Speaking to RCN personnel in China today about the Coronavirus lockdown. Word on the street within Mainland China is that this is much worse than SARS. Also Impacting regions close to China such as Hong Kong. Massive impacts on outbound tourism from China as citizens defer to “Staycations”. Another impact is that because the population is static and homebound, populations are turning to their mobiles and to WeChat for connecting to groups for situational updates. As a consequence, short term content engagement in WeChat, Weibo and Douyin is skyrocketing. Great time to gain audience attention. Especially with health products and homebound solutions. Generally, attention span is declining globally. The average time spent online on a single item is 8.24 seconds. A goldfish has an attention span of 8.25 seconds. This is a global issue, with attention deficit resulting in the growth of short form marketing. RCN has taken the lead in this shift with vertical video format influencer marketing in Douyin. More on this later.
