Clever use of internet-speak

As much as marketers want to monitor online conversations to understand what interests consumers and what makes them excited, they’re also keen to track ‘new’ lexicons that consumers have created and are widely using when communicating with one another.

The character “囧 Jiong” is popular online parlance. It is widely used to represent a range of emotions, such as unhappiness, helplessness, embarrassment etc. The icon 囧 looks like a person’s (depressed) expression. The “口” represents the person’s face, the “八” represents two streams of tears and frowning eyebrows, and the “口” at the bottom represents an exclamation by someone who feels indignant.

Though the use of “Jiong” started way back in 2005 or earlier, it became more popular only in recent years in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Marketers are quick and clever to ride the wave to create products and communications with the ‘new’ language. Here are two examples:

In 2009 July, Li Ning launched a new design of sports shoes with the ‘Jiong’ icons printed all over the shoes. Naturally, consumers were attracted to the designs as the icon resonated with online language and expression.

More recently, Kimberly Clark’s Kotex used the icon in their TVC. The protagonist was ‘symbolised’ as a mascot size 囧 to represent her discomfort and unhappiness.

Given that most consumers are using online forums, BBS and social streams to discuss brands – re-approriating online language in communications can be powerful memetic tactic, or perhaps an attempt for TV advertising to keep up with shifting-online culture.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 4th, 2010 at 10:18 pm. It is filed under Advertising, China, Internet and tagged with featured, memes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.