While most every western based online service company, blogger and social media outlets fight it out for a share of the domestic market you should be thinking global!
That’s right think global is not a unfamiliar term and we hear it all the time however the new spin is that we don’t necessarily think global with English based content and new media. For instance Chinese and Koreans between the age of 18-35 are well trained with English curriculum as part of their traditional schooling. They can read and write English probably better than some cultural groups here in North America. What they lack however is the immerse cultural experiences. For instance Chinese consumers spend billions per year on North American brands with a very large proportion of that spending on new media…
According to a 2006 UPS Consumer Preference Study on China…
“More than three-quarters of Chinese consumers who plan to purchase books, music or video intend to buy an American DVD this year…”
This is where I see the opportunity. Individuals and organizations who are able to see an opportunity with their English only products and services that both meet the demand for immersive western culture while making it fun and interactive will take advantage of this new market.
McGraw Hill’s BusinessWeek Magazine was one of the first to see this opportunity while I worked with a Canadian company who developed an online edutainment platform. What we developed for BusinessWeek was a online experience using their English only content assets to bring global news and opinion to a non-English audience who wanted to enhance their existing English skills while having fun and learning at the same time. The product launched as BusinessWeek Business as a Second Language (www.businessweekbsl.com).
While others are fighting it out over the same limited set of users savvy individuals and companies should look to international markets especially if they have something that falls into the edutainment space. There is gold in them there hills only the gold is across “the pond”.
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