I’m Fred Raillard, Creative CEO, Co-founder and Creative Chief Officer with Farid Mokart of FRED & FARID, an independent creative boutique network based in New York, Shanghai and Paris. #FredinChina is an essential social media podcast to know and understand the world’s largest economy.
I fell in love with China, and live in Shanghai with my wife and three sons since September 2012. With my teams at the FRED & FARID Shanghai agency we monitor, analyze and decrypt this ultra-connected China with nearly 800 million netizens by sharing what we see, hear and read on Weibo, Zhihu, WeChat, Huaban, Youku. I prepare this column with Zhuomin Qin from FRED & FARID Shanghai.
Thanks to Zhuomin Qin, Feng Huang, Jalila Levesque, Jules Chaffiotte, Radouane Guissi, Yi Zhang, Ying Zhang, Aliou Maro, Tina Liu, Louis Caudevilla, Dushan Karageorgevitch, Jing Qian, Jonathan Roy, Maxime Aubanel and Antoine Robin for their participation to this chronic. Find all #FredinChina podcast on iTunes.
A recreational robot band dancing on live stream
The HotBrands this week are Huajiao and Turing Robot. Huajiao is a live streaming app, and Turing Robotic Industries is a company that developing robots for children. They did a mobile live stream for their followers using a robot, which is extremely rare! The robot interacted with the followers on the live stream, calling themselves the TL Boys (named after TF Boys, one of the most popular teen bands in China) and entertained their followers for 18 minutes. It was a huge success with 1 million people following live, and raised 450 thousand RMB from each like that corresponds to 1 RMB. This was highly amusing and fascinating since it was an interaction with 9 intelligent robots, giving us a glimpse of what will happen in the future.
Shandong murder case shines spotlight on debt collectors
The HotTopic this week is a homicide in Shandong, which made 980 million media impressions. A woman borrowed some money from a private individual, because she had already amassed a debt of 20 million RMB from a bank. She therefore borrowed 1.35 million RMB from someone with a huge interest rate, and had to pay back the sum of 1.84 million RMB plus her house that she had bought for 700 thousand RMB. Even though all of this amounted to a lot more than she had initially borrowed, it was not enough for the person who had lent her the money who claimed that the interest rates should have been higher.
He therefore sent 10 gangsters to her house to threaten her, where she was with her son. She was subjected to obscene gestures, and physical threats. The police arrived to start an investigation, but when they left the room the woman’s 22-year-old son got scared, grabbed a knife from the table and attacked 4 of the gangsters. The police then arrested him and the judge said he would be facing voluntary homicide charges. This was a huge shock everyone involved and divided the reactions in China. Many believe that the young boy is innocent and simply defended himself and his mother. Moreover, the fact that they had already paid back a colossal sum of money and that 10 gangsters came to their house was crazy. Others believe that the boy should be held accountable because it remains a homicide. A lot of people also questioned how to solve these private loan problems that are very frequent in China.
China beats South Korea in ‘football war’
The HotPost this week is about the Chinese national soccer team that made over 100 thousand media impressions on WeChat (the maximum amount). Lately there have been a lot of tensions between South Korea and China surrounding the anti-missile shield installed in Seoul to protect themselves against any potential attacks from North Korea. Relations between the two countries have been very low since China was against having a U.S built anti-missile shield so close to its borders.
A soccer match had been planned between China and South Korea on March 23, so the authorities were naturally worried about potential crowd trouble because of these tensions. 10 thousand policemen were on hand to stop any violence, and Marcelo Lippi, the chief coach of the Chinese national team said that he would defend China’s honor. Luckily China won the game 1-0! The Chinese love soccer, but since the team was not playing that well, most believed they would not win. So many people posted a #IfChinaWins hashtag with absurd declarations. For example, #IfChinaWins I will run naked in the streets, not buy anything on Taobao, eat feces on a live stream etc. All in all, there was a lot of humor on SNS and relief that China won!
Follow Fred on Twitter: @FredFarid, or FRED & FARID: @FredFaridGroup
FRED & FARID website: www.fredfarid.com
All #FredinChina podcasts on iTunes.