Becoming a successful marketer requires a mix of skills, knowledge, experience, and the right mindset.
They involve trendspotting, creativity, communication, analytical skills, technical skills, problem-solving skills, sales understanding, and knowing how their efforts align with their goals. Mix and blend them together to create a marketing genius.
The internet is a crowded shared space, where things are noisy. To stand out, one must be unique to be able to stand out.
'Tony' is a man from China who becomes an internet celebrity, drawing customers from across the globe with his entertaining product demo skits and earnest, function-over-fluff scripts.
Tony Zhu went viral by catching the low hanging fruits, bring the attention to himself, and nailed it perfectly with his marketing messages.
As a multicultural chameleon, the internet is amused.
He has left the internet entertained.
Reels after reels, Tony uploads videos to his social media accounts, where he acts with an ever-growing collection of accents and a knack for entertaining audiences worldwide. From switching between personas effortlessly, Tony’s creativity and charisma have propelled him into the spotlight.
But unlike most content creators who entertain their audience through superhuman feat, lip syncing, dancing to some music that just went viral for some reason, going viral for the wrong reason, showing more skin or doing some adult jokes or activities, Tony is just a neon sign salesman doing his job.
Regardless of who he is and how he looks, Tony managed to captivate the internet with his charm and humor.
Calling his followers "homies," the face of LC Signs is literally a marketing genius.
Read: Chinese Live Streamer Banned From China's TikTok After Earning $14 Million A Week
What he does best, is make use of existing, viral videos, or some others, and stitch them with his own video, where he markets his neon lamps.
While the method isn't exactly novel, and that a lot of content creators have stitched videos of others with their own by using "fair use" as a way to add context, Tony creates a video, but bring the attention all to him.
He did this by skillfully impersonating famous people, speak in different accent, and essentially silence the woke culture in a spectacular fashion.
As a result of this, he created the sensation where people are actually waiting for his response, rather than enjoying the original video he stitched before his.
And uniquely, with lots of other content creators reviewing his marketing entertainment, many of his videos receive even more views than the original videos.
Tony’s humorous skits and functional product demos have attracted customers from across the globe, from Asia to Europe and Africa.
While some of his videos can be offensive, as he ridiculed the woke culture with his anti-transgender and homophobic approach, the idea is to make it an entertainment and not personal.
So instead of sparking heated discussion about gender rights, his viewers view his videos as something to laugh on to.
It's all about entertaining his audience, not provoking them.
The China-based Instagram star has built a loyal following because of this.
"I graduated majoring in Business English in Mainland China. I started [with LC Signs] in March 2022, and first joined the company as a salesperson, actually," the 25-year-old man from the city of Guangzhou said.
"When our company was running a promotion on the Alibaba platform, I was chosen to be on our company's live show, and then there was a strong demand from audiences. Since TikTok had [began to go] viral back then, our boss had chosen me to be responsible for the brand-new department in the company – the social media department. And that’s how we started!"
As for his strategy, he works to stand out on the internet by keep doing what he and his employer do and make it better.
"Working on better accents and working on more interesting, more attractive videos to provide our customers with emotional value. We want to find more effective ways to interact with our audiences and create more user-based content, for example, sharing customer’s experiences on our products showcase. And developing better products as a manufacturer, of course," he said.
As for he could imitate Donald Trump or speak in various accents, Tony said that his mother language is Mandarin, but that he has been learning English since primary school. After he grew up, he learned Cantonese, and more accents by "watching a lot of movies, talk shows, or TV episodes."
