From the category archives:

ii. Chinese Brands

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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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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Lenovo ThinkPad; Easily Tackle 38,756 Sticky Note Tasks.

11.04.2009 Lenovo
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When talking about office life, perhaps the only couple of items that come into your mind are desktop/laptop, sticky-notes, pen and the forever handicapped printer… How to enjoy working? I’ve seen advertisers encouraged white collars to yogurt-dance, to steal Lay’s, to play basketball for distraction. Or, we can simply work and just enjoy it.
The office [...]

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Fear & Loathing in Chinese Advertising.

10.21.2009 BWCDF
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Here’s a cute campaign, excellent art direction and visuals tie together a memorable piece, sort of like a knife wrapped in hello kitty pajamas. Pretty universal in message: parents be paranoid; the message is communicated through a typical landscape of childhood dreams, which upon closer inspection reveal dangers such as eating pins, stepping on mines, [...]

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CCTV; Stunning TVC perfectly balances Chinese Art Aesthetics and Nationalist Spirit.

10.13.2009 CCTV
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I picked this one up from LRB forums; this is truly a stunning commercial; with a distinct nationalist tone, similar to the Adidas Olympic ads from last year, this commercial uses Chinese water painting aesthetics to weave inspiring visuals.
It’s difficult not to feel a sense of pride when watching these commercials; they’re perfectly tuned to [...]

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Kingston; Targeting China’s IT Stoners.

09.13.2009 Kingston
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Here’s a good example of a “Lost in Translation” ad; likely either done by a local agency, or the brand’s localized marketing staff.The original message is: “Set your enthusiasm on fire”; followed by an English sentence that says “WE  are HIGH”… now there’s a line that has some stopping power.
Now I know this [...]

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Jissbon; Condom Branded China Bicycles.

09.13.2009 Jissbon
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So I’m walking to the bank the other day and as I was waiting I spotted this bicycle parked on the sidewalk with a condom mascot on it.
Now I’m assuming this is just one of those things you see in China, but for the sake of amusement, and also to kill a little time before [...]

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Which promotion is dumber?

09.07.2009 Asahi Kasei
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Usually, we will think that the promotional gifts are something smaller than the purchased items, or something complimentary; for example, buy a camera get a free leather camera bag, or buy a computer mouse get a free mouse pad.
However, when I was shopping at Carrefour last weekend, I found couple strange promotions. One of the [...]

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Mengniu; Celebrating adolescent superficiality.

09.02.2009 Mengniu
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I picked up this from LRB’s forum. These ads for Mengniu (a major China dairy giant) launched in early 2009; the product is fruit yogurt drinks that combine fruits, vegetables, milk and nutrition targeted to Chinese teenagers.
This is a great example of empathizing how Chinese kids really feel, and their uncontrollable desire for simple indulgence. [...]

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China Mobile; Using love to cellphones.

09.01.2009 China Mobile
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This is a collection of China Mobile’s newly launched TVCs posted in LRB’s forum. China Mobile’s trick is to stress love among people, basically between parents and children; husband and wife, and to boast cellphone’s power of getting in touch with whoever you are emotionally connected.
The TVCs are made genuine, touching; however, the audience is [...]

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Ariel; Food that bites back.

08.25.2009 Ariel
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I picked this one up from LRB’s forums. It’s an Ariel washing detergent campaign that looks visually striking, which is great; but whether it pushes sales at point of purchase is another thing. It’s easy to get lost in the creative – it really jumps out at you; but I had a hard time remembering [...]

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Selling scissors the old fashioned way.

08.19.2009 Print
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This is a pretty cool campaign for scissors; replacing the widely recognized (in China at least) art of paper cutting, with “iron” cutting, the ad hits on Chinese traditional values, while also stating quite clearly that the scissors sold are sharp, tough, and can cut accurately.
Now whether or not you can actually cut images out [...]

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TianTian; Fart jokes + Air Freshner; classic Chinese humor?

08.17.2009 Print
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Here’s a pretty gross ad. At first I thought it was kinda funny (which it still is), but then I thought, “Well shouldn’t it also take all surround odors out of the air, rather than contain the one shooting at your face?”. But then this is sort of like dissecting a “knock knock” joke, ie: [...]

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To make troubles disappear: put face in noodle bowl.

07.31.2009 Print
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Jalen recently posted an interesting entry in LRB’s Forum; it shows a series of pretty crazy/shocking images of Chinese culture in “comic book” art fashion – it empathizes with white collar workers, little princesses (spoiled daughters), menial workers, “Mah Jong” women, and internet junkies.
It’s a funny campaign and gives light insight into the minds of [...]

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Sunlife; Strength avoids danger?

07.28.2009 Print
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This recent campaign by Sunlife, created by JWT Guangzhou, is a bit of a puzzler. It won the bronze at Cannes, and at first glance it’s a bit difficult to figure out why. The first impression I had when looking at the child avoiding danger, along with the name “Sunlife”, made me think of an [...]

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ZhuJiang; Taxi Cab Beer Advertising.

06.24.2009 Outdoor

Our friends from the west will notice the “drinking and driving” conventional wisdom disconnect. The saving grace then is this is taxi cab ad, which implies that you are not the one drinking; you are the one rolling around drunk in the backseat as your driver speeds down a small alley dodging residents, bicycles, motorbikes, [...]

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LiNing; Basketball Kungfu Demon Killer.

06.22.2009 LiNing

As seems the trend in China’s youth marketing; messages tend to focus on super-fantasy elements (check out a full article on this here).
So are these ads done well? I would say yes, when we consider our target audience: teenage Chinese boys. Basketball/hiphop is popular the world over, and mixing pop culture with ancient warfare [...]

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Jianlibao; Promotional straws “plug” users into liquid energy.

06.22.2009 Jianlibao

This is great – simple and effective.

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DHL.. I mean Jie Yun; express déjà vu.

06.17.2009 Jie Yun

Jie Yun’s latest print ads – I guess they get the point across, but it all seems like something we’ve seen before. I guess having the Jie Yun Logo a pretty close straight knockoff of DHL’s logo doesn’t help the overall “déjà vu” of these China ads.

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Donghua University; Are you more artistic than an earthworm?

06.15.2009 Donghua University

“Seek out anyone’s potential for art. If animals can become masters, so can you!”
Quite interesting art, with a bit of a “gross” factor; all art is made by creepy crawlies that would normally give you the heebie jeebies.
The pitch? “If bugs can make art, then so can you! Come to our art school”. Not so [...]

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China Mobile; Not-so-subtle mobile advertising.

06.11.2009 China Mobile

“See now this ad is really a statement on how mobile technology has taken such a large part of our lives as to become “giant” ie: so large that it then serves as the filter between self and object; it has in essence become not only an extension of what we are, but also a [...]

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