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.