Tencent's Cannes "China Day" Marks China's Transformation from Follower to Leader

Tencent, the leading providers of Internet value-added services, yesterday hosted China Day in Cannes Lions and won its first Gold Lions Award, the Cyber Lions, for its QQ Alert. Reflecting China's growing importance in the global brand, advertising and marketing industries, China Day is the only national signature program to be held on Cannes Main Stage. The recognition of the QQ Alert: Hope Never Dies, reflects Tencent's ability to connect others, empower society and bring good and warmth to the public through its technology. Several divisions of Tencent Group are participating at the event, including Tencent Online Media, Tencent Social Ads, and the Tencent AI Lab.

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"Today's China is more commercially attractive than any other country, full of both fascinations and frustrations. No one can afford to ignore it, much less bypass it. International companies need to find a way to develop connections with China," said SY Lau, Senior Executive VP of Tencent, Chairman of Tencent Advertising, Chairman of Group Marketing and Global Branding in his China Day opening speech. "Today, China is the world's largest mobile market with 695 million mobile internet users, and the number is still growing rapidly. As one of the most mobile-oriented countries in the world, China's digital economy accounts for as much as 30.61% of its total GDP, and its growth rate is the world's fastest. Today, digital transformation is penetrating every aspect of Chinese society, and digital is the norm. China is transforming from a follower to a leader in the digital economy, becoming a true 'Digital Nation'," he continued.

SY Lau revealed three key drivers of innovation - ABC for short - through which the business and creative world will usher in China's digital economy; Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Cloud Computing, respectively.

Tencent has been researching and developing AI technology in four fields: machine learning, computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing which will help to enhance our leadership in content, social networking, games, and cloud platform tools. And in each field the company has already made a number of developments. Tencent's "Fine Art" go-playing robot won the championship in Japan's Computer Go UEC Cup, and Tencent has applied AI technology to improve voice and facial recognition, social advertising intelligence and many other fields. Meanwhile, the company has created related technology available to government, banks, logistics, construction and other partners.

 "AI will be the core force driving the evolution of marketing in the future. The focus of marketing will evolve from 'Big Idea' to 'Big Data', and from precision marketing to predictive marketing. The only way to advance in our quest towards the holy grail of marketing is to embrace this trend," said SY Lau.

During Cannes Lions, Wei Liu, Director of Computer Vision of Tencent's AI lab, spoke with Jean Lin, Global CEO of Isobar, on the main stage. Dr. Liu said: "AI Lab is striving to improve AI's abilities in understanding, decision-making and creation. AI can help us understand consumer demands better and faster. In addition, AI will help generate a strong emotional connection between brands and consumers, deepen their interactions, and create an unprecedented marketing experience."

With the continued development of the Internet and the rapid growth of data capacity, Big Data will become the ultimate competitive advantage for businesses. Tencent has years of experience in massive data operations, and the total storage of its data storage center exceeded 1,000PB, more than that of 15,000 largest libraries, including the US Library of Congress, in the world combined. Tencent ranks first in China in terms of the number of uploaded images and video views, as well as mobile "red envelope" cash gifts.

Cloud Computing is becoming the core infrastructure supporting the development of the global digital economy.  Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, suggested that future companies will process big data on the Cloud with AI. "Cloud Companies" are trending not only in China but in the rest of the world. Today, many companies are no longer limited to simple 'webification'; instead, they are rapidly moving back-end operations and data to the Cloud. Tencent focuses on providing enterprises with cloud computing infrastructure, along with AI, location-based services, security and other capabilities to promote the development of China's digital economy.

Traditional fields such as finance, government, public security, transportation, media and manufacturing, including heavyweight clients Taikang Life, CGNPC and Sany Heavy Industry have chosen to migrate Tencent Cloud. In 2016, revenue from Tencent Cloud services more than tripled from the previous year, and the growth rate ranked the first among Cloud service providers.

During Cannes Lions, Tencent hosted the China Day Signature Program commissioned by China Advertising Association. During the China Day forum, Kiki Fan, General Manager of Planning & Implementation Department of Tencent Online Media Group; Zhang Minyi, Deputy General Manager of Tencent Social Ads ; Yan Xuan, President of Nielsen Greater China; Asmita DUBEY, Chief Digital Officer, Consumer Products Division, of L'Oreal China; and Chee-Guan, Group Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy Shanghai, conducted discussions around topics such as how to leverage big data into insight, turning consumers into fans and how Tencent data sits across the entire customer journey.

Tencent's first Cannes Gold Lions Award win came with the Cyber Lions for its QQ Alert: Hope Never Dies, which leverages the 861 million monthly active users on the platform and AI-driven facial recognition technology，developed by Tencent Youtu Lab，to help find children missing in the Golden 72 hours, as well as years later. To date, QQ Alert has publicized 286 Notices for Missing People and helped locate 176 children and reunite them with their families. QQ Alert also won the Bronze Lions Award in the Mobile category.

Recently, Tencent Social Ads and Cannes Lions entered into a strategic cooperation to bring digital social networking to Cannes. Through multi-level cooperation, the two parties have driven brand marketing innovation in the mobile social era; and together with domestic top-caliber creative talents, the two parties launched IDEA + Creative Lab to promote the integration of Chinese brands with international creativity. During Cannes Lions, Tencent Social Ads promoted the exchanges among top creative professionals at home and abroad by sponsoring The Clubhouse. Cannes Lions also cooperated with Tencent Social Ads in launching a WeChat official account so that audiences who cannot attend in person can enjoy highlights of the event.

As the world's largest annual event in the communications, advertising and creative industry, Cannes Lions draws attention from major enterprises worldwide. This year, 15,000 guests from more than 90 countries participated in the event.

Founded in 1998, Tencent is one of the leading providers of Internet value-added services in China. Tencent provides core services including social platform, digital content and Internet finance, and, through strategic cooperation and M&A, has created an ecosystem that "connects everything". Listed in Hong Kong in 2004, Tencent has recently achieved a market value of more than US$300 billion, becoming one of the world's top ten companies in terms of market value. Recently, Tencent was ranked eighth on the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, a list put out by WPP, the world's largest communications group.