Marketing in China

March 4, 2009

It’s a fundamental tenet of depth psychology that we project our own views, desires and passions on other individuals.  After all, in projection is where love begins. We also project our values on other countries. In its most raw form this can be little more than shipping cultural stereotypes overseas, such as when a consumer marketing whiz spoke a few years ago about the China market as a nation of one billion armpits—he even got the math wrong.

We often forget what S.I. Hayakawa, the semanticist and senator observed: “the map is not the territory.” We do know that usually the more distant, “foreign” and exotic a country is, the easier it is load it with our projections. With familiarity we don’t always get understanding. After reading the December 2008 issue of the Journal of Advertising Research from the Advertising Research Foundation, I have no more excuses for cultural pratfalls, especially in regard to China.

A good bit of the volume is dedicated to “The Challenge of China.”  Editor-in-Chief Geoffrey Prescourt notes wistfully in his editorial that “the moment the Olympic torch was doused; China seems to have slipped into the recesses of our collective marketing consciousness. What was so viable, so powerful, and so persuasive in just a few short months, no longer captures our focused attention.” Perhaps one reason for this is that the government-controlled China television was so successful in delivering up nightly, for two weeks, the kinds of costumes, images and archetypes the West associates with traditional China. From a marketing perspective this was a brilliant strategy.

This issue explores what marketers need to understand about the psychology and the technology of the fast-changing China market. Jing Wang in “The Logic of Chopsticks” writes about working for a multinational client in the homecare field in a Beijing advertising agency. The team explored the ecosystem of the emerging Chinese web sites specializing in parenting and motherhood. Specifically, they were looking for posts that suggested some global insights about the “individualistic trends” of Chinese mothers. Jing Wang observes that international advertising agencies have little regard for genuine cultural differences. “In this particular case, foreign marketers, in general, were eager to convince themselves that young Chinese mothers were revolting against the system, becoming ‘self-expressive’ (and increasingly feminist) about their idiosyncratic needs.”

The danger, the author notes, is the outsider’s vulnerability to dualistic perceptions: private versus public; capitalism versus communism, and the like. Hayakawa would call this thinking a two-valued orientation; it is either this or that. What people often miss about China is its rich culture of flexibility. Mother can live in both the traditional and modern worlds and move between the two with confidence and alacrity.

The last twenty years in China have spawned countless instances of foreign marketers missing the advertising mark. I remember talking to an agency head in Shanghai who recalled a Toyota billboard campaign in China. It was a fine piece of creative work. The only problem was that the imagery somehow showed—and it was apparently subtle, China being subservient to a Japanese logo. Symbols matter and matter a hell-of-a-lot in China.  

“The Challenge of China” contains a piece about what constitutes offensive advertising in China. Researchers found that “If Chinese people find that their peers are offended by advertising, those who have a high susceptibility to interpersonal influence will agree with their peers’ views. In other words, embarrassment (or offense), in part, may be driven by concern for what others are thinking about them. Focus groups showed that if a subject is too personal, evokes fear, shows cultural insensitivity, or implies sexism, it is considered very offensive for the Chinese.

There is abundant, valuable information in this issue. Let me close with a few words about an article on creating brand names in China. Creating brand names in China can be full of mystery, uncertainty and sometimes humor (When I was in the bicycle business I wondered why so many bikes there were called Flying Pigeons). The researchers write that the “name-giving tradition has been extended into Chinese businesses. Numerous studies of branding have demonstrated that Chinese prefer names with positive and fortunate implications, and they often wish to obtain ‘luck’ based on supernatural beliefs.” A name is closely related to individual fortune.

Congratulations to the editor and contributors for a fascinating and detailed look at challenges facing the marketer in China.

For more information about this journal please go to www.thearf.org

Charles McCullagh