分众传媒创始人江南春： 出海的终极战场，唯有抢占心智复利

At the recent Ebrun Global New Brands Conference, Focus Media founder Jason Jiang shared his latest insights and practical guidance on Chinese brands going global. His core conclusion: going overseas has entered a new 3.0 era where brands win, and capturing the mindshare of global consumers is the ultimate battlefield for international expansion.

1. The global expansion landscape has fundamentally changed: the traditional fast-profit model of low pricing, online store openings and indiscriminate spending on traffic is no longer viable. Rising supply chain and traffic costs have intensified price competition, bringing an end to the era of quick profits. Going global is no longer an optional growth strategy—it has become a necessity for survival.

2. Clear practical direction: Companies must break free from two major mindset traps—getting stuck in low-price competition, and confusing promotions with marketing. Instead of only competing on tangible cost-performance, brands should also deliver "pain-point value" (addressing the unique needs of consumers in different markets) and "mind-value" (offering emotional, aesthetic and other spiritual value). They need to escape the no-label white box trap, reduce dependence on a single e-commerce platform, and adopt an omnichannel strategy that integrates online and offline touchpoints.

3. This approach has already been validated by multiple leading Chinese brands, including BYD, Anta and Vinda, which have all achieved significant market share growth following this path.

Against a backdrop of rising macroeconomic uncertainty, going global is the most reliable growth path for Chinese brands. China's overseas expansion has entered the 3.0 "climbing up" era of brand-led growth, where the core opportunity is capturing the mindshare of global consumers.

1. Industry trends and competitive advantages: Global consumer perceptions of Chinese brands have flipped from "low-end made in China" to "smart, high-quality China manufacturing." China's globally competitive supply chain, mature cross-border infrastructure and policy support have created the foundation for Chinese brands to command price premiums. For example, BYD sells in the UK for 2–3 times its domestic price, and has established itself as a local premium brand.

2. Brand marketing direction: Brands must escape low-price competition and abandon the misconception that promotions equal marketing. Instead of competing only on tangible product features and costs, they need to build up intangible value: aesthetics, identity alignment and emotional resonance, while establishing differentiated brand positioning. Data shows 83% of global consumers prefer branded products and are willing to pay an average 15% price premium—this is the critical profit driver that will determine survival in today's oversaturated market.

3. Channel layout recommendation: Reduce dependence on a single e-commerce platform and build an omnichannel online-offline presence. Focus Media's overseas elevator advertising network allows brands to reach the most influential mainstream consumers in a country's core market with just $70,000 to $280,000, one-tenth the cost of traditional TV advertising, delivering exceptional value.

Amid high macroeconomic uncertainty, going global is the core path to reliable growth for cross-border sellers—but traditional models are no longer working, and sellers need to adjust their strategies to capture new growth opportunities.

1. Key risk warnings: The overseas market has shifted from a blue ocean to a zero-sum stock game. On one hand, supply chain costs are rising and volatile, while traffic costs continue to climb. On the other hand, a flood of new sellers has intensified price competition, squeezing per-unit profits. Compounding this, e-commerce penetration in overseas markets is lower than in China, so relying solely on online platforms creates a hard growth ceiling. The pure paid traffic model—where growth stops when spending stops—means quick-profit strategies are no longer sustainable.

2. New growth opportunities: China's overseas expansion has entered the 3.0 era of building brand mindshare, and the "mindshare dividend" is the largest incremental opportunity available today. Consumers are willing to pay up to a 15% premium for products with credible brand backing, making this the core path for sellers to break through profit bottlenecks.

3. Actionable next steps: Escape low-price competition by shifting from purely competing on cost-performance to delivering "pain-point value" that addresses consumer needs and "mind-value" that offers emotional and aesthetic value. Proactively build differentiated brand positioning, reduce dependence on a single e-commerce platform, and adopt an omnichannel online-offline strategy. Focus Media's overseas elevator network allows sellers to reach core mainstream audiences at low cost to build brand awareness quickly, and multiple brands including BYD, Nanfu and Vinda have already delivered significant market share growth with this approach.

Chinese manufacturing factories have evolved their overseas expansion from 1.0, when factories went global through OEM manufacturing, to 2.0, when they established local localized operations, and now to 3.0, when they go global as branded players. This brings new opportunities for growth, but requires factories to adjust their production and operation strategies to align with the new trend.

1. New requirements for product design and manufacturing: Traditionally, factories only competed on tangible production costs and product features, but this model has now become trapped in low-price competition that has erased all profit margins. The new trend requires factories to build on solid product functionality by upgrading offerings to fit the unique consumer pain points of different overseas markets, while improving aesthetics, design and emotional value to build differentiated products and escape the white-label OEM trap.

2. Attractive business opportunities: Global consumer perceptions of Chinese brands have fundamentally shifted, and consumers now recognize the quality of "China intelligent manufacturing." Combined with China's globally unmatched mature supply chain, and cross-border infrastructure and policy support for factories looking to build brands, successful brands can earn substantial price premiums. For example, many Chinese auto brands sell overseas for more than twice their domestic price, delivering far larger profit margins than OEM manufacturing.

3. Insights for digital and e-commerce transformation: Factories should not settle for only selling unbranded white-label products online. They need to proactively invest in brand building, reduce over-dependence on online platforms, adopt an omnichannel online-offline strategy, and can partner with professional marketing services to build brand awareness at low cost, open up incremental growth for their own brands, and complete the upgrade from OEM manufacturer to branded brand owner.

Chinese companies going global have entered a new 3.0 era of brand-focused expansion, bringing new growth opportunities to the cross-border service industry, which needs to adjust its solutions to match the new demands of brand clients.

1. New industry trends: In the past, cross-border services focused on providing basic support for trade exports and white-label sales, such as supply chain management and traffic operations. Now, as Chinese brands shift to a brand-led strategy focused on capturing global consumer mindshare, demand for professional overseas brand marketing and omnichannel layout services has grown sharply, opening up significant new industry space.

2. Core pain points of clients: Today's cross-border brands face three common major challenges. First, they are trapped in low-price cost-performance competition that continuously compresses profit margins. Second, many are focused only on selling goods and reluctant to invest in brand building, leaving them stuck in the white-label trap with no differentiated competitive advantage. Third, they confuse promotions with marketing, over-rely on platform traffic, and fail to build long-term mindshare—so sales drop immediately when spending stops. At the same time, lower overseas e-commerce penetration creates inherent growth limits for pure online play.

3. A proven reference solution: Focus Media has developed a mature model for exporting China's elevator media format overseas. When entering a new market, it first covers core metropolitan areas around the capital, focuses on the closed elevator environment, and delivers a "high reach, high frequency, high attention, high completion rate, low cost" media service. Currently, Focus Media's CPM is just one-tenth that of local traditional TV, and it can reach all core mainstream consumers in a country for $70,000 to $280,000. It has already helped multiple Chinese cross-border brands deliver market share growth, and has achieved a balanced client split: one-third Chinese outbound brands, one-third international brands, and one-third local brands, demonstrating strong replicability of the model.

As Chinese brands enter the 3.0 era of brand-led global expansion, brands have new demands for platforms, which need to adjust their operating strategies to fit the new trend. Focus Media's overseas expansion offers a useful reference model.

1. New demands from brand clients: Brands are no longer satisfied with only basic platform services such as store hosting, transaction matching and traffic sales. Today, they need platforms to help them build consumer mindshare, increase brand premiums, access offline traffic resources, and support omnichannel online-offline layout, to solve the problems of high pure-online traffic costs and low growth ceilings.

2. A viable go-to-market strategy for platforms going global: As a marketing media platform, Focus Media has developed a clear overseas expansion path: when entering a new market, it first focuses on the core capital metropolitan area, which covers 50% of the population and 70% of total consumption power, concentrates on closed elevator spaces where consumers spend consistent time, and sticks to its "four highs and one low" media positioning. Currently, it has completed coverage across most major Asian markets, and is expanding into Europe, Oceania and South America.

3. Operations management and risk mitigation: Companies expanding overseas do not need to pursue short-term profitability. In the early market development stage, they can strictly control CPM to maintain competitiveness and attract clients, prioritize market coverage before pursuing long-term break-even. They should also focus on reaching the most influential mainstream consumers, to help brands quickly penetrate consumer mindshare and drive growth, while avoiding the risk of unsustainability inherent in pure traffic models. Today, Focus Media has a balanced overseas client base, delivering strong risk resilience.

In this presentation, Jason Jiang proposed a new stage framework for the development of China's cross-border outbound industry, summarized a new competitive logic, and offers many new perspectives and case studies for industry research.

1. New industry development trends: China's corporate outbound expansion has completed three iterations: from 1.0 "going out" (exporting low-end manufactured goods), to 2.0 "going in" (establishing localized local operations), to the current 3.0 "climbing up" (leading global trends with brand power). Going global has shifted from an optional corporate strategy to a mandatory one, and the core of industry competition has moved from supply chain cost advantages to consumer mindshare positioning advantages.

2. New challenges facing the industry: Traditional growth models for outbound expansion are no longer viable, and the industry faces multiple headwinds: supply chain and traffic costs continue to rise, intense domestic price competition among Chinese sellers is eroding profits, pure paid traffic models fail to build long-term mindshare so sales collapse when spending stops, unbranded white-label sales offer no differentiation and have all profits competed away, and lower overseas e-commerce penetration creates a hard growth ceiling for pure-online players.

3. Insights for new business models: Jiang put forward the core concept of "mindshare compounding", arguing that traffic is a short-term dividend, while mindshare delivers long-term compound returns. Building a brand means managing causality rather than outcomes—identifying the core reason consumers choose your brand is the foundation of sustained growth. At the same time, Focus Media has exported China's original elevator media model globally to build marketing infrastructure for Chinese outbound brands. Its approach of prioritizing market expansion before profitability, and focusing on core high-value markets, offers an entirely new reference model for Chinese service companies expanding overseas.