Chinese Brandmess

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My 3 months stay in Beijing has overwhelmed me with material to write on cross-cultural branding... so much so, I haven't written a word on cross-culturalbranding.com until today while in Japan waiting for my working visa. I will now be working in partnership with the largest brand design company in China, ZhengBang (www.zhengbang.com.cn).

The photograph above taken by Miwa Masayuki in the city of Xian, illustrate perfectly the chaotic brandscape in which an identity designer operates in China.

I write here about 3 myths I had before visiting China.

Myth #1: Branding is not valued in China.

On the contrary, branding is of major importance but operate under different set of value. The Chinese population is fascinated by logos, marks & emblems. An enormous respect is generated from these images. It automatically says: "if you have a logo, you must be someone important". This idea of having a logo=respect probably originate from martial branding. The tactical aspect of designing a brand is more important than the strategic aspect. There is not much doubt or cynicism attached to the way a company look vis-a-vis a company's actions, quality of services & behavior. The concept of company or product persona does not resonate if it is not strongly attached to the national identity or the communist party identity (the party & the nation may appear as one from a western point of view, but this paradigm compete for the Nº1 place in the mind of Chinese citizens).

Myth #2: Chinese knows very well western brands because they copy them.

Copying a product & copying a brand is really not the same thing. Familiar brand tags & sign are everywhere, but the value assigned by the population to these products does not go beyond the price-tag. The majority of the cosmopolitan population have no idea how foreign brands are positioned relative to other brands. The "brand story" has not reach the popular culture. Codes of global communications we believe to have become universal & common references are very limited. The only field where the western brandscape matches somehow the Chinese brandmess is sports, thanks to basketball & Yao Ming. Luxury, Technology & Entertainment have almost no common ground. Names are forgotten, values are mis-categorized, the nature of a brand is passing through the grinder of mono-cultural interpretation. It is a cross-cultural anarchic work of reverse engineering, re-creation & re-interpretation... which make western foreigner cringe or laugh out loud depending on the situation. Major foreign branded house sees the situation as a major loss of money & minor or commodified global brands sees it as a major opportunity to grow locally from a clean slate. Eram for example, a cheap shoe shop in France is now view as a luxury brand while Ferragamo is struggling to sell beyond foreign visitors. Flipping fashion magazines, we can see a major engagement from editors to "educate" the Chinese public with the desire to "addict" them to the concept of fashion... something not yet achieved... fashion & coffee seems to be in a competition of which of these 2 will first sweep the nation.

Myth #3: China is experiencing a similar brand perception evolution as Japan in the 70's & 80's.

Just arrived in a new country, no-one escape comparing what we know with what we don't know & make extraordinary wrong assumptions. Having studied the evolution of brands in Japan & noted the success of some strategies, I tend to look for solutions that have worked there & could work here. In 20 years, brand Japan as evolved from "Made in Japan" to "Designed in Japan". Considering how "Made in China" is similarly currently view, one could assume that 20 years from now "Designed in China" could replace the current impression. I now tend to think, it will not happen but I also believe that "Made in China" will be replaced by a specific quality which will become the positive face of Brand China: "Engineered in China". With the current media outlook we tend to focus on the negative of Chinese dramatic developments & excesses. China is facing tremendous set of problems many industrial countries have faced in the past. But China often faces these problems at monumental scale dwarfing the experience encountered at some point by other countries. These type of problems do not favor design, idealism, elegance or perfection in the detail. Priorities tend to go to solutions with the most effective effect engineers strive for. Engineering is also deeply implanted in the historical culture of China & its aesthetic tendencies. The opening & closing of the Olympics were a marvel of engineering... not so much of design & creativity. Design is probably the most important value China needs to implement to enhance their engineering skills & capabilities. There is many untold engineering stories that only concern Chinese & their own set of problems. I for example discovered that the first computer typesetting software & laser typesetting, encoding & compression protocols have been developed by Chinese & used by Japanese for their own writing. I used to be frustrated by the few number of Japanese fonts available & roman font integrated in them are usually badly set. In China, the catalog of fonts in Chinese character is incredibly large & very well organized... it is remarkable considering that China use 2 different writting systems an average of 6000 more characters than Japanese & have vectorized this enormous collection within the past 30 years.

There is much more busted myths to talk about especially about doing business in China & socio-cultural aspects. In 2 weeks I will be back in Beijing. Let's hope I feel less in awe with what I experience & find a bit more time to write about it.

Comments (2)

While I have not been to China and may be completely off here in making the comparison - I remember being fascinated during my stay in Japan that an individual's personal signature was really meaningless. At least it was not respected as a mark of unique identity as we do in the west. Instead when the Japanese do business they stamp their name with an "inkan" stamp that is carved by a professional inkan maker and acts as your unique identity on paper. After reading this blog post I'm curious about your ideas as to how the "inkan" culture translates into the importance of branding in Asian cultures. Do you think there is a relationship?

Thank you Carmen for your comment.
You are right, inkan are a major thing across Asia... It's the original block print & in China especially, the centerpiece of their "cultural soul" as they themselves like to put it.
In terms of "branding", the inkan is used by art critics to validate the value of paintings. During the processing of my Chinese visa, they asked for the inkan of my company in Japan... I provided a round one (the director's seal)... they wanted the square one, because according to them, all Japanese company have a square seal. I had to do the paper all over again.