KT Business Talk

Erke has gone viral in China in an unexpected way. With many parts of Central China's Henan province suffering from flooding after heavy rainfall, the sports brand Erke donated 50 million yuan (approximately 7.7 million dollars) worth of supplies to provide financial aid and help with the flood relief in the province. After Erke announced the news on its Weibo account, the post had gathered more than 280,000 comments as well as more than 9.45 million likes. Topics, hashtags, and trends related to Erke and its kindness also generated millions of views across various social media platforms. Sales for Erke's products also skyrocketed. According to the statistics provided by JD.com, one of China's largest eCommerce platforms, Erke's sales alone on Friday, July 23rd, 2021, witnessed a 52-fold increase . In offline stores, shoppers were so enthusiastic about Erke's products that the company said it was experiencing a serious lack of inventory due to a surge of demand. A ...

Recently, Michelle Ice City (MiXue BingCheng), a Chinese beverage chain brand that mainly focuses on ice cream and tea, has gone absolutely viral in China. Most of the credit for this sudden popularity goes to the brand's theme song. "I love you, you love me, MiXue Ice Cream & Tea..." With its unique and catchy melody, Michelle Ice City's theme song has become so popular that people were joking you can't stop singing it once you heard it. As I'm writing this blog, the song has been played over 2.5 billion times on the internet. On BiliBili, a popular video streaming platform in China, the song's music video has already reached almost 5 million views for the Chinese version and approximately 17 million views for the Chinese and English bilingual version. No one saw this coming. In fact, the song was created in 2019, but it never caught the public's attention. So what made the brand and its theme song go viral now? Michelle Ice City's theme song ...

With more than 665 million gamers as of 2021, China is the largest market in the world in terms of video games. Influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the sales revenue of the Chinese video-gaming industry hit its all-time high with 278 billion yuan , which is an increase of 47.8 billion yuan from 2019. Now, even as the effects of the pandemic are slowly chipping away, the Chinese video-gaming industry continues to grow as it hits a sales revenue of 77 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of 5.32% compared to the first quarter of 2020.  Image Source: Marketing to China As a Chinese myself, I can definitely confirm the booming of video games in China. When I visited China in the summer of 2020, I found that almost every restaurant has an internet connection. Some even have video-games themed food, or activities. The popularity of video games became even more apparent when I started hanging out with my friends who took school in China. When I was trying to plan some...

After defeating the Belgium national soccer team with a score of 1-2, the Italy national soccer team will be heading into the semi-final of the UEFA Euro 2020 to take on the Spain national soccer team. During this game, Italy's midfielder Nicolo Barella first broke the deadlock with a smashing shot across the keeper and into the far corner. As the Italian midfielder celebrated with his teammates, the sponsor advertising billboard from Hisense, a Chinese electronics and appliance company, became the background.   Image Source: Football Italia Since the kickoff of Euro 2020, the Chinese sponsors continue to draw more attention with its advertising billboard on the sideline as many were displayed using Chinese slogans and logos. In fact, among the 12 sponsors of Euro 2020, 4 are Chinese companies . And these 4 companies are Alipay, Hisense, Vivo, and TikTok, with Alipay and Hisense being UEFA National Team Football Official Sponsors, and Vivo and TikTok being UEFA Euro 2020 Official S...