Unilevers’ new Age Miracle face cream by Pond’s hasn’t exactly been leaping off the shelves in the Chinese market over the past year. So, they have decided to turn on the charm with a digital campaign that hopes to generate buzz, establish the product’s credibility and encourage Chinese women to give it a try.

The anti-aging cream is up against a long list of strong competition from brands such as Clinique, L’Oreal, Lancome and Olay which have made their mark as trusted favourites to a loyal consumer demographic.

Unilever and Ogilvy PR Worldwide asked volunteer bloggers to participate in a blind trial program and quickly signed up 150 official testers. The Chinese blogging community is large and influential with more than 100 million claiming to communicate via forums and discussion boards and 41 million heavy social media contributors, according to Netpop Research. (more…)

Anheuser-Busch InBev is inviting consumers in China to participate in the creation of the newest ad campaign for Budweiser beer. The commercial will be launched to the public in celebration of the Chinese New Year and as requested by the company, should be crawling with ants. (more…)

User-generated content (UGC) may be the best example of freedom of speech there is. This may be the reason why social network Plurk was recently banned in China. Plurk is a micro-blogging website that works a lot like Twitter. Users sign in and post short updates with a maximum of 140 characters. The website never really caught on in North America as it did in other parts of the world.  Asian countries Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines make up the top three countries for user concentration.

In North America and most other places in the world websites like Veoh, Bebo, Twitter, and Flickr are very common and no one outside the advertising community cares when a user logs on to the websites. However, sites like these are considered a threat by the Chinese government because they allow for the free flow of information and ideas. (more…)