1. Topic Four: Reshaping the Relationship
between Brands and Consumers
“The Internet is THE Community”: IWOM white paper
Series on Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) Development in
China
2008 Q3
© 2008 CIC

2. Reshaping the Relationship
between Brands and Consumers
Editorial Summary
The Chinese Internet population is now the largest in
the world with 253 million users and the Community is
a major element of the Internet experience. The
Community is reshaping and revolutionizing
relationships that individuals have with each other as
well the relationships they have with institutions such
as companies.
This white paper, “Reshaping the Relationship
between Brands and Consumers,” is Topic 4 of our
“The Internet is THE Community” series of reports. In
this white paper, we offer a number of case studies of
how brands can connect and learn from the Chinese
Internet Community.
The full “The Internet is THE Community” series of
reports can be downloaded here.
© 2008 CIC 2

3. THE POWER OF COMMUNITY: The Internet Community
accomplishes what traditional institutions cannot
The Netease Model Internet Worker Award (link) is
one of the most interesting artifacts of the Internet
Community serving as a sort of “Oscars” for service
to the community. With netizens voting in an
ongoing election, the Internet Community “Subtitle
Gangs” are currently in first place, just ahead of the
“I ‘HEART’ CHINA” initiative.
The “Subtitle Gangs” are competing groups of
volunteers which organize themselves online to
create Chinese subtitles for popular foreign movies
and TV shows.
As we wrote about in Topic One, the I ‘HEART’
CHINA initiative inspired Chinese netizens to almost
universally place a “heart” icon by their MSN name
Subtitle Gangs I ‘HEART’ CHINA
to demonstrate their love of China in spring of 2008.
• The Internet Community levels the playing field The power of the Internet Community is that it
between institutions and individuals removes the need for institutions, like TV studios to
accomplish tasks -- like quick turn-around
• The Internet Community accomplishes tasks translations -- that could not or would not be
which institutions are either ill suited or not
accomplished without it.
motivated to accomplish
© 2008 CIC 3

4. THE POWER OF THE INTERNET COMMUNITY: IWOM is
redefining the brand/consumer relationship
The power of the Internet Community levels the playing field between brands and consumers. This means that
traditional agencies are no longer a necessity for brands to aggregate and connect with consumers. Brands can
directly learn from and connect to targeted, relevant, communicative and empowered consumers by going to the
Internet Community. Brands can look to consumers directly for Insight, for Inspiration and for Collaboration.
Online Gaming E-Commerce
Video
RSS
Sharing
Q&A Customer
Review
Wiki BBS
Internet Consumers
Brands Blogs Community
BBS
Aggregator
Social Instant
Bookmarks Messaging
Photo Micro-blogging
Music Life Stream
Social Networks
Social Media prism inspired by Brian Solis and JESS3, 2008;
see full size Chinese Social Media Prism here.
© 2008 CIC 4

5. CONSUMERS AS INSIGHT PROVIDERS
Buzz Incidence of Overall Notebook Attributes in Q3, 2007 *
Whether brands are listening or not, consumers
32.4% Quote: “4th Centrino Platform, nVIDIA 8400
independent graphic card, all these are are expressing their opinion in massive
standard configurations for middle-high end numbers in the Internet Community. For
notebooks…For family entertainment users, this
notebook is a good choice as it is a middle-end example, in our Q3 2007 “Tuning into Notebook
22.3% price with high-end configuration.” IWOM” white paper, we found that 32.4% of
the 411,445 mentions of notebooks on leading
BBS communities referenced configuration.
11.0%
Digging deeper, we found that mentions of
9.9%
8.7%
7.9% independent graphic cards drove configuration
6.4%
buzz, indicating a trend towards consumers
using notebooks to replace desktops as home
PC’s in order to play games and watch videos.
Configuration Price Design & Service & Performance Function Marketing &
Appearance Channel Promotion
Base: Total number of brand and product posts is 411,445
*Note: Buzz incidence of attribute is the percentage of attribute posts among total brand and
product posts.
See here for CIC white papers on various
categories including notebook computers,
automobiles and mobile phones.
© 2008 CIC 5

6. CONSUMERS AS INSPIRATION
Sports Athlete Nick Names
Nick Name Interpretation
四克拉 Four carat
Luis Scola
影帝 Movie king
大姚 Big Yao
When passionate sports fans talk about their
姚哥 Big Bro Yao
favorite players, they use creative nicknames
like “King Ming”（明王）for Yao Ming and “The
Yao Ming 明王 King Ming
Prince of the Zebras （ 斑 马 王 子 ） for
点球皮 Piero for penalty goal Alessandro del Piero. Inspired by this passion,
when Chinese local sports apparel brand Anta
wanted to create a new line of apparel for its
斑马王子 Prince of the Zebras
spokesperson Luis Scola, it looked to his fans’
Alessandro
del Piero nickname “4 Carat,” a phonetic play on his
name in Chinese. Anta created a 4 Carat logo
See here for CIC white which was integrated into a line of 4 Carat
papers on various industry shoes, caps and shirts. Similarly, Lining
categories including sports. created a line of shoes inspired by the Chinese
character “Jiong”(囧).
© 2008 CIC 6

7. CONSUMERS AS COLLABORATORS
The Internet Community offers unprecedented opportunity to connect and collaborate with the most informed
and most passionate of your consumers. In 2007, when Intel wanted to launch its first Chinese language
packaging, it worked with a forum administrator to post a topic on a popular DIY (do it yourself) BBS forum
inviting forum members to submit their ideas for a Chinese slogan. Over the course of a month, thousands of
quality slogans were posted and awards, including two processors and a watch, were given as gifts to the
submissions deemed the most humorous and the most creative.
Sample Consumer Submissions
中国盒，世界芯！ link
The Chinese package, the world’s
core!
中国形 酷睿心 link
The Chinese style, the Conroe heart.
© 2008 CIC 7
See more information about the case, you can refer to Sam’s blog IWOM centered marketing in China

8. THE INTERNET COMMUNITY: Do they want brands to
participate?
The Internet Community actively discusses, and even builds community, around brands. But do
consumers welcome brands to participate in the community? According to our survey of “efluencers”,
the participants on leading communities, the answer is yes. Of course, participation should be done
with transparency and respect of community culture.
The response to cooperate with brands *
Attitude of cooperating
Frequency of being contacted with brands
11%
6% Brand
Interaction
38%
45%
Netizens
49%
55% 89%
51%
Ever contacted Positive to
by brand cooperate
Often Seldom Never Support Cooperative Dislike
Base: 315 valid responses
© 2008 CIC 8
*Data source: CIC Efluencer survey, 2008 Q3

9. MAKING SENSE OF THE BUZZ: The L-K-PTM framework
As an independent provider of Internet Word of Mouth intelligence, CIC has been using its “Listen-Know-
Participate” framework to help brands leverage the power of IWOM and bring value to the Internet Community.
CIC services Fortune 500 brands in China by providing a thorough, systematic, objective and strategic
understanding of Internet Word of Mouth.
Listen听 Know识 Participate融
Topic E-Culture Communication
Listen to consumer Know the communities Participate to bring
feedback and cultures value and appreciation
- Systematically analyze millions - Develop understanding about - Based on IWOM understanding
of unsolicited, naturally occurring who they are, where they are, why and insights, participate in the
comments about your brand, they talk, what is their language, Internet Community in effective,
products, services and industry and what motivates them to innovative and appropriate ways
participate…
© 2008 CIC 9

10. THE IWOM MINDSET: Creating an internal/external
ecosystem for leveraging IWOM
1. Consider IWOM as a strategy/mindset (not a tactic)
• Express your voice (not your message)
• Develop platforms, not only campaigns
• Hire a dedicated person or team for vision/execution (i.e. IWOM
manager)
2. Leverage IWOM strategy across the marketing organization (not siloed,
i.e. not only PR tracking)
3. Utilize an execution agency with real understanding of IWOM
4. Utilize trusted, 3rd-Party Research/Consulting for non-biased strategy
and measurement
© 2008 CIC 10

11. ABOUT CIC
CIC is the leading Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) research and consulting firm in China. Since
2004, CIC has pioneered the concept of Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) that is redefining the
relationship between brands and consumers. CIC coined the term Internet Word of Mouth and is
the thought leader in utilizing it for strategy planning and application in marketing
communications. CIC is committed to both providing objective third party strategic advice to
clients and promoting the healthy development of the Internet Community in China. CIC’s
research and discussion of IWOM’s impact and best practices can be found on company blogs,
IWOM white papers and IWOM watch reports and through its IWOM roundtable events such as
IWOM summit and IWOM classroom.
CIC offers customized research and consulting service to its stable of retainer clients through its
expert IWOM analysts supported by proprietary Chinese language based text mining technology
(patent pending), data processing technology and data visualization technology. CIC’s retainer
relationships stretch over multiple years with multinational clients from Fortune 500 companies.
CIC’s continual development and evolution is driven by a unique, powerful and open mindset and
learning culture which at its foundation continually seeks to understand how the Internet, and
Internet Word of mouth, is redefining the relationships between brands and consumers.
For more information, please visit www.cicdata.com (CIC website), www.seeisee.com (CIC
Company blog in Chinese) and www.seeisee.com/sam (CEO's company blog in English).
© 2008 CIC 11

12. OUR BLOGS:
www.seeisee.com (Chinese)
www.seeisee.com/sam (English)
OUR WEBSITE:
www.cicdata.com
CONTACT US:
Thank You
info@cicdata.com
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of this document or its content will be considered a violation of CIC IP
copyright and CIC has the right to take legal action.
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