It's a Brand Jim But Not As We Know It

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One of the dilemmas of working around the world, particularly in developing economies is that while its fun and constructive to join in the online debate of brands and how they work (yawn?) there is little chance of reciprocity when sparking off any dialogue about how Asia often subverts the brand model. Here they do, and the rules frequently get broken because the hierarchy of needs are different.

All too often the pressure is on to get some interruptive wallpaper out swiftly. In low media literacy societies, the relationship between the customer and the product or service is only cemented by interruptive marketing communications within a media aperture that is recognizably not inexpensive (the trust dimensions of this, is a factor the FMCG boys know all to well in developed economies). It also touches on low involvement processing which is a fave topic of mine too.

I'll give you an example, earlier this year we won the Red Bull pitch and one of the nuggets of 'cor blimey' data is that they sold 1/2 billion cans last year in China, and will sell 3/4 Billion cans this year. The marketing people for that particular enterprise have far more pressing matters than brand dimensions, tautological backflips and transactional analysis or even displacement theory. 50% growth a year suggests the advertising fulfils a different role than say just defending market share.

No, clients like this need something 'pretty'; up and out very sharpish. Getting it done is more important than getting it done well for many of these people and even sophisticated and experienced brand stewards know the score on that one in Asia. You snooze, you lose.

Now the clients of booming businesses might enjoy the pseudo intellectual game of brand discussions and even pretend they get it. But the reality is they all too often don't and are seduced by the intoxicating sales uplift of trading-off short term efficacy against long term brand building. If growth is anticipated to be 50% or more the key issues are distribution and their commensurate B2B sales through CTN's, Supermarkets and Gas Stations.

If you're struggling with all this I'll make it plain. You're not making an ad for the guy or gal who is going to use your product. You're making an ad for the all to often creative Philistines who give the nod on distribution through a new channel. They don't want to see anything unusual. They want to see that expensive media aperture (TV & Print) used sensibly, as in 'the sensible shoes' they buy for their kids to go to school.

Put another way, they want to see an ad that looks like an ad. The bubblegum bullshit they have been raised to believe should flood the commercial break and by its very definition is a cauterized version of brand speak and the worst excesses of the Western marketing communications model. Hey, we sold them that shit don't get uppity now.

Trying to get some creative through is like interrupting a commercial break for a quick breakdown on the meaning of Christo and when he wrapped the Reichstag. (Thanks Eaon)

Now that doesn't mean it applies in all instances, but it is a general concession to the rough and tumble of commercial life when dealing with clients who don't really know how hard a brand has to fight for during tough times as it's the good times that delude us. Which is a universal condition.

This is especially so in Asia because many have never experienced protracted tough times. It's all been economic growth apart from a blip in '97, and it's the seasoned marketing people from countries that have weathered a few economic cycles that grasp it's bravery that takes marketing communications a step further, that makes it work harder.

The problem is only exacerbated in the instance of say Red Bull where there is no competition whatsoever domestically. It's so easy to make money it's almost criminal but that isn't my issue here.

While the above constitutes the 'real politick' of doing business in low media literacy societies (read your Mary Goodyear if you live inside the M25 or NY) coupled with explosive economies, I also think there are some interesting brand workouts for budding planners who will by definition need to be less myopic than the couture of working on the brand catwalks of the creative centers of the world. It's all going to get a bit more complicated and a good thing too. Those days are diminishing fast and a good example of trying to figure out what the future holds in store is best brought to life by the QQ car.

QQ is an internet company. They are LARGE as in "my God you're not going to put that inside of me are you"... but joking aside they do a lot of net stuff here in China including a messenger application we are all so familiar with. Oh wait. I forgot. Asians are far more likely to use their personal messenger for work than us white folk checking their emails to get stuff done. They like the bite sized nature and gossipy way of achieving things this way instead of the linear flow that the occidental and so called scientific model has given us and will seemingly one day break us with, given the volume of email that is required to get stuff done these days.

Going off topic briefly, email is broken. Don't do it. We deluded ourselves with thinking that immediacy is the same as efficacy. It isn't, and we probably just need to Twitter our way through projects. If you miss a tweet somebody will say something that contextualizes the momentary ignorance on your part, but that's another post for another day or maybe one for Johnnie to pick up on because he's a lot more clever than I am about stuff like that.

Anyway, QQ are massive and they do all the social media stuff that we know, love and are familiar with except for one crucial point. QQ make more money than Facebook or Myspace. They do it using the virtual currency model that is closer to Second Life, as well as ringtone download stuff, and for a popular internet brand they also do something that I love to see and have blogged about before with the YouTube-to-T Shirt phenomenon which is that the QQ brand has actualized itself in real life as the yellow car above.

Trying to get your head around a manufacturing model that is launched by a communication model is quite interesting and raises important questions about the nature of monolithic and explicitly endorsed and of course discretely endorsed brands. I quite like the way that Asia fucks around with this stuff and in principle sometimes they create a new brand question through sheer mashup ingenuity or circumstances.

Many of the branding 'rules' apply with these scenarios (or identifiable contexts) but reading some planners talk about brands so confidently, and as to what constitutes good advertising by experienced practitioners in the field, often reveals little more than pontificating and parochial dare I say it, pastoral brand observations from a global perspective.

One of the annoying ticks of U.S. internet culture as you will well know is that our Stateside cousins often think the internet starts and ends in the U.S. You will know this from the forms we need to complete asking us which state you come from or what zip code we have. Equally annoying is the notion that a few planners in London or in other creative hotspots are capable of talking about what a brand is when they've little experience of anything other than the familiar. Anybody got anything to say? Usual rules apply in the comments section below.

One last point raised by Kaiser Kuo on the phone just now, because I talked about the imitation, duplication and copy ramifications for newly industrializing Asian countries in my Chungking Express post over here, but just to muddy the waters a little more, Kaiser reminds me that the QQ brand is owned by Chevy who deny they ripped the name off the QQ Internet guys or indeed that the car model is a rip-off of the Chevy Spark of the Daewoo Matiz. 

It's gloves off marketing over here and there isn't much time for air kissing with brands.

Scamp

One of the best advertising blogs on the net is Scamp. You probably know that already but I've learnt lots and lots from his Tips on Tuesday specials, of which I will be the first to shell out some cash on the book when it gets published because it's required reading.

Scamp did a post recently about cheesy endlines and asked his readers to contribute their own which is always a healthy reminder that most marketing people who make these increasingly meaningless decisions are far less capable of recognising creative and/or believing their own 'value proposition' bullshit than they would like to think. The proof is in the pudding so to speak.

Anyway lo and behold I was flicking through Insider ("The classic magazine for high society in China") and once I got bored of rich folk telling me why they are rich, I shot through it quickly and reached a classic ad on the inside back cover that I feel compelled to post about.

This is quintessential Asian advertising, in so much as it's far beneath the marketing person at Sofitel to hire a 'farang' or a 'laowei' or a 'gweilo' or a 'gaijin' to check the spelling. There's a reason for all this but lets not dwell on that because even though I'm in Beijing the ad is for for travellers to Thailand, and no better example of what might be called superlatives and 'aliterative copywriting' could exist. Take a look.

I know its easy to have a dig at this sort of stuff but if I was proof reading this ad in a foreign language, I'd hire someone who could actually do it. Anyway right from the git go (after that monumental corpoate(sic) cockup for a headline) we have 'ideally situated in the heart of Bangkok's central business district'.

No it isn't.

It's out in the sticks and if you want to stay in a decent Bangkok hotel it's either The Conrad for the Diplomat Bar, The Peninsula for the ferry ride across the Chao Phraya, The Sukhothai for its elegance (and its Central Business District location between Sathorn and Silom) or maybe The Oriental if you like fawning waiter service that can remember if you like one lump or two after two decades away from the joint while they crawl on their hands and knees in the Authors lounge where Somerset Maugham kept rent boys waiting in a line while he wrote toptastic prose (OK, that bit I just made up; he just stayed there). The Bamboo Bar is top notch Jazz singing at The Oriental but the rest is claustrophobic.

There's more. I've discovered it's actually "Ideally situated on a motorway"

What else? Erm 'Ideally situated' written twice in the first two paragraphs? I thought that was one of my blogging specialities! Is this plagiarism? Have I started a new trend? Is this one of those god damn fucking memes?

Anyway click on the pic and read it for yourself because it ends on that old chestnut. "Who says you can't mix business with pleasure?" I mean that sort of language is for the wankers who have butt plugs fully strapped-in, isn't it?

I see at the end they've gone for a strap-on line of "Simply Thai, Absolutely Different" Isn't that the same as "Sim Same But Different"? (Oh don't get me started on that one)

I'm probably going straight to hell for this post but seriously, I could probably write a better headline in Thai for Sofitel, if I put my mind to it. ("Tam ngarn sudyort, yu sabai sabai?) but the main point is to go over to Scamp, because if you like the craft of advertising he'll put you straight on a few things.

If anyone from Sofitel is reading this I've no regrets, as the Sofitel in Hua Hin which I've frequented more times that I should have, is equally up for a good kicking and just because it featured in "The Killing Fields" doesn't mean its up to scratch. The Elephant bar is possibly the dullest lounge West of "Heart of Darkness" in Phnom Penh.

Don't believe me? Ask Somerset Maugham about Conrad.

The End.

Wallpaper - Beijing

Here at Wallpaper towers, we've gotten tired of the Spa at Badem Wurttemberg and just a little weary of those lush cherry tomatoes from Riverford Organic Vegetables so we thought we'd pay a flying visit to the new seat in the house called Beijing. To be sure we were surprised at the breath taking giantness of it all in an endlessly rolling suburban setting and a square that holds a million but what really caught our eye was...

... OK you can see I think the Wallpaper talk sounds like air kisses on cocaine. They got away with it for a while and Tyler Brûlé has moved on but still manages to do big time carbon footprint for the F.T. and Monocle which is like The Economist with Miu Miu shoe straps.But I wanted to talk about a different wallpaper that has really knocked me sideways. The following pictures are some structures which were knocked up in a matter of weeks and in one memorable instance tore a road up and made a new one, just for the construction; pretty much over night. But the point I want to make is that someone has decided they can't be completed in time for the Olympics and so they've come up with the ingenious idea of just wallpapering a skin to the outside so it looks like its ready to ROCK.

I call it velocity construction and you gotta see it to believe it.Chutzpah eh!

Dicky The Dealer

That little sucka in the middle is for sale to go towards Burma but I think I'm going to take it to LA and meet some rich white folk and ask them to sell it. I'm sure it would go for a lot more of a modest price than here (the flash has bleached the orange a little in the middle but it is oil on canvas). 

The Chinese girl is mine. Any comments for Dicky The Dealer? (Note the red thread running through the family in the top painting).

China Internet - Podcast

The BBC World Service has been blocked on and off here in China of late, and I miss it a lot. Anyway, as ever with these things (and a bit of displacement theory) its got me sniffing around NPR which is terrific, and doing lots of interesting content that I hadn't checked out for a while. Here's one of theirs on the internet in China.

The Bird's Nest

One of the great experiences of Beijing is the sheer velocity of construction which has had me pondering for quite some time on the implications of whole neighbourhoods flattened overnight with new superstructures going up faster than I've ever seen in my life. I've already talked about the CCTV building by Rem Koolhaas which we will never see its like again (and he knows it) but the other supermodel on the catwalk is the Birds Nest, or the Olympic Stadium. It's awesome. Period.

Here it is from some photography I took the other day. Notice the traditional peasant (migrant worker) in the foreground. I chose this pic out of the 30 or so I took because like the washing below it represents something about modern China that Noam Chomsky talks about a lot in this podcast here; the human development index for China is still quite low, around 70th if I'm not mistaken. 

There's a lot of people still running around on loose chained tricycles shifting bricks from one place to another. 

Wait till all those have offspring that want to go to college, drive a car and double China's GDP with the 'Chinese Dream' (One World One Dream).........Yeah, we need to rewire our economies and the answer might be most candid in Asian economies today. 

Not tomorrow.

I live only a stones throw from the Forbidden City and a short walk from Tiananman Square. Beijing is often a sooty and polluted overcast metropolis. It's also, in its own way the most tidy I've ever come across for its size. I've never seen a broken glass, a crisp packet or an empty packet of cigarettes on the road and that's because there is no litter. But still there are quaint signs of a rapidly disappearing life, and though I live amongst the political elite (and those who did them favours) The washing is still out on the road drying in the occasional spell of glorious sunshine. For when Beijing shines. It really does shine beautifully.

 

Sorry about the lack of links and layout at the moment as I'm using the new version of blogger and playing with new features.

200 People Complained Out Of 60 Million

Meanwhile the Northpole might disappear this year; thanks Fox News (aren't the best family values, the same ones where the kids get a safer world?). I always get angry with people around me most stupidly when it's a mirror I should be holding to myself. Tip of the Youtube dear stalker hat to the Herdmeister.

Burma

Burma is a very special place for me. It's very poor and like Tibet, the last thing it needs is dramatic regime change or the different states will just slug it out like they did in the Balkans. If you read Monocle recently that article on Kosovo might help you understand because its great but also deeply depressing when the tribes get all....tribal. The best chance it has is for ASEAN to do SOMETHING but Asians have a culture of non inteference to the point where I've seen people run over by a car in Bangkok and nobody helps. It's not evil, its just a cultural fault. We have lots and lots too.

However China pretty much uses Burma as one of its Southern Ports so they have a lot of influence. But probably not enough to tell the Generals they are scum. They may not want to burn their bridges either.

So yesterday I finally bumped into my dealer again. I've been avoiding him because he sold me that Pop Communism painting and even though he's a nice guy, he's a bit pushy on the sales but yesterday was unavoidable so I did the decent thing and took a look around his gallery. That was a mistake because I found a painting about Burma there.

A Chinese person doing a painting about Burma takes a sort of internationalism that is hard to grasp to those outside this country. My heart melted and I bought it instantly. But I've been thinking about it, because I don't necessarily need to stack up on paintings and actually I put a deposit down on another painting that is about China and will be with me for the rest of my life. More on that later.

So I want to repay Burma and Rangoon back for the haunting beauty of Bagan and the tranquility of Pyae by offering this painting for sale. All money to the Burmese even if I have to fly there and stuff some dollars in someone's hand because I think they might be hit by a famine after that cyclone/hurricane/tropical monsoon that wiped out a 100 000 or so. 

It's pretty desperate as I understand things.

If someone knows how to turn this into a meme/contagious content I'd be very grateful.

Untitled

Skype

I know planners shouldn't shine lasers in their mouths but Creatives need inspiration. That's our job.

Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra

We're very lucky to have this building barely two minutes away from my house here in Beijing . I've been making the most of it and dropping-by on my electric bike and buying random tickets for the Ballet, Pianists and Orchestras. It's called 'The Egg' locally for reasons I can't figure out.

Last Monday a colleague and I went to see the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and they were seamless. A real transportation away from the outside world, conducted by the hugely talented Yannick Nézet-Séguin from Montreal. A classical superstar in the making , along with a sublime performance by the pianist from Shanghai called Yundi Li who was definitely on another level when he played a Prokofiev piece, Piano Concerto No. 2 in g minor, OP. 16 which is hideously dark, complex and confrontational. I loved it.

They get very annoyed about filming anything in the Egg (actually China loathes anything being photographed if they think copyright is being infringed - which is ironic) and even shine a laser spot on people during a performance if anyone is caught doing so.

Anyway, you know I like to shine, so I sneaked some of the two and half minute ovation they gave to the conductor with some never before seen panoramas (I should work in advertising shouldn't I?) of the auditorium. It's world class and here it is.

Just in case you've got loads of time on your hands there's an expression I picked up in Thailand from a P.R. professional, that also applies here in China. Do it first and ask for forgiveness afterwards. This is how we roll as Sam might say.

Average number of Asian searches

Thomas Crampton makes the witty observation that perhaps the Malaysians should help the Koreans with what they are trying to find.

JC Penney & Saatchi Saatchi

This is a beautiful ad. It feels more wholesome than prurient to me. I understand that Saatchi & Saatchi are saying this ad is nothing to do with them but they are nonetheless trying to take it down.

Trashvertising

I couldn't help laughing at this bag I saw in Xidan over the weekend. I'm probably going straight to hell aren't I?

There's an anthropological/linguistic/ethnographic study in the waiting for this little number above. I'm being serious because actually it's unacceptable in many Asian cultures to wear this and yet the intended irony has gone off-skew with this example I saw in Beijing. Lauren or Angus might have a bit to say on this.

Everybody loves a bit of Exciusive design don't they? Just splendid!


Or can we safely blame Moschino for this kind of stuff.

Lifestyle Advertising

I was reminded of Rob's recent post on lifestyle advertising when I passed by these posters last week, because the people responsible for this kind of stuff evidently have no style and even more scarily, no life whatsoever. I'm hoping someone who can read Chinese might enlighten me on the copy. So bad it's good really. The first pic is worth an enlarged click in case any talent companies are on the lookout for some people in need of help; both clients and erm the talent.

Mentos

I'm very critical of using the word creative in China when its often a case of the Emperor's new clothes. So I want to plug an ad by BBH Shanghai that I saw at the AAAA awards in December. I liked it then and I like it even more now I can see some more strategic thoughts behind it.

Crucially I think it gets across some critical points about the product such as mouth feel, proximity to an open mouth and lastly (most weakly) a new product attribute of the green filling at the end. It's not brilliant but it is good and its fun. I'd expect this sort of creative to come out of Thailand usually.

Now if I could only get the commercial for children's clothes where the strategy, endline and creative was about "Children are illogical little things". It smelt like it had good planning on it. Hat tip to Madison Boom for reminding me.

Quake Talk

I wasn't in China for the Sichuan Earthquake and so it's only when I returned and started speaking to people that I formed some opinions about what this meant and how it is changing China. It's a really big deal because the last earthquake (Tangshan) in 1976 was concealed to the outside world, and to this day revelation of anything that isn't government ordained is a de facto secret.

However I found this picture on Wanfujing high street the most solemn and in case it didn't make it to the Western media I've posted it today because I think it sums up both the extent of the grief that the parents of these children must be feeling and equally it's the most sensitive topic for the Chinese government which has now been clamped down on in terms of discussion in the broadcast media, which is the quality of the school buildings that fell so quickly in that area.


Some of you may recall that I've railed against the quantity not quality approach that seemingly blinds a lot of the business community, including the advertising brigade who avoid any discussion that managing the growth rate and its reciprocal greed is what the business is about. That the any nod towards idea innovation is in the main a desire to be associated with the creative economy. This doesn't mean that China hasn't been an unprecedented success in its idea of how to succeed from a nation state perspective.

I've also recently managed to talk to people who are closer to government and there is some interesting and unsubstantiated gossip that Premier Wen Jiabao whose popularity rating has climbed since the tragedy, leapt on a plane after the quake which occurred at 14:28:01.42 CST and was in the perimeter of the damage area within 2 hours with a loudhailer and some power to get things done. Not enough power it seems because his immediate call for the military to be deployed through the highest office of Hu Jintao was ignored for two days due to bureaucracy and possibly the potential of political capital being made.

This is unsubstantiated rumour, because even getting a reluctant nod on the names involved was hard enough and I didn't realise until the second time round who was being indirectly held accountable by the Chinese who like all people share information with each other. It's always worth bearing in mind that Chinese culture in the 21st century is both thousands of years old and yet at the same time is just finding its feet. More on that later as I've got a few outstanding posts on how China ticks from what I've learned so far.

Cement

It's not just the cement. It's the entire industrial 'eco' system that goes with each scraping-the-sky-tower. I hope this graph puts Asia into context for a few people. Managing the growth is a feat in itself. Via Rich and Shanghaiist and The Oil Drum.

NB. Last night while riding my electric bike around the diplomatic area I noticed a large queue on both sides of the road to fill up with gas (petrol). Today I see the price of gas is going to rise in China and that just this news dropped the price of a barrel by $5.

This comes under volumetrics doesn't it?

Feelings

Some of you are probably familiar with my assertion that particularly with TV commercials it's most powerful when conveying feelings not messages or rather messages wrapped around feelings rather than the other way round. It's probably why Pipes taught me that 'tonality' was 'very important' among many other things. I'm a bit stuck where I swiped this german visual for dimensionalizing (is that a word?) 'feelings'. It's primarily in German but worth translating for those who need a model to work from. I speak prettty crap German so it kind of worked quite quickly for me.

Fink about the money!

I was over at Zeus Jones blog a few days ago, and Adrian’s post on monetization of social media got me thinking about digital again, and whereas I usually fire off a long comment when that happens, I reckon it’s time to write some thoughts down over here.

Firstly I can’t bear that word monetization. It’s the English part of me I guess, but it just feels crass that everything has to be monetized. I’m reminded of this each time I watch Fox News, because all the bullying of any (pinko Commie bastard) liberal guests they bring on to bait is won by their vulgar but implicit idea that if profit is not made then its not of worth. This is the point where I think the United States has gone slowly wrong in the last 50 years because the values it was built on are not about profit to the detriment of all else. OK I got that off my chest. Back to making money! We’ve also all got bills to pay. The environment of course being the biggest!

Yes of course there should be some sort of transactional value exchange model between social media platform providers and the people who frequent them. It does however feel like the old media model of huge profits and mass market broadcasting persuasive powers has disintegrated.

Micro-transactions work very well here in China for the most popular platform QQ using a virtual currency that is paid for in hard cash. (Kind of like a Second Life model) but this is where I like to think social media should embrace a number of revenue streams and think about revenue diversity because it’s obvious (to me) that good old fashioned bread and butter banner advertising works very effectively in Facebook. I generally love the ad to the left of their pages because they are eerily effective and are mainly China location based services making them highly relevant. In short they work. I like them even.

So we’ve got micro-transactions, and then traditional banner advertising. I like to call this distractive (contextual) advertising because if it’s good enough, then it distracts much like print advertising does today, interruptive advertising which is generally disliked but is based on the commercial break and includes pre-roll advertising as well as the hated pop up and even ideas such as “get this digital mobile phone for free as long as we can give you x number of ads a month”

I also think there are more innovative ideas that could be considered such as tiered or rewarded internet activity. Adrian has done a fine post about social media but as he correctly points out most people are hanging out on the net to get away from dull content and patronizing marketing communications. However the tiered subscription or rewarded activity is based on a model that really needs to embrace some ideas that Adam Crowe was, I think, the first to bring my attention to. The notion of data portability. The information accumulated by internet usage should belong to the customer not us.

If we (or Google or the ISPs) do the unthinkable and give our potential customers their own internet usage data to trade with us we then are truly opening up ideas loosely called the free market economy. It’s probably more American/United States than apple pie and fanny packs put together now that I think of it. This then opens up our potential customers to benefit from their data portability in the best way possible. The provider they choose to allow receipt of marketing communications from. It’s a bit like a bazaar. If you don’t like the voice of the trader or the goods they are selling, you can stay clear of them. Imagine a world where in return for premium content we permitted ourselves to exposure of specific marketing models. If the advertising sucks we make a decision about whether we can get by with lower value advertising-free content or not at all.

Either way I think we are moving into a new era of marketing communications because as an advocate of 'the medium is the message' it's clear to me that I never got ‘spammed’ while watching a commercial in a movie theatre, direct mail is lower down the food chain because its so much more cheaper to indiscriminately ‘target’ (using the language of old) with geography or basic demographics acting effectively to the point where a 3% response rate still makes it worthwhile.

But here’s the context. The internet is both a place where I can watch a Cannes winning Youtube clip and also open up my mail to be offered a larger penis or a fake Rolex watch. That never happens on TV or even direct mail and so the value of the internet is diminished by this activity. There are innovative ways around this if advertisers want to raise the perceived value for a short while. Like for example if I was P&G I would buy all the available online advertising space within a specific digital media aperture. Maybe the whole of the NYT or The Guardian for a few days. Just wipe out every ad in the online editions and put one sponsor message on there, advertising some spot removing clean or dandruff clearing shampoo. Something relevant seems appropriate!

There are ways to be creative on the internet, although finding the clients bold enough to do stuff like this is tough. Anyway in principle the point I want to end on is that it's not us who should be targeting the customers, it’s the customers who should be targeting us.

This is after all the 21st century and not the 20th. We had two world wars in that one.

Update: Adam links to this which is just the sort of example I'm talking about with P&G. i.e. buying space that would normally be filled with ads.

Beat her into submission

Welcome to the latest agency from WPP. George Parker knows exactly what he's talking about. See you at Cannes next year but only if you punish me. Go on, I'm a consumer...I like.

Girl

Via Leland Maschmeyer who has been on a real roll this year with some of the most progressive thinking in our business or the shape of our future business. The video highlights for me what I think is probably one of the more concrete and tangible shifts of the 20th/21st century that is for the better: The emancipation of women in general.

I also happen to think that pitches should be done like this. Charts, strategies, quantitative data and qualitative dimensions mean nothing unless an agency can articulate how it's going to speak on behalf of their clients. The video above is exactly how we should be doing it in my opinion.

Is Google Stupid?

Baidu is the search engine of choice in China. Google has 27% market share here and it is growing, but Baidu has double at 55%. There are plenty of reasons, that extend from cultural inclination, history and product offering, but the one area that Google consistently fails to embrace is the notion that people can be driven to internet services from what I like to call hard media. Time and again I've seen very simple and effective advertising for Baidu. On Friday while taking a subway trip I saw yet more examples of invitations to use Baidu and took a quick picture.



That's a search box in Chinese underneath the English name with the search button on top to the right of it. It's quick, simple and effective. One of the dimensions of media that is talked about very little outside of the creative execution is the notion of trust and credibility. Just buying that media space says a whole lot to prospective Chinese internet search engine customers (think 'we're Baidu and we can afford this space), and I've been irritated for longer than I've been in China that Google has failed to grasp a window of opportunity by using simple and traditional media. I've noticed that the paper tray mats in KFC were also being used by Baidu for a co-promotion recently and the reason why I think Google has slipped up is that I really wanted their Google Talk feature to become more popular. It could have done that and created momentum for user growth in more of their products too, quite easily.

If the internet is today more understood to be about the power of community, then it smacks a little of brand arrogance not to approach people and potential communities in the media that they may have exposure to more easily, or even prefer! Its us that are the digital evangelists. Most people have lives to get on with.

I absolutely love Google and their products (Google RSS Reader kicks ass). There's no doubt that they have been one of the most exciting and innovative companies on the planet. They are also phenomenally successful, a veritable black swan, but I think they have missed an opportunity to make friends, by not talking to people outside of what we are increasingly glued to. Our computer screens.

It would be nice to hear their brand voice elsewhere. The medium is after all the message and the internet isn't the only one that matters. Or even should.

One last point as there is more depth to this issue than I want to get stuck into here, is that Baidu is better at finding free mp3 files which is a contentious point, but in terms of efficacy I understand that Google is better, and for sure in English Baidu's best search result on me is by a long chalk unrepresentative. Yet still my Chinese colleagues prefer Baidu in some contexts.

You know Google; if you're listening, sometimes people like to find what they believe. Not believe what they find. Baidu is better at that function in China and that is the marketing challenge for Google here.

The Official Olympic Cheer

In the event that an overwhelming urge to display anomalous feelings of group euphoria in a synchronized or coordinated fashion overwhelms the Chinese spectators during the Olympic games the official Olympic cheer is here to the rescue. More via Sina

I reckon Charlie Gower with burrito in hand doing a Mexican wave would be just the ticket too. Sometimes wish Mark was out here absorbing this stuff. Via Danwei

Update: Will over at Image Thief has a post with the memorable official line "This gesture demonstrates to the world the charisma of the Chinese people and our enthusiasm"

What in the world can stop a G-Class?

Erm....Peak oil and climate change spring to mind. Lovely ad though.

Brand Snot

This isn't. But it is part two from last years seminal video that caught the mood of the times

Chunking Express

This is a long and sweeping post covering Asia and Creativity and Survival. There's no way I am even close to being completely right and there will be gaps, mistakes and contradictions and could easily go on for much longer, but I think I've connected enough of the dots to write this down rather than endlessly repeat what I've been asked about through umpteen Skype/Coffee Shop/Phone conversations around the world even though it was a pleasure to do it one more time for my good man Mark in the early hours of Saturday morning (It was closer to 3 AM Mark, I lost track of time!)

I'm a committed environmentalist, green marketeer, sustainable energy man and yesterday, as promised, offered free B2B marketing consultancy to a Chairwoman I met on Friday night at a swanky hotel bar, who is trying to raise funds on AIM for biomass fuel resource development in China. So cut me some slack on buying this unecessary phone because it is now the stimulus for a long overdue post that I started with Quantity not Quality back here.


OK, so the phone is pictured above. I first saw one owned by the manager of a stall in a Xidan shopping mall that does those funky T Shirts with twisted slogans I love so much. She was kind enough to answer my questions about where to get one, although they were no longer available, and finally Gustavo emailed to let me know he'd spotted them at Silk Street Market.

I have no real desperate need for a secondary phone except as a backup, but here's the skinny. Its shaped in the style of those first 1985 models called the Motorola DynaTAC, only a lot smaller and it is in my opinion, the definitive ironic style accessory. But lets talk facts. It comes with some more stuff than the original despite being a fraction of the original size:

Extra Memory Card
Stylus operated PDA
Bluetooth
FM Radio
Two Batteries
Media Player
Camera
Sound Recorder
Video

and....... most importantly; a SOLAR PANEL on the rear for charging the battery, meaning I leave it in the sunshine and she's good to go. Oh yeah, and it carries two SIM cards so I can have a double life which is perfect because even though I turned down those alarmingly low paid but discrete approaches by people who insisted on being implicit and not explicit about what branch of government they worked for all those years ago, this phone has a telescopic detachable zoom lens so I can observe Al Qaida operatives long before they spot me, and way after they were called the Mujahedeen and funded by "The American Dream" to win the cold war that was also won by outspending the Soviets on Nukes instead of funding guerrilla fighters who wanted to protect their religion and culture. I digress but check the telescopic lens out.


Freaking neat huh?... Back to the point. Asia, and China specifically is staggeringly good at duplication, imitation, reproduction, cloning and replication. I don't mean that pejoratively at all, except that in general it appears very few give a fuck about the environment, but it's not like any fool can do it either. For a start, it takes an entrepreneurial mindset, lots of financial resource, the expertise to duplicate the latest technology, reorganise an existing manufacturing process, disrupt the in-process inventory model (which is a LOT of work), reconfigure supply side distribution management and believe it or not, try and do some marketing.

So even though Asia is brimming with the sort of creative output that humans all round the world are good at when given the right environment, the reality of the region and China specifically is that it does the industrially unprecedented, through scale and volumetrics, plus a monoculture that pretty much insists on a uniformity of mindset and collective action rather than the pluralism and creative tension of the Western model kicked off by ideas from Empedocles and Democritus. China is still closer to the pre-Socratic Eleatics in thinking and while I generally embrace all cultural idiosyncrasies I believe China should think very very seriously about how to embrace pluralism and how to work it together with collective endeavour outside of the neoliberal capitalist model for reasons I'll round up on once I've dusted off creativity.

Now there plenty of exceptions outside of China, of brilliant creative marketing executions. There are however insufficient Pan-Asian successful branding case studies to conclude that out of a few billion people in the Far East, only a handful have figured out how to build on their strengths rather than embrace the reality of not being innovation leaders. Lets list them. Singapore Airlines (had it, lost it), Sony (erratic), Honda (W+K London) erm Samsung/Epson/Panasonic/Asus et al (yawn) and shall we say that'll be the Daewoo? Because when I worked in London at HHCL, no creative could ever deliver a pun as an idea. Oh and by the way Hello Kitty is Asia's third strongest brand.

So back to the product because that is where Asia knows how to rock-it from a manufacturing, pricing and distribution angle. The phone above is a 3rd millenium mashup and I love its solar panel credentials (it's no toy feature) but there is nothing in it that was invented outside of an occidental environment. Hat tip to Charlie Gower for his post that highlighted it was the Japanese at Sharp in 2001 who put a camera into the first popular cellphone. Digital photography though is rooted outside of the country that implemented it first successfully.

Charlie Gower is also one of the most creative idea driven people I know and memorably suggested at The Endurance in Soho, that mobile phones cameras need a small detachable light connected by wire, for taking decent night time shots. He's right too. Lighting is in the top three things for a good picture with composition and subject matter. A serious Asian brand will never do it first because it hasn't been done elsewhere. Sony. You make the best camera phones. What are you waiting for?

And there my friends is part of the challenge.

Whether its manufacturing or marketing by the time it comes to that old chestnut called creativity the absolutely last thing on a serious Asian brand's mind is taking a risk. Monoculture is all about being risk averse.

The marketing psychology over here is all too often 'If everyone is doing the same shit, then its more than likely to be working'. If I go out on a limb I'm risking the whole shebang for some marketing glory. Why on earth would I want to do that? The agencies are quite happy to go along with the illusion of creativity because the remuneration for getting a regular kicking from their clients is worth it. Senior management just shuffle the spreadsheet finance numbers and it's those lower down the food chain that are bullied the most anyway.

Now I could go into the reality that there isn't much need to stuff Asian ads with the usual superlatives of shiny white teeth and happy sterile family stereotypes. In real GDP growth economies here in Asia of say 7% and above all we have to do is bash people over the head with a monologue and make money. Repetition, increased sound volume, general aspirational lifestyle imagery and a million wasted hours talking bullshit about brand values, propositions, transactional analysis (just kidding), rational versus emotional, link testing, likability versus memorability and the rest of that old marketing bullshit that invariably settles on the word passion because of course the client and agency believe the brand is ALL about PASSION. Of course they do! It pays their fucking mortgages for Christ's sake.

How do we move on? If Asia and China specifically wants to move on to having the glorious aroma of a brand that performs above and beyond product specifications, there is plenty of fertile territory that deeper analysis of the DNA and marketing context offers. So often the really sticky stuff that is insanely interesting about Asian brands are the humble roots of the people who started them, the scalability, the risk taking, the commitment and the reasons they put on their spreadsheet marketeer heads on each morning. For their families and for their dreams. The power of dreams as we all know is quite something which is probably where I should begin to wrap up because the reality is that while I know great brands can be built here in Asia that can go global and attract a lot of customer love we are all facing a much larger problem than flogging the latest tech gadget. The economic model we are using is broken. It operates by extracting resources from the ground, converting it into products and then disposing of them at an exponentially faster rate because that is why technology controls us and not the other way round.

The imperative marketing challenge for Asia and China particular if you are listening because it all rests with you until the Indian demographics kick in is to charge more for less.

More ideas less stuff.

More cost less consumption

How do you do that?

You build proper brands that stand for something your families would be proud of and that means embracing the word creativity and innovation with a view to doing nothing less than rewiring our economies and the corporations so that we have something to pass on to the next generations.

Its really rather simple, and very very complex at the same time.

There's also a lot of thinking some of us are doing about why digital is more sensible for explosive growth populations and why analogue is probably a more intelligent use of resource for the rich folk.

Say it again

When I see citizen created content like this I begin to feel that part of the job of an agency 2 point something is to find an innovative brand association rather than write a brief for content.

Why not write a brief for the media companies to use it in such a way that people connect with the authenticity and creativity that is sprouting up on Youtube and elsewhere? This is probably heresy to the creative community, but in my view this piece of content is better than 90% of advertising. A creative media association would be way more effective.

Via Angus who consistently digs up kick ass digital on the net.

Why Advertising Needs Its Head Examined

I was in Dubai earlier this week and had a terrific time. I'll be writing a post about it very shortly as there is a lot to share and a few assumptions that need clarification about this very cosmopolitan part of the world.

However, in the mean time it just struck me while departing through the airport that while it's all fine and good to have a decent monologue with customers beating our brand chests, the whole point about the 21st century marketing and Web 2.0/Digital dialogue is that if brands aren't able to shift into that dialogue mode when circumstances demand, then they end up losing so much of their effort.

Their credibility, their hard work, professionalism, vision and outlook. Everything is contextual (yes I know 'yawn') and if the only context that agencies can think of for their clients are rose coloured Ray Bans with duty free fragrance, then they are aggravating problems and pathologically avoiding the solution.

There is quite possibly nothing more patronising then seeing the output of 20th century marketing automatons delivering a monologue on the virtues of a brand when the reality is all too evident that agencies and marketing folk are a bunch of money grubbing air heads that don't know how to turn around a problem into an a golden opportunity.

As Rob says quite rightly, a customer complaint is a brilliant opportunity to create a brand advocate. I say a problem is when we really need to start talking to customers not just invading their social media/digital arena when it suits us.

All the time these poor folks were dealing with the reality of 3rd millennium air travel and the inevitable delays, a screen the size of three billiard tables above them was spouting forth the usual distorted advertising superlatives that are perfectly applicable when everything is ticketyboo (A Hindi expression "tikai babu," meaning "it's all right, sir.") but are a shameless example of why most marketing blows chunks big time, and why advertising specifically is seen as only slightly higher up the food chain than political rhetoric.

I absolutely love great advertising and I'm a great admirer of Emirates the airline, but if any brand or agency isn't talking about ways to open up a meaningful dialogue with their customers during the inevitable part of life when things don't go according to plan then very simply they are inevitably wasting money on advertising 1.0 and pissing off people with the sort of bad manners we reserve for bores at dinner parties that dominate the conversation with the sound of their own voice. I've got 20 ideas in my head how Emirates and Dubai could win over everyone of the carpet sleepers I saw that night but you can rest assured that filling that stadium screen with more chest beating 'hub of the world' content is way more important than getting some digital/web/advertising 2.0 solutions into the mix.

Making profits isn't as hard as it made out to be. Losing customer loyalty and the money that goes with it is even easier.

Spread The Love

Designed in response to people who champion Pownce, as per last nights dialogue. Via Paul Isakson and No Chucking Around.

Travel - X

Danish Travel Management System Commercial

Chanel

Ed just posted about Chanel and so I've got to get this off my chest. Chanel are kicking retail ass at the moment in so many ways that I can only describe as creative tumescence pour moi. 

I passed their flagship store in Bejing and pulled out the Canon to snap their window display. It's on another level and frankly I could write about just their shoes for a few hundred words. 

I realise that luxury is the opposite of a lot of values I espouse on this blog but never confuse true beauty and design genius with high bills.