Wildfire on Bridging Brands and 40K Consumers in China
October 17, 2010 by Gwendolyn Regina T
While working towards an MBA at INSEAD, Christoph Zrenner and Benjamin Duvall were also busy hatching ideas for a startup. Observing the Chinese market and how international brands were having difficulty reaching out to local consumers, Christoph and Benjamin set about creating Wildfire, aka XingXingHuo, a combination of a proprietary network of influencers and a technology platform that allows brand managers to create authentic word-of-mouth between their target consumers, listening in and impacting conversations between friends, both in the real-world and on internet social media.
Wildfire has worked with some of the biggest consumer brands like Johnson and Johnson, Kraft Foods, Campbell’s Soup Company, and The Coca Cola Company. They just closed their Series A round of SGD 780K (USD 603K) two months ago, led by IDEAS Ventures / Innosight Ventures.
This is a follow up of their first round of angel funding raised over 2009-2010 of SGD 550K (USD 425K) from 12 angels (mostly from Singapore) on a convertible note basis.
The spark of fire that is every individual influencer
The key driver behind the success of Wildfire is the community of members, called Sparks. They are consumers who are “demographically diverse, with passionate hobbies ranging from sports, to fashion, food, electronics, and more, Sparks are eager and excited to share their experiences with others“.
On their About page, Wildfire says that “nearly 20% of every conversation is about a product or service, whether a new local coffee shop, an innovative running shoe, or a cutting-edge cell phone”, which means that there is a lot of opportunity here for brands to go so right, and so wrong at the same time.
At the time of investment, Wildfire’s network of influencers consisted of 40,000 profiles and Wildfire intends to grow this to 1 million profiles within the next 12 months.
While Christoph and Benjamin believe that Word-of-Mouth works for any product or service, they are focusing Wildfire’s efforts to scale the process that is standardized for packaged consumers goods (Unilever, P&G, etc.) to reach and serve this network of influencers.
One of the benefits that consumers get in return is free products that they like, making them more likely to engage with the product and spread the word about it.
Why do Christoph and Benjamin believe in Wildfire/XingXingHuo?
Christoph Zrenner
There has got to be a better way to change perceptions and behaviours. The value of a brand is vested in the minds of the consumers, and Wildfire recreates this connections, marketing with the consumer, not at the consumer. As consumers grow more sophisticated in China, Advertising will have to change.
We believe in our ability to make a positive difference to how brands communicate with their consumers. Maybe some of the mistakes in the west that have led to a huge amount of distrust and cynicism can be avoided in China.”
Taking proofs beyond the concept
“Over the past two years, we’ve been doing small pilot projects for some of the big consumer goods corporations (Kraft Foods, Campbell’s Soup, The Coca Cola Company), to prove the effectiveness of adding our word-of-mouth impressions to their usual Television media impressions, using the metrics that media buyers are used to.
Our challenge now is to convert such small proof-of-concept deals into nationwide word-of-mouth activation campaigns that are part of an integrated marketing communication for a product launch or repositioning. During the pilot stage, we have to do everything to deliver an excellent result, even if it erodes our margins – our challenge now is to scale up to profitable campaigns in the time that our runway lasts!
We are trying very hard to run a lean shop until we are cash-flow positive, it’s not fun to have to raise money.”
Reaching beyond China
“Wildfire is HQ’ed in Singapore, where we also run the R&D and manage the technology licencing (consumer profile data and social media aggregation and integration) but it is our ambition to reach consumers across Asia. During our first years, we have focused on China, because China presents a huge problem for marketers, and we’re positioning ourselves at these “pain points” as the first market.”
Image credit: Design By Zouny
About The Author
Gwendolyn Regina T - Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Apart from SGE, Gwen is also a Partner at Thymos Capital, where she focuses on early stage investments in technology firms. She has had two exits out of her investments via the firm, one of which is iHipo. A frequent judge for business competitions both locally and overseas, she graduated from the National University of Singapore. Gwen also spent some time in Silicon Valley and studied in Stanford University under the NUS Overseas College programme. Gwen is a mentor at Spanish incubator Tetuan Valley, Polish incubator Gamma Rebels, the Singapore Ambassador for the Sandbox network and the Singapore curator for StartupDigest. She enjoys languages, travelling, dance and adventure sports. Gwen can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Find more jobs at Triple Point Jobs
