Rand Han: littleredbook Founder & Advertising Entrepreneur

I first ran into Rand Han’s littleredbook (LRB) in early December of 2008 when it featured his post discussing the differences between China’s Baidu and Google. Not long after, I had subscribed to LRB full-time. While the updates have been irregular, I loved LRB’s subject matter (advertising) and was quite impressed with Rand’s posts offering both analysis and context for various advertisements found in China.

It seemed like a no-brainer idea to me. What better subject to blog about than advertisements, right? Their very nature usually involves eye-catching pictures and interesting ideas! Both are key to grabbing people’s attention and keeping their interest! I thought to myself, a well-done blog on interesting Chinese advertising would surely attract tons of readers, not just those involved in advertising but the mainstream audience as well.

So, I recently hunted down LRB’s founder and mastermind, Rand Han, for an interview. He obliged and shared his insights into advertising in China, the evolution of LRB, and how he’s using internet social media to promote his businesses:

CNR: Rand, tell us about yourself, who you are, where you’re from, and what you do.

Rand: I’m Chinese-American, born in California. I’ve worked in several big agencies before starting BA360, my boutique ad agency; this was done initially with copywriting clients, then reinvesting commissions allowing me to organically build the company from nothing. I created LRB late last year as an alternative advertising method to Google AdWords; as with AdWords, you pay a lot, and when you stop the campaign, its done… but with LRB, we spend a lot of time, but that effort never goes away, and only builds on itself over time. Strategically, building LRB was a smart move… though at 4 months old, LRB doesn’t outpull AdWords for leads – though I’m optimistic that after a year it will, and the quality of the leads/business partnerships will be far greater.

CNR: When I first visited LRB, I was instantly attracted to the subject matter, and thought LRB would easily appeal to the mainstream audience. Tell us a bit about your thoughts on LRB’s subject-matter, beyond it being a natural complement to your boutique ad agency.

Yeah, you’d think that blogging about ads in china would be interesting; but its a bit harder than it looks. When you blog about advertising overseas (adsoftheworld.com; frederiksamuel.com/blog) the ads really speak for themselves. In China though, you need to explain an otherwise dull ad in a cultural context, allowing western readers to understand it.

I’ve always had a belief that you can tell a lot about any given culture by that culture’s advertising; cause what is advertising anyway? It’s businessmen spending HUGE amounts of money trying to communicate about their products in a culturally relevant way to the buyer. These businessmen run focus groups, research studies, etc. ad infinitum. This leads to the idea that by studying China advertising, we can begin tracing back the business logic to uncover modern China advertising/marketing/cultural insights.

CNR: Going back to you mentioning that LRB was set up as an alternative to Google AdWords for BA360, what is the relationship between the two?

Rand: LRB was originally going to be BA’s blog, but since LRB covers creative from other ad agencies, and stories/content that don’t relate to BA’s service offering, we figured to separate LRB from the BA brand. BA360 does have a blog, but it’s embarrassingly out of date, since most time is spent focused on LRB (in fact the last post on BA’s blog is a link to LRB). Generally, you can think of LRB being BA360, but with the freedom of not being restricted to the BA360 brand.

CNR: Since you’re the big cheese behind it all, how would you most accurately characterize yourself and your efforts with LRB? As a blogger blogging, an entrepreneur developing a business, or a business owner further marketing his brand?

Rand: LRB was originally about building my company, BA360. However, it seems to have built my personal “Rand” brand more than that the company brand, which is fine, as it’s all connected. The strategic intention is to consistently funnel targeted traffic on China advertising and marketing through the blog, and then fish for new business through implication/association (ie: various BA360 branding scattered through the site along with contributor bios referencing BA). It’s a soft sell, we lead with info that is interesting to readers – but always want to remind them that we’re here to serve beyond the articles.

The BA360 website. The kid? That's Rand...probably.

CNR: Recently, you’ve redesigned and piled on a lot of new social media features, sections, or spin-offs to LRB, including Blog Aggregator and Social Network. All of this has led me to characterize LRB as something of an aspiring “advertising media portal.” What are your plans and goals for LRB (or BA360)?

Rand: Yes, you are correct with the “China advertising portal” goal. One of the main challenges with social media I find is optimizing the value of generated traffic. My off-the-cuff-2.0 answer to this is to create other complements that will help retain some of the traffic and encourage interaction/retention.

CNR: With the exception of Sherry and her previous City Snapshot posts, I’ve noticed two new contributors, VeronicaYinise. So now the peon has underlings of his own, eh? Tell us a little about these new personalities and, if they haven’t been misbehaving, feel free to give them a little love here. and

Rand: Veronica and Yinise will be joined by Vance soon; they are all interns at LRB. Finding good stuff isn’t easy, and as you mentioned before, my initial posts in December were inconsistent. This is mainly because I’m juggling finding/writing content along with developing/pitching new clients, directing the design advertising and websites for current clients, building LRB, plus other in-house projects. To remedy this, I hired a bunch of interns over the last few months (Veronica and Yinise are the newest) to search for content online. One of my primary aims with anything I do is to pass it on to others to execute, so I’m in the process of training Sherry, Veronica, and Yinise to find good content and write and post it up themselves, though I still write most headlines. By seeing the results from their efforts viscerally, it motivates them to build their skills.

CNR: In the context of LRB being an advertising blog that helps promote BA360 the marketing agency, I understood the advertising case studies and City Snapshot posts, but I’m having a hard time understanding how the recent chinaSMACK-esque posts fit into the big picture. Are you expanding the subject-matter scope for LRB and why?

Rand: chinaSMACK traffic stats are amazing when you consider the amount of work put into the articles. In one day, Sherry found several great articles, translated them, and posted them up, and we experienced a significant traffic spike, so the simple answer is: lots of traffic / little effort.

When you look at the Google/Baidu entry, or any other good entry on LRB, they take a lot of time, and thinking, and analysis. Whereas with using chinaSMACK-ish articles, you really only need the ability to read Chinese, surf the Chinese web, and a bent sense of humor.

However, it does tie into LRB, albeit distantly. I always liked chinaSMACK for its translations of Chinese comments, or its “chinese people’s secrets” translations because it lends insight into how the modern Chinese think. A lot of times when we look at articles in China, we see this whole “Asia mystery” thing to it. That’s nice and all, but ultimately misleading. By translating comments from Chinese on LRB as it relates to interesting cultural stories, we’re also giving readers an idea of how Chinese people really are, to a certain extent. You can argue this is good content for marketers trying to figure out China, and who are looking for analysis beyond BA360’s perhaps biased opinion.

Additionally, by mixing in CS-ish articles with LRB’s normal fare, we can quickly build more traffic and awareness; which feeds the previous strategies mentioned.

CNR: As an advertising and marketing man in China who may be aspiring to be the next Tom Doctoroff, what are the top three things you think people should note about Chinese advertising and marketing?

Rand: I don’t assume to be anywhere near Tom Doctoroff’s level; if he were an opera singer, I’d be the guy singing dirty limericks on the street.

I can say a lot about advertising in China, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll just say this: Advertising in China is significantly different than advertising elsewhere; the message needs to be relevant on a local level. Yeah, that seems glaringly obvious, but too many times I see clients try to bring their brand culture into China, and it can be frustrating balancing client brand needs against Chinese cultural interests.

CNR: Do you follow any other English China blogs or websites? Which, if any, do you strongly recommend for anyone interested in China or the Chinese?

Rand: I follow a lot, you can check LRB’s media aggregator for a short list.

Rand is a bit camera shy, but if you’re craving more Randtasticness, visit his China Advertising and Marketing Insight blog at littleredbook or his boutique agency at BA360.