The Grey Market

Word Up

This will no doubt be a boring post for many, but I'm in the States and catching up on a lot of blocked sites that were just too difficult to interact with through The Great Firewall of China. So here's my Blog Wordle thus far.

If anybody is in Los Angeles and wants to hook up for a coffee, drop me an email which is in the 'Soundbite' section to the right of this post hopefully.

I'm also going to the PSFK conference in San Francisco later next week for a few days so if any of you Stateside progressives need your inspiration and thinking tackle topped up, you need to book your tickets soon over here because those PSFK boys and girls keep it fresh every time.

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.