Not for the first time, a giant corporation is attracted by the value proposition for online marketing, but gets caught disrespecting its rules, and loses the positive impact it was looking for. According to a recent Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung article Vodafone is reputed to be spending up to €200 million on persuading young people (”Generation Upload”) via placards and via the Web (YouTube, Twitter, etc), to use their mobile phone as their primary Internet access device at all times of day. But they are openly paying bloggers to promote them. One of these bloggers, Sascha Lobo (pictured), has up to now opposed Vodafone’s stance of supporting government proposals about restricting internet access, and his involvement is causing a real storm.

Some of the other criticisms of the campaign in the article:

1. “Generation Upload”  consists mostly of people who’ve uploaded one or two videos in their lives. So is the market really there? At some point, probably, but via paid-for access on their mobile phone? The evidence is at best equivocal - even iPhone users predominantly use wifi access rather than mobile internet.

2.  It’s not at all clear what the value proposition is - the campaign seems to be mostly about image projection. According to Tobias Langner, Professor of Marketing at the University of Wuppertal, getting people to spend more time online is best served by making the tariff more competitive - particularly difficult if ROI means covering a massive advertising campaign.

3. How will glossy posters in train stations convince an audience defined by its adherence to the web?

The fundamental principle in online marketing is authenticity -  products and presence that inspire people to blog about you, not paying them to do so. Vodafone has not convinced yet with its offering, and is paying for blogs, both of which are likely to provoke criticism. But even criticism provides an opportunity for positive engagement. Is that opportunity taken well? This is the comment that Fritz Joussen, CEO of Vodafone Deutschland, made in response to critical blog posts:

“We’re talking about 500 blog contributions, and we make products for 40 million customers. I’m happy to talk with bloggers about our products, but not to discuss my view of the world.” (my translation). In a few weeks Vodafone may realise that they don’t want all the flak that is coming their way and follow the golden rules - listen respectfully, admit problems, be positive, engage. But I’m not betting on it yet.

This week, I mainly did translation work for the e-book. Now the first draft is finished. This is a very detailed job and needed much patience to do it. At first the speed of translation was a bit slow, because I am not very familiar with some terminology in this field and I needed to look up some terminological dictionaries and some related Chinese books as well. But gradually I got used to it and started to increase efficiency. However, there is one thing that always haunted me from the beginning to the end of the translation. When I translated English into Chinese word by word, sometimes it made no sense because different languages may have different logics when referring to deeper meaning. If I do it by free translation, it will be more in line with the Chinese habit of using language. However, I prefer keeping it as original as possible, therefore you get a sense of how these experts think. You always have to make a choice.

After two weeks hard work, I finally finished the first draft of the Chinese version of the e-book. I read this e-book for several times and find it’s a good book to read, not only for marketing guys, but also for people who are interested in social media marketing or online marketing. The six experts from ICT companies have lots of experiences of product management and product marketing, and most of them are actually VP Marketing. They have done lots of traditional marketing such as trade shows, big events, etc. However, they are making use of more and more online ways and benefit from them. All of them have positive attitude towards online marketing stuff. I think it’s a trend.

Online marketing in China is just at the very beginning stage, Chinese companies really need good examples set for them, especially those who would like to expand their business to European and American markets. In this e-book, the six experts all talked about the differences of doing marketing in Europe, US, and Asia. Even for different regions in Europe, the style could be totally different. For those Chinese companies who have already succeeded in Chinese local market and also want to win in international markets, there is a gap between them. For me this is natural, because we do have different culture, which leads to a different way of doing business.

Hello, everyone. My name is Jingzhi; you can also call me Alex. I come from China, I did my bachelor in Civil Engineering of Tongji University in Shanghai, and I stayed in Japan for one year, joining some exchange program in Nagoya University. I am now doing my masters in the program of Management, Technology and Economics (MTEC) in ETH of Zurich. I am very glad to join Extendance as an intern to do this summer project, where I can now put what I have learnt into practice.

I will mainly take charge of promoting the e-book to P.R. China. But first I need to translate the e-book into Chinese, and the website of the e-book as well. Because most Chinese may not wish to read an English book, even if it’s a very good one. I started my job from this Monday, and it took me two days to translate the e-book website (www.techmarketing.ch) and another one day to set up the webpage, and the Chinese website of the e-book is available now, even if it’s not perfect. I have also translated the PowerPoint excerpt of this e-book; it’s an overview of the e-book and the bios of the participants of this interview. I am just a little delayed from what I planned in starting to translate the e-book. However, I think I will catch up and finish the translation of the e-book within two weeks, at least for the first draft.

I think this e-book will be worthwhile reading for Chinese companies, because they always want to learn experiences from successful companies in Europe and the US, not only the technology but also the business aspects. In this e-book, the specialists from top European ICT companies talked about their experience of online marketing and international marketing. Maybe some Chinese companies can find something useful which they can apply to themselves.