in China

COVER STORY
online or wherever,” says Malik. “We get a lot of
engagement when there is gaming and a sense of
fun that’s also on brand.”
She points to Gap’s public casting call to find the
next face for their kids/baby campaign, which
attracted huge attention in Shanghai, as an
example of leveraging game elements on social
media. Parents posted their children’s photo, a
popular practice in China, and people voted for the
winner.
Digital coupons that reveal prizes when scratched
online, often used during special holidays like Qixi
(Chinese Valentine’s Day) are successful because
they appeal to a customer’s desire to have fun.
Malik is also thinking deeply about brand loyalty,
harder to secure as the field gets more crowded.
has developed successfully elsewhere.
“If you do not put a lot of intelligence behind it
and you just light up inventory and have it
operationally execute, you can actually end up
losing money in the shipping cost or with different
prices and promotions in different parts of your
business,” says Malik. “I am looking at using
a more refined algorithm coming from North
America to do that.”
But in terms of social media and a mobile-first
strategy, the only place to look is at China itself.
And in these areas, the rapid pace is relentless.
“Just last year in the US, we were talking about
how everything should be mobile first. That
conversation in China happened three years ago,”
says Malik. Even in the last few years, there have
“THE CUSTOMER MOVES SO FAST that traditional
consumer insights every six to twelve months is pretty irrelevant,”
says Malik.
She says she is currently formulating a way to go
much further than they have before, not just with
discounts or bounce backs, but to provide unique
exclusives for the loyal consumer.
But she won’t be rushing in blindly. Her approach
is to continue to leverage their second mover
advantage. This means not haphazardly going
live with new initiatives - and being stuck with
attempting to tweak changes once online - but
pausing to think about what makes the relationship
with the consumer sticky and doing rigorous
testing before rolling out new initiatives.
been radical shifts. “When I first visited China
three years ago, everybody was talking about
Weibo; now, everybody is talking about Wechat.”
Malik finds herself fascinated by how much time
people spend on their phone.
“It is real communication that can turn into
commerce that happens here. I still don’t
see meaningful integration of Facebook into
commerce, of instagram into commerce, of
Pinterest into commerce. But Wechat has
integrated it.”
ADDING EASE, EXPERIENCE AND EMOTION
“There are a lot of shiny new coins. You have to be
very careful about which ones actually add ease,
experience and emotion to the customer versus
it being a gimmick or a good idea, but not really
being very well thought through,” she says.
She points to the latest online-to-offline (O2O)
craze around shipping product from stores to
consumers who purchased online, a service Gap
This is one area where Malik is not holding back,
but rather ramping up to boost Gap’s consumer
insights abilities. “The customer moves so fast that
traditional consumer insights every six to twelve
months is pretty irrelevant,” she says.
“The consumer is the only place to go to figure
out the future, because they are fast. If I could
exaggerate, I would say this is an entire country of
first movers and first adopters.” n
IMA ASIA CEO DIALOGUES
AUTUMN 2015
4