A Mysterious Chinese Soul through Eyes of An Advertiser

In this article I would like to focus on psychological aspects that you should take into consideration while creating successful advertising. One of the main concepts in marketing is «brand» concept. It includes two components – the brand viewed as complex of individual visual elements (logo, name, design) which help to distinguish the product, company from others, and the brand viewed as symbolic construction in mind of society, consumers and competitors.

By the book of James R. Gregory «Leveraging the Corporate Brand», brand is not a thing, a product, a company or an organization. There are no brands in reality – they are just mental constructions. Here, brand could be described as the total of human’s common perception, his perception of things, products, companies or organizations. Brands exist in the form of conscious perception of either concrete people or society.

And really, despite the fact that the appearance of the product is important, what’s more important is how you feel while looking at brand. That’s why it is so important to connect to an audience in an emotional way while creating advertisements. You have to understand what are people’s deepest desires, wishes and even fears. Connecting to consumers on deeper, maybe even subconscious level is necessary, because the brand represents the set of emotions, as well as branding means provoking necessary emotions for product’s success.

It becomes especially important for companies striving to conquer foreign markets, because every culture has its own unique values. And without some indispensable knowledge about the mentality of a nation, it is easy to make a serious mistake, causing the opposite of the expected result.

Let us try to look on example into mysterious depth of the eastern mind and realize what basic features we are to take into account while creating an advertisement for Chinese market. For this purpose I propose to divide Chinese consumers to four groups by their desires and wishes: whole Chinese nation, youth, men and women.

So, dreams of the nation. Chinese are very proud of their five-thousand-year-old history and by the time the whole world had only begun developing, China was already highly developed both culturally and technically. But then, China gave up the first position and spent many centuries trying to catch up with other countries. China became the butt of jokes and «Made in China» was often associated with bad quality. Nevertheless, memories about their former great power never leave the Chinese in peace, and they still hope to retrieve the leading position, honor and glory, taken from them during last centuries.

Probably, that’s exactly why Chinese like Chinese-flavor ads so much. If you use elements of traditional culture while creating your advertisement, no matter what are they – a tune played on bamboo flute, shadow feature or Kung-fu fighters.

Dreams of youth.  I think everyone has heard a lot about  extremely high level of competition in Chinese society. I used to think that the only reason for such situation is high density of population, but it turned out that the true reason seems to lie much deeper – in ancient culture layers. As we know, Confucianism appeared in the 4-5 century b.c. and became very popular sooner. To be honest, it still influences significantly Chinese minds. The most important Confucianism principles are respect towards elder people and implementation of “son’s duty”. But parents also have to take care of their children; that’s why, at first, parents support children, and then children have to start supporting their parents. However, in result of one-child policy in China, it turns out that a grown up child is to take care of two old parents alone, with no brothers, sisters, aunts or uncles to share the financial burden with at that. That is why from the very childhood Chinese understand, that they have to become the very-mega-best, i.e. to finish school with excellent grades, enter-and-graduate-from a prestigious university, get high paid job, and do their best to be able to help their parents.

Chinese youngsters always feel under permanent stress coming from their family, society, school. So, what they crave for is escape and become free. Therefore, it’s not surprising that advertisements succeeded using the theme of escaping problems of real life for example, through supernatural abilities newfound.

Dreams of women.   Similar to other countries, in Chinese culture women played supporting role for a very long time. They only could sit at home making food and taking care of their children and husband. But when the communists came to power, situation changed a lot, now Chinese women stand on the same level with men. Nevertheless, traditional thinking still keeps strong position in Chinese society, and women have to face problem of making choice between the family and the career. They want to be independent from men, but at the same time want to be an ideal mother and an ideal wife. That’s why most of the women-oriented ads show us thoughtful mothers and loving wives or decisive, brave business-ladies fighting successfully men’s dictate.

Dreams of men.  Chinese men are also under great pressure, because surrounding society puts multiple expectations upon them. Chinese men should be successful, but should not stand out (in Asian countries “be like others” is the goal people try to achieve). The Chinese man should be  a loving husband and a caring son. So, Chinese ideal man is a successful, wealthy man, loving his family, a perfect team member. Though, this dream seems to be quite simple, considering contemporary challenges of competition, it becomes rather hard to achieve. That’s why men-oriented products are usually represented as something that can help you to achieve your aim, or as something symbolizing that the success has been already achieved.

These are just several points for better understanding the Chinese consumers’ way of thinking. Finally, examples of advertising campaigns of such brands as Adidas, Metersbonwe, Nokia, Snickers and others prove, that with these simple desires and emotions taken for a basis we can achieve remarkable success, and what is more important, win love and recognition of the target market.

Every product – just like every man – has its own face, which can cause either incredible market success or incredible failure. Product’s face is a combination of its basic features (such as appearance, name, advertising company, etc.), creating in their combination the general impression of the product in consumers’ minds, the impression which we are able to influence.