Xiaolu Chen – EYES ON MEDIA

Weibo’s Algorithm “Likes” Women

Browsing the posts from the accounts I follow on social media is one of my favorite things to do in my fragmented time, and Weibo, whose design and function is in equivalent with Twitter, is one of the social media platforms that I visit more often. Most of the accounts I followed are friends, vloggers, arts bloggers and celebrities. In the meantime, I can find more posts under the recommendation section due to the recommended algorithms of Weibo, which explore more interesting content of my interest and enrich the user experience.

Started from few years ago, there are advertisings appear among those post and most of the content of these are related to plastic surgery, wedding customization, and fashion retailer E-commerce. At first, I though these were randomly push to me, thus I click “not interested”. However, similar advertising is still included on my Weibo till now. Looking at the advertisings show on my male friend’s Weibo, I found out that not only the contents are totally different which are about cars and games, but also the frequency for the advertising is lower than that of mine – there are 1 piece of advertising among 6 to 7 posts for him whereas there are 2-3 ad post for me.

The Advertising on My Male Friend’s Weibo.

Through all these automatically appear content, it reflects the identities the algorithm placed on the female Weibo users except for their interest. It reveals that the algorithm is encoded with the Chinese traditional ideologies about women and the gender bias carried by its designers. Reflecting by the advertising for female users, we also can see the value system it carried believes that women needs to know how to dress and to be pretty to please men and considers marriage as a life guarantee. At the same time, it is not difficult to see the commercial interest of Weibo as an enterprise whose goal is to maximize its profit from the difference between the advertising frequency for male and female users. It considers that it is easier to influence women’s purchase intention so it tends to impact them with conveying consumerism.

There is another case on Weibo shows the gender bias of Weibo’s algorithm. As Chauncey reported in 2018, a Chinese tycoon started a lucky draw run by Weibo raffle algorithm to give out 10,000 RMB each to 133 people to celebrity the championship of his E-sport team. However, the result turned out that there is only one male winner among all 133 winners. It is doubts that Weibo tries to attracts more female users who tends to spend more money which it can generate larger profit from. It is not acceptable for users to receive contents with gender bias lens since Weibo is a social media platform has millions of active users. It is not doubt that what people read impacts on their value systems and behavior unconsciously.

With the algorithm carried gender bias, Weibo not only becomes annoying because of the worse user experience, but also it could aggravate the problems caused by gender inequality. Benjamin stated that:

“Difference has a commercial value: shift toward multiculturalism marked by ‘a move away from one-size-fits-all mass marketing toward ethnically tailored niches that capitalize on calls for diversity”.

Since advertising seems to be unavoidable on social media platform, it is more reasonable to generate them to match the interest and needs for the users which lowers the possibility of users’ ad-avoidance.

The Business Model Behinds the Free Distribution of Stylist Magazine

Every Wednesday, commuters in the UK can always find this fashion and beauty magazine Stylist for free on their journey to work. Published by Shortlist Media, Stylist is a free weekly magazine targeting at 20 to 40 years old female. It aims at providing the latest and insightful contents related to fashion, beauty, culture, career and entertainment. Despite from the printed magazine, it is also available on the its website as well as the app through subscription.

Browsing through the Stylist website, we can see that besides the main sections under the headline, there are various categories of content top down from the menu. With the abundant posts under each category, it can keep readers engaged as much as possible with the website.

“Stylist differs from its competitors because it takes a more intelligent approach, covers a broader range of culture and tackles issues women face in their professional lives.”

Says Lisa Smosarski, the editor-in-chief of Stylist magazine.

Except for the fashion and beauty section which are similar with other magazines targets at female, there are several distinctive sections are especially in correspondence with what Lisa stressed. Career which provides guidance for women in current workforce. Under Her Eye which includes commentary of film and industry and interviews through female lens, and People which mainly introduces excellent female figures. It emphasizes the value and power of women in modern society, which is also essential to meet the interest and preference of its target customers. In this way, Stylist make a good balance between its uniqueness and familiarity of female-oriented content which can satisfy the diverse taste of its readers to the greatest extent.

Among these posts, it is not difficult to find out that there is large amount of branded content as other magazines. For example, under the recommended reading column Our Picks, there are five articles classified into different categories and all of them are actually advertising of Netflix, products of homeware, shoes and cosmetics respectively. It is in consonance with the tone and style of Stylist to merge the product sales into the trendy topics, and obviously the magazine could provide plenty space of branded content.

There is no ground for blame since Stylist belongs to the enterprise whose ultimate goal is maximizing profit and advertising is where the revenue comes from. Supported by the solid advertising model, it tries to attract as much as readers with the high-quality content which could compared to other paid-for magazine, along with the free distribution. With the efficient printing and distribution, each week Stylist can reach around 400,000 readers. This makes it influential and gain more profits from advertisers and brands. Nowadays, with the strong readers base, Stylist operates in a subscription model. On one hand, readers can reach more abundant content through paying for subscription online or on its app, which also increase the revenue. On the other hand, there are still lots of free content available online to attract new readers. Stylist tries to minimize its churn by remaining the original customers with premium content as well as raise the number of new fans by free content.

On this circumstance, the readers’ interests and the brands determine the media content Stylist can produce. However, the preferences of customers are not always in line with the brands. Stylist heavily relies on the advertising to support all the production and operation costs, so it is reasonable to doubt that if Stylist could continuously keep its readability and reliability without fully compromising to the capital controls. It brings the challenge for Stylist to figure out how to find the balance between the commercial interest of brands and the benefit for its readers.

Your Future Waste Can Become Someone Else’s Plate – Brand Film for OLIO

In the midst of a fast paced, busy life, people hardly stop to think about how their seemingly usual habits negatively impact the environment. Food waste, mass and overproduction are prevalent issues that need to be taken seriously—yet it is such topics that remain voiceless in contemporary society.

OLIO is a food sharing app that allows households, local businesses, and individuals to exchange and share food or other items for free in attempts to reduce waste and encourage a sustainable lifestyle. OLIO seeks to be inclusive, resourceful, convenient, and environmentally conscious.

Our branded content film demonstrates how OLIO is an easy, helpful, and useful tool that should and can easily be incorporated into the lives of everyone. The film aims to generate a sense of community made possible through sharing, and carries with it heartwarming tones that sheds positive light on a negative subject; it is encouraging and relatable, it is intimate and uplifting.

The fast paced film follows the path of three distinct characters who, on the regular course of their day, have an implicit encounter with an event that functions as a catalyst; setting in motion their relationship to OLIO. These implicit encounters include, reading articles on environmental issues and food waste, using a bicycle or public transport, donating to a charity shop, noticing the overproduction of food at a mass supermarket, and walking by a row of overflowing garbage bins. These visual indicators function as symbols whose significance is only revealed to viewers at the end of the film.

It is only after the characters collect their food through the OLIO app that the audience is made aware of their relationship to each other. The seemingly separate stories merge into one as the characters have a candle-lit dinner together. After dinner, their leftovers are collected and stored in reusable containers to be shared to another person; suggesting that OLIO creates an eco-friendly circle of like-minded people who are collectively making a difference in the world. The tagline “your food waste can become someone else’s plate” closes the video, encapsulating the essence of OLIO, awarding meaning to the visual indicators and warming the hearts of viewers.’

Coca-Cola: Por Todos

Commercials of Coca-Cola during Covid-19 Pandemic

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Coca-Cola released a commercial Por Todos to show its respect to everyone in the fight with Covid-19. In the advertising, each group of people were represented by parts of the products from Coca-Cola. For instant, the bottle of coke in various size means a family while the coke in original glass bottle refers to the elderly. The representations are quite implicit but explained along with the voice over for each group, it become very explicit that the audience can easily understand the message the brand trying to convey.

On one hand, these representations along with the wordings in the beginning and the end reflects that Coca-Cola cares about the whole society; on the other hand, it is a good way to present various products of Coca-Cola. In fact, this commercial could be considered as a reproduced version of its previous advertising For Everyone since they are in the same structure. Moreover, there are different versions For Everyone in different languages targeting at countries all over the world. Through coming up with videos in the same structure, to some extent, Coca-Cola make it standardized to promote its products as well as brand culture in the market. In this case, although this new commercial may try to cheer people up in this dark time, the standardization makes its more obviously a product promotion which is alike with the previous ones. Similar with For Everyone, there are also various versions of Por Todos in different languages including English, Spanish, Montenegrin and so on, which proves that Coca-Cola has expanded its business worldwide and made everyone become its target customer.

As one of the ruling class who owns the relations and the means of coke production, Coca-Cola also tries to controls the means of metal production by convey the value emphasized in the neoliberal economic system. According to the Base & Superstructure model raised by Marx and Engels, the strong economic base and advanced technologies of Coca-Cola allow it to produces all kinds of products to meet the market demand as much as possible, which determines its brand culture has to consider diversity and large number of mass public. In this commercial, it highlights the importance and the responsibility of every individuals in the society by appreciating their every little contribution to the society during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the meantime, the display of all its diverse products which seems can satisfy the needs of drinks for every group of people indicates Coca-Cola values consumerism. These are the message Coca-Cola tries to deliver through its media content which is consist of its superstructure. Thus, its economic base is reinforced and legitimated since Coca-Cola suggests the significance of individual and diversity to the whole society which will lead the brand to expand their product line and maintain or even enlarge its customer group.

Overall, Coca-Cola aims to make an emotional connection with all its target group through expressing that “we will get through it together” in this commercial related to Covid-19 pandemic. It tries to building the brand image to a corporate with social responsibility but at the same it presents its ambitious business vision again.

GoPro: Million Dollar Challenge

GoPro Annual Product Highlight Video from Million Dollar Challenge in 2018

GoPro aims at producing action camera which allows people, especially extreme sport enthusiast to capture the wonderful moments of their lives. It encourages its users to inspire others by sharing. In 2018, GoPro launched the first annual user generated content campaign called Million Dollar Challenge (MDC). It invited the GoPro users to submit a raw video clip of the rad moment in life which 100% captured by HERO7 BLACK at then. The selected clips will be made into an annual cut meanwhile the creators of these clips will share the $1 million dollar reward and their work will get exposure on the GoPro official account who have 17.6 million followers on Instagram and 10 million subscribers on Youtube.

This campaign has been launched for 3 years and each years the rule required the creators to film with the latest version GoPro camera. Until this year, the brand has received around 96,200 clips from all over the world there are 12.9k posts under the hashtag #GoProMillionDolloarChallenge.

As what Nike Woodman, GoPro founder and CEO, claimed:

“Previously, our product highlight videos were shot by our in-house media team—expert creators with the know-how to get the perfect shot. Now that HERO7 Black makes it easy for anyone to capture professional-looking shots during their favorite activities, we decided to challenge our customers to shoot this year’s highlight video and pay them for it. We’re glad we did—they absolutely nailed it.”

From this contest, GoPro receive bunch of clips which build up its annual product highlight videos that could be used for brand promotion permanently. Compared to the origin way to tailor made the video by professional team, this challenge is a more cost-effective means of getting diverse content in correspondence with the brand image. At the same time, the annual product video is connecting the creators together as the work they all contribute to. It enhanced the bonding within the GoPro community and further impacts on the stronger customer loyalty and brand engagement. Moreover, it may also lead to the increasing sales of GoPro action camera not only because it is one of the essential rules for taking part in the challenge, but also with the product link in the stories collection of MDC on its Instagram which has 690K views.

Through participated in MDC, all the creators get the chance to share the 1 million dollars reward as well as to get exposure in the brand’s high traffic social media account. As White declared that the rising of digital economy encourages collaboration and sharing, and it lower the barriers to start a new business. Under the digital economy circumstance, there are abundant business opportunities in the internet. Therefore, the creators might consider MDC as a stepping stone to explore more possibility of their lives.

In fact, MDC is only one of the user generated content program from GoPro which can inspire other GoPro customers to explore their unique user experience of GoPro products. In order to involve more consumer of GoPro in the brand engagement, it launched various campaign targeting at users owns different models of product such as Anything Awesome Challenge and Photo of Everyday Challenge which both allows all GoPro users to attend and have their own rewards. These programs provide the opportunities for its participants to with their interest, but after all, GoPro regards its customers as the media to promote the brand similarly and it will always be the biggest winner among all these challenges.

What is behind the Lifestyle Section on News Media Platform?

Under the lifestyle section of China Daily Website, one of the most famous English-language news media in China, there is a post, Chinese Brands: Seal your look with lipsticks, reported that Chinese traditional culture nowadays has great impacts on domestic cosmetics products especially on lipsticks, from the package design to the ingredients used. At the end of the news, it mentioned a domestic cosmetic brand Florasis which makes Chinese culture and flower ingredients its most outstanding features, along with some compliments from a British makeup artist.

The content reflects a certain phenomenon that cosmetics with oriental characteristics is becoming popular and promote the brand Florasis at the same time. It is written by the editor from China Daily, thus the audience may not notice that it is branded content at the first glimpse of the post. The content is quite short and it appears in the content recommendation column Editors’ Picks. Even though the readers might find out that it is a native advertising in the end, it turned out that the post it is not repugnant by the readers since nearly all the comments are positive.

It seems more easier for the audience to accept the brand promotion in this integration without separation way which merging the branded content into this kind of trends report. Moreover, in this case it is more like promoting Chinses culture rather than endorsing a certain brand in Chinese English-language mainstream media who targets the readers all around the world. Likewise, the readers noticed the brand Florasis for sure while what attracted them more is the way to spread the Chinese culture with cosmetics industry.

However, the picture inserted are all sourced from T-mall which is one of the biggest E-commerce websites in China instead of from the brand official websites. To some extent, it might be an implicit guidance which the advertiser intentionally used to lead the readers to search the products or brand on the online shopping website and might further influence their purchase intention.

Pictures of brand products inserted in the post which sourced from T-mall

Nowadays consumer is facing abundant of advertising everywhere which can easily trigger their ad fatigue and avoidance. Besides, the ability to advertising identification for consumer these days keep rising which bring the challenge for the marketers to come up with advertising content and strategy more cautiously.

In fact, there are another post similar with these kind of fashion trends report whose headline starts with “Chinese brands” on China Daily website, but there is no specific introduction the certain brands like the Florasis one. It indicated China Daily as a news media publisher tries to blur the boundary between branded content and editorial. Also, based on advertising regulation of China Daily, branded content can only appear in lifestyle and travel sections. On one hand, it aims to remaining solid, serious and objective as a news media platform by separating editorial and advertising; on the other hand, the branded content can not only enrich the publisher content experience but also be a significant increase the revenue. Thus, its advertorials are controlled by its own editors who need to make a really good balance between the cultures and commercial of branded content.

As a news media, China Daily still needs to be cautious with the selection of topics as well as brands for its advertorials. At least from the post above, the effect is not bad for the media site since most of the comments are compliments.