Response Newsletter – Issue 17
Response Newsletter – Issue 17
Four elderly Chinese men sat around a bent wooden table playing mah jong, smoking wilted, unfiltered cigarettes and cackling like old women through yellow, nicotine-stained teeth. The game and its attendant cheering section (the table was surrounded by a small contingent of the Chinese Medicare crowd and a young teenage boy) was situated to the side of a dirt walkway that led to a four story apartment complex in the university area of Beijing.
Not far from the afternoon’s mah jong engagement, urban streets buzzed with the traffic of the city’s ten million inhabitants. Cars, cabs, bikes, pedicabs, scooters, afoot, – it is a city with people in motion.
Indeed, Beijing is booming. With construction cranes everywhere, the city’s skyline looks like a scene from a low-budget science fiction film portraying an invasion of twenty story alien robots. Friends building a condominium development in Clearwater, Florida tell me the cost of cement has increased 25% in the last year due to demand from China.
And cement is but one example of the fact that the most populous nation on earth is now hungrily consuming foreign products and services with relish. Despite the contentious and highly publicized subject of Chinese exports – textiles in particular – imports increased 16% in the first nine months of 2005 and should approach $650 billion for the year. Not pocket change.
The great paradox of twenty-first century geopolitics is the fact that the planet’s most thriving free market economy is controlled by those anti-Maoist home boys at the Chinese Communist Party. Perhaps they should rethink who is adorning their money. 
The truth is that while military, political, and human rights issues abound, in the grand scheme of things, The Buck seems to be in the driver’s seat in the good ‘ol PRC – People’s Republic of China.
A comparison helps paint the picture. The Gross Domestic Product growth rate for China, one key measure of economic well being, expanded at an annual rate of 11.6% from 1990-1997. The rate for the rest of the world was 2.4% for the same time period and 3% for the US. And it didn’t stop there. China’s National Bureau of Statistics just reported the ninth straight quarter of economic growth in excess of 9%.
For companies looking for new markets, 1.3 billion potential customers in a stably expanding economy can look, eh… let’s call it appealing. And with 103 million people online and growing at 800,000 a week (!), you can skip the Beijing brick and mortar gig – at least for now. But Chinese cyberspace is not without its own domestic players. Internet marketing in China has been booming like everything else there. In the last five years, Internet advertising has grown from a $36 million to a $230 million a year industry.
Still, opportunity abounds, and the online potential is staggering. In the US, 186 million, or 62.5% of a population of 296 million, are online. Compare that to 103 million, which is just 7.9% of China’s 1.31 billion. Moreover, the opportunity extends beyond the sky rocketing numbers of Netizens. Advertising itself – quality of – provides an open door to the hearts and minds of the Chinese consumer.
Let me explain.
The advertising industry has expanded to an estimated $15 billion a year, making it the fourth largest ad market in the world. But the quality of most of the off erings border on the childish. Occasionally a professionally produced commercial will grace the airwaves, but for the most part, TV, print, and outdoor advertising make the likes of James Bond look like Pokeman.
In many cases, professional design – matters of form, theme and motif – are unknown or unused and so advertisements lack impingement. They don’t communicate.
Even more importantly from our perspective is the need for well researched and surveyed messages that parallel the minds of their intended public, their prospects. This is necessary for domestic enterprises but particularly important when marketing to a new, foreign audience. Customs are diff erent; mores are different; “hot buttons” are diff erent. And in China, there are political taboos, toes on which you step at considerable risk.
A brief story of a cab ride makes the point. As we are pulling away from our hotel, I sigh and reach for the seat belt dangling from the side of the door, knowing that I am going to be told to buckle up as I am by countless weak-kneed cabbies from DC to LA.
I put seat belts in the same category as vaccinations for the media-created Avian Flu virus. I haven’t the slightest interest in wearing them, and even less interest in governmental entities forcing me (under penalty of $300 citations) to wear them because they know what is best for me.
These are the same people who, having driven the country $7 trillion dollars in debt, still spend $400 billion a year more than they collect in revenue, push psychiatric programs to screen every child in the country for “mental disorders” because they fidget in class and permit highly toxic drugs to be foisted on an unsuspecting public and then shield the manufacturers from liability.
Not people I want telling me what is good for me. But I digress.
Seat belts.
So I reach for mine, and the person I am riding with who lives in Beijing, says, “If you put on a seat belt here, the driver will be insulted. It is a sign that you don’t trust his driving.”
I’m beginning to like the place.
The point being, of course, that you have to understand the market into which you are promoting or you waste your advertising and marketing dollars, or worse. You have to know and understand the general mores and valuesof your target audience as well as the specific likes, dislikes, opinions and attitudes they have about your product or service.
A car commercial showing a happy Chinese family “buckling up for safety” would not only not sell cars, it would alienate an entire population.
Nobody would be that foolish, you say.
Really?
An example that I have written of elsewhere comes to mind.
Shortly after the statue of Felix Dzershinsky, the depraved founder of the KGB was toppled in the square carrying his name in Moscow in 1991, Communism collapsed in one of the greatest political meltdowns in history. Into this power vacuum stepped a vodka toting Boris Yeltsin while a whole new class of Russian entrepreneurs sprang up like daffodils in springtime.
Banking attracted many. In June of 1992, I traveled to Moscow to deliver a talk to Russian businessmen on the use of surveys in advertising and marketing programs.
The organizers of this conference asked me to return in February of ’93 to address a convention of Russian bankers. Russian bankers at the time were looking for foreign investment and deposit dollars.
As I was about to leave the US to return for the second trip, I grabbed a copy of USA Today, which, coincidentally, carried a several page advertising supplement placed by a number of Russian banks. I recall vividly to this day, the four color ad placed by one bank, which positioned itself as a “Beacon in a sea of fi nancial uncertainty”. They were trying to distinguish themselves.
Nothing the matter with being a beacon in a sea, but who in the world would spend precious hard currency telling US investors to place their money anywhere near a “sea of financial uncertainty”.
It is astonishing to see what some companies think will attract customers.
Whether you are an American company looking to market a product to a billion Chinese over the Internet or a Russian bank looking for US investors, you need to understand your prospects and how they think about your product, and the best way to do that is survey them.
And that’s why we recently developed survey facilities in Beijing to go along with our capabilities in Moscow and Mexico City (see our new sister site at www.surveysinchina.com). Still, most of our work is conducted for clients, of all sizes, shapes and industries right here in the good ol’ US of A and across North America.
In nearly twenty years of helping clients understand their publics, we have surveyed customers, prospects, clients, doctors, dentists, optometrists, physical therapists, podiatrists, chiropractors, patients, judges, lawyers, plaintiffs, defendants, accountants, bankers, CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, CIOs, state legislators, federal legislators, reporters, homeowners, renters, real estate agents, Hispanics, African Americans, Russians, Canadians, musicians, actors, actresses, producers, directors, writers, book buyers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, distributors, hotel guests, hotel owners, policemen, sheriff s, wardens, travel agents, business travelers, fund managers, adagencies, insurance agencies, surgeons, jewelers, beer drinkers, yogurt eaters and ice cream lovers… to name a few.
If you’re in business of any kind, anywhere, and need to better understand the needs and wants of your customers or prospects we are but a click or phone call away.
See you next issue.
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