From the category archives:

i. China Advertising

Confessions of a China Entrepreneur.

03.08.2010 Insights
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Today I’m going to give you a quick overview of my short experience as a China entrepreneur for reasons you’ll soon discover. So lets start with the end, and then we’ll work our way to the beginning.
Recently, I was honored to be invited and take part in UC Berkeley’s Asia Business Conference; I was a [...]

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Blackmailing your family… Confucian style.

03.02.2010 China Modern Culture
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There is a reason that every girl wish to have a big brother – even they could be too protective sometimes, it’s still an enjoyable relation.
On the contrary, having a younger brother wouldn’t be such a lovely journey in China. Especially when you think of how old generation/rural residents favor sons much more than daughters. [...]

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Top 10 reasons to use Chinese Social Media.

03.02.2010 News
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Hey all, as checking my Google buzz this morning, and found a cool link from Thomas Morffew for a site created by Ren Media. The article lists ten top reasons to use China social media, vs. Western media for a Chinese audience, I suspect.
Key elements refer to the same stuff you may have heard before, [...]

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Hello Tiger Baby.

02.14.2010 News
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Wishing you a happy year of the tiger; hope this year brings you happiness, success, or wealth; and if you’re lucky maybe you’ll get all three.
I’m out in California now, which partly explains the laziness in updating LRB recently. It’ll be a busy week for me; first I’m getting married on Valentines day, then next [...]

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Forcing Chinese College Students to Think. Period.

02.03.2010 China Modern Culture
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Hey all, yet another post from the prolific Veronica; this one focuses on China’s “college student problem”; the system continues to churn out clones that are above average (when taken in context) but not up to par to the standards set by their global counterparts.
Whereas it was a sellers market years previous (exemplified by [...]

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Chinese Netizens Rage at Google’s “Purposefully Anti-China” Search Results.

01.31.2010 China Modern Culture
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Hey All, as you’ve no doubt heard, Google is refusing to comply with China’s censorship policies. This has become a pretty heated political issue; today, Veronica has compiled commentary from Chinese netizens responding to perceived attacks from Google at China. Enjoy -Rand.
Google’s pulling out of China set off China netizens’ concern in a fairly large scale. As [...]

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“Does Zhang Ziyi Represent Chinese Women?”

01.28.2010 China Modern Culture
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Hey All, the below is from Veronica who is writing about Zhang ZiYi, a famous Chinese movie star and whether she represents Chinese women. It’s an interesting culture article and a good way to get quick insight into the heart of the Chinese woman. Enjoy; -Rand
As the proudest international star from China, the spotlight brings Ziyi [...]

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Ask Rand; “Is a bilingual website necessary?”

01.21.2010 Ask Rand
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Here’s another question I received via LRB’s contact form. If you’re interested in asking me a question; go ahead and shoot it over; I’ll post it up on LRB and we can discuss online to your benefit, and the benefit of other readers. Feel free to ask me anything; I’m pretty open with my advice; and while [...]

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Wildaid; Shooting Glass with Money.

01.18.2010 Outdoor
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This recent campaign by Wildaid is pretty interesting; I’d venture to say most wildlife protection advertising is great; as their primary focus is to shock the crap out of you to get you to change your point of view. In this particular campaign seen in China’s subways; Wildaid shoots endangered animal posters with money, through [...]

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Ask Rand; “How to match UK agencies to China marketing directors?”

01.18.2010 Ask Rand
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I get a lot of inquires through LRB, many of which ask for quick bits of advice. I’ll normally answer these things one-to-one, but since there’s some overlap there, I figured I’d start posting some of my answers.
Why? Well this gives you a glimpse into China and marketing strategic thinking; and plus, perhaps some of [...]

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Breaking the rules without breaking the rules.

01.13.2010 China Modern Culture
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Perhaps the best recipe for fun is a mix of being smart, being cheap, and being bored. Posted today is a few pictures from Pizza Hut China; wherein customers have turned taking advantage of Pizza Hut’s “one trip to the salad bar” policy into a science. I’m not exaggerating, I’ll actually show you the mathematical formulas used to [...]

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IBM; Geeky Love via China Viral.

01.12.2010 IBM
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I found this one on LRB’s forums. It’s a pretty simple video with a surprise ending; surprising enough to get 3.5 million views, and close to 1,000 comments. Created for the IBM Rational Software Conference this geeky romantic viral hit the mark.
It’s interesting what goes viral in China vs. the West. There’s a sweet innocence to the Chinese psyche, [...]

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Selling China to the Chinese.

01.12.2010 JiaDing
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Or rather, selling Shanghai to the Shanghainese. I picked this one up from LRB forums; JiaDing district in Shanghai is known as rural, “end of the line” district… generally speaking its the kind of place you don’t want to live or really even want to visit. With Shanghai’s breakneck development pace, even the fringes are getting a [...]

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Letting kids play with fire.

01.11.2010 News
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A belated happy new years to you my fellow propaganda professionals. I’ve been off for a while as you may (or may not) have noticed; this was due to holidaying in Thailand, a place that lends itself to, well… forgetting about writing on blogs for one. What made me forget about it all? I’m going [...]

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Guinness; Tapping the androgynous market?

12.22.2009 Guinness
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When I think of the brand Guinness, I think of dark, heavy frothy beer; perfect for a late night drink, perhaps in a semi-modern, upscale bar; usually during a causal business meeting; “business drunk” (which I’m told is similar to “rich drunk” but have yet to verify personally). Now I know that I’m not like you, [...]

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Jinkela; Purposefully idiotic China ad creates massive viral success.

12.18.2009 JinKeLa
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I found this on LRB’s forum; it’s an ad for Jinkela, some sort of fertilizer. What’s crazy is the clownish way they went to advertise it; and the surprising reaction from millions of Chinese viewers.
Here’s an interesting question; let’s say you are an unrecognized brand, and you want to go “viral” to spread the word as quickly as [...]

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Domesticated Ancient Chinese Warriors.

12.16.2009 Print
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I picked this one up from LRB forums. It’s  campaign for YangHe, a famous alcoholic spirit in China.
What’s interesting? Looking online many non-Chinese think this campaign is great; but to a local Chinese it looks totally ridiculous. The campaign depicts several ancient heroes including Zhang Fei, a warrior general of the Three Kingdoms period (around 200 A.D.) in [...]

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Associating “Volkswagen” with “Pee”.

12.14.2009 Print
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Ah yes; the holy grail of advertising is to somehow link your brand to urine. Wait; that doesn’t sound right…
I’m not sure what the thinking behind this one was; I guess they were able to check the “catch attention” box; but whether they got the “memorable brand message” is something else altogether; cause in this [...]

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One billion invisible Chinese.

12.11.2009 Insights
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This one isn’t about advertising; rather its a forwarded email I got from Andrew (my biz partner), which he got from his sister in Australia (now you know my content sources). In it is a Chinese man named Liu Bo Lin that literally paints himself into the background. It’s pretty cool in a weird sort [...]

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Hello ZeroDegrees.

12.11.2009 News
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After a week of heavy pitches, mixed with management of current projects and re-branding ZeroDegrees site; I’m happy to say I’ve made it through the gauntlet and finally got ZeroDegrees new website up online.
Now bear in mind, I’m not trying to wow you with my adolescent design skills; rather, I’m shooting for ease of communication [...]

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Breaking Down Viral Advertising.

11.27.2009 Insights
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Hey all; I’m still in process of rebuilding ZeroDegree’s site; here’s something I wrote yesterday for ZD; it’s a general theory of viral advertising.
Key points are breaking it down to a level wherein we can predict results. This is always limited to content; but having said that there are other ways to build some [...]

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LRB; One year old and hot as hell.

11.16.2009 News
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Hello all; I’m proud to report today that LRB is one year old.
It’s been an interesting year, beginning with the thought “why don’t I try to build a blog”, followed by “is anyone actually reading this blog”, then “you know what I don’t think anyone is reading this, so I’m just going to shoot my [...]

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