Highlights from Cerberus Marketing’s second marketing Think Tank

After two months of preparation, the 2024 Cerberus Marketing Second Marketing Think Tank “Unlocking the Golden Opportunity of the International Market” by Cerberus Marketing was successfully held at Shanghai Hongkou Shengbang International Building on June 30th. 10 guests with high reputation in the industry and 48 advertising and marketing industry practitioners have gathered together to actively offer suggestions for cooperation and common development in the industry.

The Cerberus Marketing team worked hard to create this event, bringing together many guests from prestigious companies, including Intel, AIUX, NewsBreak, and Indiegogo. Their diverse backgrounds inspired the collision of ideas and creative exchanges on the spot.

Unlock the golden opportunity of the international market

At the beginning of the Think Tank, Stuart Dunn, President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, delivered a warm welcome speech to warmly welcome the guests and review the highlights of last year’s Think Tank. He shared his profound insights on the topics of this meeting and placed high hopes on future cooperation and development.

Afterwards, Jackson Li, founder and CEO of Cerberus Marketing, delivered a congratulatory speech. First, he expressed his sincerest gratitude to all the guests for taking the time to attend this event. Then, he explained the significance of this event, which is to provide a platform for mutual learning and mutual reference for all parties as a way for everyone to communicate and inspire each other. At the same time, Jackson also briefly summarized the four major themes of this event.

After the host finished his speech, the event entered its climax – the roundtable discussion. This roundtable discussion involved four core topics, namely overseas marketing, AI marketing, Xiaohongshu marketing, and marketing for foreigners. Each core topic has several sub-topics, striving to grasp the industry context from multiple angles and gain insight into the market trend. The guests in the sessions are all industry leaders with rich and profound knowledge of their areas of expertise. They shared their unique insights on each topic and deepened the audience’s understanding of industry dynamics, strategy application, and innovative practices.

Regarding the topic of “Little Red Book Marketing”, Zoe Hu and Jackson Li shared their unique insights on the Little Red Book platform. As the brand marketing director of Jiejiele, Zoe used “Jiejiele” as a starting point to deeply analyze the key role of Little Red Book in data-driven and traffic growth. She believes that Little Red Book is not only a content platform, but also an incremental platform. Only when brands grasp the characteristics of Little Red Book can they achieve better marketing.

Specifically, first of all, the two speakers introduced the underlying logic of the cross-domain marketing of Xiaohongshu, and pointed out what means can be used to achieve cross-domain operations. After that, the two speakers sorted out the context of how to create hot articles on Xiaohongshu, which is the transformation from topic selection-capturing traffic hotspots-recommendation+search-pushing traffic mechanism from the two perspectives of “push” and “pull”. Among them, Zoe believes that in the production of hot articles on Xiaohongshu, attention should be paid to the diversification of note content. Brands should adhere to the concept of no boundaries and no limitations, and attach importance to the key role of KOC and users in promotion.

At the same time, the two speakers also introduced how to formulate appropriate Xiaohongshu marketing strategies for brands with different budgets during marketing. Zoe pointed out that compared with other platforms, Xiaohongshu is more fair, just, open, and can bring more positive feedback, so brands should deepen the user layer and use the promotion mechanism of Xiaohongshu from the user end to match brand marketing. Jackson used the example of Stanford Bagel to explain how to let KOL play their own advantages in marketing.

Then, entering the AI ​​marketing session, Brandon Zhou expanded on his professional perspective as a senior engineer to vividly explain the basic principles of AI agents by citing Andrew Ng’s speech and the case of Stanford Town. Brandon introduced agents into the marketing field, reviewed its development history, and pointed out that agents can be widely used in marketing user research and early program planning. Amy and Zhuo Wu followed Brandon’s thread and showed us the current application and promotion of AI agents in the marketing field through specific examples.

Amy Li, founder and CEO of Ai Experience, introduced to us how AI can empower current marketing based on its product “2049”. She used a more practical example, namely the scene marketing in the liquor industry, to show us how AI tools can contribute to marketing from user group discovery to scene marketing creative insights to trend research and finally to the implementation of innovative solutions. Specifically, AI tools can automatically capture the characteristics of user groups, focus on what is popular, consumption preferences, and generate corresponding marketing ideas. At the same time, it can gain insight into the trend direction of the current market and produce creative marketing solutions. In addition, Amy also pointed out that AI can be combined with the thinking board, workflow and trends in the field to further benefit all aspects of marketing.

Similarly, Zhuo Wu used the “World Earth Day” theme event jointly organized by Intel, Microsoft and JD Live as an example to show us a new marketing strategy – how AI can assist in live streaming of goods. This theme day event was set up at the National Museum of Zoology in Beijing, and the AI ​​model provided auxiliary explanations for the entire live broadcast. In the process of AI answering questions and solving doubts, users not only gained more knowledge, but also had a deeper understanding of the performance of the product, achieving a two-pronged effect. Therefore, the exposure and viewing volume of this live broadcast were very gratifying, and the sales of the product doubled, achieving a substantial increase. As a result, Zhuo Wu realized that AI technology can provide users with a more personalized and in-depth experience, allowing brands to stand out in the fierce market competition.

In the “Marketing for Foreigners” session, Rudy and Jacob told us how they lived in China as a foreigner from an international perspective and their unique attitude and characteristics. The two guests first shared their feelings about living and working in China. Interestingly, both guests mentioned that many foreigners ‘s integration with China is gradually deepening, and this increasingly close connection happens to help promote the marketing of Chinese brands among foreigners. Afterwards, the two guests expressed different views on shopping habits and the use of Chinese social platforms. The two guests have different uses of Chinese social media. Rudy prefers to obtain relevant information from WeChat and Dianping, while Jacob prefers to use Western software.

However, both of them agree that online platforms are more competitive in brand marketing than online platforms, and Taobao is the leader among them, thanks to its more complete shopping policies and chains. Finally, the two guests gave their own views on the market and marketing strategies of Chinese brands. They believe that when Chinese brands conduct brand marketing to foreign people, they should pay attention to the language and cultural differences between China and the West and do a good job of brand localization. At the same time, Chinese brands should adhere to the concept of always putting users at heart, conducting good user research, clarifying users’ social ecology, and understanding users’ consumption behavior, so as to better promote the brand.

In the “Overseas Marketing” section, Nancy Ding, Patrick Tam and Renee Luo first had an open discussion on the goals, channels and common marketing matrices of Chinese brands’ overseas marketing. Renee explained to us with her many years of experience working at Indiegogo that start-ups should adopt a “top-down” marketing strategy when marketing overseas, first find the brand’s positioning and target customer group, and then discuss specific methods.

Patrick agreed with this and believed that finding target users is the first issue that companies should consider when marketing. Only by identifying the most direct users can you know what kind of people you are competing with and make the brand distinctive. Nancy used a more direct case, which is the promotion of early childhood education robots, to explain to us that the brand’s positioning of target users is actually a test of the potential market.

Then, Patrick elaborated in more depth on the differences between China and the West encountered in overseas marketing. He pointed out that there are actually great differences in marketing methods at home and abroad. Domestic brands are mostly concentrated on specific platforms, such as Baidu and Taobao for marketing, while overseas brands’ marketing is more scattered, and they rely more on their own official website for promotion. Therefore, if Chinese brands want to do a good job in overseas marketing, they must pay attention to brand promotion. Brand building can enhance users’ understanding of products, thereby avoiding traps that may be encountered in marketing.

Renee provided new ideas for Chinese brands in terms of capital flow for overseas marketing. She believes that for emerging science and technology brands, if they want to conduct overseas marketing, they can consider crowdfunding, which is one of the important channels for brands to enter the market. Crowdfunding can not only bring certain funds to the brand, but also provide potential seed users. Nancy also recognizes the importance of funds for brand marketing. She pointed out that when conducting overseas marketing, brands need to integrate the current resources and grasp the underlying logic of the operation of each platform, so as to better realize the investment of funds and achieve “using small levers to move the big earth.”

Finally, Renee and Nancy expressed their views on the advantages that Chinese companies currently have when going overseas for marketing. Renee believes that the current leap forward in domestic Internet technology has greatly supported the development of the e-commerce industry, while for the overseas market, this part is still in a vacuum period, so we can apply the mature domestic industrial chain to marketing in overseas markets. Nancy also pointed out that when going overseas for marketing, Chinese companies can play to their own advantages, such as strong learning ability and young power, and explore the marketing strategies and methods that are most suitable for their own brands.

Entering the Q&A session, the participants raised questions that had been accumulating in their minds for a long time, ranging from how to balance the brand’s tone and the content of KOL/KOC when marketing on Xiaohongshu, to how to view the impact of the establishment of overseas warehouses for brands on overseas marketing. These questions are wide-ranging and profound, prompting the guests to show their professional swords and share unique insights and deep insights. The atmosphere on the scene was warm, and sparks of thought were flying, presenting a series of wonderful and unforgettable exchanges of wisdom.

The enthusiasm of the participants for the event was unprecedentedly high, so much so that during the tea break, the guests seized every minute to answer questions and solve problems. The event organizer, Cerberus Marketing, also prepared exquisite gifts for the guests to express gratitude and respect for the guests. The guests highly appreciated Cerberus Marketing’s thoughtful consideration and careful planning, and were full of expectations for future cooperation.

This Think Tank Forum has built a valuable platform for professionals in the field of advertising and marketing, enabling everyone to have in-depth exchanges and learn from each other. We firmly believe that this conference is not only a meeting point of knowledge and experience, but also a melting pot that inspires innovative thinking. Cerberus Marketing will continue to be committed to deepening the discussion of existing topics, constantly pushing the boundaries of knowledge, and ensuring that every participant can benefit from it. We look forward to working with you to continue exploring and growing on the road of marketing and to jointly welcome a more brilliant future.

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About Cerberus Marketing: Cerberus Marketing specializes in overseas marketing for foreign companies, with a proven track record of success. We’ve served 32 foreign clients from 25 industries, including giants like LG, Qualcomm, Nielsen, JLL, and Mercado Libre.