Chinese E-commerce, Mobile, SNS and Marketing, China Connect will be Back in Paris in 2012, March 22 and 23

In Paris, it is rare to find serious events on Chinese marketing, calling on real players such as brands and media, as opposed to consultants.  China Connect is one of those events.

What is China Connect ? A sort of open forum, where any marketing specialist interested in China may listen to presentations by the major players in marketing, and meet them in the networking areas. The event is rich, intense, lively and completely worth the cost. It is all the more important since the major players of emarketing – Facebook, Twitter, Google, Youtube – are not present in China for political or economic reasons, and since China has developped its own players for the  several hundred millions of Chinese connected through their PCs or mobile phones. These players have often grown autonomously from the western world, due to the specifics of Chinese ideograms, or for cultural reasons such as the predominance of mobile phones over PCs.

Have you heard of the war machines that are the weibos from Sina or Tencent ? The world’s largest B2C ecommerce site TaoBao ? The Baidu search engine ? The local equivalents of youtube : Youku and Tudou ? If not, run to China Connect, because China is preparing to invade the West, and what is happening in China today will happen tomorrow in Europe. To prepare for this, you can come and meet the head managers of these players and build your network.

In parrallel, numerous brands from the fields of luxury, design and consumer goods will be presenting Chinese business cases, offering lessons that are often valid across industries. Finally, a few experts in Chinese marketing will focus on the reality of numbers, on the on-going battles between the various Chinese players, on the successes and failures …

Among participants this year (available on the following site http://www.chinaconnect.fr):

-Youku, the Chinese Youtube, represented by its General Manager for East China (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzen and the whole east coast) Lee Li.

-Elleshop.com.cn, the e-commerce arm of Elle magazine, leader in Chinese women’s fashion for the past 25 years.

- case studies with the Adidas brand, presented by  Hélène Saurais, in charge of the brand’s ecommerce activity

-Fei Wang Eyewear, profiled glasses for the specific Chinese physionomy, represented by its founder Fei Wang

-Philips’ Chinese design center, represented by its star designer Tammo de Ligny

-the famous Shanghai blogger Sam Fleming, who will analyse the key trends in the Chinese internet.

Many others are expected to join the list as they confirm their participation.

On my personal wishlist : A specialist on weibo microblogs, search engine Baidu, ecommerce site TaoBao, and a few others.  I have no doubt that China Connect organizer Laure de Carayon will know how to attract them, because coming to Europe is good for these players’ relationship with the large brands that finance them, and because the European audience is largely worth the effort.

It is up to us to sign up for China Connect and show these great players of the world’s main luxury market that we want to listen to them, and to meet them in person in Paris and, in the words of Loreal, that “we are worth it”.