SteveKemper.com

Chinese consumers remain loyal to luxury brands

Seventy-two percent of luxury goods consumers in China said they’ve felt little to no effect from the recession, according to a report released Wednesday by KPMG. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said they would maintain the same level of spending on luxury goods this year.

Other findings of the report are that:

• there is a strong potential for outlet malls in China – as well as a strong business case given that the tax framework does not favor repatriation of surplus stock to other markets
• there is potential for greater use of technology to reach consumers with increasing mobile-phone usage across the country and the introduction of 3G technology. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they were interested in receiving updates on new arrivals or limited edition goods via SMS technologies

The report is based on a survey of consumers in 15 cities across China, which was conducted by market research group TNS in the third quarter of 2009.

But what if they’re fake?

Of course, this kind of brand loyalty means little if you’re a brand owner whose products are being counterfeited and sold to unwitting (to give most the benefit of the doubt) customers. A recent article in China Daily, entitled Fake goods in mail up 7-fold, reported that China’s customs officials seized as many as 37,000 pieces of mails and express mails containing counterfeit items from June to December of last year, seven times the figure in the same period of 2008. The staggering increase, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC), is largely due to the increasing development of e-business.

Ballmer: China can’t get a lot worse.

In the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine (formerly BusinessWeek), Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went so far as to say that for Microsoft, China can’t get a lot worse. Speaking from Hanoi, Vietnam, Ballmer singled out China and Vietnam as being in the most need of improvement in the IP protection area. India is much better, Indonesia is much better.

Ballmer went on to share some fascinating numbers:

If you look at the numbers today, how we do in China vs. the U.S., we do about 10 times better in the U.S. per PC sold. Maybe 20 times. We do seven times better in India. China can't get a lot worse. We haven't given up on China, but from a Microsoft perspective, we do more business in India, we do more business in Korea.

What percentage of Microsoft's $60 billion revenue comes from Asia, excluding Japan?

Three percent.

Just three percent?

How big is the PC market in these countries? It's a third of the world's computers, maybe 25 percent—and yet maybe 3 percent of our revenue. IP protection is critical, particularly in China.

And it’s not just software. The GAC report cited tobacco products, light industrial products, cosmetic and care products, hardware and mechanical products, and clothes as the categories topping the list of goods seized in 2009. Software would no doubt rank high in this group if it had to be shipped via post, but since it is – in most cases, no doubt – traded online, it wouldn’t show up in these numbers. Also, this report looked specifically at goods destined for export.

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Chinese Consumers Remain Brand Loyal
Fake goods in mail up 7-fold
Steve Ballmer: A Plea for Better Copyright Protection

Proposed Twitter #hashtags for Web i18n, l10n, g11n

Please let me know what you think of these proposed #hashtags for use on Twitter.

My inspiration for this is the fact that, in order to find and track tweets about internationalization, globalization, localization and translation, I currently have to have a filter that looks for all those words, plus their various numeronyms (i18n, g11n, l10n, and so forth). It’s just too much.

I propose the following:

#wgilt – An umbrella #hashtag for Web globalization / internationalization / localization / translation

For Tweets that are specifically about Web internationalization and not about localization, some might argue that it’s better to use that specific tag (#i18n). By all means, do so. But please include #wgilt, as well, for those of us who want to set up a watch list of all things multilingual on the Web.

Another advantage of using #wgilt (and #g11n until #wgilt fully catches on) instead of spelling out globalization, is that without standardizing on #wgilt, you’d have to search on globalization, globalisation and g11n – each of which brings up an entirely different set of results, of course – in order to make sure you find everything.

Finally, roughly two-thirds of the results for a search on globalization (and globalisation) are referring to financial and cultural globalization, not Web content and application globalization. A large percentage of tweets returned for a search on translation are employing the word to mean rewording something in less technical terms, for its mathematical meaning and so forth.

#gwcms – Global Web Content Management System (CMS)

This might be used along with #wgilt for those who want to track multilingual Web CMS-related tweets, but not general Web GILT topics.

#wcms – Web Content Management System (CMS)

This one obviously isn’t specifically about GILT topics, but it’s sorely needed. When I search Twitter (or the Web) for ‘WCMS’ right now, I get a whole slew of meanings, including a radio station (call letters), World Class Motor Specialists, Washoe County Medical Society, Worcester Chamber Music Society and so forth. When it’s not about global Web CMS, let’s use #wcms.

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I’m going to start using these immediately in my tweets and retweets on these topics.

If there are others you feel are needed, please comment here and let’s keep the discussion going!

Google offers global holiday greetings

Click on the logo on Google today and you'll see holiday greetings in nine languages. Click the image above for a full-size version.

Speak Any Foreign Language--Instantly

Nearly every startup has a lofty mission statement and a plan to change the world. Google may have their detractors, but no one can deny that they're passionately striving to deliver on their mission statement:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

First that seemed to mean organizing online information in their search index and making it universally accessible via their innovative algorithms. It quickly became apparent that Google takes their mission statement a little more seriously than that. Their offering expanded to include indexing online images and capturing satellite images and making them available online. Along the way they quietly added various specialty searches like U.S. government sites, scholarly papers, programming code. Blog search, book search and street search where you could have a street-level view of addresses -- and walk down the street, viewing the buildings and people unlucky enough to be there when the photo was taken -- as if you were there.

It became clear that Google wanted to get as much information online as possible and make it easily accessible via search. But that wasn't universal enough. When Google said universal, they meant it. And the only way to do that is to make it not only available to everyone, but intelligible for everyone. The only way to do that is to make all the information available in all languages.

Their first step in this direction came in the form of Google Translate -- to which they've added languages over time. Next came Translated Search, which let's you enter search terms in your language and have results displayed side by side in your language and the target language of your choice. I only discovered today that they've now added a dictionary that let's you look up the definitions of words in a number of languages, as well as look up foreign language translations of words between 12 different languages.

The rate at which Google continues to innovate and introduce new products to the market doesn't seem to be slowing. As someone who has spent almost my entire professional career working in multilingual environments and managing teams that span the globe, I find it incredibly exciting.

The Internet lets you connect with people around the world, but in practice you’re really limited to the people with whom you share a common language. What if you could e-mail anyone in their native tongue? What if you could even talk to them in their native language, your voice translated in real time into Vietnamese, Arabic or Swahili? “It’s possible,” Nikesh Arora, Google senior vice president for operations in the Europe, Middle East and Africa, told participants at the Monaco Media Forum.

During a presentation in which he examined some of the big Internet trends of the next decade, Arora demonstrated a new version of Google Talk that allows real-time conversations with somebody who speaks a foreign language. You type in English, and the sentence appears in French, German or whatever. The next step, which could come within the next decade, would be simultaneous voice translation.

Thanks to Google's efforts in this area, the Web is not only world wide -- it's increasingly world friendly.

Google Wants to Let You Speak Any Foreign Language--Instantly | Business Week

Abu Dhabi to take majority in AMD's manufacturing spin off

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices took the wraps off a long-awaited reorganization on Oct. 8, announcing a plan to spin off its manufacturing operations into a separate company that it will jointly own with investors from Abu Dhabi.

AMD's Spin-off: Abu Dhabi to the Rescue  |  BW

U.S. companies learning the benefits of localization

First U.S. companies learned that the Internet doesn't stop at the U.S. border. Next, they learned that English alone isn't good enough if you want to appeal to customers abroad. Now they're learning that, as inconvenient as it may be, translating website copy alone isn't enough.

AOL splashes images of Bollywood celebrities on its new home page for India. MySpace accepts sign-ups from mobile phones in Japan. Google departs from its customarily spartan home page and peppers its Korean site with colorful, animated icons...

Companies are trying to expand globally without seeming to, designing market-specific services with customized features that reflect differences in connection speeds, payment options and attitudes toward sex or violence.

This Associate Press article today highlights how several companies have come to realize the need to not only perform a quality translation of their copy, but to truly localize their content, feature sets and more.

I recall one client I worked with several years ago. Their business involved awarding prizes to site members for participating in various surveys and other activities. They initially approached us with the intention of having us simply localize their content into Japanese. At our urging, the engagement was expanded to include a research phase up front to explore the appeal and even legality of their business model in Japan. It turned out to be a very wise move. The majority of prizes they were planning to offer simply didn't appeal to a Japanese audience, even though they were a huge hit in the U.S. More importantly, we learned that it was against the law to give cash prizes in Japan the size of those they were awarding in the U.S.—and had planned to offer there.

In the end, they adopted an entirely different brand in Japan, offered very different prizes, reduced the size of their cash prizes to adhere to Japanese law and much more. The Japanese entity went on to outlive it's U.S. parent and exceed all projections for revenue and success.

The AP article concludes:

"Creating a national company is like rocket science," said John Strand of Strand Consulting in Denmark. "But creating an international company is like proton physics."

While not easy by any means, I'd say this statement does a grave disservice to the robust language services industry and the many Internet professional services firms who, when empowered to help their clients succeed, have a very strong track record of doing exactly that.

An un-American feel aids expanding US Web firms :: The Associated Press

Wieden+Kennedy weathers global growing pains

There is no perfect path to international success, no matter who you are. Weiden+Kennedy, Adweek's reigning Global Agency of the Year, is learning that the hard way. Fortunately, they so far seem to be growing stronger for the struggle.

Their international expansion is the subject of a story in today's Oregonian newspaper. There are some nuggets of wisdom in the article instructive for anyone trying to make a go of it in today's globally connected but culturally and linguistically diverse world.

Wieden+Kennedy has been venturing abroad in cautious steps for 16 years. That may sound like a long time to remain cautious, but that approach has resulted in impressive gains: Almost half its annual revenue of about $165 million now comes from outside the United States. That's especially impressive when you consider the alternatives. In international business, first impressions make all the difference. If you botch your entry into a market, you risk not only the opportunities of that single market, but your worldwide reputation—including back on your home turf. A failed attempt or worse, an embarrassing gaffe, will echo around the world and likely affect potential partnerships, prospects, talent acquisition and financing in subsequent market entry attempts.

Wieden+Kennedy, [Gregory] Solman [Adweek's West Coast editor in Los Angeles] says, has "done a wonderful job at smartly expanding their network globally," always entering a new market for a good business reason. One secret, he says, is the agency's foreign-office recipe: mix one-third Wieden culture, one-third of the host city's DNA and one-third of the office managers' personalities -- then shake

Portland ad agency strives to maintain edgy yet understated hometown profile overseas
Wieden+Kennedy looks to continue expanding globally while retaining its irreverent Oregon attitude

Why Facebook is dominating MySpace outside the U.S.

Melissa Chang has written an excellent piece, published yesterday, in the recently relaunched Industry Standard. It looks at how Facebook and MySpace are taking very different approaches to localizing their websites and entering overseas markets. The bottom line: Facebook is winning the popularity contest and shows no signs of slowing down.

MySpace is, perhaps not surprisingly, taking the traditional route; setting up local offices, getting entrenched in the culture and then launching. As part of News Corp — Rupert Murdoch's global media behemoth — this approach may have been imposed on the MySpace unit from above. Or perhaps they simply felt they might as well leverage the enormous influence and resources of News Corp. In either case, they may have overlooked the obvious and will likely pay the price for doing so.

So how is Facebook beating MySpace in their space? With what they know and do best: social networking.

Facebook is building out its foreign language versions with the help of its vast and committed user base. Instead of setting up an office and a staff before launching in new countries, Facebook is putting its audience to work with an online Facebook application that allows translation by the Facebook community.

In other words, Facebook is practicing what they preach and showing the world that it works. There are a number of things that make this a brilliant move on the part of Facebook.

Taking a page out of Google's field-tested playbook, Facebook is keeping translation costs to a minimum by recruting volunteers to do the work of translation for them by way of a highly-intuitive Facebook application developed specifically for this purpose.

But cost savings isn't the only benefit of this approach. It isn't even the top benefit. By getting member volunteers to help with the translation, Facebook is allowing people in countries all over the world to get involved and become directly invested in the translation effort and the resulting local language versions of Facebook. You can bet these members are then going to want to talk with others about what they're doing and show off their handiwork.

By allowing members to suggest languages and then get involved in the translation process, Facebook is able to track demand and prioritize deployment of the many language versions of the site accordingly. They are also rallying a global team of translators that would be prohibitively expensive to hire and manage under a traditional vendor relationship model. This will ultimately allow Facebook to roll out far more language versions far more quickly than if they're were doing all of the translations in house or through a traditional translation vendor.

But surely the quality of the translation can't be on par with that of a professional translation agency. On the contrary; it is likely better than most professional agencies could produce. Wikipedia is a worthwhile example of this kind of community-based quality assurance. Try inserting erroneous information into a popular entry on Wikipedia (though I'd prefer you didn't and simply take my word for it to spare the good Wikipedia elves the trouble). It will typically be corrected within minutes — and sometimes seconds, depending on the vigilance of the volunteer guardians of that particular page.

Facebook handles it slightly differently and in a way that makes much more sense for a site where the user interface is being localized and where phrases likely will not change once they've been translated:

The Translations application by Facebook allows translators all over the world to translate Facebook into different languages. The translation process consists of two steps: submitting translations and voting for translations. You may also discuss the translation process with other translators...

The second step — voting for translations — is the key to quality. Rather than translations being published instantly and corrected later, volunteer translators and reviewers vote on each translation and the highest-rated translation goes live.

The result? Melissa Chang sums it up nicely:

Facebook is currently working on 22 more language translations, and many hundreds of users have left suggestions about other languages that they would like to see translated -- and have volunteered to help with the work.

This savvy approach to new markets will be what wins the international audience for Facebook. In combination with the widely used Facebook Platform, which will allow international developers to build Facebook applications for local audiences, Facebook's international strategy is the better one. MySpace, with its less innovative international approach and still-new and largely untested developer's platform, will not be able to catch up.

I should close by saying that this approach is certainly not right for everyone. It is uniquely appropriate for open source applications and communities, and for social networking environments. That said, I will continue to explore and report on ways that my clients and partners, as well as companies in the news, implement and benefit from community-based localization and quality assurance.

Facebook vs. MySpace: The battle for global social network dominance | The Industry Standard

Free download: Presenation from SearchFest 2008

It was great to meet those of you who were able to make it to SearchFest 2008 yesterday here in Portland. It was a fantastic conference. I speak at and attend a lot of conferences and it's always a pleasant surprise when one goes as smoothly as this one did. It ran on time, the food and beverages were great, the rooms weren't too hot or too cold, all the audio and video equipment worked... An event like this is no accident. Kudos to the SEMpdx folks, the volunteers and the Oregon Zoo catering crew.

I took it as a good sign when I flipped open one of the free magazines being given away, Website Magazine, and found that the first article was entitled Geo Targeting Countries For SEO. It offered a solid, albeit brief introduction to international search engine optimization and covered some of what I had in my presentation. It's great to see this kind of visibility for international SEO. It's definitely a sign of things to come.

All the SearchFest 2008 speakers were first rate. You should be able to download all their presentations as they're uploaded to the site over the next few days. You can download mine from the event website, or grab it here:

International Search Visibility: Go Where the Growth Is (PDF - 726KB)

Please bear in mind that it was only a 30-minute session—including Q&A time. So it's a very high-level view of things. It would take a half-day seminar to do the topic justice. Please ping me if you'd like more information on anything I talked about. Or anything related that I didn't talk about!

I'm thinking about doing an online seminar with an expanded version of this presentation, so stay tuned here or let me know to contact you when I do that.

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Kemper Consulting International, LLC
Your trusted partner for international success online
http://www.kemperconsulting.com/

Come say hi at SearchFest 2008 this Monday

If you're going to be in Portland this coming Monday, March 10—or if you can make it to Portland—please consider attending SearchFest 2008. It's the premier area event for search marketing professionals and those looking to learn how to optimized their sites. [Click the logo to learn more and register]

SEMpdx brings you SearchFest 2008, a full-day search engine marketing conference featuring multiple learning sessions and expert panels to help you leverage search engine marketing (SEM) in your organization. Whether you are an SEM professional, work in an advertising agency or part of an in-house marketing department, SearchFest 2008 will connect you with the leading thinkers and practitioners in SEM today.

I'm doing a session on how to gain maximum visibility in the major international search engines: China, Japan, Germany and so forth. It's a short session so I won't be able to go into a great deal of detail, but we'll have a Q&A session at the end and I'll be sticking around to discuss and answer questions after.

Hope to see you there!

Link:
SearchFest 2008