Month: December 2022

The integration of advertising and editorial content has become increasingly common in media content, with sponsored content and branded content being used as a source of revenue for publications. This blog post will analyse the branded content of Forbes.com, a leading news media publication, and discuss how it raises these issues and highlights the need for greater transparency and regulation of sponsored content.

In the contemporary world, everything seems to be about media and advertising. From the moment we wake up to check our phones when we go to bed to watch TV, media and advertising are everywhere. When you see a piece of financial information, the fund it recommends may be its sponsor; when you see a mobile phone review video, the creator may then be promoting a new Samsung phone; when you search for information on a product, the search engine will list the links and prices of that product on various websites for you.

The integration of news media and advertising should be obvious. But the behavior of much of the media now blurs the line between content and advertising, as content is essentially a form of advertising for sponsors but is presented as objective information.

Integrating news media and advertising raises questions about the regulation of news media. Forbes.com is well-known for its business and finance news and its use of sponsored content to generate revenue. In this case, the sponsored content provides a source of income for the publication and exposure for the branding agency. This type of financing model relies heavily on the use of branded content, which can potentially compromise the publication’s editorial independence and objectivity.

The integration of news media and advertising impacts consumer perceptions. This is an important issue because consumers need to know whether their views are fair and impartial to allow them to make informed decisions about their consumer behavior. However, the sponsored content in this article is not clearly labeled, which has the potential to mislead readers into believing that the content is objective and unbiased. This lack of transparency could harm consumers and erode their trust in the publication and the information it provides.

The combination of news media and advertising also raises questions about the power of brand sponsorship. In this case, branded organizations sponsor content, and their services are the article’s focus. However, it can sometimes create a conflict of interest, as creators may be less likely to criticize the sponsoring brand or its services.

Some skincare brands have allowed influencer to promote their products on platforms such as ins, but we know from some of the revelations that influencers will promote falsely for the brand’s sponsorship money. For example, there have been instances where an influencer poured out an entire bottle of skincare products and then told viewers that she had used it empty to convey how good the product was when she had never used it.

The concept of ‘brand intelligence’ – information presented objectively and unbiasedly but designed to promote a specific brand or product.

Naomi Klein

 In the Forbes article, the content appears to be presented objectively, analysing the power of AI technology. However, the content ultimately promotes the sales of the sponsoring brand’s products. This can be seen as a form of ‘brand wisdom’ – information presented objectively and unbiasedly but designed to promote a specific brand or product. This blurs the line between editorial and advertising and raises concerns about manipulating information for commercial purposes.

Indeed, greater transparency and regulation in the use of sponsored content are needed to protect editorial independence and prevent manipulating information for commercial purposes. It is vital that news media publications label sponsored content to ensure that consumers are aware of what they are consuming and can make informed decisions about the information they are reading.

In the digital economy, user-generated content (UGC), content created by users of a brand’s products or services, such as images, videos and stories, is becoming increasingly important to brands. Brands can use this content to engage with customers, build trust and generate buzz.

User-generated content has a dual character, suggesting more engaged creativity while being incredibly cost-effective as a way to produce free content.

Freedman, 2016

An example of a successful UGC campaign is the Nike #justdoit campaign. This campaign encourages people of all ages and backgrounds to create content showing how they can achieve their goals.

There are currently over 15 million Instagram posts with the #JustDoIt hashtag. This content helps Nike to stimulate social media followers and comments, additional inquiries about the brand, shop visits and sales. Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook also have positive #JustDoIt posts.

For brands, brands can use UGC to their benefit.

The campaign encourages people of all ages and backgrounds to create content, such as videos, photos or stories, that showcase how they have achieved their personal goals.

Simpson

 This allows Nike to connect emotionally with consumers by encouraging them to share their journeys and success stories. By doing so, Nike can create a strong brand image that resonates with consumers and builds trust. When people share their stories, they may tag the brand’s social media accounts, which will help increase awareness of Nike’s products and services. People tag items in the content of their posts, and other users can directly view the item’s purchase page, price, sales and other information. The campaign also allows Nike to collect valuable user data. As people create content for the campaign, Nike can better use this data to understand its customer base, preferences and interests. This data can then inform future product and marketing decisions, enabling a data chain.

For creators of UGC, this means connecting with brands and gaining extra exposure.

The campaign provides a platform for them to share their stories and potentially gain recognition and attention for their achievements. This could be particularly beneficial for creators looking to build their brand or gain exposure to their work. Also, because Nike is a well-known international brand and comes with massive exposure, UGC creators’ content will naturally gain more exposure because of the brand, which will also attract more users to share it. In addition, the campaign allows creators to have meaningful conversations with people who share similar interests and values, which can lead to new connections, relationships and friendships.

For consumers of the brand’s products, it is a new perspective on the brand and its wares.

The campaign provides a way for them to connect with people with similar interests and goals and to gain inspiration and motivation from the stories shared by others. It allows them to see how others have achieved their goals and inspires them to pursue their ambitions. This can be particularly beneficial for young consumers who are still trying to find their world. It also allows people to swipe through the shopping platform to find information about items and may have found an item they want to buy while swiping through ins in general, leading to a purchase.

Overall, the brand benefited the most from the #justdoit campaign.

1. The campaign has enabled Nike to build a strong emotional connection with consumers, increasing the quality and impact of the brand culture.
2. t the same time, the campaign led to more exposure for Nike merchandise featured in the tweets, which naturally led to more transactions.
3. It also enabled Nike to collect valuable user data that could be used to inform future product and marketing decisions.

While the creators of UGC and consumers of Nike products benefit from the campaign, these benefits are secondary to the brands. However, all three groups can benefit to some extent, depending on their respective goals and objectives. In projects created by capitalists, the biggest beneficiaries are often the capitalists themselves, which applies to most brands.

In 2020, I posted one of my vlog videos on the Chinese social media platform “Xiaohongshu”, which received over 300,000 views and 2.6 million likes. I started my career as an influencer from then on. To date, I have gained more than 200,000 followers across the internet, generating a profit of over a million RMB and transitioning from free digital labour to total revenue.

Initially, I did not receive any sponsorships to collaborate on my content. As Duffy, B. E. puts it: in theory about the ‘digital labour debate‘, participants produce content with economic value while presenting their practice as positive. Essentially, this is unpaid online activity: for example, creative expression in digital form, where I praise a brand of foundation as good, review a restaurant as sound, etc. in a vlog, is free labour exploited for profit by capitalism. But as my following grew and the platform transitioned to economics, everything changed ……

Xiaohongshu could be called the Chinese version of ins. Still, one of the most apparent differences is that most of Xiaohongshu’s users are women, focused on recommending products and places. Xiaohongshu had attracted 100 million users by late 2018. Crucially, 90% of these users are middle or upper-class women with higher degrees of disposable income. This is an incredibly lucrative market for global fashion and cosmetics brands.

Any company would be wise to target female customers. Four industries where women are most likely to spend more money or upgrade: food, fitness, beauty and clothing.

Harvard Economic Review

I’ve also started to shift the focus of my vlog content to these four. For example, in the morning, I’ll show how I make my healthy breakfast; at lunchtime, I’ll show what I do for cardio fitness; and in the afternoon, it’s make-up and ootd time. Unsurprisingly, the videos on these topics have garnered a lot of likes and attention from female viewers. Within six months, my account had reached a maximum of 98% female followers! As we all know, in the “female economy” market, female followers are the most valuable audience on the internet.

This profile has attracted the attention of many famous brands (Estee Lauder, Maserati, max mara), who have offered me sponsorship for their videos. 

An account persona is like a building. A beautiful building needs to be built brick by brick, and each piece of content from the creator is one of these bricks. The better the video content, the more people like the video, the more traffic the platform will give the creator, and the more people will see the video. When more people follow the channel, it naturally attracts sponsors because they need their audience’s attention.

So, what is the value of internet content? It is valuable when people want to take the time to read what you share. The audience’s time is money. The brand will need to pay up to 36,000 RMB (about £4,500) for one of my branded ad videos. But is this figure worth what I paid?

Take the example of my vlog for the Maserati MC20 limited edition sports car:

• firstly, I needed to pay my team (photographer, assistant and editor) for a gorgeous video;
• secondly, we were filmed in a fancy resort and at a fancy caviar culture site, which is very costly;
• thirdly, the commercial-laden video turned off some of my viewers, leading to the loss of those followers.

This hurt the subsequent value of my channel. With these, especially the third point, it’s hard to tell how much revenue commercially sponsored videos bring in for me. But there is no doubt that the sponsors’ fees make it worth my digital labour

When a creator gains the time and attention of more viewers than the average person, they have shifted from free digital labour to being paid to work, which is a sure way to go.

In the period after the Second World War, advertising became the first productive force in promoting consumption. In the early days, the advertising audience was predominantly male.

There are three visual symbols in advertising that attracted the most attention: Beauty, Baby and Beast, of which Beauty was the most visible and interactive.

‘3B’ strategy from a famous American advertiser David Ogilvy

Since then, ‘women’ have been seen, consumed or appeased for more than half a century in the evolution of advertising. Advertisers then saw women as objects to be conquered or owned.

1950s men’s cigarette advert: blow on her and she’ll be on your way

Then over time, in recent years, female users have become the backbone of the global mobile internet tide. With this change, women have become the primary target audience for advertising. As the spending power of independent women increases, there are more and more feminist advertisements.

Fitness has long been a health trend sweeping the urban population. As a new growth driver in the sports market, women have become a strategic target group for sports brands. As a global sports brand leader, Nike announced its entry into the women’s sports market by launching its Nike Women strategy in New York in October 2014.

Nike women’s ads photos

July 2015 saw the opening of Nike 45 Grand in New York’s SOHO district, a luxury fitness studio available only to Nike’s female VIPs. Here, female guests can see all Nike products for women and receive exclusive workout advice from trainers and coaches.

photo of Nike 45 Grand in New York’s SOHO

International Women’s Day has become a great marketing opportunity. On 8 March 2020, International Women’s Day, Nike celebrates the women who drive sport with the campaign ‘One Day We Won’t Need This Day‘ – the hope that one day, every day, will be like the day we mark on our calendars. The one-minute spot is about the day when women worldwide will not need International Women’s Day to remind people of women’s equality and role in society. And to deliver its message of empowerment, the Swoosh highlighted the achievements of tennis icon Serena Williams, soccer star Megan Rapinoe and several others.

The brand’s products are naturally glorified by the psychological effect when the viewers of the advertisements recognize the culture transmitted by the brand. They can feel as if they have raised the flag that marks the independent woman the moment they buy the item after viewing the ad.

They say, “there are no modern poets because they all write copy for advertising agencies.”

 The image of a successful female athlete in the ad is paired with an uplifting slogan that creates a strong sense of identification in the hearts of feminist advocates.

Nike women’s line will grow from $5 billion today to $7 billion by fiscal 2017 and will account for 20% of total revenue.

Nike CEO Mark Park

What you can trust is that targeting and selling to female users can be effective in increasing brand sales.

But the reality is that we cannot hold capital to a moral standard, the injustice to women comes from truth, and many problems can only be solved in fact. In sports events, many women are still not treated fairly because of their gender, and men are still the leading force in sports. A marketing advertisement for women, in addition to driving sales of branded women’s clothing, does it help the status of women in sports and society.

Although advertising has commercial properties, it reflects society’s attitudes toward women. It is certainly not enough to rely on advertising alone to change the status of women and reshape their image.

Through advertising, you can see the ideals of the country.

 British writer Norman Douglas

It is helpful enough to show the power of women of all fields, colors and ages through these positive feminist advertisements.

In the internet age, how inconvenient would life be if you were cut off from the internet for a whole day?

What is life like when you are disconnected for a year?

The western Chinese province of Xinjiang was cut off from the internet by the government for a year in 2009 due to riotous actions by ethnic separatists. People were unable to access the internet, talk or text because these played a crucial role in instigating the riots. To this day, “Xinjiang riots” are still sensitive words blocked by media platforms.

source：China Briefing

In China, there are also restrictions on what can be viewed. When overseas films were banned, local Chinese films were also subjected to the same limits: the TV series “The Legend of Wu Mei Niang” was ordered to be modified because the actors wore underage costumes that showed off their ample bust lines.

Comparison of clips (after and before) by culishi.com

Powerful editing turned a high-quality drama with a high-cost production and a superstar cast into a tedious film showing only the actors’ heads. The beautiful costumes and sets of the TV series no doubt cost much capital, but they also have to bow down in the face of policy regulation.

McChesney argues that markets do not bring democracy.

McChesney, R. (2015) ‘The media/democracy paradox’, Rich Media, Poor Democracy. New York: The New Press.

As long as there are financial relationships, media messages will always inevitably be influenced to some extent, and non-profit media is one of the changes that the media industry is seeking to make, and we need such media. There may not be a non-profit media in the total sense of the word in China.

However, there is a media organisation called Narada Insights, a thought-producing station initiated by the Nandu Public Welfare Foundation, which was established in 2007. It invites many experts, scholars, senior media professionals and others to discuss issues about Chinese society in transition and to interpret public social problems from a fair and impartial pluralistic perspective.

Unlike other news platforms filled with commercial advertisements, Narada Insights‘s articles revolve around social issues such as feminism, China’s healthcare system, the education and employment system and domestic violence. These are the topics that people like to hear about.

The original authors of Narada Insights have grown from 75 at the beginning to 181 today. These authors come from all over the world; some are research experts in their fields, using professional theories to explain issues; some are overseas scholars, bringing a Chinese perspective to the world while also looking back at China from an international perspective; there are also media people, educators and public welfare practitioners. It is worth mentioning that last year there were also some young students who, during the epidemic It is worth noting that last year there were also some young students who organised themselves into a lot of public service practice activities during the epidemic, focusing on marginalised groups and providing unique perspectives. These writers are willing to share their experiences and reflections with readers in Narada Insights to disseminate appropriate and valuable content to the public and to stimulate more sparks to promote the democratic process.

The advantage of non-profit media is that it can be more objective, neutral, conscientious, and warm. This is why the slogan of Narada Insights is “100,000 reasons for Chinese society”.

Perhaps these are where the Chinese people inside the Berlin Wall have a respite.