Omni-channel marketing provides a seamless experience, regardless of channel or device. This allows customers to engage with a company in a physical store, a website, mobile app or social media.
With more than 600 million internet users and more than $US899 billion in online spending, China is the world’s biggest online shopping market and one of the most digitised countries. As the e-commerce market continues its meteoric rise, it’s now more important than ever for businesses to implement omni-channel marketing strategies that deliver a consistent experience across online and offline platforms.
Whether it’s insurance or luxury brands, the omni-channel marketing experience is essential for businesses looking to thrive in China.
A report by EY found that in 2010 only 23 per cent of China’s urban population shopped online. Last year, China’s consumers accounted for 42.8 per cent of the world’s e-commerce sales and this is projected to rise to nearly 60 per cent in 2020 – almost triple what it was a decade prior.
The increase in smartphones in China has contributed to this growth in e-commerce. The same EY report found that in 2014, there were more than 780 million active smartphone users across the nation, and around 25 per cent of customers made purchases through their mobile phone on a weekly basis. Even in rural areas, which have less than 20 per cent internet penetration, more than 60 per cent of consumers are e-commerce users.
Given the prominence of e-commerce in China, it’s essential to have a strategy in place that creates a seamless experience across third-party websites, your own website and any bricks-and-mortar stores you may have.
If you want to implement an omni-channel marketing strategy for your business in China, here are a few tips to help it thrive.
China’s top 10 favourite websites are all e-commerce sites – including TMall, JD, 51Buy and Amazon China. In order to reach the maximum number of consumers, it’s important to be on third-party websites. To protect your own brand identity and image, it’s vital to collaborate with third-party providers to make sure your brand’s merchandising, pricing and product descriptions are consistent with your other sales channels.
As customers access your business through multiple touchpoints, it’s essential that their experience is the same no matter where they go. Whether a customer orders from TMall, receives their product from a third-party delivery company or complains over the phone, it’s imperative they receive the same level of service to avoid conflicting experiences with your brand. To do this, identify the key touchpoints with customers in your business, and focus on creating processes and controls to ensure these experiences are up to your business’s standard. It doesn’t hurt to try a mystery shopper either, to help you identify any holes.
Consumers behave differently on third-party websites than they do in stores, over the phone and at an online store. In order to ensure you’re getting the most out of your different sales channels, dive into your data to see which channels are performing best and where further investigation or improvement needs to be made. Key insights to look for include abandoned shopping carts on your own website versus on third-party websites, which products are popular on different channels, satisfaction rates and exchanges or returns on third-party sites versus your own.
Loren is an experienced marketing professional who translates data and insights using Isentia solutions into trends and research, bringing clients closer to the benefits of audience intelligence. Loren thrives on introducing the groundbreaking ways in which data and insights can help a brand or organisation, enabling them to exceed their strategic objectives and goals.
Another year draws to a close and 2018 fast approaches, but it's business as usual at Isentia offices across the globe. Mediaportal is now available in Korea and Taiwan, and Asia Pacific continues to be a highlight for Isentia’s Media and Intelligence business.
David: From my point of view, if any company wants to launch in a new country, the key is a flagship brand, or product. What we would like to see is Isentia moving from more than just a company name but to a strong and recognisable brand. The exciting aspect about our future in Asia now is that we have a product that can really help us to build our presence in the market. The launch of Mediaportal in Korea and Taiwan really marks the beginning of a new chapter in the launch of Isentia in Asia.
Mediaportal is a very powerful tool that provides a lot of clarity to our clients on what our capabilities are. Anybody can say ‘we monitor media’ but with Mediaportal, what we can do means so much more and it’s going to make it easier for us to continue to build the brand in the region.
Especially with the capabilities Mediaportal brings:
• Metadata applied to local sources
• Multilingual content when it’s available
• A user interface in English, Korean and Traditional or simplified Chinese
Having this portal in very unique countries like Korea and Taiwan, where the media landscapes are not in line with any other international market, gives us the insight and confidence to expand our services further and faster. As a business we haven’t actually changed anything that we can do at the core, but it’s much easier for the team to tell the story of what we can help clients achieve.
David: The reception in Korea has been incredibly positive. The fact is, the decision making processes in companies in these markets are typically longer than most countries, so there’s still a lot of opportunity there for us to sign on more clients than we already have. I’m confident it’s going to be a real breakthrough for us.
Taiwan is just as promising! We’ve recently launched and already signed our first round of clients. They’re coming over from competitors after seeing a demo of a prototype. So you can see that there was already a buzz building there. Of course, the client services team are really excited about Mediaportal, too.
Sean: The other key point to add to this is that this is the first time we’re taking a single platform approach to Asia. We’re simplifying what we do by retiring a series of smaller platforms and outputs & providing a superior, whole-of-company approach. In doing this we will give our clients the best media intelligence service and make it more seamless to our clients to go get regional or global servicing.
The important thing to emphasise again is that we’re delivering a Mediaportal experience which has been adapted to the client needs of each market. Mediaportal will have a multilingual UI and be able to receive content and data from any Asian language.
Sean: My time in Hong Kong and China will focus on getting both these markets ready for Mediaportal. There’s a big change management process that David and I need to work through in order to enable our teams and ensure a successful release of Mediaportal.
Launching in Korea and Taiwan was exciting because both were new markets, and there was no legacy to contend with. This isn’t the case when we go live in Hong Kong and China. We’ll introduce a new platform, and a key challenge will be enabling our people and clients so that Mediaportal is easy for them and improves the service. We already deliver the market leading media intelligence service in Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. We now want this to be the reality in Hong Kong and China.
So we are coming together to build the internal culture and knowledge. What David brings is the skills, expertise and leadership in doing business in Asia, while I bring my experience in Media and Intelligence – we meet in the middle and will work towards a shared goal of releasing Mediaportal in Hong Kong and China and all other markets. Isn’t that the plan David?
David: [laughter] We’re really happy with the way we have structured this because what we have is someone who really understands Mediaportal through his experience and leadership in Media and Intelligence. The support in implementation, positioning and communicating the value of Mediaportal is fantastic and will really help our teams to expand their knowledge.
David: Well as you you’ve already pointed out, the landscape has been rapidly changing and becoming more digitized. I think the difference in Asia is that the capturing of data is actually easier than before because there is less print (print media requires more complexity to capture and costly) and maybe less in broadcast. A notable change in the media landscape is that there is more online news and social –with the digital growth, everything is moving on to the cloud. If you’re not using a platform with the power of the cloud, how will you contain all the data?
Another key point, as well as fast paced growth, is the demographics across the Asian population. For the most part, it is a younger subset. For example the median age of the Vietnamese population was 30.4 years in 2015. This has a big impact on the adoption curve to digital and how media is consumed now and into the future.
Sean: We know Mediaportal is a great product and that our clients in other markets use it successfully every day to help manage the media and stay informed. Getting the change process right will be critical. We need to make sure our people become experts at using Mediaportal and understand how to show case to our clients so that they can see the benefits it will bring to them as professional communicators.
Secondly the media market is very different in Asia, not just as a region, even as we look country to country. As David has pointed out it is more digitally driven – so online news and social media will be key. Isentia has always had depth of content and data and in Asia this will be no different. In addressing this, we have got to be smarter – the volumes of data in Asia are infinitely bigger. Managing volume and noise for our clients is that we do, by getting the relevant sources to our clients at the right time.
Sean: We have the greatest reach and can provide our clients with the relevant content and data that they need to stay informed. We do this through a single platform (Mediaprotal) and clients can access this through the web, mobile apps or any device. Importantly Isentia monitors any media type - whether it is print, broadcast, radio or online news - we cover it all. Our clients will have the confidence that they are fully informed. This is unique, as what I see of most other players in the market is they only cover one or two media types.
Another key difference is what Isentia does with all that content and data, through our relevance engines. We make sure that we get the right information to our clients at the right time. We shield them from the noise!
Lastly, it is the strength of our people, we are local and operate in every country. Our teams will understand the media landscape and clients in each country individually.
Sean: We talk all the time! We have regular meetings and when needed I spend time in Asia. We stay connected and touch base on all the important points and have very open and robust conversations about what we need to do.
Again, we both bring different strengths to this partnership. David has the Asian knowledge, like people and sales, whereas I bring a range of experience across media intelligence, and that’s how we build a better business.
David: I think we have only one goal and is to make sure that we deliver the best client experience – that is how we really grow Isentia. We understand the client needs locally and I think Sean and his team contribute different industry knowledge and product insights so that our teams can deliver.
David: We’re in the business to help clients solve problems. We need our people to understand the client problem and the approaches we can take to help them solve it. But when it comes to implementation, we need technology to help with the complex media landscape world. I doubt any company successfully performs without technology and people going hand in hand.
Sean: I think it’s getting the best out of both. Our service is powered by technology, especially when you talk about the scale and volumes we now encounter. Our people help guide our clients through that busy 24/7 media landscape, and add value to what technology cannot already do.
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To target the world’s most populated market and to be better engage with over 200 million millennials in China, more and more multinational brands are collaborating with young Chinese celebrities. Especially those with high commercial value and significant social media influence. For example; Michael Kors partnered with Yang Mi, while Bally is working with Tang Yan, and Lancôme choose Zhou Dongyu as a brand ambassador.
Isentia’s recent social media analysis report “The hottest young Chinese celebrities that luxury brands should be following” reveals some of China’s young rising stars that may be next on the brand collaboration watch list, given their commercial value, reputation and highly visible lifestyle.
Download the full report now or read on for a sneak peek!
Leah Dou, born in 1997, is the youngest brand spokesperson for SK-II. Known for her rebellious, edgy but also cool attitude, including a distinctive chin tattoo, Leah is somewhat of a departure from the Japanese skincare brands traditional brand representatives.
As the daughter of China’s famous musician Faye Wong and Dou Wei, Leah is a unique Chinese celebrity and according to Isentia’s analysis, after a month from the launch of the “Your statement, your bottle” SK-II campaign, it contributed to 21% of SK-II’s social buzz.
In the past two years, SK-II has increased its marketing efforts in China by leveraging e-commerce and social media tactics crafted for the local market. SK-II’s Changing Destiney campaign has successfully aroused resonance among the Chinese consumers, and sales roared 50% in 2016 from April to December.
Tinna Nien , SK-II’s senior PR manager said in a media interview that to quickly adapt to the China market demand and tap into the millennial consumers, SK-II works with Leah to create diverse brand images, as she is not just represents young consumers but also symbolizes independent values.
However, the collaboration didn’t work for everyone. According to Isentia’s social media analysis, netizens expressed an ambivalent view on choosing Leah Dou as a brand ambassador as they felt she wasn’t a ‘right match’ with the brand. Sentiment then hit bottom and also triggered discussion around the push to be ‘younger’ and label those over 25, unmarried to be ‘leftover women’. Large amounts of Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) however continued to blast positive articles and posts towards the SK-II x Leah Dou collaboration and KOLs followers expressed supportive opinions. The sentiment peaked and lasted around 10 days. Over 114 KOLs leveraged for promoting #‘生而由我，从心所欲BE THE PERSON YOU DECIDE TO BE #, SK-II seamlessly leveraged the KOLs to promote Tmall, Duty free and offline promotions.
The raising social media e-commerce and fan economy creates a new direct-to-consumer model that enable brands efficiently convert the leads. In Chinese, people call the celebrities who are good at promoting and selling products via social media to their fans ‘Dai Huo Huang Di or Huang Hou’ (King or Queen of product sales). According to Isentia social media analysis, the brand or event co-mentions ratio of King or Queen of product sales could up to 20% to 40%.
Using our powerful media listening tool, along with bespoke framework and extensive keyword iteration list, Isentia’s award winning media analysis team identified the latest popular influencers based on real data and their ability to impact sales through brands collaborations.
Celebrities born after the 1990s have become popular on Weibo since they garnered high buzz volumes thanks to TV dramas and shows. “孟子坤 Meng Zikun”, “周震南Zhou zhennan”, “马伯骞 Ma bosai” and “赵天宇Zhao tianyu”, were all known thanks to the TV show “The coming one” (明日之子.
To view the full celebrity rank and download the full report, please visit:
As one of the most influential young celebrities in China, Kris Wu is the first non-British brand ambassador for Burberry.
AI has become a powerful stakeholder in its own right — from being just another ‘technological advancement’ to an active contributor to modern-day communications, that’s massively changed the media landscape today.
Isentia hosted an essential conversation with Lisa Main (Director, Main Bureau), Dr Nici Sweaney (Founder and Director, AI Her Way), Prashant Saxena (Isentia’s VP of Revenue and Insights, SEA), and Ngaire Crawford (Isentia’s Director of Insights, ANZ). Together, they explored how AI reshapes the world of communications and corporate affairs all the while figuring out how to manage and strategically engage with it.
In this session, we covered:
Following the webinar, our panellists took the time to answer the most insightful questions from our attendees that we couldn't get to during the live session. Here are their expert perspectives.
As the Founder and Director of AI Her Way, Dr Nici Sweaney advocates for a strategic approach to AI that prioritises human intent over technical capability. The questions directed to her focused on the ethical foundations of AI, how organisations should structure their internal AI strategy, and practical ways to start using agents today.
Ethical AI, to me, is about two things working together: avoiding harm and actively doing good. It’s not just “don’t break anything” — but genuinely asking, does this create value for the business, for the people using it, and for the broader world? Transparency, equity, and accountability are the pillars. Transparency means being honest with your audience and colleagues about when AI is involved. Equity means asking who this helps and who it leaves behind, as AI scales existing biases. Finally, accountability means humans stay in the loop. AI should inform decisions, not make them. When the "why" is clear — like saving a team time to focus on strategy — you are using AI with integrity.
My answer is probably not what IT wants to hear. AI is part of your infrastructure, so IT must be involved for security and guardrails. However, the strategy behind adoption is fundamentally a human problem, not a technical one. I advocate for a cross-functional "coalition" that brings IT, HR, communications, and strategy to the same table. If you create a dedicated AI leadership role, that person should sit closer to human-centric functions like HR and communications. The hardest part of adoption isn’t the technology; it’s the people, the culture, and the narrative you build around it internally.
First, acknowledge that the fear is real; it is a biological response to an unprecedented rate of change. Trust is built through honesty. Pretending AI won’t displace roles destroys trust, so be honest about how the landscape is shifting. What actually moves people is showing, not telling. Show them how AI can solve their specific "pain points" — the tedious, joyless tasks that don't add value. When people see AI as an "empowered choice" that uplifts their work rather than replacing their judgment and strategic thinking, buy-in follows. Build confidence with small wins first.
Most professionals don’t need complex autonomous agents yet; they need custom bots and automated workflows. The magic is in understanding your process first. Some practical starting points include:
Answer: Your instinct is right. If your team uses free consumer tools, your data may be used to train future models. You should move to enterprise-grade tools like Claude for Teams, Microsoft Copilot, or ChatGPT Enterprise, which offer contractual data protections. You should also build an AI Usage Policy that defines which data is public, internal, or restricted, and map AI rules to those classes. In Australia, we recommend aligning with the EU AI Act — the most comprehensive framework available — to future-proof your organisation.
Prashant Saxena, Isentia’s VP of Revenue and Insights for SEA, approaches AI through the lens of psychological bonding and media structural shifts. His insights address the changing role of media and the technical ways we must now communicate to satisfy AI as a new audience.
Media's value is shifting from being the "trusted narrator" for humans to being the "training signal" for AI. When AI models generate answers, they weight authoritative media sources much more heavily than random web content. Even as human trust erodes, media’s structural influence on AI-generated information is growing. For communicators, "earned media" now serves two audiences simultaneously: the humans who read it and the machines that learn from it. Publications with strong editorial standards become more valuable because AI systems use domain authority and editorial signals as quality proxies.
AI models don't "rank" sources like Google does. They weight information based on source authority, recency, consistency, and structured data quality. If five credible outlets report the same fact, that fact becomes a "high-confidence training signal." This means volume across credible sources matters more than a single "big hit." For your strategy, consistency of messaging across all placements is vital because AI looks for corroboration. Factual, entity-rich statements will be picked up more reliably than narrative-heavy feature writing.
This is the core of my PhD research. It is what I call "synthetic authenticity." AI systems deploy cues like warmth and memory that we evolved to interpret as human. These trigger "parasocial bonding" — the same mechanism that makes you trust a friend’s recommendation. The danger is that cognitive awareness (knowing it’s AI) doesn't override the emotional feeling. We need a new kind of literacy that teaches people to recognise when their "trust response" is being activated by design rather than by a genuine relationship.
Yes. This is a very practical move. AI models extract information more reliably from structured formats. A Q&A format gives the AI clear question-answer pairs that map to how people query systems. You should also focus on "AI-readable claims" — entity-rich, factual statements. Instead of saying "We are committed to sustainability," say "Our Singapore operations reduced carbon emissions by 34% between 2023 and 2025." The second version is a verifiable fact an AI can actually use and cite.
This is the new frontier. Traditional monitoring tracks what humans publish; AI sentiment monitoring tracks what AI systems say about your brand when asked. Since there is no single "AI sentiment" (ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude all give different answers based on their training), you need to monitor across platforms. We are developing capabilities to systematically query these platforms to see how their narratives change over time and identify which source materials are driving those answers.
Every model reflects the values, training data choices, and alignment decisions of its creators. ChatGPT (OpenAI) tends towards cautious, balanced responses with strong content guardrails. Conversely, Grok (xAI) was explicitly designed to be less filtered, sometimes surfacing perspectives that other models suppress. Claude (Anthropic) prioritises honesty and nuance. For communicators, this means your brand's narrative varies by platform; you must monitor across multiple models because the same question about your brand will receive materially different answers depending on which tool is used.
Major publishers like the New York Times and Reuters have blocked AI crawlers, creating a gap in training data. When authoritative journalism is unavailable, AI models may fill that gap with lower-quality content or brand-owned content. For communicators, this means your "owned content" — such as your website, blog, and structured data — carries proportionally more weight in AI-generated answers. Your media targeting strategy now needs to account for which outlets are AI-accessible, as they will be disproportionately influential in shaping your narrative.
Ngaire Crawford, Isentia’s Director of Insights for ANZ, emphasises the role of the analyst. Her approach is characterised by a "rhythm of interrogation," arguing that the most effective way to use AI is through constant questioning and a focus on high-authority inputs.
I was initially very sceptical, but it is now part of my every day. I use models like Claude and Gemini to workshop conference outlines, plan education programmes, update code, and structure strategic thinking. My best practice advice is to develop a "rhythm of interrogation." Don't just accept the first answer; ask for evidence and challenge the output. While AI saves time on technical tasks like coding, for strategic work it simply shifts the "mental load." You spend the same amount of time, but the depth and quality are significantly improved because you aren't starting from a blank page.
It's important to know that models are optimised to give the most useful answer, not necessarily the most accurate one. They are pattern-completing, not fact-checking. Because model responses are not fixed and change based on the conversation, I suggest focusing on the "controllable inputs" that feed them. This includes your own website, company material, Wikipedia data, and review sites (including employee reviews). Ensuring these bases are telling the intended story is the absolute best starting point for managing AI "sentiment."
There is no "PageRank" to reverse-engineer here. Models are shaped by what was prominent and widely cited in their training data. Practically, this means a shift from volume to authority. A hundred pieces of low-quality coverage do less work than ten pieces in genuinely credible outlets (major mastheads, industry publications, or your own well-structured site). The question for the modern communicator isn't "did we get coverage?", it's "does the coverage that exists, taken as a whole, tell a coherent and credible story?" AI reads the whole picture, not just the highlights reel.
Honestly? We don’t know yet. The commercial layer of AI is being figured out in real time. The moment someone wonders if they are getting the "best" answer or a "sponsored" one, trust erodes. However, we still click Google ads, so it will likely happen. What's important is that organisations that "earned" their reputation through authoritative presence before the ad market caught up will be in a much stronger position than those trying to buy a shortcut later.
The insights from our panellists make one thing clear: AI is no longer a tool of the future; it is a stakeholder of the present. To lead with credibility in this new era, communicators must pivot from chasing volume to building authority. Whether it is through adopting a rigorous ethical framework, optimising content for AI readability, or maintaining a "rhythm of interrogation" with the tools we use, the goal remains the same: ensuring our brand narratives are coherent, credible, and human-led.
The tools have finally caught up to the ambitions of our industry. Now, it is up to us to provide the architect's blueprint for how they are used.
Interested in viewing the whole recording? Watch our webinar here.
Alternatively, contact our team to learn more insights into meaningful measurement, KPIs and communicating using the right dataset.
In this blog, panelists from our recent webinar on “AI as a stakeholder” get to answering all your burning questions.
The media landscape is accelerating. In an era where influence is ephemeral and every angle demands instant comprehension, PR and communications professionals require more than generic technology—they need intelligence engineered for their specific challenges.
Isentia is proud to introduce Lumina, a groundbreaking suite of intelligent AI tools. Lumina has been trained from the ground up on the complex workflows and realities of modern communications and public affairs. It is explicitly designed to shift professionals from passive media monitoring back into the role of strategic leaders and pacesetters.
“The PR, Comms and Public Affairs sectors have been experimenting with AI, but most tools have not been built with their real challenges in mind.” said Joanna Arnold, CEO of Pulsar Group.
“Lumina is different; it is the first intelligence suite designed around how narratives actually form today, combining human credibility signals with machine-level analysis. It helps teams understand how stories evolve, filter out noise and respond with context and confidence to crises and opportunities.”
Lumina is centered on empowering, not replacing, the human element of communications strategy. This suite is purpose-built to help PR, Comms, and Public Affairs professionals significantly improve productivity, enhance message clarity, and facilitate early risk detection.
Lumina enables communicators to:
We are launching the Lumina suite by making our first module immediately available: Stories & Perspectives.
In the current fragmented, multi-channel media environment, communications professionals need to be able to instantly perceive not just how a story is growing, but also how it is being perceived across different stakeholder groups.
Stories & Perspectives organizes raw media mentions into clustered, cohesive Stories, and the Perspectives that exist within each, reflecting distinct media, audience, and public affairs angles. This unique functionality allows users to:
"Media isn’t a stream of mentions," said Kyle Lindsay, Head of Product at Pulsar Group. "But rather a living system of stories shaped by competing perspectives. When you can see those structures clearly, you gain the ability to understand issues as they form, anticipate how they’ll evolve, and act with precision. That’s what we mean when we talk about AI built for communicators, and that's what an off-the-shelf LLM can't give you."
The launch of Stories & Perspectives is the first release of many. Over the upcoming months, we will systematically roll out the full Lumina roadmap, introducing a comprehensive set of AI tools engineered to handle every phase of the communications lifecycle.
The full Lumina suite will soon incorporate:
Want to harness the power of Lumina AI for your PR, Comms, or Public Affairs team? .
Complete the form below to register your interest.
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