Shanghai Expo 2010 will run for 6 months, from May to October; and is expected to attract upwards of 70 million visitors over those six months. The UK has a truly exciting pavilion, designed by Thomas Heatherwick, on the Expo site – able to accommodate up to 40,000 visitors a day (5-7 million over 6 months). In addition, there will be an extensive programme of business and public events, showcasing the UK’s sectoral strengths and business expertise, the arts, culture, science, innovation and our low carbon agenda. For the first time in the history of Expos, there will also be an online Expo; and the UK is developing its own ambitious Expo website to maximize contact with the growing web population in China.
It is the last of these 3 platforms which offers the UK the greatest potential to extend the reach of its public diplomacy messages in China. China has around 340 million internet users: this number is growing at about 6 million every month. Following the introduction of 3G, almost 50% of users now use mobile internet and Chinese “netizens” are on-line for increasingly extended periods with this mobile access. With such a massive user base and a huge number of very active networking sites, the UK Expo team has worked hard to identify those sites most likely to be used by our Expo target audience (young/middle class users) to have a conversation about the UK, as a creative, innovative nation – diverse and open to business, students and tourists. We are able to present the UK as a preferred partner for China, and Chinese people; and one which seeks to engage with our Expo target groups in their own preferred networking media.
Since early December 2009, the UK Shanghai Expo project team has been running a marketing campaign on Chinese social media sites designed to drive traffic to the main UK Shanghai Expo website and to create an added “buzz” around the UK’s programme at Expo. The response so far illustrates the huge potential of using these channels in China for public diplomacy purposes. Not only does social networking allow us to engage directly, and to grow our audience in China; but experience shows that we can get our softer messages across to segmented audiences most effectively, and directly, by working with specific sites. We are also able to mediate, and shape, the responses to our messages.
The Chinese target audience for Expo has in many respects bypassed the traditional media age, using digital media instead in unprecedented numbers. The UK Expo marketing communications effort builds on our awareness of this growing consumer trend, rather than (just) working through more traditional public diplomacy media channels. Our research shows that we are the only national level participant at Shanghai Expo to have invested such significant resource in digital media presence. By leading the way in using digital media to reach our audience, this in itself is demonstrating to a wide audience the UK’s position as an innovator, at the forefront of technical developments.
Our Expo website incorporates the functionality that Chinese users respond to; but it is our work on digital marketing campaigns that truly sets us apart. Since starting our UK@Expo “buzz” campaigns to coincide with the launch of the Expo website, expectations have been far exceeded: we have received nearly half a million effective viewers. The number of people who have engaged on the topic of the design of the UK pavilion, and the search for a nickname for it, has been 1500% above our objectives; and the total number of clicks/views almost 350% of target (with 42,000 views and 2500 comments). 90% of all comments have been positive about the UK pavilion; with the remaining 10% neutral. Discussions for a nickname for our Expo pavilion already run to 67 pages on one site; the same site has also recently launched its own nickname campaign for the top 10 Expo pavilions, very much following our lead with a successful idea.
It’s been important in our approach to reflect the distinctly different preferences among Chinese users for the look, feel and most of all the functionality of social networking sites. We’ve done a separate post on this.
Next steps
The functionality provided by the UK Expo website offers huge potential to develop much more ambitious FCO/HMG marketing campaigns in China; and the team will be encouraging Expo stakeholders (both private and public sector) to leverage this potential to the full for their own benefit. To tap into the most popular functions, the team is developing competitions and games which could both generate revenue and offer further sponsorship opportunities. Phase 3 of the UK Expo website which goes live with Expo in May will incorporate a knowledge bank (funded by NINJ/UKTI) highlighting the UK’s sectoral strengths. Research has helped the team identify the most appropriate social media partners to work with to promote this core knowledge bank to segmented audiences.
There is potential to take established work in new directions too: most bulletin boards require real name registrations, generating the option of working together with hosts to build databases, and set up newsletters and online communities with a declared interest in the UK.
Carma Elliot is HM Consul-General in Shanghai
