Asian Insight

chinainnovation:

The third interview of a 12 part series, Larry Weber, Chairman of Racepoint Group, interviews Alvin Graylin, CEO of mInfo, the leading Mobile Search Service in China providing natural language search services to users throughout China via SMS, WAP, IM and embedded client applet.He is also the founder of Guangxi Inc, a new location-based social discovery platform aimed at helping users interact with people and places and around them and connect more deeply with existing friends in their lives.

LW: Hi, this is Larry Weber and welcome to our third interview about China, Innovation and Technology on behalf of Racepoint Group. I’m so excited today to have a very interesting guest, Alvin Graylin. Alvin has been around – he went to MIT, he has engineering degrees, he worked at INTEL and established them in China. He now owns a couple of companies, mInfo and Guan.xi which we will talk about in a little bit. Alvin is a leader and has his finger on the pulse when it comes to mobile in China – we want to talk a bit about where innovation in mobile is going and ask a lot of different questions I think our audience would love to hear. Welcome Alvin, thank you for joining us.

AG: Thanks Larry, appreciate you giving me the opportunity to chat with you on your show.

LW: So the first question is a basic question, social media is so different in China vs. the US. China have integrated things more – over here we are separate in our approach. Mobile marketing is considered very different. I would love to hear your perspective for our audience on the difference and what should Western companies be sensitive about when it comes to that difference? Mobile Marketing vs. Social Media vs. China vs. the West.

AG: That is a very long question…

LW: Take whatever time you would like.

AG: I’ll give you a quick intro. I’ve been in China Mobile Marketing for about 7-8 years now and as well as the social space. I have worked in the States but it wasn’t in the Mobile/Social side but I do work with a lot of international agencies so we do see a lot of different things going on. In general, mobile marketing is doing OK here – it’s not generating very high revenue % or ad $ spend % - or it’s not generating as much as we would like to see. It’s in the one percentile, maybe one and a half in some places. This is significantly lower than you would expect in a country with over a billion cellphones and about 300 million smartphone users which will double to probably about 600 million over the next year or so. A lot of people think China is actually quite advanced in terms of mobile and is some areas it is, some areas it is a little bit behind. In terms of the network a lot of the users are still using 2G phones. That primary a legacy issue – they are on 3G/4G phones but on a 2G network because China Mobile is primarily based on the old GSM network and when they switch to 3G they were given a 3G license. That was a China only 3G license which most cell phone manufactures don’t support so the majority of the 500 million China Mobile subscribers are still on 2G.

LW: On a side note, before you continue, will 4G come there or will it be years?

AG: Well here is the interesting this, 4G is probably going to leap over 3G for China Mobile because relatively few 3G TV STMA cell stations but this year they are going to put out 300 4G LTE stations around the country – by the end of the year. They will then become the largest 4G network in the world – jumping directly from 2G to 4G. This is part of the plan, they were forced by the government to do the China only 3G and it’s given other carriers the chance to catch up, so that’s a quick network picture. The other Chinese carriers, Unicom and Telecom they are both on 3G. One is on CDMA 2000 the other is on the standard US 3G network. So the sophistication of the mobile advertising programmes are not as much as what you would expect – there have been some examples of good, integrated marketing using mobile but in general mobile is a bit of an afterthought for most agencies. Not necessarily because they don’t want to do it, but mostly because of the structural difficulties. The way that $s are spent here as well as the complexity of using mobile in integrated campaigns to avoid doing something they don’t know or selling something they don’t know or having been measure by something they cannot control, a lot of agencies actually don’t do a lot of work on mobile or do a big portion of the project on mobile – however mobile can actually increase the activity or effectiveness of the entire campaign. So most of the mobile $ spent today are probably in a few specific industries in fairly narrow methods of usage but I think that is changing relatively quickly – there’s more and more proactive agencies and brands coming to companies like us trying to get more integrated mobile strategy and solutions and mobile CRM.

LW: Another side question, one of the areas I talk a lot with my Western clients about is mobile loyalty. Do you think that could quickly become an application that could because popular for a Chinese audience where you use digital couponing and loyalty integrated with their mobile efforts?

AG: Mobile couponing hasn’t taken off – coupons in general aren’t a big part of the culture here. So there isn’t a big trend in coupon clipping. There are definitely some restaurants, bars and tea shops that using couponing programmes, but it’s not that sophisticated.

LW: And how does it relate to social networks? Because you have Guan.xi and one of the things I think is going to happen here is a loyalty and discounting as you share things with people – it sounds like the Chinese market is definitely getting into mobile social networking and Guan.xi sounds like a pretty cool ideas.

AG: Thanks for the plug there! Mobile social networking is definitely a big part of what’s going on in social networking in general – if you look at recent releases from the likes of Facebook, they have more than half of their traffic and usage through mobile users. In Japan, it’s probably more like 80% of the traffic through mobile. Companies like Weibo, they have more than half of their users accessing the content through global – one of the things that happened last year was Tencents Wei Xin (We Chat) which has gone from over 300 million users from nothing in about 18 months. That’s a mobile only social solution that’s a mix up of Facebook and Whatsapp.

LW: Must make Pony Ma happy!

AG: He’s always been a happy guy; this is just making him happier! The interesting thing with Wei Xin is that even though they have almost half a million users, they are monetizing it at all – there is no advertising (or very little) and they lose something like 100 million RMB/month on operating the service for their users. So, the monetization on mobile has continued to be an issue. For Tencent they don’t really care as much because they have a lot of other revenue and resources but a lot of mobile only companies that depend a lot on mobile/social media as the only revenue source – they have been having monetization issues.

LW: Alvin if you were advising major companies in the US about the use of mobile marketing in China, if you could only tell them three things, what would they say?

AG: OK, well the first thing is make sure you plan mobile ahead of time as one of your initiatives during your initial planning strategy so that it isn’t something that gets put on and tagged in at the end when the plans are set. This is the only device that lets you reach over a billion users instantly and personally. Two, have fully integrated campaigns that allow traditional media to be integrated with mobile aspects/elements. SMS response coding, mobile websites, an integrated app – even TV Barcodes. TV Barcodes are actually becoming more viable with Wei Xin – a few years ago, a lot of people had it but nobody used it. And I guess the third is demand more from your agencies and marketing department about how to think about what users are doing in mobile and integrate their usage patterns and making a long term customer service management model through mobile and integrate it with your ad campaigns so that it’s all one cycle of creating awareness, bring the users in, having them make a transaction and then following up with post purchase surveys/reminders and reactivation through mobile. Have one solution through mobile – think about CRM and advertising together in one chain versus having them in separate departments. We see that a lot, we actually provide both sides to the solution but usually we’re talking to totally different people when doing that.  

LW: That’s cool. Hey, take a minute to tell us about Guan.xi and mInfo so that my clients and future clients can know more about what you are up to.

AG: Sure, so I have two companies – one is called mInfo which is a multi-transport mobile search service.  It’s been around for about 7-7 ½ years. We started out as a mobile search company focused on SMS search when there was no mobile internet or apps, android or iOS. Then we progressed into adding mobile internet and app based solutions, along with working with Chinese carriers. So we have been working with pretty much all three Chinese carriers on providing mobile search solutions for them – that is a natural language based search. Essentially we do what Siri does today but we were doing it 6-7 years ago and for Chinese content and Chinese freeform. We are now integrating voice communications into our search capabilities – now Chinese Telecom users can actually speak into the app and do what Siri does for an American/Western audience. Of that company we also have a mobile agency which we have to create innovative mobile advertising campaigns. The second company I own is Guan.Xi, Guan.Xi was formed about a year ago – we’re focused essentially on mobile and mobile social discovery. So helping introduce people to each other that are relevant and enhance your life. Instead of having social networking that replaces fact to face contact, we focus on helping enhance and create more opportunities for face to face contact. So we have a feature on Guan.Xi which essentially you tell what you are looking for and when these type of people are nearby you, we would tell you a) did you know that Larry is only 200m away from you and b) you have over 500 friends in common with him and by the way he also works in a similar industry and likes marketing. You can click a button and instantly start chatting with that person. We also allow you to look through a face wall of people around you to see who is interesting and we have something called the Guan.Xi max score, so based on 40 -50 characteristics of the person (interests, age, deposition, industry etc.) we devise a score that tells you how compatible you would be with that person – whether for business, social or dating. It enhances and makes it a lot easier for people to start conversations – social is still an issue for a lot of the younger generation because they don’t have brothers/sisters/cousins. They tend to opt for digital communication and a lot of people will escape the real world by playing video games. We want to bring them back to the real world – so that’s a quick summary of our two companies.

LW: How cool is that? I hadn’t thought about not having a lot of siblings, close family networks etc. Congratulations – it sounds like you’re doing well and I wish them great success. My last question for you, since the digital world gets bored very quickly is some Alvin predictions? If you had to predict what sort of marketing platforms in China would be the most popular…. One of the arrogant things that Westerners think is that they are exporting marketing ideas to China, but I think it’s going to come the other way soon. Some predictions and some observations would be great.

AG: Yeah I think that WeChat’s platform has taken hold and even though it probably copied something from Western apps, it’s now spreading all over Asia and parts of the US – that app has a lot of designs in it that creates super viral usage. Group chatting is something that you don’t see a lot of in the western markets right now but it’s something that will significantly increase mobile traffic amongst users – that’s something that people should watch for and Tencent has done a really good job with that. Something like 40% of all mobile internet traffic is through WeChat – which is crazy. They essentially integrated video, live chat, group chatting, picture, face posting, IM etc. in one app! It’s a relatively good user experience – so that’s going to be popular in the West. Something like weibo which people have been talking about for the past couple of years, in fact, I think weibo have done a lot of things that are more interesting and rich than twitter because of their ability to integrate rich media into it. Whereas initially where Twitter was really focused on text based 140 characters type of simple blog – whereas now wiebo has taken that to a new level. The last few years, China hasn’t been that great with innovations but they are pretty good at creating evolutionary improvements, user experience improvements, localizations and local user habit, as well as business model implements. Things like virtual objects and more localized content. A lot of western companies don’t do that enough.

LW: Customized content which is one of the futures of marketing – you have to customize your content to you constituency base.

AG: I think most Western technology companies try to create one solution that fits the rest of the world – Facebook, Google, Microsoft they do that. In general, that works for the Western markets but in Asia; where there is a very different landscape/cultures/language etc. there needs to be much more customization and I think that’s something that Western companies can take from what is happening in China.

LW: It’s so cool – Alvin we’ve gone way past the time people are interested but I could talk to you all night! Or all morning for you. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. Alvin, you are a superb entrepreneur that we’re going to be hearing a lot more of in the next few years. Thanks again.

AG: Thanks!    

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LW： 大家好，欢迎来到锐思博德集团创新与科技论坛第三期节目，我是拉里韦伯。这次我们邀请到的嘉宾是Alvin Graylin. 他在麻省理工学院获得工程学学位之后，效力于英特尔公司，见证了公司在中国的建立过程，如今他已经拥有几家企业，包括接下来会陆续谈到的Minfo和Guan.xi。Alvin毫无疑问是一个领导者，也把握着中国的移动通讯的脉搏。相信我们的观众也想知道许多关于移动创新的问题。欢迎你的到来Alvin！

AG：谢谢拉里，十分感谢有这个机会上你的节目。

LW： 我们的第一个问题通常很简单，社交媒体在中国和美国是十分不同的。中国的社交媒体更加的整合，和我们西方的功能分散情况截然不同。移动营销市场就更是不一样了，我十分想知道你的观点，西方企业在面向不同的受众是应该注意些什么？比如移动媒体和社交媒体，中国和外国这些不同的层面上。

AG：相当长的问题.

LW：只要您愿意分享，我们多久都愿意倾听。

 AG：谢谢，先做一个简单的介绍吧，我在中国移动营销这一领域工作了七到八年的时间，社交领域也一样。我曾经在美国做过不太相同的工作，不过因为与许多国际大企业合作，所以也有机会看到了许多事情的发生。总的来说，移动营销在这里做得不错，没有过多的税收或者是广告投放，也没有在我们的预料范围以外。这远远低于你对一个拥有超过有十亿手机用户，三亿智能手机用户或许下一年还会翻倍的国家的预期。有许多人认为中国在移动市场的已经很先进，在某些领域上说是的，但在某些其他的领域来说又是相对落后的。就比如说手机网络的用户，如今有许多的用户仍然在使用2G网络，即使他们手上拥有的是3G/4G的手机，但是由于中国移动如今尚未得到3G牌照而只基于GSM的旧系统，或者是他们的手机生产商不支持3G牌照，导致用户们仍然只能使用2G的网络。

LW： 那么，4G网络会在近年开放吗？

AG：这是个有趣的话题，中国移动的4G服务也许会先于3G率先在全国范围内使用，这是因为3G TV STMA通讯服务台比较少，而300 4G LET服务站将会在今年年底内于全国开始设立。他们将会变成全世界最大的4G网络系统。直接从2G 跨越到4G。这是计划的一部分，也是通过中国政府推行的一项措施， 这项措施让很多中国运营商有了迎头赶上的机会。中国联通和中国电信如今都有3G的服务。前者是通过CDMA 2000，后者是通过标准US 3G网络。所以移动广告系统的复杂性不是你所想象的那样，有一些好的例子可以说明问题，比如说用移动端做整合营销是许多企业之后才意识到的，不是因为他们不想这样去做，而是由于结构的困难。企业不会在一些他们不熟悉的地方花钱，比如他们不愿意在移动整合营销方面投入，也避免在他们不能控制的市场投放，另外很多企业也不愿把项目以及活动投注到移动市场上面去。所以如今大部分的移动投资都集中在具体的几个较窄的产业，但我认为这个现象很快会转变。当今很多企业越来越注重移动市场和移动CRM的投放。

LW： 另外一个问题是，最近我也与许多西方客户谈及移动端忠诚度的问题。你认为在中国，移动用户的忠诚度会因为他们在移动方面的投入譬如一些电子优惠劵而增长吗？

AG： 移动电子优惠在中国还未真正的开启，也尚未变成一种文化。所以这并不是一个大的趋势。是有一些餐厅，酒吧以及茶馆在使用这项服务，但是投放也并不是十分精准。

LW：那这些又是如何同社交网络联系的呢？因为我认为Guan.xi这样的服务正是在用户中间提高忠诚度的一个良好平台，这在日趋成熟的中国移动市场似乎是一个不错的选择。

AG： 谢谢你提及这个问题，移动社交网络绝对是当今正在发生的主要变化。你要是注意到最近的一些关于Facebook的文章，他们将近一半的流量是通过移动端用户带来的。在日本，大概有80%的用户是通过手机连入互联网。还有去年发布的腾讯微信，在十八个月内就拥有了超过三亿的用户，这就是移动端综合Facebook和Whatsapp的最好例证。

LW：这一定让马化腾很高兴。

AG： 他向来如此，这只会让他更加愉悦。微信有意思的地方在于，这项服务完全是免费的，没有（或是极少有）广告植入，即使腾讯每个月要亏掉一百万人民币来支持这项计划，他们也不在乎，因为他们有太多其他的业务可以盈利了。这可不像其他的一些移动社交公司，依仗移动工具来获取利润，往往会碰到货币的问题。

LW： Alvin，对于美国的大型企业，你对他们面向中国的移动市场有什么好的建议呢？

AG: 第一，需要保证的是你的移动营销计划一定需要提前，就是说这项计划必须在所有原定计划里面的，而不是最后附加上去的一项业务。这也是如何不间断的覆盖到超过十亿用户的作法。第二，允许移动元素添加到传统媒体中去，成为整合营销活动的一部分。短信的解码，移动网站，以及一些应用程序甚至是电视条形码，和几年前不同，电视条形码如今已经和微信连接起来。然后我想第三点，是要让你的营销部门考量用户习惯，做出长期的整合营销计划并且取得长效的受关注度，带入新的用户，跟踪这些用户的消费习惯以及做调查研究等等。解决这些问题就必须考虑到CRM和广告两个部分而不是将他们分离开来。我们看到了很多这样的例子。通常我们可以提供两方面的解决方案，不过我们都是向不同的人谈论这个问题。

LW：那能谈论一下Guan.xi和Minfo的概况吗？也好让我的客户以及未来的客户们了解你都在做什么工作？

AG：当然了。我如今有两家公司，一间叫做minfo，这是一家综合移动运输搜索服务的公司。如今公司已经建立了七到七年半的时间。我们一开始做的是移动搜索引擎的公司，重点放在SMS的搜索服务上，但是没有引入网络和应用程序，安卓系统或者iOS。后来我们增添了基于移动网络以及应用程序的解决方案，为中国的三个波段服务，这三个项目都是基于自然语言的搜索方式。其实我们同Siri今天做的事情是一样的，不过我们为服务中国而提前了6到7年的时间。现在我们也将语音交流作为其中一项业务，如今中国联通的用户也可以像欧美用户那样通过应用程序来实现对讲功能。公司也提供给客户创新的移动广告作品和活动。我的第二间公司叫做Guan.Xi,这家公司在一年前才建立起来，这家公司更加注重移动和发现移动社交，我们帮助人们互相认识，丰富他们的生活等等，与社交媒体不同我们更倾向于让人们面对面的交流，所以人们Guan.Xi网上告诉我们他们想要寻找什么样的人，我们就会告诉他，第一你认识200米附近的拉里吗？或者是在你周围有500个朋友和你一样在相似的产业工作，譬如营销。你可以按一下键之后便开始同对方交流。我们也允许人们看到附近的人构成的脸墙，从而发现哪一个是你感兴趣的，我们称之为Guan.Xi最高分。在40到50种人的性格里（兴趣，年龄，职位，企业等等）我们会告诉你与对方的匹配程度是多少。不管是从商业的角度还是社交或是约会的角度。这将更有益于人们开始一个话题，社交对于大多年轻人来说还是最重要的，因为他们都没有兄弟姐妹。他们更需要数字沟通，很多人会因为玩游戏而逃离现实，我们想让他们回到现实世界中来。这就是两家公司的简要介绍。

LW：多么棒啊！我们从没有想过没有兄弟姐妹和家庭网等等的问题。恭喜你做得这么好，也希望你取得更好的业绩。我的最后一个问题是，既然你预言数字世界将很快变得无趣，那你对中国的营销平台又有什么新的预言呢？许多西方的人认为是他们向中国引入了营销的观念，但我认为事情很快就会倒转过来。如果你能给我们一些提示，那就再好不过了。

AG： 是的，我认为微信平台大概就是西方应用程序的一个复制品，但是现在它已经分布到整个亚洲和美国，这个程序有许多强大的功能。西方并没有很多这样的群聊功能，不过很快移动流量就会大幅度的增长，就像大家看到腾讯所做到的那样。40%的移动数据流量都是来自微信，这是十分惊人的。腾讯在一个程序中很好的结合了视频，在线聊天，群聊，图像，表情等等。这是非常好的用户体验程序，所以也将很快在西方流行起来。就像是这几年很热的微博，我们认为相比较推特而言做得更加好，也综合了很多不同的媒介也更加的有趣。推特只是一直强调140个字节的简单博客，而微博却做到了丰富的内容到达了一个新的高度。最近这几年，中国在创新和技术提高以及革新方面做出了很好的成绩，他们将用户本地化又市场化，更加贴合用户的习惯，这就像是做商业模型一样。而许多西方企业是远远不足的。

LW：内容定制是营销中重要的一环，需要根据你的受众来划分内容。

AG：我认为西方科技公司是希望创造一种合适全世界范围内使用的方案—类似Facebook, Google, Microsoft都是这样。总的来说，对于西方是合适的，但是对于亚洲却不同，这里又完全不一样的文化语言和背景，他们更需要定制化的内容，从中国的例子中就可以看出来。

LW：Alvin我觉得我可以和你聊上一整晚，谢谢你的观点，希望你在接下来几年做得更好。再次感谢你。

AG：谢谢！ 

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More About Alvin Graylin:

The third interview of a 12 part series, Larry Weber, Chairman of Racepoint Group, interviews Alvin Graylin, CEO of mInfo, the leading Mobile Search Service in China providing natural language search services to users throughout China via SMS, WAP, IM and embedded client applet.

He is also the founder of Guangxi Inc, a new location-based social discovery platform aimed at helping users interact with people and places and around them and connect more deeply with existing friends in their lives.

Alvin is a seasoned technology entrepreneur and business leader with over 15 years of management experience, seven of which are in Greater China. Alvin co-founded mInfo in early 2005. He is intimately knowledgeable about the wireless search and mobile marketing space in China. Alvin has rich entrepreneurial experiences prior to mInfo, having also been the founder and CEO of two other technology start-ups in the US, one in personalized e-marketing and the other in online financial tools for consumers.

chinainnovation:

The third interview of a 12 part series, Larry Weber, Chairman of Racepoint Group, interviews Alvin Graylin, CEO of mInfo, the leading Mobile Search Service in China providing natural language search services to users throughout China via SMS, WAP, IM and embedded client applet.He is also the founder of Guangxi Inc, a new location-based social discovery platform aimed at helping users interact with people and places and around them and connect more deeply with existing friends in their lives.

LW: Hi, this is Larry Weber and welcome to our third interview about China, Innovation and Technology on behalf of Racepoint Group. I’m so excited today to have a very interesting guest, Alvin Graylin. Alvin has been around – he went to MIT, he has engineering degrees, he worked at INTEL and established them in China. He now owns a couple of companies, mInfo and Guan.xi which we will talk about in a little bit. Alvin is a leader and has his finger on the pulse when it comes to mobile in China – we want to talk a bit about where innovation in mobile is going and ask a lot of different questions I think our audience would love to hear. Welcome Alvin, thank you for joining us.

AG: Thanks Larry, appreciate you giving me the opportunity to chat with you on your show.

LW: So the first question is a basic question, social media is so different in China vs. the US. China have integrated things more – over here we are separate in our approach. Mobile marketing is considered very different. I would love to hear your perspective for our audience on the difference and what should Western companies be sensitive about when it comes to that difference? Mobile Marketing vs. Social Media vs. China vs. the West.

AG: That is a very long question…

LW: Take whatever time you would like.

AG: I’ll give you a quick intro. I’ve been in China Mobile Marketing for about 7-8 years now and as well as the social space. I have worked in the States but it wasn’t in the Mobile/Social side but I do work with a lot of international agencies so we do see a lot of different things going on. In general, mobile marketing is doing OK here – it’s not generating very high revenue % or ad $ spend % - or it’s not generating as much as we would like to see. It’s in the one percentile, maybe one and a half in some places. This is significantly lower than you would expect in a country with over a billion cellphones and about 300 million smartphone users which will double to probably about 600 million over the next year or so. A lot of people think China is actually quite advanced in terms of mobile and is some areas it is, some areas it is a little bit behind. In terms of the network a lot of the users are still using 2G phones. That primary a legacy issue – they are on 3G/4G phones but on a 2G network because China Mobile is primarily based on the old GSM network and when they switch to 3G they were given a 3G license. That was a China only 3G license which most cell phone manufactures don’t support so the majority of the 500 million China Mobile subscribers are still on 2G.

LW: On a side note, before you continue, will 4G come there or will it be years?

AG: Well here is the interesting this, 4G is probably going to leap over 3G for China Mobile because relatively few 3G TV STMA cell stations but this year they are going to put out 300 4G LTE stations around the country – by the end of the year. They will then become the largest 4G network in the world – jumping directly from 2G to 4G. This is part of the plan, they were forced by the government to do the China only 3G and it’s given other carriers the chance to catch up, so that’s a quick network picture. The other Chinese carriers, Unicom and Telecom they are both on 3G. One is on CDMA 2000 the other is on the standard US 3G network. So the sophistication of the mobile advertising programmes are not as much as what you would expect – there have been some examples of good, integrated marketing using mobile but in general mobile is a bit of an afterthought for most agencies. Not necessarily because they don’t want to do it, but mostly because of the structural difficulties. The way that $s are spent here as well as the complexity of using mobile in integrated campaigns to avoid doing something they don’t know or selling something they don’t know or having been measure by something they cannot control, a lot of agencies actually don’t do a lot of work on mobile or do a big portion of the project on mobile – however mobile can actually increase the activity or effectiveness of the entire campaign. So most of the mobile $ spent today are probably in a few specific industries in fairly narrow methods of usage but I think that is changing relatively quickly – there’s more and more proactive agencies and brands coming to companies like us trying to get more integrated mobile strategy and solutions and mobile CRM.

LW: Another side question, one of the areas I talk a lot with my Western clients about is mobile loyalty. Do you think that could quickly become an application that could because popular for a Chinese audience where you use digital couponing and loyalty integrated with their mobile efforts?

AG: Mobile couponing hasn’t taken off – coupons in general aren’t a big part of the culture here. So there isn’t a big trend in coupon clipping. There are definitely some restaurants, bars and tea shops that using couponing programmes, but it’s not that sophisticated.

LW: And how does it relate to social networks? Because you have Guan.xi and one of the things I think is going to happen here is a loyalty and discounting as you share things with people – it sounds like the Chinese market is definitely getting into mobile social networking and Guan.xi sounds like a pretty cool ideas.

AG: Thanks for the plug there! Mobile social networking is definitely a big part of what’s going on in social networking in general – if you look at recent releases from the likes of Facebook, they have more than half of their traffic and usage through mobile users. In Japan, it’s probably more like 80% of the traffic through mobile. Companies like Weibo, they have more than half of their users accessing the content through global – one of the things that happened last year was Tencents Wei Xin (We Chat) which has gone from over 300 million users from nothing in about 18 months. That’s a mobile only social solution that’s a mix up of Facebook and Whatsapp.

LW: Must make Pony Ma happy!

AG: He’s always been a happy guy; this is just making him happier! The interesting thing with Wei Xin is that even though they have almost half a million users, they are monetizing it at all – there is no advertising (or very little) and they lose something like 100 million RMB/month on operating the service for their users. So, the monetization on mobile has continued to be an issue. For Tencent they don’t really care as much because they have a lot of other revenue and resources but a lot of mobile only companies that depend a lot on mobile/social media as the only revenue source – they have been having monetization issues.

LW: Alvin if you were advising major companies in the US about the use of mobile marketing in China, if you could only tell them three things, what would they say?

AG: OK, well the first thing is make sure you plan mobile ahead of time as one of your initiatives during your initial planning strategy so that it isn’t something that gets put on and tagged in at the end when the plans are set. This is the only device that lets you reach over a billion users instantly and personally. Two, have fully integrated campaigns that allow traditional media to be integrated with mobile aspects/elements. SMS response coding, mobile websites, an integrated app – even TV Barcodes. TV Barcodes are actually becoming more viable with Wei Xin – a few years ago, a lot of people had it but nobody used it. And I guess the third is demand more from your agencies and marketing department about how to think about what users are doing in mobile and integrate their usage patterns and making a long term customer service management model through mobile and integrate it with your ad campaigns so that it’s all one cycle of creating awareness, bring the users in, having them make a transaction and then following up with post purchase surveys/reminders and reactivation through mobile. Have one solution through mobile – think about CRM and advertising together in one chain versus having them in separate departments. We see that a lot, we actually provide both sides to the solution but usually we’re talking to totally different people when doing that.  

LW: That’s cool. Hey, take a minute to tell us about Guan.xi and mInfo so that my clients and future clients can know more about what you are up to.

AG: Sure, so I have two companies – one is called mInfo which is a multi-transport mobile search service.  It’s been around for about 7-7 ½ years. We started out as a mobile search company focused on SMS search when there was no mobile internet or apps, android or iOS. Then we progressed into adding mobile internet and app based solutions, along with working with Chinese carriers. So we have been working with pretty much all three Chinese carriers on providing mobile search solutions for them – that is a natural language based search. Essentially we do what Siri does today but we were doing it 6-7 years ago and for Chinese content and Chinese freeform. We are now integrating voice communications into our search capabilities – now Chinese Telecom users can actually speak into the app and do what Siri does for an American/Western audience. Of that company we also have a mobile agency which we have to create innovative mobile advertising campaigns. The second company I own is Guan.Xi, Guan.Xi was formed about a year ago – we’re focused essentially on mobile and mobile social discovery. So helping introduce people to each other that are relevant and enhance your life. Instead of having social networking that replaces fact to face contact, we focus on helping enhance and create more opportunities for face to face contact. So we have a feature on Guan.Xi which essentially you tell what you are looking for and when these type of people are nearby you, we would tell you a) did you know that Larry is only 200m away from you and b) you have over 500 friends in common with him and by the way he also works in a similar industry and likes marketing. You can click a button and instantly start chatting with that person. We also allow you to look through a face wall of people around you to see who is interesting and we have something called the Guan.Xi max score, so based on 40 -50 characteristics of the person (interests, age, deposition, industry etc.) we devise a score that tells you how compatible you would be with that person – whether for business, social or dating. It enhances and makes it a lot easier for people to start conversations – social is still an issue for a lot of the younger generation because they don’t have brothers/sisters/cousins. They tend to opt for digital communication and a lot of people will escape the real world by playing video games. We want to bring them back to the real world – so that’s a quick summary of our two companies.

LW: How cool is that? I hadn’t thought about not having a lot of siblings, close family networks etc. Congratulations – it sounds like you’re doing well and I wish them great success. My last question for you, since the digital world gets bored very quickly is some Alvin predictions? If you had to predict what sort of marketing platforms in China would be the most popular…. One of the arrogant things that Westerners think is that they are exporting marketing ideas to China, but I think it’s going to come the other way soon. Some predictions and some observations would be great.

AG: Yeah I think that WeChat’s platform has taken hold and even though it probably copied something from Western apps, it’s now spreading all over Asia and parts of the US – that app has a lot of designs in it that creates super viral usage. Group chatting is something that you don’t see a lot of in the western markets right now but it’s something that will significantly increase mobile traffic amongst users – that’s something that people should watch for and Tencent has done a really good job with that. Something like 40% of all mobile internet traffic is through WeChat – which is crazy. They essentially integrated video, live chat, group chatting, picture, face posting, IM etc. in one app! It’s a relatively good user experience – so that’s going to be popular in the West. Something like weibo which people have been talking about for the past couple of years, in fact, I think weibo have done a lot of things that are more interesting and rich than twitter because of their ability to integrate rich media into it. Whereas initially where Twitter was really focused on text based 140 characters type of simple blog – whereas now wiebo has taken that to a new level. The last few years, China hasn’t been that great with innovations but they are pretty good at creating evolutionary improvements, user experience improvements, localizations and local user habit, as well as business model implements. Things like virtual objects and more localized content. A lot of western companies don’t do that enough.

LW: Customized content which is one of the futures of marketing – you have to customize your content to you constituency base.

AG: I think most Western technology companies try to create one solution that fits the rest of the world – Facebook, Google, Microsoft they do that. In general, that works for the Western markets but in Asia; where there is a very different landscape/cultures/language etc. there needs to be much more customization and I think that’s something that Western companies can take from what is happening in China.

LW: It’s so cool – Alvin we’ve gone way past the time people are interested but I could talk to you all night! Or all morning for you. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. Alvin, you are a superb entrepreneur that we’re going to be hearing a lot more of in the next few years. Thanks again.

AG: Thanks!    

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LW： 大家好，欢迎来到锐思博德集团创新与科技论坛第三期节目，我是拉里韦伯。这次我们邀请到的嘉宾是Alvin Graylin. 他在麻省理工学院获得工程学学位之后，效力于英特尔公司，见证了公司在中国的建立过程，如今他已经拥有几家企业，包括接下来会陆续谈到的Minfo和Guan.xi。Alvin毫无疑问是一个领导者，也把握着中国的移动通讯的脉搏。相信我们的观众也想知道许多关于移动创新的问题。欢迎你的到来Alvin！

AG：谢谢拉里，十分感谢有这个机会上你的节目。

LW： 我们的第一个问题通常很简单，社交媒体在中国和美国是十分不同的。中国的社交媒体更加的整合，和我们西方的功能分散情况截然不同。移动营销市场就更是不一样了，我十分想知道你的观点，西方企业在面向不同的受众是应该注意些什么？比如移动媒体和社交媒体，中国和外国这些不同的层面上。

AG：相当长的问题.

LW：只要您愿意分享，我们多久都愿意倾听。

 AG：谢谢，先做一个简单的介绍吧，我在中国移动营销这一领域工作了七到八年的时间，社交领域也一样。我曾经在美国做过不太相同的工作，不过因为与许多国际大企业合作，所以也有机会看到了许多事情的发生。总的来说，移动营销在这里做得不错，没有过多的税收或者是广告投放，也没有在我们的预料范围以外。这远远低于你对一个拥有超过有十亿手机用户，三亿智能手机用户或许下一年还会翻倍的国家的预期。有许多人认为中国在移动市场的已经很先进，在某些领域上说是的，但在某些其他的领域来说又是相对落后的。就比如说手机网络的用户，如今有许多的用户仍然在使用2G网络，即使他们手上拥有的是3G/4G的手机，但是由于中国移动如今尚未得到3G牌照而只基于GSM的旧系统，或者是他们的手机生产商不支持3G牌照，导致用户们仍然只能使用2G的网络。

LW： 那么，4G网络会在近年开放吗？

AG：这是个有趣的话题，中国移动的4G服务也许会先于3G率先在全国范围内使用，这是因为3G TV STMA通讯服务台比较少，而300 4G LET服务站将会在今年年底内于全国开始设立。他们将会变成全世界最大的4G网络系统。直接从2G 跨越到4G。这是计划的一部分，也是通过中国政府推行的一项措施， 这项措施让很多中国运营商有了迎头赶上的机会。中国联通和中国电信如今都有3G的服务。前者是通过CDMA 2000，后者是通过标准US 3G网络。所以移动广告系统的复杂性不是你所想象的那样，有一些好的例子可以说明问题，比如说用移动端做整合营销是许多企业之后才意识到的，不是因为他们不想这样去做，而是由于结构的困难。企业不会在一些他们不熟悉的地方花钱，比如他们不愿意在移动整合营销方面投入，也避免在他们不能控制的市场投放，另外很多企业也不愿把项目以及活动投注到移动市场上面去。所以如今大部分的移动投资都集中在具体的几个较窄的产业，但我认为这个现象很快会转变。当今很多企业越来越注重移动市场和移动CRM的投放。

LW： 另外一个问题是，最近我也与许多西方客户谈及移动端忠诚度的问题。你认为在中国，移动用户的忠诚度会因为他们在移动方面的投入譬如一些电子优惠劵而增长吗？

AG： 移动电子优惠在中国还未真正的开启，也尚未变成一种文化。所以这并不是一个大的趋势。是有一些餐厅，酒吧以及茶馆在使用这项服务，但是投放也并不是十分精准。

LW：那这些又是如何同社交网络联系的呢？因为我认为Guan.xi这样的服务正是在用户中间提高忠诚度的一个良好平台，这在日趋成熟的中国移动市场似乎是一个不错的选择。

AG： 谢谢你提及这个问题，移动社交网络绝对是当今正在发生的主要变化。你要是注意到最近的一些关于Facebook的文章，他们将近一半的流量是通过移动端用户带来的。在日本，大概有80%的用户是通过手机连入互联网。还有去年发布的腾讯微信，在十八个月内就拥有了超过三亿的用户，这就是移动端综合Facebook和Whatsapp的最好例证。

LW：这一定让马化腾很高兴。

AG： 他向来如此，这只会让他更加愉悦。微信有意思的地方在于，这项服务完全是免费的，没有（或是极少有）广告植入，即使腾讯每个月要亏掉一百万人民币来支持这项计划，他们也不在乎，因为他们有太多其他的业务可以盈利了。这可不像其他的一些移动社交公司，依仗移动工具来获取利润，往往会碰到货币的问题。

LW： Alvin，对于美国的大型企业，你对他们面向中国的移动市场有什么好的建议呢？

AG: 第一，需要保证的是你的移动营销计划一定需要提前，就是说这项计划必须在所有原定计划里面的，而不是最后附加上去的一项业务。这也是如何不间断的覆盖到超过十亿用户的作法。第二，允许移动元素添加到传统媒体中去，成为整合营销活动的一部分。短信的解码，移动网站，以及一些应用程序甚至是电视条形码，和几年前不同，电视条形码如今已经和微信连接起来。然后我想第三点，是要让你的营销部门考量用户习惯，做出长期的整合营销计划并且取得长效的受关注度，带入新的用户，跟踪这些用户的消费习惯以及做调查研究等等。解决这些问题就必须考虑到CRM和广告两个部分而不是将他们分离开来。我们看到了很多这样的例子。通常我们可以提供两方面的解决方案，不过我们都是向不同的人谈论这个问题。

LW：那能谈论一下Guan.xi和Minfo的概况吗？也好让我的客户以及未来的客户们了解你都在做什么工作？

AG：当然了。我如今有两家公司，一间叫做minfo，这是一家综合移动运输搜索服务的公司。如今公司已经建立了七到七年半的时间。我们一开始做的是移动搜索引擎的公司，重点放在SMS的搜索服务上，但是没有引入网络和应用程序，安卓系统或者iOS。后来我们增添了基于移动网络以及应用程序的解决方案，为中国的三个波段服务，这三个项目都是基于自然语言的搜索方式。其实我们同Siri今天做的事情是一样的，不过我们为服务中国而提前了6到7年的时间。现在我们也将语音交流作为其中一项业务，如今中国联通的用户也可以像欧美用户那样通过应用程序来实现对讲功能。公司也提供给客户创新的移动广告作品和活动。我的第二间公司叫做Guan.Xi,这家公司在一年前才建立起来，这家公司更加注重移动和发现移动社交，我们帮助人们互相认识，丰富他们的生活等等，与社交媒体不同我们更倾向于让人们面对面的交流，所以人们Guan.Xi网上告诉我们他们想要寻找什么样的人，我们就会告诉他，第一你认识200米附近的拉里吗？或者是在你周围有500个朋友和你一样在相似的产业工作，譬如营销。你可以按一下键之后便开始同对方交流。我们也允许人们看到附近的人构成的脸墙，从而发现哪一个是你感兴趣的，我们称之为Guan.Xi最高分。在40到50种人的性格里（兴趣，年龄，职位，企业等等）我们会告诉你与对方的匹配程度是多少。不管是从商业的角度还是社交或是约会的角度。这将更有益于人们开始一个话题，社交对于大多年轻人来说还是最重要的，因为他们都没有兄弟姐妹。他们更需要数字沟通，很多人会因为玩游戏而逃离现实，我们想让他们回到现实世界中来。这就是两家公司的简要介绍。

LW：多么棒啊！我们从没有想过没有兄弟姐妹和家庭网等等的问题。恭喜你做得这么好，也希望你取得更好的业绩。我的最后一个问题是，既然你预言数字世界将很快变得无趣，那你对中国的营销平台又有什么新的预言呢？许多西方的人认为是他们向中国引入了营销的观念，但我认为事情很快就会倒转过来。如果你能给我们一些提示，那就再好不过了。

AG： 是的，我认为微信平台大概就是西方应用程序的一个复制品，但是现在它已经分布到整个亚洲和美国，这个程序有许多强大的功能。西方并没有很多这样的群聊功能，不过很快移动流量就会大幅度的增长，就像大家看到腾讯所做到的那样。40%的移动数据流量都是来自微信，这是十分惊人的。腾讯在一个程序中很好的结合了视频，在线聊天，群聊，图像，表情等等。这是非常好的用户体验程序，所以也将很快在西方流行起来。就像是这几年很热的微博，我们认为相比较推特而言做得更加好，也综合了很多不同的媒介也更加的有趣。推特只是一直强调140个字节的简单博客，而微博却做到了丰富的内容到达了一个新的高度。最近这几年，中国在创新和技术提高以及革新方面做出了很好的成绩，他们将用户本地化又市场化，更加贴合用户的习惯，这就像是做商业模型一样。而许多西方企业是远远不足的。

LW：内容定制是营销中重要的一环，需要根据你的受众来划分内容。

AG：我认为西方科技公司是希望创造一种合适全世界范围内使用的方案—类似Facebook, Google, Microsoft都是这样。总的来说，对于西方是合适的，但是对于亚洲却不同，这里又完全不一样的文化语言和背景，他们更需要定制化的内容，从中国的例子中就可以看出来。

LW：Alvin我觉得我可以和你聊上一整晚，谢谢你的观点，希望你在接下来几年做得更好。再次感谢你。

AG：谢谢！ 

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More About Alvin Graylin:

The third interview of a 12 part series, Larry Weber, Chairman of Racepoint Group, interviews Alvin Graylin, CEO of mInfo, the leading Mobile Search Service in China providing natural language search services to users throughout China via SMS, WAP, IM and embedded client applet.

He is also the founder of Guangxi Inc, a new location-based social discovery platform aimed at helping users interact with people and places and around them and connect more deeply with existing friends in their lives.

Alvin is a seasoned technology entrepreneur and business leader with over 15 years of management experience, seven of which are in Greater China. Alvin co-founded mInfo in early 2005. He is intimately knowledgeable about the wireless search and mobile marketing space in China. Alvin has rich entrepreneurial experiences prior to mInfo, having also been the founder and CEO of two other technology start-ups in the US, one in personalized e-marketing and the other in online financial tools for consumers.