In a world where paid traffic is declining and traditional ads are losing effectiveness, brands are waking up to a powerful truth: A brand shouldn’t just run ads — it should become its media. Welcome to the era of Brand as Media — a new mindset where brands are no longer just advertisers, but creators, curators, and cultural voices in their own right.
1. From Channel Dependence to Brand Sovereignty
In the past, brands relied on external media — including TV, newspapers, and digital platforms — to reach their audiences. They were dependent on intermediaries. Today, with the rise of social media, user-generated content (UGC), and fragmented digital attention, brands must reclaim control of their narrative. Leaders like Nike, Red Bull, Patagonia, and POP MART have established internal content teams, developed original IP, and fostered communities. They’re no longer just sellers — they’re storytellers.
2. What’s Driving the Shift?
Three forces are accelerating this transformation:
• Technology: AI, 5G, and XR enable scalable, immersive, personalized content creation. • Culture: Consumers crave authenticity, transparency, and relevance. • Business: Performance ads are plateauing. Content creates emotional bonds and long-term engagement.
3. 10 Actions to Evolve Into a Brand-Media Hybrid
To thrive in the “brand as media” model, organizations must restructure around content. Here’s how:
1. Treat content as a strategic asset, not just a marketing tool. Appoint a Head of Brand Media. 2. Establish an internal editorial department to plan, produce, and manage storytelling like a media house. 3. Build a centralized content hub with efficient workflows and creative scalability. 4. Use data to drive personalization — combining first, second, and third-party data for content matching. 5. Deploy content across multi-platform ecosystems — from Douyin and Xiaohongshu to livestreams, podcasts, and AR. 6. Activate employees as KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers). Every team member is a potential voice. 7. Enable user co-creation — bring your audience into the storytelling process. 8. Embrace AIGC, AR, and interactive formats to craft immersive experiences. 9. Redefine KPIs — move beyond CTRs and ROIs to track resonance, cultural relevance, and emotional lift. 10. Build a long-term content library — turning brand stories into lasting cultural assets.
4. The Next Frontier: Becoming a Cultural Architect
The real competition isn’t in ad spend — it’s in who builds the strongest content ecosystems and emotional capital. Leading brands are no longer just selling products — they’re building worlds consumers want to belong to.
• Red Bull owns extreme sports • Nike promotes empowerment • The Palace Museum in China turned heritage into a Gen Z lifestyle brand
Content isn’t supporting the brand. It is the brand.
Final Thought: Don’t Just Advertise. Tell Stories. In the age of Brand as Media, those who master storytelling will win attention, loyalty, and cultural relevance. Those clinging to ad buys and price wars? They’ll fade into the background. The future belongs to storytellers — not just sellers.
Vertical websites, also known as niche websites, play a significant role in China’s digital landscape. These websites focus on specific industries, topics, or interest areas, catering to a targeted audience with specialized content and services. Unlike horizontal websites that cover a wide range of topics, vertical websites delve deep into a specific niche, providing comprehensive and specialized information, resources, and community engagement.
Vertical websites in China have gained popularity because they cater to Chinese consumers’ diverse, specific interests. They cover industries and topics such as finance, fashion, technology, travel, health, and more. These websites offer in-depth articles, expert opinions, user-generated content, forums, and interactive features to engage their audience and foster community.
One prominent example of a vertical website in China is Zhihu, often called the “Quora of China.” Zhihu focuses on knowledge-sharing and provides a platform for users to ask questions, receive answers from experts and enthusiasts, and engage in discussions on various topics. This vertical website has gained significant traction, attracting millions of users and becoming a go-to resource for information and insights.
Vertical websites also serve as valuable marketing channels for businesses targeting specific industries or niche markets. Companies can collaborate with these websites to reach their target audience, promote their products or services, and establish thought leadership within their respective industries. Advertising, sponsored content, and partnerships are common ways for businesses to leverage the reach and influence of vertical websites in China.
Overall, vertical websites in China are crucial in providing specialized content, fostering community engagement, and connecting businesses with their target audience. They offer a focused, tailored online experience that caters to Chinese internet users’ diverse interests and preferences in specific industries or topics.
Xiaohongshu, also known as RED, is a social media and e-commerce platform based in China. It was launched in 2013 as a platform for users to share product recommendations and personal reviews.
Since then, Xiaohongshu has evolved into a multi-purpose platform that allows users to discover and purchase a wide range of products and follow their favorite influencers and creators. The platform strongly focuses on fashion, beauty, and lifestyle products.
As of 2021, Xiaohongshu has over 300 million registered users and has gained a significant following among young Chinese consumers. The platform has also attracted international brands and retailers, who use it to reach Chinese consumers.
In addition to its e-commerce and social media functions, Xiaohongshu also offers several other features, such as a personal diary function, which allows users to document their daily lives and experiences, and a Q&A feature, which will enable users to ask for product recommendations and advice from other users.
5 Tips for advertising on Red
1. Identify your target audience: Xiaohongshu has a primarily young female user base, so consider this demographic when developing your advertising strategy.
2. Use visually appealing content: As with any social media platform, high-quality images and videos are crucial to catching users’ attention.3. Leverage influencer marketing: Many Xiaohongshu users follow and trust the recommendations of influencers, so consider partnering with relevant influencers to promote your products.4. Utilize hashtags: Hashtags can help users discover your content and make it easier for them to find your products.5. Offer incentives: Consider offering promotions or discounts to Xiaohongshu users to encourage them to purchase.
Website Localization is ever so important for any website that wants to present themselves to a foreign market. Why? Because localizing a website means to adapt and tweak it to the exact need of your new target audience, which – obviously – is important to guarantee the success of a business.Now, having cleared the importance of the process, what exactly is it?
It all starts with the adjustment to the local language and culture, meaning that the website needs to reflect linguistic and cultural preferences regarding content, enunciation, images and overall UI. The motivation is to make the consumer feel as if he looked at a website from his own country, regardless of cultural differences between the creator and the user. Therefore, a localization isn’t simply translating, but much more complex than that.
In many cases, there is a surprisingly enormous difference between the User Interfaces of Websites. Take China as an example:
The screenshot above shows Mozilla Firefox’s website in the USA and the same website for China. A rather smooth, simplistic design as opposed to a colorful, information-packed UI.
Aside from UI, when entering the Chinese market specifically, there are a few more problems arising.
For instance, loading speed can be exhaustingly long because of the “Great Firewall”, which prevents any add-ins from potentially blocked sources to load. But regardless, if your website is hosted from outside of mainland China, passing through all the filters by Chinese government will take a while.
All that assuming, of course, that your site is not blocked in its entirety.
How to bypass those problems? Let’s have a look at some of our clients!
ACS Motion Control
This company offers its customers high performance machine control systems. Having Chinese customers already, they needed a functioning website as a channel of communication.
Residents in China however, found the site to be very slow to load, had issues displaying content and couldn’t use its full functionality (for instance, embedded YouTube videos that did not load).
XJet
XJet is a provider of ceramic and metal manufacturing solutions for various industries. With the rising economy in China, XJet wanted to have their fair share of the pie.
Because their original website was entirely inaccessible from within mainland China, they needed to establish a new site on a different domain.
Danziger
Danziger has had great success with breeding and patenting extraordinary flowers and sells to growers and nurseries all over the world.
Their website was state-of-the-art but included many APIs and add-ins that were blocked in China like YouTube and Google Fonts, resulting in a very slow loading speed. Additionally, much content of the website was inaccessible.
Each of these clients received a custom-tailored website localization, but let’s break down how we carry out our work in general:
Licensing and Hosting Services
– ICP License Support
It all start with an ICP license! The basic requirements for obtaining one consist of domain name, IP address and local business license. Basically, ICP is having your local hosting services/server officially connected to your domain address.
Every website operating from China is required to get an ICP License to be allowed to run. Most sites attempting to operate without a license will usually get blocked after a short grace period, losing the previously bought domain.
As the application for such an ICP license can be difficult, we help all our clients with the process.
– Domain
Local search engines in China (like Baidu.com) prioritize and rank your website in the search results higher if the domain is Chinese. As sub-domains usually have not much of an effect on search ranking results, we bought a Chinese domain for all these clients to ensure full visibility on the Chinese web.
– Local Server Hosting
To drastically reduce loading speeds, it was necessary to locally host the websites on Chinese Servers, avoiding the need to pass by the “Great Firewall”
Removing Blocked Features
Now this is where the actual work starts. Many foreign websites include add-ins that are blocked in China. Examples would be Google Search, Google Fonts, embedded YouTube/Vimeo videos, JavaScript etc.
We carefully reviewed their coding and removed any linkage to foreign providers. For example, YouTube videos are uploaded to alternatives in China and the website’s coding is being modified accordingly. As a result, the site doesn’t wait for the blocked add-ins to respond and overall loading speed increases.
Now it’s time for results. Not convinced that it makes much of a difference? Let’s see:
Danziger’s website is full of features and therefore has an according loading time in its nature. We translated and adapted the website to the Chinese customer, modified it to almost triple the connection speed and were able to remove any loading errors.
In ACS Motion Control’s case, a big part of their original website was video demonstrations and tutorials. Of course, they used the most convenient service for that: YouTube.
Next to translation, we revamped and modified the coding and, in the process, doubled website loading speed.
For XJet,Up2China provided an all-in-one solution, making their website accessible in mainland China by establishing a new domain and hosting locally. The result is a fast and reliable website.
Without doubt, Website Localization is of major importance for any aspiring business in China. Especially in such a technological advanced country, users will get impatient quickly and switch to a similar website faster than you can imagine!
Maybe your website is compatible for the Western market, maybe you even come up top in the Google search engine and have a substantial social media following… But that means absolutely nothing in China. Chinese social media and search engine platforms are an entirely different ball game and ensuring that your brand is visible on Chinese platforms and accessible to the market is critical to ensure your company’s success. Nowadays, an appealing website is critical – here are the things to remember when looking to expand into China.
Website
The most important consideration when deciding to access the Chinese market is to ensure that your website actually works in China and is compatible with Chinese apps and on smartphones. A few key points are:
Hosting and domain
Ensuring that your website works in China starts with getting your hosting (where to put your site) and your domain. It is important to get this from very early on! Leave it too late and your domain name may be taken or may now be extremely expensive, particularly if you have gained popularity by the time you buy it.
ICP Licence
The next step is an Internet Content Provider (ICP). This is a license from the government to approve your website, essentially a state-issued registration number that allows you to run your website in China and host on a mainland Chinese server. By law, for your site to go live in China, you are required to apply for one.
It is important to clarify that ICP licenses don’t technically determine whether your site is visible or blocked in China. It is possible that sites with ICPs are taken offline, while sites without them may remain visible indefinitely. The ICP merely confirms that you’ve been approved to host your website on a mainland Chinese server.
Interestingly, many non-China-hosted sites exist that do not have ICP licenses. Typically, if a site is small enough and doesn’t contain anything politically sensitive, it may slip through the “Great Firewall” and work in China. However, to avoid connectivity issues and increase the loading speed of your website overall, server hosting in China is recommended. Plus, if run from outside China, monitoring will soon reveal the lack of an ICP license, and the website will be blocked. Once blocked, there is no way to unblock it, given you are essentially outside of the system. Thus, if hosting outside of China and not getting an ICP licence is an option for your firm, you should be aware of the consequences.
Many firms decide to host their website in Hong Kong, since Hong Kong servers are geographically close, but governed by a different set of laws. Hosting offshore may be a viable short-term solution, however it doesn’t guarantee a satisfying internet speed for users in mainland China, with the possibility of your site being difficult to reach.
Consequently, having an ICP and hosting in China is a must to deliver digital content quickly to Chinese consumers. This is particularly important when your site has an array of plugins or functionality to your site which makes it relatively complex. For example, if you want your site to include payment methods then an ICP is essential and hosting your website in Hong Kong would not suffice.
It is important to note that internet laws in China change all the time, so being up to date with current news and updates on setting up a website in China is crucial, a difficult endeavour as a non-Chinese speaker. As for now however, if you want a serious web presence in China, you will need an ICP License!
Different types of ICP
ICP’s vary depending on the type of company you are, and the sort of website you are looking to host. There are two types of ICP: a commercial and a non-commercial ICP. The former allows a website to engage in online selling and payment integration.
Obtaining a commercial ICP license is an imperative for any aspiring business in China that plans to have its own website and operate some kind of online sales on a server located in China.
Other considerations
When looking to set up a website to serve the Chinese population, there are a variety of other considerations besides legal and regulation issues. To expand into China, your website will most certainly need to be restructured as Western website structure varies dramatically from what Chinese consumers are used to. They have different, sometimes very specific requirements that decide how much time – if any, at all – they will spend on your website. For example, it is expected to contain a range of features, such as UX (user experience), payment methods, and social logins, and you need to hit all these targets to build a website that can make a difference in China.
Western websites are generally far more simplistic with less functionality; they are typically more cleanly and simple. On the other hand, Chinese sites are very colorful, overloaded with links, information, animations, flashing texts and banners. For example, the images below show a comparison of Taobao and JD.com with its Western equivalents (Amazon and Ebay).
Taobao vs Ebay
Issues to consider
As mentioned, hosting a website in China from abroad will result in a very slow website, however there are an array of other reasons that may result in a slow loading website, even if you do in fact host in mainland China and are using an ICP license. These issues will most likely come from the website’s structure and coding.
For instance, given that Google and other social networking providers are blocked in China, certain plugins and features your website might contain will prevent the page from loading or result in a slow site. Examples include Google Fonts, Google Maps, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Each of these commonly used features will prevent the page from loading.
In addition to this, the coding of your website is very important. A poorly coded website means a slow website, so using the best coding practices will result in an effective and speed optimized website. In addition to this, the coding should ensure that your site is compatible with Chinese apps.
In conclusion, to make sure your site will work effectively, it is important to consider each of these options which ensure that your site will provide a website speed that meets Chinese consumers’ needs and appeals to the Chinese market overall.
SEO on China’s leading search engine, Baidu
There is no doubt in the importance of SEO to invite potential customers to your webpage. The deliberations mentioned above will certainly help with that, but here are some other essential aspects to reflect on:
Getting the right domain name helps with SEO, as the “.cn” domain name makes your brand more Baidu-friendly. Furthermore, single domains are generally the best way to go, rather than using sub-domains. For example, using “name.cn” instead of “name.xyz.cn” increases search ranking on Baidu.
Moreover, another aspect you might want to consider is the need for a Chinese physical address, because Baidu favors sites that have a presence in its home country. This does not necessarily have to be an office address, but perhaps an agent with a permanent address in China, where mail can be delivered to.
At last, you will need to produce content in Chinese characters, preferably simplified Chinese rather than traditional, because Baidu prefers simplified Chinese. In fact, Baidu won’t index content in Chinese dialects, such as Cantonese, nor in any Western language.
Thus, if you want to outrank your competitors in China, you’ll need to optimize and adapt your website, provide content in simplified Chinese and have a Chinese mailing address. All these enhancements will increase your ranking on leading Chinese search engines and allow you to broadly access the massive Chinese market.
There is no doubt in the importance of SEO to invite potential customers to your webpage. The deliberations mentioned above will certainly help with that, but here are some other essential aspects to reflect on: