Hasta La Creative!

In China, a country of 695 million mobile internet users, some creative new forms of smartphone-friendly branded content have emerged. Consider a McDonald’s post that spread this month among users of WeChat, the ubiquitous Chinese mobile app. The post looks nothing like a fast-food ad, and people had to read for about four minutes before finding out it had anything to do with McDonald’s.

A narrow, 152-inch illustration unfurled as people scrolled down on their mobile phones. (View it here). Reminiscent of a graphic novel, it was a tale about explorers landing on a fiery volcanic planet, and it blended in educational scientific content about volcanoes. After all that scrolling came the reveal: The red hot “planet” was actually a gigantic McDonald’s chicken wing. Commenters mostly enjoyed the bizarre branded twist.

Super long-form social content, with an out-of-nowhere reveal of a brand name at the end, has become commonplace in China. Typically the posts are created by online influencers — artists, writers — and posted on their own pages. Sometimes the stories have no clear link to the brand, and in China that doesn’t matter, says Frederic Raillard, co-founder of Fred & Farid: “The only concern is, you need to deliver a story that is highly entertaining.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com