JaysAnalysis: Andrew Korybko on Hybrid Wars & Faux Revolutions

Excellent analysis by Andrew Korybko on how power learns from lessons, mutates and builds upon historical success. The volume levels are all over the show which is a frequent issue with Jay Dyer's recordings but as I don't subscribe to his work I'm not really entitled to complain, though I have no idea how subscribers can endure it. I often have to skip his work as the caller is too quiet or Jay Dyer is too quiet. 

Today the caller is too loud. But the info is hot.

Energy Harvesting, Artificial Intelligence & Karmic Debts

If you like this I recommend the other interview that caught my attention from the Ammach people as very worthy of consideration.

Gangnam Style - Cultural Revolution, Peking Opera Remix Version

If you haven't come across the Gangnam Style meme yet it's huge in Asia with over 160 million views for the original from Korea below and even a few million for the Thai version. I like the Chinese version best though. It pokes fun at China's history and that's a side of China most Americans are clueless about.

Update: Britney Spears learns Gangnam Style. Dress Classy, Dance Cheesy.

Urrrr....

Sucky Fucky?

MyCrAsian (Crazy + Asian) Mother

Consistently brilliant. Human, Insightful. More over here.

Bloated Asia

I'm really pleased to have come across this today as it stimulates some of my own thinking and saves me boring you with too many words ( OK Andrew?). A little background for my motivation on this subject is that each time I walk past local schools, as the children are piling out, I'm noticing that the number of fat kids is rocketing and in some instances constitutes the majority of the students.


Obesity is a problem now, and it only took one generation to make the jump. 


The leap between skinny and irreversibly fat kids took only a few short years in Asia. I've noticed it from Beijing to Manila but here in Thailand it feels particularly poignant as I remember a time when 7-Eleven had hardly any dairy products and people didn't know what cheese really was. These days if I want to re-conjure up the elegance of a thin and beatiful race from the early nineties I need to head out into rural Thailand closer to the villages and the paddy fields, where I'm magically sent back to that bygone era. One where rice is the staple diet and a few morsels of meat with lots of vegetables keeps them looking so fabulous.

As an adman I find this troubling and yet another hurdle (on top of sustainable wealth creation) to reconcile doing good work with good intentions.

Paul French who I've long admired as a thoughtful China commentator is interviewed here by another China afficianado Jeremy Goldkorn about his new book Fat China. They both dissect the issue in a manor which is contextually interesting even if you're not in Asia but interested in adding dimensionality to what's going on with expanding waistlines of the Occidental races: Europe, U.S and Australia. 


The most compelling point for me if you can't spare 10 minutes to watch is that, we advertisers idealise children as chubby when selling to Mom children's food and drinks, and  yet when they turn to 'Pepsi' teens we suddenly try to sell them the Heroin-teen-chic matchstick-thin lifestyles when biologically the toothpaste is out of the tube if one is serious about reversing the obesity process. 


This is morally wrong and a point I hadn't thought of before; one I'll never let slip by again.  

Asian Poses (cont)

I managed to hook up with the worlds most opinionated sod for lunch today and as he managed to snap me looking tres pimp outside The Oriental in Bangkok last time I thought I'd take a picture for posterity too.

Before I knew it he was doing that puffy cheeked V signed shit that is all the craze with school girls across Asia, and that he claimed he picked up from doing some bollocks he calls distributed digital ethno but which sounds suspiciously like surfing the net to see what J Girls put up on their bedroom shelves.

I thought it was all a bit 'last week' and that everybody knew it was puffy cheeks PLUS double cat claws this week, but it's hard to keep up with these things after 15, so I cut Rob some slack and just had a terrific lunchtime rambling chat, with one of the best in the biz.



Read his blog regularly because it's one of a kind and has a lot of common sense in it which we all know isn't that common, and it's also a piss taking, best one liners in the comments section, provider-of-laughs you'll find on the net, if you keep a regular eye on it.

You'll learn something too.

Asian Poses

I've had a terrific day today as I managed to crowbar myself off fantasy island where I'm staying and make it to Hong Kong central for a full-on slap-up English Breakfast 'power meeting' at the Flying Pan (I went for the 'Fly Up' with extra side of English sausage just creeping into the picture on the bottom right) We had a terrific time because I'm a breakfast connoisseur and when tanked up on English Breakfast tea can wax lyrical with Shakespearean soliquoys or even riff on with an Iambic Pentameter (when pushed )about stuff like plate sizes, Croydon fry ups, Kate Moss and hygiene (it's all true), Audrey in Croydon who keeps it real, her ex partner Rob who is a FASHION HO (but a bit of a genius with it) responsible for educating me both on my degree and more importantly on Vivienne Westwood and the punk ethic among many other things.

I even launched into my recently formed "Hierarchy of Nuts" speech because that's the stuff that fills my head at random points. Do you want to hear it?

No I didn't think so but tough luck, as I made sure that Sherri (who is doing something very interesting with a boutique agency network start-up and her interactive head honcho endured my ramblings) I think I should be sharing it with you too.

It goes like this top of the nut food-chain is the Macadamia and below that is the Brazil, Walnut, Almond or Pistachio (interchangeable) followed by Hazlenut, and then there's a whole sub hierarchy of peanuts starting of with dry roasted and shell steamed (Asia only) and ending up with ready salted and then those awful lighly salted partly husked (is that a word?) cheap peanuts that cheapskate bars serve thinking they're doing us a favour when in fact they only serve to remind one of the poverty of taste being endured but more importantly I felt compelled to share that the Macadamia is the fillet steak of the nut world -  juicy, meaty, tender, and I think we concluded that the likes of the almond are not fully represented if the whole cracking procedure (fiendishly difficult in the almond's case) is not brought into the hierarchy metric. Good point I thought when it first raised.

Anyway, it's important to have an opinion on things as a a planner and the nut allegory only serves to demonstrate that. My planning mentor was alway one for making a game out of these things and would endlessly press gang us with impromptu list-games about books, movies or whatever he deemed worthy of inspection. This was before the ubiquity of mobile phone internet of course but it's a loss we should be aware of.

Lastly, because it was such a grand fry up I insisted on a photo of the glorious spread. I thought briefly, and not for the first time that black pudding is in my case an unavoidable  addictive reason for not giving up meat products (along with bacon, but not sausages) because despite considerable moral and ecological arguments for giving up meat I don't think I can - which fills me with horror . I have the ability to break down and weep or write poetry about black pudding and also chuckle as I did today when Sherri asked what it was made from. Pigs blood innit.

Along the way, I shared the Asian Poses websites for the pic above, and so I opted for the cutting edge vogue, of the puffed cheeks looks coupled with the rapidly fading Churchill V sign. You should try this shit because Asians (particularly girls) are well ahead of the game when pulling camera poses and it can rescue a bad pic or easily replace that awkward scowl that is meant to convey modesty but looks like glumness in many a random occidental snap. Here's the web site again for the afficianado.

Hong Kong

Well it's been a while since I was last here, messing about on a Tokyo story that wasn't directed by Ozu (小津 安二郎), but I'm very happy to be back and also frankly checkout of The Conrad Bangkok, where I could have holed up for another week while running up a large tab of Pellegrino popping antics.

I've still got my India trip to do and that's going to happen but in the mean time I'm sort of back in love with Hong Kong because I'm reminded how much more breadth there is here. I've often pointed out that if one were to choose the Sinified capital of Asia it has to be Hong Kong both historically, business-wise and geographically. Tokyo is too hermetically sealed as a culture even though I love all things Nippon. Korea too is probably hipper than the former colony now as they just do their own thing with TV and K-Pop production (check that video out on top - three times and you're hooked on pop) which while inspired from elsewhere is definitely on another level. But yet the Koreans or the Japanese aren't known for their multilateral view on things. Xenophobia some might call it but all Asiaphiles will have noticed that this is one area where full marks aren't scored across the board, although I've always appreciated the Malaysian vibe on that point or maybe I've lucked out meeting the best quality people in Penang.

In any case, while no longer the most achingly hip. I still think Hong Kong deserves the moniker of 'Asia's capital'. It reaches all around for cultural influence and yet its past is undeniable, its present is still formidable and the future could well be more than just a Shanghai satellite. Of course Shanghai is the capital-of-currency in China and is arguably the Leviathan of Asia; definitely an exciting city to live and work in but yet for me it's the more sedate Beijing, the seat of power and home of the tanks that more fully represents the bits of China I like the most. Intellect, power, thoughtful, less greedy than its sister Shanghai and in lots of pockets more sophisticated from it's exposure to the international diplomatic ranks.

Anyway after an awesome flight with Emirates who over delivered on food (God dammit that Tuna lemon grass starter really kicks ass) and service (largely gay yet cheerful and authentic) I checked into Hong Kong immigration, once again during a time where people were sporting white face masks (the last time was during the SARS crisis, it's that deja vu thing all over again).

Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok is yet another awesome Asian airport (built on reclaimed land from the sea) and like Suvarnhabhumi, Incheon, Beijing, Changi and all the rest is yet another reason to appreciate this part of the world while Heathrow whinges on about terminal five (are we there yet?) and the US whinges on about terminal decline. It's the Asian century isn't it?

 One more point that contrasted nicely was when, complete with squeezing luggage, I met up with friends in the Jardine House (the one with the circular windows) in Grappa's Cellar located on the basement and was treated to a full-on live swing band and swing dancers and it occured to me that this semi amateur gang of people who were getting off on their own subculture that nods in respect both musically and in dance form to the 30's and reminded me heavily of Malcolm X's autobiography (completed by Alex Haley) with mad scenes of lindy hopping (and the nutmeg and the hookers and finally the Nation of Islam) and I remembered that despite really really liking my trips into the heart of the slums of Bangkok (where I find out how the country ticks) and the sizzling neon lightlife so close by that there's so much more culture happening in places like Hong Kong and which possibly explains the myopic and insatiable nosiness of the Siamese who largely don't even discuss the big two of health and education because a nation of car park whistle blowers and maids is exactly how the priviliged wish to keep it. Priviliged.

I've deliberately left out Singapore in this post because Singapore is unique for me from an Asian perspective and I don't want to spoil it with what should ideally be written within the Island State. And I will.

But lastly as I made my way up the hill after the ferry ride, with a heavy and loaded suitcase in the dripping humidity of the Island I'm staying on; stripped to the waste and ranting in the gloomy night about hiring a car for the final leg of my journey ("there are no cars on the Island Charles") I finally made it up the flights of stairs with the artifice and efficacy of anger to pull that bitch of a suitcase up the steps one by one and yet when I was finally shown to my room I looked up and saw the light and smiled because it doesn't matter where I am it's only a matter a time and then one by one I'll knock you out.

,

Sold

 

I'm really happy to have found a buyer for the Burma painting. It's just been put in the post to Daria Radota Rasmussen of Social Hallucinations. All proceeds will go towards the Google  Disaster Relief in Myanmar fund where Google is chipping in to the effort. Nice one Daria. Thanks.

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

loremipsum

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.

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.

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?

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.

Bearbricks and Banal

There's a genre of Youtube video uploads with young, specifically doe eyed Asian girls staring into the camera or miming to Karaoke which I come across a few months back and then saw subverted over at Asi's, with a youthful American guy doing a very funny parody. You can check out the definitive curator of these Youtube uploads called mingming19, although I don't feel inclined to post the latest development which is a eurotechnopop (annoying nosebleed) variant that makes me feel a wee bit ill.

But what I do find interesting is the crossover of the Youtube visual to T Shirts pictured above which Gustavo and I came across last week at Xidan. I like this and I think its more interesting that the inspiration is citizen generated and shifts from digital first to the real world after. Note the 'BEARBRICK' in the young girls hand which is huge out here and across Asia at the moment.

Looking for a Planning Director

We're looking for a Planning Director to work in China and run a department, but not directly for me. Which is probably a very good thing. If anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment or go to the 'about me' me section for my email. Japanese recruitment agencies might want to pick up the phone unlike these fools.