Brands in China

By Richard Burger

I was just reading a report on why Chinese car buyers choose certain brands, and was reminded of how much of their decision is based on emotional factors, “intangible” factors extraneous to the car’s quality or features.

First, Chinese car buyers have strong emotional preferences, are extremely brand conscious, and place great importance on industry leadership. Therefore, automakers must develop and maintain strong emotional and intangible associations between their brands and the customer not only on the level of individual models but also on the corporate, or umbrella, brand level. Depending on the segment that automakers target, they can select from a range of key intangible attributes, such as popularity, trendiness, and an air of success. [The McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 Number 4 Global directions]

This is so true. If you want to sell cars (or anything else) in China, it is essential to take into account the emotional considerations of the consumers there. You can’t go in and sell it based on the way you sell it to Americans. That’s a sure ticket to failure.

Working in public relation in China, I was intrigued by the factors that influence Chinese consumers to buy the Western products they do. This is actually key to PR and marketing, where everything starts by understanding your market and the messages that will resonate with them.

The most vivid example of this was a client of mine, very famous, that was trying to market its digital cameras in China.

In the US, its key selling points are ease of use, simplicity and “hidden technology” – American consumers don’t want to deal with the technology, they only care about the result and how easy it is for them to attain that result. In other words, hide the technology away and let me just take pictures quickly and easily.

When the Chinese buy a product like a digital camera, it is much more than a photo-taking device. It is a status symbol, a source of great pride and something to show off aggressively to friends. It usually will not go hidden in a closet, but will instead be prominently displayed in an auspicious location (like a coffee table) for all to see and envy.

So the brand is very important, more important even than whether it’s a good camera or not.

But the oddest thing was this: The new middle –class Chinese consumers do not want products that are simple or easy to use. Part of the status of owning consumer electronics is to show how complex it is. To show how it’s not easy to use, but that you have mastered the art of using it. And that is a very hard concept for Western marketers to grasp.

All the messages about two quick clicks to beautiful photos and picture sharing were out the window. Instead, the emphasis had to be on the “guts” of the product, how complicated it was and how it took a master photo user to make the most of it. This made our PR work very difficult, as it goes against all the usual company messages.

It’s always interesting to see how differently a product is marketed in the West as opposed to China – sometimes it is absolutely night and day.

In America, Oil of Olay is considered a lesser brand that’s usually sold in drug stores, and certainly not comparable to, say, Estee Lauder, Chanel or Shisheido. But walk into the cosmetics area of any of the new malls in China, and will see right next to the Chanel counter a counter for Oil of Olay. And Avon! As though they are on the same level.

(Avon is unique, in that in the West it’s usually sold through multilevel marketing, Amway, and this is against the law in China.)

So I think a shrewd marketer who understands this dichotomy can make a bundle if he plays his cards right.

Ikea is another prime example. In the US, Ikea stands for dependable but very affordable furniture, the type you buy early in life before you can afford the $6,000 dining room table.

In China, Ikea is perceived as high-end, a far cry from its perception in the West, where it is considered dependable, attractive and affordable, but certainly not high-end. My boss in Beijing told me how she actually visited Chinese friends who pointed to their new furniture and said (more or less), “Isn’t it beautiful? It’s Ikea!” They felt a tremendous pride that they owned Ikea furniture. And that’s totally understandable – it had been positioned to them as top of the line.

So before setting up shop in China, just keep in mind that the way we see a certain brand could be radically different, if not the exact opposite, to the way Chinese consumer see it. It was a fascinating lesson for me, from both a business and culture perspective.

Richard Burger, a Director with The Hoffman Agency’s Singapore office has more than 20 years of combined public relations and journalism experience. His principle areas of expertise include strategic counsel, copywriting, media relations and media training. Over the years the accounts that he has worked on include Sony Ericsson, InFocus, Seagate, Kodak, Altera, Symantec, Adobe, LG-Philips Displays and Oracle.