分众传媒江南春：出海下一站比的是“人心的算法”

This article shares key insights from Focus Media founder Jason Jiang (Jiang Nanchun) on corporate growth, brand building, and Chinese brands going global. It outlines ongoing market shifts and actionable strategies, with core takeaways below:

1. Core assessment: With China’s demographic dividend fading and online user acquisition costs climbing, growth driven purely by paid traffic has become increasingly limited. Jiang argues that "traffic acquires users, but brands win hearts and minds." Only strong brands can drive consumer choice, help companies escape price wars, and reduce their dependence on platforms.

2. Step-by-step brand building: First, elevate the value of your product by identifying functional, emotional, or identity-based values that consumers can perceive and are willing to pay for. Second, condense this value into a clear, differentiated, and memorable message. Finally, embed this value in consumer minds through consistent, high-frequency exposure; the effect of brand building can be measured by tracking changes in organic search volume.

3. The value of offline media: Focus Media places ads in elevators—an unavoidable, enclosed, high-frequency daily scenario that remains unaffected by the constant turnover of content platforms. It has now integrated digital intelligence technologies to enable precise targeting and performance tracking, making its value even more pronounced.

This article shares Jason Jiang’s core assessments of current brand building and global expansion trends, offering strong strategic insights for brand owners. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry trend outlook: China’s traffic growth has peaked, user acquisition costs are continuing to rise, and pure paid traffic growth has hit a ceiling, bringing the market into an era of brand compounding. For Chinese brands going global, the sector has reached a watershed: the era of low-price volume selling has passed, and the market has shifted to a new stage focused on building local consumer mindshare.

2. Brand building methodology: Brands are core infrastructure that allows companies to escape price wars and reduce platform dependence. Jiang frames products as the "1" that precedes the "zeros" of a brand—an uncompetitive product cannot be saved by branding alone. Brand growth follows two key steps: first, elevate product value to find differentiated, perceptible value; second, embed this value in consumer minds to build the habit of active choice.

3. Strategic advice for global expansion: Brands need to achieve three key transitions: shifting from pure value-for-money positioning to elevated product value; moving from no-name white-label selling to building brand recognition; and reducing overreliance on in-platform traffic to build awareness off-platform. Global brands should not copy domestic Chinese strategies wholesale; instead, they should adapt core logic to local media and cultural contexts. They can leverage Focus Media’s existing network of prime locations in overseas core business districts to reach local middle-class consumers.

This article summarizes ongoing market shifts, risks, and new growth opportunities for sellers across all segments. Core takeaways are as follows:

1. Market shifts and risk warnings: Online user acquisition costs keep rising, platform algorithms are increasingly opaque, and the pure paid traffic growth model has shrinking room to scale. Rising traffic costs eat into margins, short-term conversions rarely turn into long-term assets, and many sellers are trapped in a cycle of price wars and platform dependence.

2. New growth opportunities: Shifting focus to building brand mindshare is the key to breaking this deadlock. Building a brand that consumers actively search for and choose will lower long-term user acquisition costs and free sellers from dependence on platform traffic and price competition. For cross-border sellers, the current period marks a turning point for transitioning from white-label selling to branded business. By moving beyond pure low-price competition, elevating product value, and building local mindshare, sellers can build long-term competitive moats and access higher profit margins.

3. Actionable takeaways: To build a brand, first identify your differentiated value, then reach users through consistent, high-frequency exposure in daily scenarios, and use growth in organic search volume as the core metric for measuring brand performance. For global expansion, sellers can partner with established media networks such as Focus Media, which already has prime locations in key overseas markets, to build local consumer awareness at lower cost.

This article offers clear directional guidance for Chinese manufacturing factories pursuing transformation and global expansion. Core insights are below:

1. Product design and positioning direction: Today, competing purely on low cost and value for money no longer works in either domestic or overseas markets. Consumers are increasingly willing to pay for perceptible functional, emotional, and identity-based value. Instead of just stacking technical specifications and cutting prices, factories need to shift to elevating product value and building differentiated, consumer-perceptible value to support brand premiums and escape low-price competition.

2. New business opportunities: A growing number of Chinese factories are going global, and shifting from original equipment manufacturing (OEM) to owning self-owned brands is the major industry trend. By combining their supply chain advantages to build a brand with a clear value positioning, factories can secure higher long-term profits than manufacturing alone. Media companies including Focus Media have already built out networks of prime locations across core cities in many overseas countries, providing mature infrastructure for brand building that lowers the barrier to entry for factories expanding globally.

3. Insights for digital transformation: The offline media industry is advancing digital upgrades to optimize site selection, ad delivery, and performance tracking through data. Factories should also speed up their own digital transformation: both product development and marketing can leverage data to improve decision-making and operational efficiency.

This article outlines current development trends in the marketing service industry and core pain points of brand clients, offering valuable guidance for service providers adjusting their business direction. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry development trends: Offline marketing has shifted from simply selling ad inventory to integrating digital intelligence, and a closed loop of "centralized brand activation + digital performance verification" has emerged as the new growth driver for the industry. The value of advertising in stable offline daily scenarios has actually grown amid constant turnover and disruption of online content platforms. At the same time, demand for global brand marketing services is growing rapidly, particularly for localized brand building that captures local consumer mindshare, where a large gap remains unfilled.

2. Core pain points for brand clients: Today, both domestic and global Chinese brands commonly face high user acquisition costs, overreliance on platform traffic, and difficulty building long-term consumer mindshare. Pure paid traffic services no longer meet brands’ needs for long-term growth, and global brands lack stable distribution channels to reach core local consumer groups.

3. Reference for solution development: Service providers can upgrade their offerings around brand mindshare building: first help brands clarify their differentiated value, then build an online-offline marketing closed loop to reach consumers through consistent exposure in daily scenarios, and leverage data feedback to optimize ad delivery. For global expansion demand, providers can partner with media networks that already have established location footprints overseas to offer localized marketing services that align with current market demand.

This article outlines brands’ core needs for platforms and provides reference guidance for platform operation, expansion, and risk mitigation. Core insights are as follows:

1. Brands’ core needs for platforms: Today, brands are no longer satisfied with just traffic投放 services from platforms. A growing number of brands aim to build independent consumer mindshare and reduce overreliance on platform traffic. Global brands, in particular, have an urgent need for localized marketing infrastructure that can reach core local consumer groups.

2. Reference for platform operation and expansion: Focus Media’s location expansion strategy offers a useful case study for all offline platforms. For global expansion, companies should not replicate rigid domestic models, but only copy the core underlying logic of "building high-density coverage in core cities first": prioritize securing locations in capital city core lifestyle districts to reach mass core consumers. This difficult-first approach pushes the business across the scale threshold, after which marginal costs continue to decline. Platforms should also accelerate digital upgrades to deliver precise, attributable, and continuously optimized services that meet brands’ performance tracking needs.

3. Risk mitigation guidance: If a platform relies purely on algorithmic traffic sales for revenue, rising traffic costs will continuously compress brand margins, which will ultimately harm the platform’s own long-term growth. Platforms can expand services related to brand mindshare building to meet brands’ long-term growth needs. For global expansion, platforms can create mutual value with Chinese global brands to jointly develop local markets.

This article presents the latest developments in Chinese offline media global expansion and puts forward new perspectives on brand growth, offering high reference value for industry research. Key insights are as follows:

1. New industry developments: As the leader of China’s elevator lifestyle media sector, Focus Media has deployed more than 190,000 advertising displays across more than 10 overseas countries as of March 2026, and has developed a replicable global expansion path. Instead of copying rigid domestic organizational models, it only replicates the core logic of "building location density first to unlock scale efficiency": it prioritizes deploying networks in core capital city lifestyle districts and partners with local players to rebuild on-the-ground execution systems.

2. New business models and perspectives: Jiang Nanchun has put forward the concept of "the algorithm of human hearts", positioned as an alternative to platform traffic algorithms. He argues that as traffic costs continue to rise, brand recognition and user trust are the most stable long-term competitive moats for companies. As infrastructure for building consumer mindshare, offline lifestyle media has a naturally stable business model that is unaffected by content industry cycles. Combined with digital upgrades, it has now formed a new closed-loop business model of "centralized brand activation + digital performance verification".

3. Key outstanding industry issues: Most Chinese companies expanding globally remain stuck in the low-price selling phase, are overreliant on platform traffic, lack investment in building local consumer mindshare, and struggle to command brand premiums or build long-term competitive moats. This is the core problem that China’s global expansion industry needs to address next.