While Western consumers start to reinvent their digital contexts as they retreat from public social platforms into more private channels, Chinese consumers have been far ahead in the process of recreating various offline social contexts online. In comparison to the West, where social platforms like Facebook and Twitter dominates, Chinese consumers have always enjoyed a much more intimate and flexible social media environment thanks to the near-ubiquitous adoption of WeChat. Whether it’s through one-on-one messaging, group chats, influencers and brand accounts in the Moments feed, or the booming short video channel, WeChat contains a multitude of social contexts for users to choose from.
Besides WeChat, which forms the foundation of digital socialization in China, many other local platforms have also leveraged social elements to build their own interest-based communities. For example, Little Red Book started as a UGC platform aimed at beauty influencers to showcase imported cosmetics. It has since evolved into an encompassing lifestyle discovery platform — like Pinterest but filled with Instagram influencers. Similarly, local discovery platform DianPing, which is essentially China’s Yelp but with a stronger social component, is also a local favourite for discovering restaurants, stores, and out-of-home entertainment options. Users follow friends, along with opinion leaders in the categories they are interested in, to discover local businesses and share their experiences.
The Gen Z consumers in China set themselves apart from the older generations with a higher sense of individualism and self-expression. They refuse to settle for the dominant social platforms and are demanding their own online spaces. This has led to a recent resurgence of QQ, an instant messaging platform made by Tencent that was popular in China during the pre-mobile era. Besides, Chinese Gen Z has been ‘raised’ by BiliBili, which is essentially China’s YouTube, but with social elements designed to encourage users to comment and interact with each other while watching videos, and they represent the most creative energy and forces in this country. Bilibili recently announced strategic partnerships with NatGeo, Netflix, and BBC, signalling its ambition in laddering up from UGC and building co-viewing communities around video content.
Looking further down the road, over the next 3–5 years, live streaming might bring us to be more social online across various platforms. Along with the progression of 5G technologies, virtual reality, and virtual influencers, live streaming will contribute to an increasing blurring between reality and virtual social context as Gen Z consumers take over as the main cultural force. Although Tmall, Douyu, and Bilibili remain the top live streaming platforms in China, WeChat is also getting in on the trend and trying to make live streaming happen on its platform. Thanks to its user data and existing social graph, the open beta of WeChat’s live stream mini-program (mini-apps that run within WeChat) has been well received by brands, as nearly 83% of brands said they’d like to try or continue to live stream on WeChat.
Beyond the existing diverse set of social platforms and online communities in China, we are even starting to see some platforms extending the social contexts they forged online into the offline world. For example, Dedao, a popular social learning platform, recently shifted its focus to reinventing the offline experience by creating learning centres located in high-end malls in several cities across China. The company also launched a new “Ignite Club” program where users come together in these learning centres and hear Dedao founder Mr Lou Zhen-yu share his recent learnings in person, thus reinventing a real-world context for the learning communities Dedao created online. Moreover, these learning centres also serve as a user acquisition channel for Dedao, attracting people looking for intellectually stimulating conversations and networking opportunities.
Given the proliferation of live-streaming platforms, each with its own audiences and algorithms, it may become harder for brands to keep their brand identity consistent. Then again, brands, like people, can be multi-faceted. The real question is, will brand identity become more fractured across various channels, or can it be unified by brand value? The future will continue to challenge our focus on building a stronger brand that aligns with our core value, especially on private social channels like the ones that WeChat provides.
In addition, the shifting online social context provides an opportunity for brands to attract more users to owned channels where brands can have a better chance at establishing strong, long-term connections with customers and, as they strive to take complete control of their customer data and feed it back into their CRM systems without sharing their data with platform owners.
