UBM, social media and Japan

Interesting to see this use of YouTube by UBM Asia Senior Vice President Chris Eve. It captures nicely the buzz of a new e-commerce event which opened today in Tokyo.

It seems increasingly clear that companies who can successfully combine their web offerings, social networks and face-to-face events can have a significant advantage over competitors who remain unconvinced about these things - a sizeable number based on straw polls at recent industry events we have attended.

China’s attitude shift

James McGregor, a journalist, media entrepreneur, investor and long-time resident of China, gave a sobering talk today at an Amcham lunch in Hong Kong. As an American living in China for more than 20 years, McGregor says that he loves both countries, but he thinks there has been an unsettling attitude shift in China recently. He believes that the arrogance that was once a less-than-appealing feature of U.S. businesses abroad has been adopted by the Chinese at an alarming rate.

Some of McGregor’s other observations included:

-A belief in “exceptionalism,” which was once an American position, is now common amongst Chinese business leaders and officials.

-More than ever before, Chinese authorities are moving to implement regulations to rig markets in favour of Chinese businesses. These regulations are designed to replace foreign businesses.

-“Indigenous Innovation” is a policy gaining traction at all levels of government in China. McGregor notes however, encouraging innovation which is protected from global competition by a net of regulations is not a plan that is likely to succeed.

-State-owned enterprises are enjoying a resurgence as Beijing has rediscovered its interest in maintaining an economic constituency that it can count on and control. Privately-owned Chinese businesses are beginning to feel they are at a disadvantage in their own country.

-Google was not about censorship. It was about corporate espionage.

-China is headed towards building the world’s largest intranet and if Chinese businesses want to compete globally, they can only do succeed if they have access to the same information that the rest of the world has.

Mark

MICE leaders gather in Subic Bay

This is Mark Cochrane here jumping into Paul’s blog space…

I just returned from the annual Philippine MICE Conference. This year more than 300 delegates attended the event in Subic Bay. The conference featured leaders from all corners of Asia’s MICE industry. MICE China’s managing director, David Zhong, charted the growth of China’s outbound meetings market which started from close zero just ten years ago. David noted that favourite destinations of mainland groups such as Singapore and Thailand have taken notice as the average group size has risen now to 300 persons with an average per head budget of RMB10,000.

Catherine McNabb, formerly of the Singapore Tourism Board, explained Singapore’s knack for winning mega events. (It is a laser-focus on events that match its strengths and the alignment of all government departments like only Singapore can manage. “Nothing is done in isolation in Singapore.”)

Social media was top of mind and featured prominently in the plenary sessions. Morris Sim, CEO ofCircos, a brand analytics consultancy, urged event organisers to use Twitter as an “in conference tool” to open two-way communications and to use it after the event to steer participants back to the event website.

Shanghai Expo and social media

There’s a very interesting piece on Marketing’s daily e-newsletter from Hong Kong.Titled, Shanghai Expo spurs social media buzz, it’s a piece by writer Adaline Lau’s on Ogilvy’s Thomas Crampton’s thoughts about social media and the Shanghai World Expo (follow him on Twitter @thomascrampton). It’s fascinating to see how the organisers of what will undoubtedly be the world’s biggest event of this type in our life times have latched onto virtual experience and social networking as ways to extend its reach. They’re now expecting up to 100 million people to attend in person but I noticed just this week on Monday when CCPIT Vice Chairman Wang Jinzhen spoke to the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, that he finished his presentation by talking about the virtual version of the Expo. It will, he said, be very necessary as it could take up to a month for a physical visitor to actually get around all 3.8 square km of exhibit space.

I’ll be heading to the Expo in September but, in the meantime, will be moderating a panel discussion on social media and the events industry at the UFI CEO Forum this week in Geneva (springlike and sunny yesterday as you can see from the picture from my room at the Intercontinental). Follow us on Twitter with the #uficeoforum hashtag or by keeping an eye on my tweets at @pwoodwardhk or on the @ufilive page. See you online!

Ten Alps buys 10 Asian titles from Reed

Ten Alps buys 10 Asian titles from Reed | Media | guardian.co.uk
The Guardian story linked here includes some intriguing elements:

• Bob Geldof, the early 80s punk/pop star who hated Mondays is now buying into Asia B2B media;
• As UBM did in 2000, Reed is now selling out of its Asian travel publishing business, now much weaker than long-time rival TTG Asia which has rather thrived under the benign neglect of ownership by the china.com group;
• Reed is left with not much of anything in Singapore except expensive corporate staff. How much longer will they all be there we wonder?

What impact Walmart direct sourcing deal on B2B media?

The FT today leads its Companies and Markets section in Asia with a story headlined “Walmart reveals supply deal“. If you’re struggling to get over-excited about how Walmart buys cheap t-shirts and skirts in Asia, sit up and listen.

Products and services which support consumer merchandise sourcing dominate B2B media in Asia in terms of dollars earned. Companies such as Alibaba.com, Global Sources and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (OK, not really a company, but bear with me) make most of their money out of exhibitions, web sites, directories, magazines and other services which support this huge activity.

So, when Walmart, the colossus of global buying, announces a tie-up with Li & Fung, the 300lb gorilla of the sourcing middle men world, it’s worth wondering what impact this will have on the supporting media. The FT quotes Walmart’s Eduardo Castro-Wright saying that the company could save up to $12 billion a year if it meets its goal of sourcing 80% of what it purchases directly from manufacturers, cutting out middle men at every step of the way.

Is this good news, bad news, or indifferent news for the Asian B2B media industry?

Bullish on exports

Much of South China’s B2B media is still driven by exports, so it was interesting to see two of the key players making bullish noises about the prospects for 2010 this week. In a review of the prospects for the Hong Kong economy, the Bangkok Post says that Hong Kong Trade Development Council is forecasting 5% export growth this year.

The article quotes Subrina Chow, director of the HK government’s Economic & Trade Office in Singapore saying that the relative improvement in China’s external trade should augur well for better performance in Hong Kong’s trade.

The surge in China’s investment has directly and indirectly benefited Hong Kong’s exports of capital goods to China. The trend is likely to continue in the coming months, she said.

“China’s strong domestic demand has buttressed Hong Kong’s exports of goods to China, which is its largest trading partner, accounting for about 48% of our total trade value,” she said. “The declines in exports experienced by Hong Kong since the latter part of 2008 have been slower than those in many other Asian economies.”

Meanwhile, JLM’s Pacific Epoch quotesAlibaba.com CEO David Wei saying that Chinese exports could surge as much as 20% this year:

Online trading has bounced back faster than the traditional markets, Wei said. Alibaba.com’s fourth quarter statistics demonstrate that consumption of developed markets like the U.S. has recovered more quickly than expected

Social Media in Asia

Lots of good data in this SlideShare Presentation from Ogilvy’s Thomas Crampton. I’m delighted that he’s going to join us for the UFI Open Seminar in Asia next March. Check out the web site and watch up for Twitter with the hashtag #ufitaipei

Harvard and BA on F2F

Now it does seem that BA is about to make it hard for us to follow through on its proposal to get face-to-face with what that great bastion of moderation and toleration the Daily Mail calls its “kamikaze staff” about to go on a merry Christmas strike. However, don’t let that detract from this interesting promotion highlight by Fleishman Hilliard’s Napoleon Biggs in a post title Forget Facebook, get Face-2-Face! BA is giving away tickets to businesses trying to build their activity through face-to-face sales and marketing activities. Of course, when you’ll be able to use them is anybody’s guess.

Dig into the BA microsite and you’ll come across a report by Harvard Business Review called “Managing Across Distance in Today’s Economic Climate: the value of face-to-face communication“. As Brussels, only recently free from its straight banana crisis, grapples with the idea of adopting the WWF’s proposed 20% reductions in business travel, this will come as a breath of fresh air to those in the events industry.

A couple of highlights from the HBR report’s executive summary:

• Virtually all survey participants (95%) said that face-to-face meetings are a key factor in successfully building and maintaining long-term relationships.
• 89% agreed that face-to-face meetings are essential for sealing the deal
• 79% said that in-person meetings are the most effective way to meet new clients to sell business
• 52% said that restrictions on the number of flights they take for business would hurt their business

Of course, if the airline you want to use is on strike (or, in due course, out of business), it makes taking those flights a bit harder.

The virtual fairs are coming

UBM Asia Launches Virtual MBA Fair
The press release from UBM Asia has really set me thinking. I talked about it last week in Australia (thanks EEAA for your hospitality) and have been noticing that, 10 years after event organisers were panicking about the prospects of virtual trade fairs during Dotcom v1.0, there has been a real surge in events like this. Some of them (e.g. Red 7 Media’s FolioShow and Expo Tech) have replaced existing real live events while others, such as this UBM announcement look like brand new, stand-alone events.

To me the technology is still pretty clunky and I don’t like the Second Life style of the graphics some of the systems use, but that’s probably just a symptom of my advancing years. It also seems unlikely that we’ll see a wholesale draft from real life events to virtual shows but we are getting quite close to a tipping point where virtual events can take there place as part of the marketing mix, combining some of the convenience and cheapness of a web site with some of the interactivity of a real, face-to-face experiences.