Wildfire on Bridging Brands and 40K Consumers in China

While working towards an MBA at INSEAD, Christoph Zrenner and Benjamin Duvall were also busy hatching ideas for a startup. Observing the Chinese market and how international brands were having difficulty reaching out to local consumers, Christoph and Benjamin set about creating Wildfire, aka XingXingHuo, a combination of a proprietary network of influencers and a technology platform that allows brand managers to create authentic word-of-mouth between their target consumers, listening in and impacting conversations between friends, both in the real-world and on internet social media.

Wildfire has worked with some of the biggest consumer brands like Johnson and Johnson, Kraft Foods, Campbell’s Soup Company, and The Coca Cola Company. They just closed their Series A round of SGD 780K (USD 603K) two months ago, led by IDEAS Ventures / Innosight Ventures.

This is a follow up of their first round of angel funding raised over 2009-2010 of SGD 550K (USD 425K) from 12 angels (mostly from Singapore) on a convertible note basis.

The spark of fire that is every individual influencer

The key driver behind the success of Wildfire is the community of members, called Sparks. They are consumers who are “demographically diverse, with passionate hobbies ranging from sports, to fashion, food, electronics, and more, Sparks are eager and excited to share their experiences with others“.

On their About page, Wildfire says that “nearly 20% of every conversation is about a product or service, whether a new local coffee shop, an innovative running shoe, or a cutting-edge cell phone”, which means that there is a lot of opportunity here for brands to go so right, and so wrong at the same time.

At the time of investment, Wildfire’s network of influencers consisted of 40,000 profiles and Wildfire intends to grow this to 1 million profiles within the next 12 months.

While Christoph and Benjamin believe that Word-of-Mouth works for any product or service, they are focusing Wildfire’s efforts to scale the process that is standardized for packaged consumers goods (Unilever, P&G, etc.) to reach and serve this network of influencers.

One of the benefits that consumers get in return is free products that they like, making them more likely to engage with the product and spread the word about it.

Why do Christoph and Benjamin believe in Wildfire/XingXingHuo?

“Advertising today is broken. Traditional media competes for consumers mind and heart by emotionally salient but inherently simplified messages that interrupt our lives, that are mostly not relevant to us at the time, and that we never asked for and don’t trust.

There has got to be a better way to change perceptions and behaviours. The value of a brand is vested in the minds of the consumers, and Wildfire recreates this connections, marketing with the consumer, not at the consumer. As consumers grow more sophisticated in China, Advertising will have to change.