Red Scarf () is a London-based

online media In mass communication, digital media is any communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronic ...

and digital

marketing communications Marketing communications (MC, marcom(s), marcomm(s) or just simply communications) refers to the use of different marketing channels and tools in combination.Tomse, & Snoj, 2014 Marketing communication channels focus on how businesses communicate ...

company. The company provides a British lifestyle website produced in Chinese for a Chinese speaking audience. The stated aim of company is to help British companies plan and execute online marketing activities, which include offline stores for the Chinese speaking community.

History

Pauline Guo, a MA Marketing Communications graduate from

London College of Communication The London College of Communication is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. Its origins are in education for the printing and retail industries; it now specialises in media-related subjects including advertising, animation ...

, University of the Arts, founded the company in 2012. After graduating, she started Red Scarf as a blog on

Sina Weibo Weibo (), or Sina Weibo (), is a Chinese microblogging ( weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily ...

, with Pauline posting about United Kingdom life, news and advice. She has been described as "the most useful account for Chinese students in the UK". Red Scarf surpassed 6.7 million online users in 2019. As of January 2024, Red Scarf has merged with the French-based company ECENTIME. Together, they aim to be the first and only platform of their kind. As part of the family, Red Scarf maintains its unique brand identity while utilizing ECENTIME's vast network and cutting-edge technology. Under the leadership of the newly appointed Group CEO Yangke SUN, a renowned expert in recommendation systems, they are focused on helping UK brands expand into the Chinese market.

About

The company owns and manages a United Kingdom lifestyle website, written in the Chinese language, under the Red Scarf name. The stated aim of the site is to help people from

Mainland China "Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...

who are currently living in or visiting the United Kingdom. Red Scarf is also on two Chinese social media platforms,

and

WeChat WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ( zh, c=微信, p=Wēixìn , l=micro-message) is an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment mobile app, app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile a ...

Name

Its readers commonly know Red Scarf as "honglingjin", which is a direct translation of

red scarf The red scarf is a neckerchief worn by young pioneers of several communist and socialist countries. In the Soviet Union, it was known as ''pionerskiy galstuk'' (пионерский галстук, i.e. 'pioneer's tie'), in Vietnam as ''khăn q ...

in Chinese. It is a symbol of the international communist

pioneer movement A pioneer movement is an youth organization, organization for children operated by a communist party. Typically children enter into the organization in elementary school and continue until adolescence. The adolescents then typically join the Yo ...

and a part of the school uniform worn by primary school students in mainland China.

Website

The website covers seven different categories: shopping, deals, restaurants, life, holiday, visas and events. It received over 6.5 million unique visitors in 2017 and, on average, 540,000 unique visitors per month, with 65% of traffic generated from the United Kingdom and 24% from China. The reader demographic from the latest 2017 Red Scarf Readers Survey shows that they are mostly females, aged 18 to 25, study undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the United Kingdom, and mostly reside in England. In 2017, the Red Scarf official website launched a preparation guide named the '2017 British Red Scarf life guide report'.

References

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External links