On November 28, the China Advertising Association hosted its annual event, the "Unleashing New Brand Power" forum, at the China National Convention Center. Zhang Guohua, President of the China Advertising Association, spoke about how China's path can win global confidence in light of the 19th CPC National Congress spirit. Jim Smyth, President of the New York Festivals, and Barbara Levy, President of the London International Awards, delivered speeches on how Chinese originality is leading global trends. Presidents of renowned research firms KANTAR, Nielsen, and CTR China gathered, and special guests including Wang Lifen (producer of "Win in China"), Leng Youbin (Chairman of Feihe Dairy), Duan Jianjun (Executive Vice President of Mercedes-Benz), and Zhang Xuhao (Founder of Ele.me) engaged in in-depth discussions on how brands can win in China in the era of consumption upgrade. The event also announced the establishment of the China Advertising Association's Advertiser Committee.

Zhang Guohua, President of the China Advertising Association, pointed out: "In May this year, Focus Media won the 'Brand Communication Award' at the New York Festivals, one of the world's top three advertising festivals. This is the first time a Chinese media company has won a major award at the New York Festivals. In October, the China Advertising Association received news from the London International Awards, the most influential advertising award in Europe, that Focus Media had won the 'Effective Media Award' there. Additionally, Focus Media won the 'Digital Media Award' at the Busan Advertising Festival on its 10th anniversary. This year, Focus Media has won top awards at advertising festivals in the United States, Europe, and Asia, representing Chinese media for the first time. This is exciting news. Combined with Tencent's Cannes Lions award two years ago, Chinese media has now won major awards at all major global advertising festivals, signifying the rise of China's advertising industry globally and the world's recognition of China's soft power. Many new technologies and models nurtured in China have contributed Chinese wisdom and provided Chinese solutions to the global advertising and media industry. Focus Media's three global awards are a prime example of the international recognition of elevator media's ability to 'ignite brands.' In China's advertising market, the internet, especially mobile internet, is becoming the primary information mode, while the continuous rise of elevator media indicates the increasing value of life-scene media for urban mainstream audiences. The 200 million urban mainstream consumers covered by Focus Media contribute 70-80% of urban consumption. Monitoring shows that over 5,000 brands, including P&G, Unilever, General Motors, and Mercedes-Benz, choose Focus Media. Data shows that Focus Media's revenue has exceeded 10 billion yuan, making it the second-largest brand media group in China. Focus Media is also expanding into markets such as South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. From imitation to originality, from following to leading, the China Advertising Association is delighted to see that China's locally innovative models are being fully recognized by the global advertising industry. We look forward to more original Chinese models like Tencent and Focus Media moving to the center of the world stage and making greater contributions to the global advertising industry."

Jim Smyth, President of the New York Festivals Jim Smyth, President of the New York Festivals, said in his speech: "Congratulations again to Focus Media for becoming the first Chinese media company to win the Brand Communication Award at the New York Festivals." Focus Media pioneered the elevator media network, a highly valuable media network globally. Its success is one of the most important media innovations in China and the world. China's market is huge and rapidly growing, and the urban mainstream consumers—those with high education, high income, and high consumption—are increasingly dominating China's consumer market. Information modes are changing dramatically, but life spaces are hard to change. Focus Media has captured the closed elevator spaces that 200 million urban mainstream consumers pass through daily. These apartment and office buildings allow high-frequency reach to white-collar and gold-collar workers, representing the majority of mainstream consumption power and influence in Chinese cities. Concentrating advertising on these opinion leaders and word-of-mouth groups—the trendsetters influencing China's market consumption—is the foundation for igniting brands and leading mainstream consumption trends. We and the jury have observed that today, elevators have become infrastructure for China's urbanization, and Focus Media's elevator media has become infrastructure for igniting urban mainstream audiences. Elevator media has become a core force influencing China's mainstream consumer groups. Globally, consumers spend 4-5 hours on their phones, and mobile is the trend. But users are selective on their phones, mainly viewing content, and ads are often selectively ignored. Brand communication faces the huge challenge of fragmentation. The rise of Focus Media's elevator media in China provides important inspiration for solving the communication challenges of the global mobile internet era.

Xu Lijun, President of CTR China In 2015, China's advertising declined by 2.9%, and in 2016, it declined by 0.6%. Against the backdrop of overall decline in traditional media, only the internet and Focus Media's elevator media continued to rise rapidly. Xu Lijun, President of CTR China, released a report on the development trends of Chinese brand communication at the forum. He pointed out: CTR advertising monitoring data shows that in the first half of 2017, traditional media advertising spending decreased by 4.1% year-on-year, while digital media advertising spending increased by 12.9% overall. Internet advertising, building TV advertising, and cinema advertising all achieved double-digit growth. The current media ecosystem is roughly divided into three parts: traditional media represented by CCTV has advantages of high coverage and high credibility; internet media represented by BAT has attributes of high connectivity and strong interaction; and life-space media represented by Focus Media has high reach and high matching for urban mainstream audiences. Using the three platforms in combination will produce the best communication effects.

Wang Xing, Global President of Kantar Millward Brown's BrandZ™ Wang Xing, Global President of Kantar Millward Brown's BrandZ™, pointed out at the forum: Today, 13 Chinese brands are on the BrandZ Global Top 100 list, accounting for 11% of the list. Over the 12 years since 2006, the brand value of Chinese brands on the BrandZ Global Top 100 list has increased by 937%. In the current situation where traditional media communication efficiency is declining, the way to drive brand value growth mainly relies on new media's effective reach and communication with urban mainstream audiences. Focus Media's elevator and cinema media are the platforms with the highest reach to urban mainstream consumers. According to Kantar Millward Brown's BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Chinese Brands, 80% of China's Top 100 brands, including Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, and Mengniu, choose Focus Media for advertising. How to improve advertising ROI in the multi-screen era? Wang Xing used detailed data to point out: The era dominated by TV is over. Traditional TV, internet video, and elevator TV have become the three core platforms for advertising. Now these three platforms can be combined across screens through GRP quantitative research. Data shows that with sufficient budget, using a combination of 40% traditional TV, 30% internet video, and 30% elevator TV can significantly improve the reach and ROI of advertising. With a less sufficient budget, in addition to the 433 combination mentioned above, a 50% internet video and 50% elevator TV combination also performs well. With a small budget, focus on a single platform based on target audience characteristics: for the middle-aged and elderly market, focus on traditional TV; for students and young people aged 15-30, focus on internet video; for young and middle-aged office workers aged 25-45, focus on elevator TV.

Yan Xuan, President of Nielsen China Yan Xuan, President of Nielsen China, pointed out: In Nielsen's latest "China Advertising Attention Study," the time consumers spend watching ads overall decreased by 11% compared to last year. Paying to remove ads and actively avoiding ads have become trends. The mobile internet era allows people to access any information anytime, anywhere, but information overload, information explosion, and too many choices make consumers' attention scattered, greatly diluting the brand-building effect of mobile internet advertising.

In terms of ad reach, internet ads, TV ads, and elevator ads rank in the top three, with weekly reach rates of 88%, 76%, and 74%, respectively. In terms of share of eye time across all media, urban consumers spend 24 minutes per day watching ads, of which internet accounts for 6.2 minutes (26%), TV ads account for 5 minutes (21%), and elevator ads account for 4.6 minutes (19%), ranking in the top three. In terms of ad attention, cinema ads and elevator ads are in relatively closed environments with low interference, so they lead in ad attention, while TV ads and internet ads are in information and entertainment media with high content attention but low ad attention. Yan Xuan also pointed out: Phone interference has become the biggest factor affecting ad attention. Bus body ads, bus shelter ads, and subway ads are greatly affected by phone interference, at 83%, 78%, and 69%, respectively. TV ads and elevator TV ads are also affected to some extent, with 49% for TV ads and 30% for elevator TV ads. In contrast, because there is no signal in elevators and phones must be turned off in cinemas, elevator posters and cinema ads are least affected by phone interference, at 11% for cinema ads and 18% for elevator posters. As for ads on phones themselves, internet feed ads have low attention because consumers have choices and mainly view content, while internet video ads have good attention, but 77% of urban consumers purchase memberships to remove ads.

Wang Lifen, producer of "Win in China," hosted the roundtable forum. She proposed: In the mobile internet era, mainstream audiences basically don't watch TV; they go online, and on the internet, consumers mainly view content and rarely watch ads. Although internet video is gradually replacing TV as the core entertainment method, among 700 million video users, over 200 million mainstream users purchase memberships to remove ads. So the entire advertising industry is facing unprecedented challenges amid rapid development.

Leng Youbin, Chairman of Feihe Dairy, which just won the top sales award for Asian brands, believes: Compared to online media actively seeking target audiences, elevator media uses the media consumption gaps in users' daily life environments offline to achieve high-frequency communication and effective reach of embedded ads. This life-scene media stably exists in the life and work scenes of mainstream audiences over the long term, fully realizing concentrated influence on mainstream audiences.

Zhang Xuhao, Founder of Ele.me, believes: Life-scene media, represented by elevator media, which is a necessary and closed environment, has become the fastest channel for brands to efficiently reach mainstream consumers. Focus Media's elevator media helped Ele.me seize the time window to rapidly rise and become a leading brand in the food delivery sector. Many innovative brands emerging in the new economy regard Focus Media's elevator media as the core driving force for building innovative brands.

Xie Weishan, Chief Lecturer at the Positioning Center of Peking University HSBC Business School, believes: In the era of consumption upgrade, companies building brands must learn to use the power of the "lever," and that lever point is people's hearts. So today, to win in China, brands must first win people's hearts, especially the hearts of mainstream audiences. Because mainstream audiences have high education, high income, and high consumption, they are the consumption trendsetters in the market and have strategic significance for brand building. Among China's 400 million urban population, elevator media covers 200 million mainstream urban consumers. Its most unique value is the high-frequency effective reach in the elevator spaces that mainstream audiences pass through daily, forming a strong brand ignition capability. These are important reasons why Focus Media can become a new force for igniting brands.

Focus Media Receives "China Advertising Industry International Contribution Award" Over the past 30 years, China's advertising industry has developed rapidly. In terms of volume, it has become the world's second-largest market after the United States. In terms of quality, global 4A companies and media have gathered in China, and China has fully developed in various media forms and technologies, including TV, internet, outdoor, newspapers, magazines, and radio, reaching global levels. In 2017, Focus Media's elevator media represented China in winning the "Brand Communication Award" at the New York Festivals and the "Effective Media Award" at the London International Awards. After 30 years of learning and imitation, media innovation with Chinese characteristics is providing better experience and reference for the world in the mobile internet era. For this reason, the China Advertising Association awarded Focus Media the 2017 "China Advertising Industry International Contribution Award." In the award citation, the association stated: Fifteen years ago, Focus Media pioneered elevator media in China. The elevator is a unique space—small, closed, with extremely low interference—which gives elevator posters in apartment communities high attention, and the elevator TVs at office building entrances have only one channel and cannot be changed, making them non-selectable. Urban mainstream audiences enter and exit elevators multiple times daily. In the relatively boring elevator space, ads are more likely to attract attention, so elevator ads have more significant viewing effects. Data shows that among China's 400 million urban population, 200 million watch Focus Media daily. Focus Media's elevator media covers 120 cities, with 1.2 million elevator posters and 250,000 elevator TVs, reaching 500 million urban mainstream consumers daily. In the era of media fragmentation, Focus Media is increasingly becoming the core force for brand ignition. Looking at the history of global advertising, Europe and the United States have led development trends, but China invented elevator media, a unique media platform globally. In 2017, the New York Festivals, Busan Advertising Festival, and London International Awards all awarded media awards to Focus Media, indicating that the value of China's pioneering elevator media for brand ignition is internationally recognized. It is hoped that this Chinese innovation will bring corresponding inspiration and reference for the global media industry to address the communication challenges of the mobile internet era.

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