well, I think like Singapore - the consumer facing companies, the Nikes, the Reeboks, the Levi’s Jeans and those sorts of guys, they’re well into it. I mean, they’re using Zenga and Facebook, and using the social media channels already as part of their communications programme. And they’re having quite a lot of success. Because that’s an easy transition – they seem to be going from digital marketing to digital community marketing. I think the bigger B2B is very little, and understandably. ‘Cause ultimately, the business to business decision makers are influence by what’s happening online, but to be honest, there is influence by what is happening in the United States than what’s happening in Hong Kong. And [the] last time they did any research on B2B technology, blogs in particular, there really wouldn’t have been many in Hong Kong that had that much weight. And so I think people right now are doing the right thing; they’re looking at – I mean it comes back to PR101 – what’s my business objective. What’s my audience – in order to influence and make - achieve that objective, what channels do I need to use to influence that audience? And if your answer is social media, basically, or stories in the South China Morning Post or Straits Times, then that’s how you communicate your communications plan. But it’s not the case of saying social media will save us and it’s the only way – only route to market, because that would be a risk then. So people are going to see increasingly as companies ask themselves that question, and develop communications strategies that mix those various things together. At the moment we’re seeing traditional media as one budget, and social media is over here. And there’s sort of this uneasy tension between the two. And that’s going to change – it’s already changed in the United States. Right now, in the US, it’s hard for us to sell, I don’t know, a blogger outreach programme, because it’s just outreach, it’s just what you do. And you’ve got media influences, and you’ve got social media influences. So yea, I think we’re going to see that transition happen relatively quickly, and I mean, talking about … here in Singapore, it’s happening now. And we presented 5 case studies, all Singaporeans, based around twitter outreach, based around discussion forums – you know SGforum. Based around blogger-relations programmes, I mean, it’s happening now.
What about internal communications for collaborations between the departments and divisions? Are these companies implementing social media?
Global companies are. Hong Kong is historically, I mean this in the nicest possible way, a ... little slow to adapt to new technologies, so yeah, they’ll sort of wait - take a wait-and-see approach. But turning to global companies are saying this is our internal intranets have changed. I mean, intranets now are a very different environment. My company, which uses [Microsoft] Sharepoint, which has got a blogging feature, it’s got document management, it’s got tagging, it’s got links, it uses the language of Web2.0. And I think more and more companies are doing that. Big companies are introducing their own corporate-type Facebook. I think IBM’s done that, PriceWaterhouseCoopers. And so, they’re realising very smartly that this audience wants to use these technologies. And they’re going to do it anyway. I mean the realisation is, for many companies, unless we do it internally [and] officially, our people are going to do it. Just have a look at the number of Facebook sites around corporates. How many of those are actually sanctioned by the companies? Very, very few. And someone’s who’s gone to Facebook, oh I don’t know, put my company in? And suddenly they’ve got this site, they; got this page. And so it’s a bit like SMS becoming mainstream. SMS was always this sort of thing that kids do, and now it’s become a corporate tool because people say that’s how we want to communicate. So we’re going to see more and more cases of that.
I mean, at my company, we had a blogging infrastructure, [and we] didn’t really like it, and we went out and made a different one using Wordpress, and that became our infrastructure. And again, from an IT-system’s perspective, and security, we needs to be conscious and keep up with it. But this is where the people wanted to have their conversation, and I think corporates are going to have to find themselves being a little more flexible in the way that they align and assist these technology decisions. Because if it’s not friendly if it doesn’t feel like the environment that they have at home, they’re not going to use it, you know? If the corporate intranet isn’t as easy to use as Facebook, then... is hard, you know? This is done by engineers, it’s boring , it’s hard. It’s not fun. And so should an analyst who goes, you’ll probably meet if he comes to Singapore, a guy named, he’s with IDC, his name will come to me in a moment, and his area of speciality is social media. His area of expertise is social media, and he’s Claus Mortensen. But yeah, I mean, his area of expertise is adapting this, which is the difference between corporate adoption of social media. If you look at his name Claus Mortensen from IDC, you’ll see a study he put out, I think, the beginning of last year, that’s comparing corporate adoption of social media tools versus what people actually want, and it’s dramatically different. Corporates who put their money really in the wrong place, and for internal communications, you know it doesn’t work if you develop tools that people don’t like. Yeah, it’s one of those little battles that’s going on.
How ready do you think Asia is to this entire idea of Wikinomics, Youniverse, Safe Haven and Middle Kingdom?
Do you mean Wiki based development? - Web 2.0 in general. Well, it’s a big question because there’s awful lot of development coming out of Asia. Huge amount, I mean in Hong Kong, certainly mainland China, I mean, there’s more iPhone apps being developed in China than anywhere else in the world, and yet you can’t legally buy an iPhone in China, you know? You can’t run on the network because [Apple] haven’t signed a deal with China Mobile. So, yea, there’s an awful lot of development going on. But there’s a lot of skills here, the success in Asia, as everyone always knows, is local. And so you can take something – and again this is why people like Yahoo and Google have struggled in China – because they’re not seen to be local players, where BaiDu has essentially ripped out Google’s source code, put a new badge on it, that’s why their successful. Because it’s local language by people in China. And so there’s a lot of skills here.
I see some of the most interesting technology developments coming out of Asia and some of the most interesting applications. ‘Cause here we’re having to solve different problems. I mean, a lot of the markets in Asia, in particular emerging markets like Cambodia and Vietnam, internet penetration is relatively low, but mobile adoption is very high, and so you see some of the best mobile application development in the world done for Asian markets. Because, yea, there’s no point in investing in a lot of staid PC-type infrastructure if most of your users can’t actually do it – they can’t read it. They can’t’ get access to information. I mean there’s a case in Japan, which is obviously not Third World, where because of the mobile adoption – it’s a nice story actually – they’ve got a service – begins with ‘I’, a name I can’t remember. But basically if you’re a student, and you’re sitting at a place like this, a coffee shop, and you’ve got a couple of hours between lectures, you can go online, go to a particular website on your phone, and it’ll say, “Restaurant over there needs a dishwasher for two hours”. And you get a job, and you go and get your hours. And it’s become this sort of micro job-placement economy. Once you have mobile devices and ... locations. so you go I'm here, and obviously it knows through GPS where you are, and it'll say, "Spinelli needs someone behind the counter for an hour," And you go and work there. And it's a great example of how, a very Japanese example, of how mobile technology... technology is creating a new type of sort of social, mobile social structure. I think it's fascinating. Places like Cambodia, for example, there's no point in investing a lot in PCs. People don't communicate via PC. They communicate through the mobile phone, they have their facilities for mobile ... And so your developers and engineers are building things to solve that problem. So I think Asia will do what it's always done - it'll take the best of the rest and it will develop very, very good local applications. And it will continue to do that. I think, in terms of innovation, at this stage, the big breakthroughs are coming out of the US. I mean, facebook is a US thing, twitter is a US thing. I think it's quite hard to go the other way, especially when your development started in English. I can see that changing in time, but at this stage, Asia is essentially mimicking what's happening, a lot of what's happening in the US. Like I said, there’s three different twitter versions, all that look exactly like Twitter, in China.
Yeah, that's Xiaonei and Xu…, can’t remember that one. But yeah, there’s also a Wikipedia version in China, not just an official one, an unofficial one. There’s, the dating websites, I mean, they're all there. But It'll be interesting to see when something big comes out of China and it goes worldwide. And that might follow the model of the Japanese innovation, where big Japanese ideas and then wham, suddenly they're worldwide. So they might follow that , but I haven't seen examples of that yet. But give it time, I mean this is a … world, right?
According to the recent ICT reports, Europe had the highest mobile phone adoption compared to Asia. Why?
I mean, last time I looked it was, Hong Kong at 120% but I guess it's a lot of Asia. And even China you've got quite a high penetration. You got a population of 1.4 billion India, yea, I guess in the cities you've got quite a bit of mobile penetration, the population's 1.2 billion. So, I think Europe probably has a denser, more urbanised and ultimately more affluent population, that's why you’d see it high .But I think in terms of internet penetration, I mean, well the... numbers, China has overtaken the US as the largest internet market in the world.
But even then, what's interesting is that China, the growth isn’t coming from the cities, it's growing from rural areas. And so, I think cities are growing at something like 40% year on year, and in the rural areas it's 60% year on year. So yea, you're getting some big numbers, and in rural areas people are adopting mobile, so straight away, you're talking about a population base of 1.4 million. From an application development point of view, there are going to be a myriad of [sic] opportunities in a very, very high growth market like China. But the question is, can those applications be exported out of China? Are there going to be things that will appeal? I've seen some of the Hong Kong development that's gone global. Some of the ERP services. There's a company called Kingdee that was acquired by IBM a year and a half ago, and that was an ERP solution that is Hong Kong, China developed. But yea, those are pretty rare. So, I think, yea, it's going to take a little while, and again, the needs of different other markets. But give it time.
What do you think is holding back social media from evolving as quickly into mainstream media?
Well, I think again, it's a generational shift, you've still got business decision makers who are deep in their ways. I think it's also the reality of the genuine influence of social media when it comes to, in particular, business. And, if you're having to decide to – you know - where to buy a cup of coffee or something like that , yeah you might look at social media, 'cause there might be a coffee forum or something. But, I mean, [for] technology infrastructure purchases, you're more likely to look at other means, other channels as opposed to social media, which is still a relatively young discipline. And the people who are blogging, [and] who are commenting, aren't necessarily as knowledgeable. So I think it's going to take a change in the way and style in the way people communicate, before we see greater adoption, and the key will be B2B. B2C, yeah it's kind of growing ... Business to business, it’s going to take people who are very senior within business to be used to using this type of communication, and that's how they share their reports. They don't write a whitepaper for example, or do an analysis document and then talk about it in a seminar, they'll do that virtually online. And when that starts to happen, and when other people, business decision makers start to look at that, then we'll see that transition. But that's going to take a little while, and again it's probably your generation going out - but it makes me sound so old - our generation going out. It's going to be the deciding factor. That's when I don't stand up in a conference here, talking to 25 older people about social media for 8 hours. What I do, is probably a virtual conference, where, I mean, if you have ever seen one of those? They're great! It's the best speeches from around the world! It's absolutely stunning. And you package it right, and you stream me as well on webcam or telecam or something like that. When that starts to become the norm, and I'll think you're going to see people acknowledging that this style and format of communication is genuinely influential.
And right now, if I took to my client base, they'll go - and quite rightly - they'll go, "Ok, I need to talk to, I don't know, I'm trying to sell telecommunications hardware to Singapore?" There are probably 6 individuals you'll need to talk to. Literally talk to, to get your routers sold into those business. And so [do] you invest in a big social media campaign? No you don't! There's virtually not much point. You can research the way you've always researched. But if I'm trying to sell these things, iPhones, absolutely. Because people think of these and go to a forum. They're not going to go to Apple. They're going to look at the pretty pictures at Apple's website, but they're going to talk to their peers, and go, "OK, well, iPhone 3G? Or, you know, should I go [with the] HTC Titan 2? I like the keyboard. I like the fact that it's a touch screen. And it's also a touch [screen], but it's a smaller screen." They want to have that conversation, and they know they're not going to get that type of dialogue and honesty from HTC’s site, from Apple’s site. They're going to get it through the forum, 'cause that's the consumer demand. So, yea, I think it's going to take the business decision makers adoption and use of these communication channels forward to be taken seriously as an influential medium.
In the areas of businesses, how essential is it for PR and social media to go hand in hand?
Oh I think there's only, well I don't know, I have to speak with my PR head down here, but, you know, I think it's critical. PR people historically have got a very good understanding of the message and the place, and the ability to shape a message to suit an audience. And that's what we're talking about with social media. I mean, I mainly work in technology PR, but you have to take your story and make it appropriate for Straits Times, and also appropriate for ZDNet also appropriate for CNBC, you know? And there's an ability to shape and construct a message. PR is also instinctively a dialogue-based mechanism, you know? With conversations with journalists - what do they want? What’s going on there? How do we shape and stop this story? So we're used to managing those types of conversations. Advertising, I must say, historically is a one-way, you know? There's a sign on the wall, there’s a sign on the cab, you know? There is an ad that runs for 30 seconds. That doesn't leave itself to discussion, and fundamentally, we've got a community that wants openness, collaboration. They want it to happen in real-time, you know? They want a community. And those things you don't get through necessarily through advertising.
So I see PR as incredibly influential in shaping these discussions, and sort of the work my company is doing it for us through the markets around the world, is showing, yea, PR is taking the leadership in this. So I think we've got a great opportunity as PR professionals to change the way people communicate.
The other thing within that, is that, I feel, every PR consultant needs to be able to do social media. Some business say, "This is our digital team." And that's wrong, 'cause we're going to get to a point very, very soon, where it's not a question of traditional media or digital media, it's just, "How do I reach my audience?" You might say, "I want to have x amount of traditional media, and x amount of social media." That's fine. But you need a consultant who's able to balance those different things. So our approach is very much empowering every consultant with the ability to manage social media as well as traditional media.
As a PR consultant, how do you actually balance between social media and mainstream media?
It's the same question I've asked before. I mean, what is your business objective? Yeah, and, okay, who are you trying to reach? And if the answer to that is, well, I want to reach, I don't know, young adults aged 16 to 22, the answer is, you're probably need to wage your PR programme towards social media. Because if you ask where those people live, they're not spending 3 hours a day watching TV, you know? It's the same question. And so, that's my target audience. You ask yourself where do they live - do they live in the newspaper? Or do they live online? The answer is they're online, therefore you wage your programme that way. So it's never really one or the other. I think there is a perception that social media is somehow a silver bullet to communications problems - you know, it's going to solve all my illnesses. And it won't. And so, it's like saying traditional media will, and it won't. You might be better off having a meeting around a cup of coffee and talking to someone directly, than worrying about media at all. So essentially, communications hasn't changed, it just got more channels in which to communicate.
The biggest change, though, that does exist, is that it's now a dialogue-based model, it’s not a monologue. And that's something that older-school communicators will struggle with. Clients also struggle with that, because they feel they'll lose control of the message. Because, you guys are doing, what, communications to groups? Ok, old school is - Ok, we go to a media interview, say you're a journalist - I'll brief my executive: we've got 3 key messages we've got 4 talking points for each message. You've got to stay on message for this interview. If you communicate that well, there'll be a nice story that will run on page 4 of [The] Straits Times. Ok, that's the older model. And it still works, it still exists. But the reality is, the vast majority of people don't believe what they read in The Straits Times - they don't trust it as an institution that is old and is not relevant to me as a younger person. I'd much rather read a discussion in a forum. I would much rather see a blog post and some comments that follow that post, and the ongoing dialogue. And so, we need to change the way we structure our communication. And that's become very, very critical.
So I think the challenge for communicators, for older ones like me, is to sort of to get out of that mindset, or at least be willing to accept those two different things. Many companies have struggled with that. I mean, I've ... in China, what if someone says something bad about me? And it's a legitimate concern. Because for many years in China, news media have been relatively compliant, and will essentially do what they're told to do. And all of a sudden you've got this group called 'bloggers' and 'moderators' on forums and those things, who don't necessarily tow the corporate line, and that's quite a scary thing if you hitch your entire career in a place like China, where you are getting a lot of good news. Your press release will often end up in the newspaper. so it's a slightly different model. So what it's going to take, is not just a generational shift in terms of business, so it's going to take a generational shift in terms of communicators, to get to a point where people like you guys are doing this instinctively. I have to think about it; you probably won’t have to think about it. I think that's the advantage of getting young people in the business. That said, I go back to my original point: there is still a need for communications objective and still a need for strategy and those aren’t going to go away.
How would you manage the negative effects that come out of social media for businesses?
First thing is you set an expectation that it's not all going to be good news. And to be honest, the reality is not a question of if you go into social media as a business. We're already there. Every business, I mean we got a session in this conference, the workshop today, [where] we'll get everybody to look after their own businesses ... and their own business .. of course they...results about themselves. And some were shocked by those results. No, they're already there. Point 1, they're already there. Point 2, it's not all going to be possible. That’s the nature of media, so you need to help executives understand that this is changing. Point 3, it's not anything that’s negative or positive. You treat it on its merits; if the story is incorrect or factually incorrect, you do what you can to perhaps comment, or offer a different opinion. Bloggers don't behave like journalists, nor should they. And so, they don't necessarily follow the same rules as journalists, so again you do it, .... But sure, you've got a large reply typically through a forum through a blog, or just to write a comment. so if someone say something that's blatantly defamatory, if you determine that this is an influential blogger or moderator, then I would advise my clients, "Ok, you'll need me to respond. I wouldn't do a big response on their blog, maybe a short one saying, 'thank you for your insights I do have several issues that I disagree with', maybe list those out. And link back to your own blog post where you can stick to your side of the story." You're doing exactly what social media is designed to do - encourage discussion. You don't always win. Some bloggers are moderated, some bloggers are paid off by different companies’ competitors, you know? This is all part of the game. But at least you've got an opportunity to reply.
So does it mean more risks for these business?
Well, again, it's not a - the risk is already there. You're already living in an environment where these conversations are happening, where people are being openly derogatory towards your brand, openly negative. So, it's, in my mind, it's not an either or. It's not, "do I engage or don't I?" So I can sit back passively, and have people throw stones at me, or I can choose to defend myself. And once you get over defending yourself, maybe I can start to use this proactively and start thinking about communicating to audiences in a more appropriate way. So, yeah, I really [don’t] want people to think of this is somehow optional. It's there, and yeah, you can choose to engage today, or you can choose to engage in 2 year's time, that's fine. But in the intervening 2 years, you're going to find some bad things go on that you've had no control over, or, to be honest, weren't aware of. I think 'control' is a tough word to use in this context, but certainly awareness is something you can do today. The tools exists to find what's going online very, very easily. SMEs - do you think the way forward for them is to utilise social media?
Oh absolutely. Look at what’s happening in Facebook - [the] Facebook economy. People are building - I've done this in Hong Kong. We built up a thing called the Hong Kong PR network. It's just me and 2 other people from other agencies and we put up a facebook site up, and we have 800 members, and we get meetings every 6 weeks, and we go out and, it's a social thing and talk about this stuff. There's suddenly - there’s no cost marketing. Not low cost, no cost - it's your own time. And so for small businesses, this is perfect. 'Cause small businesses historically have to rely on commercial radio. I used to work for commercial radio, so I know how that game works, and you know what? You're not going to run a station ad which means it pops up randomly between midday and midnight, and then it goes away, and you’ve got 30 seconds of air time. And that's not building a relationship, that’s just wallpaper. For social media, if you do it properly, you can genuinely build a differentiating brand. And as a small business, often you're not constrained by the legal team, and corporate and those other things, so you can actually do quite - you can - the expression these days, is you can 'punch above your weight'. Suddenly you can establish a dynamic brand presence, if you have an opinion and can support that. And again, social media is relatively easy. Small business - Ok, where does my audience live? Ok, well they're on this blog, and this forum and they're on this social network. Ok, well I'm going to spend my time ... linking back to my place. I'm going to some new content to my facebook group, or my facebook page rather. I'm going to go to this forum, [and] I'm going to add some comments there and link back. And you can start to become quite an important person within that community, even if your business is relatively new and there's no brand reputation.
To get the same credentials through traditional advertising, for example, it's going to take years, and a huge investment. I think the realisation that you don't need to have a sign on the side of a taxi, and a billboard the size of this building to be seen. Because you can suddenly talk directly to your audience, as opposed to - I describe it like thrift net fishing - you know the big nets that go behind the fishing trawler, and they catch everything. They're going to get ...and they're going to get sharks and dolphins and everything else. Versus spear-gun fishing. You've got your spear gun, so that's my target, *chuk*, and you get it. And that's the analogy. You can actually target very specifically who you want to engage with. It's not longer, I think, for small to medium businesses, an argument of, I need to be in mass media. You don't. You need to be in narrow media, and you can own and grow a very critical space within that.
Moving into the future, what do you is the social media’s position relative to mainstream media? It is not going to replace mainstream media?
No, not at all. There's always going to be a place for great journalism. You read what's on a lot of blogs is terrible. It's badly written. [Posts on] discussion forums is written in shorthand, it’s like SMS. It's not a "I want to read something". And so there is still a requirement for people who can tell stories, and craft stories. I think, though, you're going to see newspapers in particular, and magazines [as a] medium going to shrink. The advertising is going to go increasingly online. They're going to be seen as premium products to some extent. The newspapers will continue - they're not going to go away anytime soon. But they're going to be different in terms of format. Breaking news is less likely to be in a newspaper, it's more likely to be online. So you'll see longer copy, more editorial type, feature type stories in the news medium. Photographs again, people want to see, they want, there are still the desire for that, like, tactile experience. Turning the page and stuff. And that isn't going to go away very, very quickly. But I think what we're going to see is breaking news goes online, longer copy continues to be in newspapers. They become a premium product, as does the magazine. I don’t know about the role of e-paper, that sort of might become something of a hybrid, we'll see. And yea, we're going to see this greater increase in social media and social media behaviours. And even the traditional media as they are today, are starting to adapt social media techniques. Because they realise that’s what people want. And so we're going to see more and more online discussion forums that are tied in with the mainstream media brand. The television networks are going to be more and more real-time conversation. There’s going to be more webcast-type discussion. You're going to have set-top boxes with a camera, and you can engage in a real-time game show, for example.
So more and more social behaviours are going to be ingrained into what was traditional media, because if they don’t do that, it’s going to go online, and so if they fail to adapt, people are not just going to spend 4 hours a day online ,they're going to spend 6 hours a day online, and 1 hour a day with the television. And so, unless they can adapt to meet the needs of these audiences, they're going to die. Well, maybe not die, but they’re going to be something, to be honest, an older generation uses, and they're going to be a little novel. But yeah, I think we're already seeing that change, and I think there's been some very good first steps by a lot of media outlets to make these types of changes.
What about working lifestyles. Will there be changes? More home based workers?
That's already happening. I think, it also, it's a generation-wide thing as well. 'Cause as their generation goes through, their expectations of the working day aren't going to be defined by the Victorian workhouse ethic of 9-5. Seriously, that's where 9-5 came from, where people were working in sweatshops in Victorian England and that sort of doesn't - it's really no longer applicable, because that's not part of their lifestyle. People are more conscious about a balance between work and life. Companies are also conscious of the [fact that] healthy and happy employees are more productive employees. So they're making changes in the working behaviours as well. So, I mean you're already seeing flexi-time, this concept of part-time full-time, which basically means you work for half the time, but you have a career. Often, people who work, say, 2 days a week, [their jobs] become more administrative, but now they're reshaping careers, so they can actually manage on only a couple of days a week. And so people are able to get a better balance with family and other interests as well.
Working from home, the technology allows it today. It is increasingly, certainly for white-collar workers, there's no - there's less of a pressing desire for the person to be in the business. And in terms of infrastructure costs, it’s also a lot cheaper as an employer to have... in the office. So that change is coming in too. It's going to take a little while.
What people will have to do though, they'll have to master their online dynamic. Virtual teaming is actually quite hard. It's actually quite hard to empower and engage with people who are in different countries, and aren't necessarily sitting next to you. And you can't have that sort of water cooler type discussion that is at the heart of conversation. That said, there maybe is an old approach for somebody like me, and again, as a generation, we're very comfortable with that style of relationship. I know in China people have more online friends than physical friends. Literally, they, I think the number is like, they have 14 online friends for every 10 physical friends, or something. And that's become very, very common. And so, as that evolves, people are more comfortable working virtually, and perhaps we're going to see more and more people working at home, and those things. So the workplace of the future is going to be a very different place.
What about education systems? How will social media affect education?
Yeah, I think so, I think it has to adapt. I mean, I've been out of the formal education system for quite some time. But even when I was there, graduated in 1988, even then, what you'd be learning was that applicable to the real world, and I'd imagine it's gotten worse. I mean I always show, for my presentations, a video which is called "Shit Happens", and it's about the future of, oh wait it's 2 videos, and this one is more about what's happening in the world and world dynamics. And one of the points it makes is for, like, someone doing and engineering degree, by the time they're in their 4th year, they would've - half of what they would've learnt would be irrelevant. And that's actually quite telling. There's another video which I can also show you, which is about education in the United States. And you might see some similarities here, but it talks about classroom size and the nature of what they're learning and how appropriate it is. But yeah, some - it's certainly worth seeing. It won't come across very well in the recording *interruption*. There's actually another video you should see called "Epic 2015", have you seen that? It's very good, it's a documentary. Are the governments, like in Hong Kong, is the government really accepting social media and adopting it?
They are. They've actually got a youth programme which is actually a very good website. But, they are struggling though, to be honest, and I've consulted with the government a couple of times. And they're struggling a little with exactly how to - because it’s quite a conservative government. how exactly to engage. Is it appropriate to engage. But I guess it's interesting to look at this, because, to answer your question, I don't know how real this is to you. but my perception of a lot of what’s happening in education today is like this. And so people aren’t perhaps being pushed into the right areas, but that's a very limited window. I know people like Michael, here, who must make a very forward-thinking educator are not very typical here. I used to meet regularly with universities in Hong Kong, and even when social media was really limited, but at least it found in the curriculum. It was worth our discussion. But I often find people who are pure PR graduates, the stuff that they’re doing is very outdated.
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