Archive for the ‘Illuminant’s China’ Category

The 6 most dangerous myths about Chinese translation and interpretation

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

Grab a babelfish. And take a copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You will need both.

Having been working in Chinese language services (both translation and interpretation) since 2003, we’ve seen plenty of popular but ultimately wrong perceptions about these services. Client decisions based upon misunderstandings of best practice and incorrect assumptions usually cause problems both small (need to re-translate and often re-print) and large (severely damaged corporate credibility).

I asked the Illuminant language services team to summarize the main misunderstandings that new clients often have. The team and I have ranked these main misunderstandings according to potential for trouble and damage.

Please note that by “language services” we are mostly talking about reshaping English into Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese or vice versa, because that’s what the Illuminant team usually focuses on. This post may or may not be applicable in cases of converting between any other two languages.

Also, we differentiate between “translation” (working with written language) and “interpretation” (helping Chinese and English speakers understand each other in real-time). The terms are frequently confused however the roles are very different and call for distinct skills and training.

I hope that the short post that follows will help you to make good decisions within your Chinese language services!

Myth #1: Interpretation is harder than translation. Therefore our interpreter will do good translations (and vice versa).

Truth:

This is only sometimes true, and depends entirely on the individual under discussion. It is a dangerous myth because most individuals do not possess the skills and training necessary for both disciplines.

Interpretation and translation are very different tasks. Interpretation is to facilitate quick exchanges of essential points. It requires lightning-fast responses and excellent accuracy, but not much more. Less than perfect phrasing is largely okay, and omission of some not-so-important details is frequently tolerable. These are judgement calls made by the interpreter, and her tough training has (hopefully) given her the skills to apply good judgement in real-time across a range of subjects and contexts. On the other hand, translation projects usually have more generous deadlines, but a much harsher demand for quality. A translator must deliver whatever is written in clear words (the facts and figures), and what’s not (the style, any tension, suspense, the sense of humor, and a dozen other factors).

Interpretation is like journalism, where a reporter writes down where, when, what and why in a short but essential piece, then get it published overnight. On the other hand, translation is like artistic painting, where the painter captures the place, the people, the light, the atmosphere, and expressions on every face with brush strokes. A reporter and a painter can tell the same story, but there’s no way of saying which is better or worse. Many professionals are capable of both, but never assume that your interpreter can do accurate and effective translation, or (the more common and dangerous assumption) that your translator will make a good interpreter.

Myth #2: Translation apps are good makeshift solutions. Its okay to rely on them.

Truth:

We’re the first to admit that translation apps are often “good enough” for many languages. However this is never the case for any European language into Chinese or Chinese into any European language.

Unlike English, Spanish, Italian, German, Latin and similar languages, the Chinese language has a unique and particularly annoying feature: lack of spacing between words. Chinese people process sentences into words correctly without trouble because they use common sense and context while reading. Computers currently simply don’t have such faculties.

Also, in the Simplified Chinese system, one character often has multiple pronunciations, thus multiple sets of meanings. This adds more fuel to the fire by going beyond the petty intelligence of computers. That’s a reason why every now and then there are hilarious pictures popping up on the web showing Chinese signs mistranslating “to dry” or “dried” into, um, “to have sexual intercourse with”. There is always a risk of critical miscommunication when using computers for English–Chinese translation. Take extreme caution, and use a real (qualified) human whenever possible.

Myth #3: Students from Chinese “foreign language universities” make good and cheap translators/interpreters.

Truth:

Chinese students (that is, Chinese nationals studying, say, English at language universities) are definitely good budget-wise. But language services, especially translation, is a two-stage task that Chinese students are particularly ill-suited for.

Accurate translation requires understanding and comprehension of the source text. This is the first stage. The second stage, which is so frequently overlooked, is to recreate everything under another culture-language framework while keeping all of the spirit of the source text. English to Chinese translators must be as close to professional Chinese writers as possible, and vice versa, and sadly Chinese literature and writing is usually not what foreign language colleges train their students with.

Also, Chinese university students have invariably lived a much more sheltered life than their western counterparts, and lack a certain worldliness and diversity of experience and exposure to ideas. These factors invariably result in inadequate and often damaging language work, since “I think I made a mistake” is not commonly in the contemporary student’s vocabulary.

A good translator is able to translate Vogon poetry and still keep it exactly the third worst thing in the universe.

Myth #4: This is academic/professional document. Don’t bother with translators. Let’s find a Ph.D in that field to do it.

Truth:

This, more often than not, is wrong. A lot of people, especially Chinese publishing houses, hold it as a fundamental truth. The unfortunate result is a mountain of low quality book translations released to the market each year, scaring readers away and lowering the quality standard of the entire publishing industry.

A remarkable example is The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (sorry if you are reading this, Mr. Paul Strathern). The Chinese version was done in such a crude form that to a bilingual-capable reader, the English version is far easier to understand. The translation was riddled with stale phrasing and unrivaled ambiguity.

The math should be done this way: it takes a couple weeks to train a translator about industry basics, but at least a couple years to hone a science professor’s bilingual reading/writing skills. Language workers are professional impersonators by nature. They can toss the jargon very well after a little training.

Consider scholars first only when the document in question is really, really hardcore academic that translators/interpreters need to be trained from fundamental theories.

Myth #5: We have an app to localize into Chinese — its not complex like a novel would be. Go grab anyone who can speak English and Chinese. What could possibly go wrong?

Truth:

Software localization is a very special kind of translation. It involves a lot of programming codes or tags interwoven with plaintext strings. A translator with some programming training background is more desirable for the job. Get specialized people, use specialized tools (Trados, Logoport, etc). “Some random translator” carelessly manipulating what should not be translated will likely end up in endless debugging and lots of time burned.

Myth #6: We are new in China. Whom shall we trust with our language works? It’s definitely safe contracting that internationally renowned language agency, right?

Truth:

Not necessarily right. Multinational language agencies have good credibility and look safe. However, signing a contract with them doesn’t necessarily mean your work is actually done by their careful hands.

The author of this post was briefly involved in the localization project of a massively popular rapid application development (RAD) software suite. The owner of the property, one of the few giants of the global IT industry, entrusted the project to a leader-of-the-industry language agency, however, it was re-contracted at least once to a small Chinese company, and that was how your author was appointed to it (in a job prior to Illuminant!)

Summary

That’s it for mythbusting. The moral of the story? Let’s summarize it like this:

Professional communication needs professional language workers.
There are different kinds of professionals. Usually language workers best others in language-related works, no matter what’s the theme or topic.
China isn't that hard to survive. Keep your towel. You don't have one? Come get one from the guys and girls of Illuminant!
Even within the pocket universe of language services, there are different kinds of professionals. Some are good at talking, some best in writing, others could talk to machines. Choose according to your specific needs.
Spend some time, find a trustworthy language service provider, and stay with them.
There is no such thing as “too much proofreading” in the game of word-spinning. Establish a final proofreading or quality control department in-house. Or get a strategic partner for that.

Here at Illuminant, we do things seriously, be it PR, strategic communications and very much so for language services. We know about good and bad, and share the knowledge with our clients. We believe that an open and honest way of doing business benefits everybody.

Feel free to contact us for more tips on language works — we’ve been professionals in the translation and interpretation disciplines since 2003.

For more insight into Illuminant’s view of Chinese language services, see Illuminant’s Approach to Chinese-English Translation and I’m Passionate About Language.

Article by Kane Gao, Illuminant’s head of research.

Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

China’s People’s Daily calls for Chinese companies to make better and wiser use of microblogs

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

China's People's Daily, the nation's authoritative Party newspaper

On January 19th, China’s People’s Daily (the official national daily newspaper of the Communist Party of China), ran an intriguing article entitled “Micro blogs crucial to firm’s PR” (its China Daily’s translation, not ours).

Quoted from the article:

Chinese enterprises are slow to recognize emergency situations and perform poorly when handling public relations crises, according to a recent report.

The report, compiled by the public opinion research laboratory of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, looked at the 50 most prominent PR events in 2010 and analyzed the responses made by the enterprises concerned.

“We found Chinese enterprises’ ability to respond to a crisis is basically weak in areas such as problem solving, issue management and communication,” said Xie Yungeng, deputy director of the university’s Institute of Arts and Humanities, who helped write the report.

He singled out a lack of judgment as the cause of many enterprises’ failure to handle crises as and when they arise.

The article is intriguing as it marks somewhat of a “coming out” for microblogging in the People’s Republic of China. As a medium which arguably has supported widescale popular calls for social and political change in countries such as Tunisia and Iran, the article’s contention that China aught microblog more is of interest to China watchers.

The article’s focus is on the Chinese state-owned sector’s use (or disuse) of microblogs, and serves as a “call to arms” for these government-owned businesses to equal what “private enterprises” achieve with use of social media:

Many State-owned enterprises have been slow to adopt the new media and tend to rely on traditional outlets for their messages, which are not as effective in reaching the public, Xie said.

In contrast, private enterprises are generally able to respond to PR crises quickly and positively, efficiently using new media, such as micro blogs, to win the support of the public through effective communications.

In our experience, its quite correct that the Chinese state-owned sector (which is massively larger than the relatively recent private sector) is indeed grappling with the velocity of information sharing within China’s borders. Only a handful of years ago, a crisis could be easily controlled through the reliable old tactics of ignoring or downplaying and manipulating the message in traditional media (which was, naturally, itself state-owned). However, microblogging (or social media networks in a broader sense) have swiftly brought about a collective of millions of ordinary Chinese grass roots.

Although the jury is still out, there is a feeling within China that social media cannot be manipulated by a large enterprise in a time of crisis. The old western PR crisis management advice, “don’t remain silent” used to work in China. Today, with the rise of Chinese microblogs and social media, it works no longer.

According to company-released numbers, Sina Weibo, China’s first answer to the rise of Twitter, reached a user base of 50 million by the end of October 2010. Tencent (the owner of the dominant “QQ” IM service) is hurriedly pushing its IM users into its new microblog platform. With 600 million QQ IM users already in existence, its microblog userbase quickly rocketed to 80 million by January 2011. These are only two of a surprisingly broad range of microblogging services recently launched in China.

Chinese microblogs bear some resemblances to Twitter, however there are important differences as well (“Twitter with Chinese Characteristics”, perhaps):

Many Chinese microblogs directly copied the 140-character cap from Twitter. However, due to the information-rich nature of Chinese language, the short text length that is troubling to many English speakers is enoughspace for Chinese people to write a short story. Actually Sina has held microblog story competitions already.
Chinese micro blogs are mostly ran by companies that have remarkable business in other sectors of the web sector. Like Sina, Sohu and NetEase, who own dominating portal websites in China, they push microblog highlights to their portals. Tencent goes even further. It’s microblog is reflected on its portal site and IM services. That means in China, the power of “new media” is channeled into the traditional gang, creating a media avalanche.
Notable microblog messages will zip through the microblog initially, immediately echo across the vast plain of portals, to then boom all over newspapers and TV channels and reach the eyes and ears of a billion Chinese citizens.

In short, microblogging is now a very important component in Chinese-oriented marketing campaigns, and is probably even more important than its role in western markets. We believe that the article in People’s Daily is testament to the Chinese government’s admission that microblogging is not going away anytime soon.

The danger of Chinese microblogs to your public profile

Dang Dang CEO Li Guoqing

Do be aware that although presented with opportunities to develop and disseminate positive messages via Chinese microblogs, a backfire in a Chinese microblog can be tenfold devastating. Only last week, Dang Dang (a Chinese ecommerce startup with the stated goal to become the Amazon.com of China) had a legendary cat fight with investment bank Morgan Stanley over the suspicion that the latter intentionally kept the IPO funding of Dang Dang lower than it could have been. The conversation quickly boiled down to personal and obscene insults flung by Dang Dang’s CEO Li Guoqing towards Morgan Stanley personnel, creating China’s joke of the month, if not of the year.

We’d go as far as to say that the People’s Daily article, coming only days after Li’s tweets of rage at Morgan Stanley over a Chinese microblog is no coincidence.

There isn’t enough evidence to propose a connection to the significant fall of Dang Dang’s stock on NYSE in the days following the blow-up. But it does remind one to be careful. Chinese consumers do care what you do with the “new media”, and they pick up damaging stories fast.

We encourage foreign companies in China engage with Chinese microblogs. Many of our clients are already doing great corporate communications on Twitter. Remember, though, that Twitter is blocked to China’s netizens, and there are gulfs of cultural difference to consider. Illuminant is pleased to offer guidance and help to anyone who seeks to ride the new Chinese microblogging wave.

Article by Illuminant’s head of research, Kane Gao, with contributions by chief exec Simon Cousins

Tags: china, microblogs, pr, public relations, social networking
Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

Understand Chinese holidays for better business outcomes

Monday, January 17th, 2011

If you’re a company taking your first steps into the Chinese marketplace, don’t experience disruption to your business plans due to lack of planning around the Chinese mainland’s unique (and entirely government mandated) holiday calendar.

For new entrants to the China market, it can be quite disorienting to discover your entire in-market team away on holidays you’ve never heard of. And its really very irritating (and expensive) to arrive in Beijing or Shanghai to find that none of the “big potatoes” you need to meet are available, due to an incomprehensible slowdown caused by an impending holiday (or one just passed!)

Illuminant clients are coached to not only understand Chinese holidays, but to take advantage of them for better business planning and improved guanxi relationships.

“Its a holiday, Jim… but not as we know it.”

It's a holiday, Jim... but not as we know it.

Many people are familiar with the Lunar (aka Chinese) New Year — that moveable date that falls between January and February each year, and which is celebrated not only in China, but also in Asian countries and communities around the world. Few people outside China know very much about the Chinese-specific holidays and vacations though.

Due to religious differences, China doesn’t officially celebrate Christmas, Easter, or any other Judeo-Christian holiday. However China does have a series of traditional holidays, some derived from China’s nationhood and others with ancient agrarian roots. Holidays dedicated to China’s nationhood and political system fall on the same date each year, while traditional holidays vary according to the lunar calendar.

China’s central government does, from time to time, make changes to the national schedule of holidays. Currently, the annual schedule is as follows:

Chinese Name	English Name	Date	Duration	Greetings	Gifts
元旦 Yuán Dàn	New Year’s Day	January 1st	3 days	Necessary	Recommended
春节 Chūn Jié	Lunar New Year	Varies in January or February, depending on Lunar Calendar	7 days	Necessary	Necessary
清明 Qīng Míng	N/A	Varies in April, depending on Lunar Calendar, but probably April 4th or 5th	3 days	Not recommended	Not recommended
劳动节 Láo Dòng Jié	International Labor Day	May 1st	3 days	Not necessary, but okay for senior government officials	Not necessary
端午 Duān Wǔ	Dragon Boat Day	Varies in May depending on Lunar Calendar	3 days	Recommended	Recommended
中秋 Zhōng Qiū	Mid-Autumn Festival	Varies in August depending on Lunar Calendar	3 days	Necessary	Necessary
国庆节 Guó Qìng Jié	China National Day	October 1st	7 days	Not necessary	Not necessary

The background, significance and opportunities of China’s holidays

元旦 Yuán Dàn (New Year’s Day)

International New Year’s Day is officially marked in China, and has a three day vacation attached to it, however new year celebrations are pale and minuscule compared to the Lunar New Year a month later. Due to the short vacation of only 3 days, few mainland Chinese travel much distance during this holiday. The New Year isn’t at all disruptive to business.

International New Year’s Day is a good opportunity to send greetings to your partners and clients. There isn’t a need or expectation for anything too elaborate — a phone call or a drop-in would be very warmly noted, and if your client or partner uses email (don’t assume she actually reads email, even if she has an email address on her business card) an ecard with a personal greeting would be appreciated. It’s a nice time to send a generic greeting to your partners or clients.

Good Mandarin Chinese phrases to use during the new year are “新年快乐”(xīn nián kuài lè, “Happy New Year”) or “元旦快乐” (yuán dàn kuài lè, “Happy Yuan Dan”).

In summary, do take advantage of the new year, but keep your powder dry for the cacophonous glory of the Lunar New Year, which will soon be upon us…

It's a crowded railway station, Jim... but not as we know it.

春节 Chūn Jié (Lunar New Year, aka Chinese New Year, aka Spring Festival)

In China, the Lunar New Year is of equivalent importance as Christmas and Hanukkah in the Judeo-Christian traditions. That is to say, its the main holiday in the annual schedule that is celebrated and observed with the greatest gusto by all Chinese people. Lunar New Year is so important in China that we’ve written an advice article for just this holiday.

The most distinctive characteristic of the Lunar New Year in China — from a business perspective — is that every one of the 1.4 billion Chinese citizens will try to return to their hometown, even if it means flying halfway across the globe, enduring the most uncomfortable or dangerous conveyance imaginable, or even in extreme but all-too-common cases, quitting their job to make the journey possible. We should note for the China neophyte that one’s “hometown” means one’s grandfather’s hometown, not “the city where your immediate family currently lives”. Due to the colossal numbers of people who have migrated from rural areas to urban cities over the last few decades, massive numbers of travelers are seen in the days leading up to the Lunar New Year.

The two weeks bookending the beginning and end of the Lunar New Year week is a terrible time to be doing business in China. Much like the “silly season” around the Christmas/New Year period in the west, this is a time of year during which few major decisions are made and few large purchase orders are written. Its best to avoid time-consuming or expensive business development activities during this period.

Your local partners and clients will expect, at the very least, a season’s greeting from you. It’s also a great opportunity to surprise them with a timely and appropriate gift. Timing is the key here. People will start leaving for home sometimes as early as a week to a month prior to the vacation. So do plan ahead with the support of your local partner, and time your carefully designed greeting cards or gift packs accordingly.

We’ve detailed a range of culturally appropriate Mandarin Chinese phrases in our Lunar New Year article — take care to avoid offence by using the right greetings depending on the recipient’s employment status. You can get ideas for appropriate gifts and cards also from that article, or contact us for specific advice.

清明 Qīng Míng (Tomb Sweeping Day)

Qing Ming is a traditional holiday thus in theory it should be marked on the Lunar Calendar. However, in the past several decades it always falls on April the 4th or 5th of the Gregorian Calendar. Its generally known as Tomb Sweeping Day or Grave Sweeping Day due to the Tang emperor Xuanzong’s declaration, in the year 732, that formal respects may only be made at ancestor graves on the day of Qing Ming.

In contemporary times, Qing Ming day marks the practical start of the new spring, when everything turns to green and new spring growth is once again underway after the winter. The holiday is to be celebrated by going hiking in early morning, and, yes, to visit cemeteries to maintain the tombs of one’s ancestors as a symbolic act paralleling the turning of the season to vibrancy.

Since the taboo subject of death is involved, the whole business of Qing Ming is quite private and solemn. As a non-Chinese, don’t bother with special greetings or gifts. Best to leave this three day holiday alone.

The Qing Ming period is only minimally disruptive to business. Senior decision makers may be out of the office for a day or two on either side of the holiday, so plan your business activities accordingly.

劳动节 Láo Dòng Jié (Labor Day, aka May Day, aka International Workers’ Day)

Labor Day is marked with a three day national vacation beginning on May 1st every year. The holiday was introduced by the post-1949 government of Chairman Mao. The holiday is a modern one: it doesn’t have any traditional cultural importance.

There is no need for any special greetings or gift giving, unless you have guanxi relationships with senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. If so, an email to that government official wishing them a well-earned Labor Day will not go unnoticed. If you were to mention that you sincerely intended to study the works of Karl Marx during the holiday, you would gain extra points. We’re not kidding.

Like most Chinese holidays, you should assume that more senior decision makers will take a few extra days on either side of the holiday, so avoid important business during the week leading up to and the week after the Labor Day period.

端午 Duān Wǔ (Dragon Boat Festival)

Originally a day to honor ancient poet Qu Yuan, this day turned into a holiday in recent times. This three day holiday is the time that Chinese mainland people will eat 粽子 (zòng zi), a glutinous rice package wrapped in bamboo leaves. Everyone in China eats zongzi, although few actually race dragon boats these days.

Greetings or no greetings, it’s a good time to send your Chinese friends, clients and partners some zongzi, since every single one of them will be wanting to eat some. Better still if your zongzi are professionally made, and presented in a corporate-themed package (which Illuminant frequently produces on behalf of our more culturally attuned clients).

From a business timing perspective, you may find some locally engaged staff-members or business collaborators to be absent from work for a week during this period, especially if they are active participants in dragon boat teams, and are attending races in far-flung cities.

中秋 Zhōng Qiū (Mid-Autumn Festival)

It's a cake, Jim... but not as we know it. "Mooncakes", by Choo Yut Shing

As the English name suggests, this important and beloved festival marks the dead-center of autumn in the Lunar Calendar. The Mid-Autumn Festival is second only to the Lunar New Year in the year’s most important holidays.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is all about family — getting together, sitting around a table, appreciating the beautiful full moon and eating moon-shaped cakes. This is the idealized picture of the modern, prosperous extended Chinese mainland family.

However in contemporary times, for reasons of employment, Chinese families are usually scattered across the country (or the world). Therefore, the most common holiday activity is now boiled down to mooncakes (月饼, yuè bǐng). Even if the entire extended family of dozens of people can’t get together during the holiday, there are always mooncakes to keep the flame of the celebration alive.

The only problem is that to today’s palates, traditional mooncakes taste kind of awful. They tend to be greasy, very salty (often due to a duck egg filling) and usually very hard to chew and swallow (due to the dense, hockey-puck presentation). Notwithstanding the difficulty of actually consuming traditional mooncakes, it is of critical importance that they be given as elaborate gifts to all your clients, partners, staff and friends.

The Illuminant approach over the last decade of our client work has been to get creative with mooncakes, designing and commissioning special, modern, one-of-a-kind mooncake treats that are loved by our clients’ recipients. To benefit from some of our sweet and modern ideas to delight your clients and partners, please feel free to contact us.

Due to the fact that the Mid-Autumn Festival is now only a three day holiday, your locally-engaged staff may request additional leave to travel to their hometowns during the holiday (pressure from Chinese parents is a force greater than the Enterprise’s tractor beams). Many employers may also notice mysterious seasonal illnesses around this time of year (although to be fair, these may be legitimately caused by the consumption of aforesaid mooncakes).

Good Mandarin Chinese phrases to use during the Mid-Autumn Festival fall into two main categories, and its seemly to use them both. The first category is concerned with family reunions — you can say 阖家团圆 (hé jiā tuán yuán, “whole family reunited, round and full”). The second category is more generic, such as 中秋佳节快乐 (zhōng qiū jiā jié kuài lè, “Have a happy time during the pleasant Mid-Autumn Festival”.

The effect of the Mid-Autumn Festival on business availability is analogous to that of the Lunar New Year. Its best to lower your expectations that decision makers will be of a mind to make major decisions for the fortnight leading up to and after the holiday period.

In summary, plan well in advance to take full advantage of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Be sure to have your gifting plans ready by July each year. At minimum, gift quality mooncakes to a small number of your key contacts. Better yet to design and gift custom corporate mooncakes to opinion leaders across your clients and partners. Best to do this as well as to host a pre-Festival party or reception at a nice hotel for your most important clients.

国庆节 Guó Qìng Jié (China National Day)

Every country has its day. October 1st is China’s day. This is the day that marks Chairman Mao Zedong standing on the rostrum at Tian’anmen Gate, in 1949, declaring the People’s Republic of China. China National Day is the beginning of an annual seven day vacation.

There will be a lot of fireworks exploding overhead, but people don’t celebrate it personally. There is no need or real opportunity to improve personal business relationships during this seven day vacation — however large businesses commonly take out full-page advertisements in major newspapers to congratulate China on her birthday each year.

The most common Mandarin Chinese phrase used on National Day is 欢度国庆 (huān dù guó qìng, “Enjoy the National Day vacation”), or 祝贺伟大祖国的[insert a number]岁生日 ( zhù hè wěi dà zǔ guó de __ suì shēng rì, “Congratulations to the [insert a number] birthday of the great motherland”). These phrases are better suited to print advertisements, or banners in your workplace, rather than personal greetings — as previously mentioned, people don’t celebrate China National Day in a personal sense.

As the China National Day vacation week is not connected to traditional family values or familial piety, many middle- and upper-class Chinese citizens use this period for recreational travel (increasingly, overseas travel). Hence, the month of October can be problematic to secure meetings or commitments from business partners and stakeholders. Best to not assume that anyone of importance will be available during October.

In summary

The principle of making good use of Chinese holidays in your business development and corporate communications campaign can be summarized into three main bullet points:

Be aware of all upcoming holidays, taking care to ascertain the actual dates each year.
Have good timing on your promotional activities and events planning.
Be different from everyone else. Make your greetings, cards, gifts and events stand out from an ocean of mediocrity.

It can take some time to become accustomed to Chinese holiday timing, and a solid localization effort to distill a communications style and voice that fits the Chinese cultural context and your brand identity well. The easiest solution for a fast and successful program is to engage the services of a local expert. Your local partner will be your calendar, your alarm clock, your copywriter, your design team and your event manager. If you’re still without such a partner, please do consider Illuminant’s battle-proven services.

Article by Kane Gao, Illuminant’s head of research, and Simon Cousins, Illuminant’s chief exec.

Tags: advice, china, holidays, public holidays, vacations
Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

Avoiding insult and injury when using color in China

Monday, January 17th, 2011

"Mondrian Came to China". Shot in Beijing by Simon.

If you’re like most of our clients, you want to enter and prosper in the Chinese marketplace with a product or service which is presented — calibrated, if you wish – to Chinese cultural expectations. You want to avoid confusing your market by ensuring you’re localizing your product or service so that its not misunderstood, or worse, dismissed or derided, due to some cultural faux pas.

While every world culture has its own unique symbolism and taboos, its fair to say that the ancient and very complex Chinese culture is the big daddy of cultural symbolism. Highly resonant symbolic memes run so old and deep that it’s impossible to summarize them into one blog post, or even a hundred posts.

Instead, we will be talking about something more directly linked to successful business practices in China: the hidden meanings behind colors, especially in connection to effective marketing and communications in China.

There are many traps for young players!

Everything old is new again (or never became old in the first place)

Contemporary mainland Chinese culture places great importance on symbolism. Since ancient times the Chinese people have had hidden meanings and deep significance in connection with, well, just about everything. Some little-known cultural superstitions about color continue to have resonance in many parts of contemporary Chinese society — your product’s or service’s audience. For example, did you know that…

Green hats mean that the wearer’s wife is cheating on him, and

Black borders around photographs mean that the person pictured is dead, and

White gift wrapping makes the recipient think of his own death.

Colors are deeply symbolic in China, and can make or break your commercial offering in the Chinese marketplace

We’ve been advising our clients on the cultural appropriateness and effectiveness of their corporate identity, branding and positioning for almost a decade, so we felt it might be helpful to outline the main cultural cues caused by popular colors in contemporary mainland Chinese society. Naturally, color is only one of a number of key elements in every brand, but it is a very important element.

Red:

While red is the signature color in mainland China, it really shouldn't be used in every circumstance. Shot in Beijing by Simon.

When accepting briefs to design marketing collateral for the mainland Chinese market, we’re often asked: “How can I make it look perfectly Chinese, or maybe not 100% Chinese, but Chinese enough to be effective?” The follow-up question is usually “Why don’t we use the color red? Everything else in China seems to be red!”

To non-Chinese, red is the most obvious color to use in marketing work. According to a less-informed understanding of Chinese culture, red represents China and everything Chinese. Fundamentally, this is correct, but there are important subtitles which must be considered in correctly positioning your product or service.

In ancient China, the color red gained its meaning from fire. Unlike many other countries where fire has long been regarded as a symbol of danger or destruction, fire is generally considered to be a good thing in China. The Chinese people have a saying, 红红火火 (hóng hóng huǒ huǒ, or literally “red, red, fire, fire”) meaning the life of someone expands, prospers, cracks and rockets like red flame. By the same principle, 火了(huǒ le, “caught fire”) means something has gained considerable popularity, and the adjective 火爆 (huǒ bào, “fire and explosion”) refers to places such as busy markets jam-packed with people, or a book or movie which is packed with action and excitement.

The color red has acquired these characteristics over millenia, and has is today the symbol of prosperity and happiness. Importantly, it’s also the primary color for celebrations, especially the Lunar New Year and wedding ceremonies.

With the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, red was adopted as the symbol of communism, revolution and (as the Party has it) “liberation”. Do understand however that this choice of red was influenced by the USSR rather than the ancient characteristics of the colour (remember that Mao’s communist party was philosophically (and often violently) opposed to superstition). So don’t confuse the red of China’s contemporary political system with “the red of the common people”. The ancient roots of red don’t include revolution.

Our advice: It’s good to use some red to create “Chinese elements” in your collateral, but don’t abuse it.

Producing marketing collateral which is predominantly red will almost certainly make it look out of place, and cause confusion in the minds of your audiences. Your audience’s first impression will reliably be “What? Is it the New Year time already?” For non-Chinese, imagine how you react when you see Christmas decorations or marketing in the middle of June — silly, right? And don’t handwrite in red ink: it communicates that you’re ending your relationship with your correspondent.

To overuse red out of context is certainly poor conceptual communication, so if you have a lot of red in your marketing materials, seek expert advice prior to publication in China.

Yellow:

China National Games 2005 - Opening Ceremony (ancient times sequence 1)

Yellow representing ancient imperial China in the opening ceremony of the China National Games 2005. Shot in the Nanjing Stadium by Simon.

We’re addressing yellow second, because like red, the color has some quite distinctive and problematic meanings.

Yellow can be dangerous to use in your marketing materials. If your copywriting refers to a product or service and that is connected to yellow, great care should be taken.

When the term for “yellow”, “黄” (huáng) is used in connection to any kind of publication or media, it means the thing it describes is pornographic. For example, 黄图 (huáng tú, “yellow picture”) means pornographic pictures and graphics, 黄书 (huáng shū, “yellow book”) means pornographic writings, 黄片 (huáng piān, “yellow clips”) means pornographic movies, and 黄网 (huáng wǎng, “yellow web”) means pornographic websites.

So the next time you see Chinese police officers wielding a big banner saying 扫黄打非 (sǎo huáng dǎ fēi, “sweep the yellow and beat the un-”), you will know it’s time for one of their raids on pornography.

(Yes, that direct translation is a little obtuse — such is the habit of writing contemporary Mandarin in the mainland — more accurately, the police banner expresses the People’s Armed Police’s will to “sweep the street of yellow publications and beat unlawful activities”).

The other key cultural marker for the color yellow is that in ancient times, pure, bright yellow was used exclusively by emperors of several dynasties. To say someone has 黄袍加身 (huáng páo jiā shēn, “to wear the yellow robe”) means he has ascended to the throne, most likely by usurping. These ancient emperors reserved the color yellow for their own exclusive use, and anyone caught using yellow in any way during their dynasty would be put to death.

Our advice: Be very careful with using the color yellow in your marketing and communications activities. Avoid large swathes of yellow, and avoid yellow in your key corporate identity brandmarks and product brandmarks. Judicious use of yellow is possible by a deft marketing agency: for example, a bright yellow background and dragon (the Chinese kind, with five claws) may be a strong visual design choice to market a product or service that should appear to be “majestic” (but that’d be a ballsy decision, best discussed with your in-market advisors).

Gold:

Gold is a color which has long been used in China as a symbol of nobility and wealth. It is closely related to the ancient emperors’ “bright, pure yellow” (see above).

Our advice: It’s fine to use metallic gold and golden colors in your marketing materials. There are few, if any, cultural faux pas to be watchful for.

However, we advise our clients to avoid over-use of the color gold. There was a time from late 1980s to middle 1990s when practically every Chinese mainlander became crazy about gold ornaments and golden colored paints. This “gold rush” has caused over-use of the color to become the domain of the nouveau riche, and as such, can easily appear to make your message gaudy and cheap-looking. Appropriate use of gold is one of the keys to productive marketing and advertising in China.

Purple:

Graffiti is rare in China. This purple heart is an exception. Shot in Beijing by Simon.

Like in many European and British cultures, purple is a symbol of nobility (however it was never the imperial color).

Unlike European and British cultures, purple has deep religious meaning in China. An ancient Taoist symbol of divine presence is canonized as “a purple cloud coming from the east”. This phrase is always used in connection to anything mortal ascending to immortality.

Our advice: Get creative and consider using purple to your advantage. We recall a campaign for Dewar’s Scotch Whisky executed in China a few years ago with purple velvet covering every surface of the set. This was a very effective method of connecting the Dewar’s brand with positive notions of nobility and immortality.

Green:

Green is a color which can confuse new entrants to the China marketplace. While the idea of “green” in the western world has some similarity in China, there are subtle but important differences which most new market entrants fail to grasp.

In China’s mainland, green means “clean” or “free of contaminants”. Put into practice, this is not the same definition of clean that westerners might assume. Mostly when westerners talk about “green technology” or “green energy”, they mean “sustainable” or “eco-friendly”. A sort of cleanness to Mother Nature.

However in China, “green” vegetables are free of pesticides, but may contribute to environmental degradation. “Green” milk is milk without toxic melamine. “Green” publications are without explicit or prohibited content. So you see, “green” a widely applicable adjective with much broader and quite different meanings to “green” products or services in western society.

(As an aside, the term “organic” is even more troublesome than “green” in China. You see, because “green” is so broad in the minds of Chinese consumers, (and “green” products can still contain harmful characteristics) the even more specific term “organic” is very poorly understood. We’re experts at marketing organic foods and beverages in China, and we have had to develop extremely detailed campaign materials to accurately present organic product provenances and benefits.)

In general terms, green is a good choice of color in just about anything, except for hats. Symbolically, “getting a green hat” means a man has an unfaithful wife (in ancient China, husbands of prostitutes wore green headscarves). When preparing gifts for guests, partners or clients, green should be avoided at all costs if the gifts are intended to be worn anywhere on or near people’s heads.

(We recall being asked to comment on a national Olympic committee’s prototype uniform for the Beijing 2008 Olympic opening ceremony a few years before the Games. It featured a traditional national hat in… you guessed it… green. We vociferously talked the committee down from what would have been the sound a one and a half billion people laughing at that team’s most solemn moment during the Games!)

Our advice: Go ahead and use green for just about any marketing purpose, but do not assume that your “green” product or service will be correctly understood by your Chinese audience without specific market education built into your campaign. And don’t give green hats away at your next (or any) trade fair unless you want to become a laughing stock.

White

White is used in funerals, which is quite different from western culture. A 白包 (bái bāo, “white envelope”) is an envelope of money to show the sympathy to family of the deceased, much opposed to the 红包 (hóng báo, “red envelope”) given to newlywed couples and children.

White is one the color that you must avoid for anything festive or celebratory (and that includes product launches). White should never be used in connection to wedding ceremonies, especially in the less westernized (that means most) regions of the country.

And when giving gifts of any kind, never wrap them in white.

Our advice: Do be judicious with the use of white according to the context of the marketing material or activity. Seek expert advice before committing to white as a brand or marketing feature element.

Black

Black, when used in copywriting and text, has a wide array of symbolic meanings that include evil, morbid, corrupted, illegal, and/or greedy. As a color it has a hint of formality and solemness in the minds of the Chinese people.

And when giving gifts of any kind, never wrap them in black.

Our advice: Take care not to over-use black. Never put black borders around photographs of people. It means that they are dead and are being memorialized! Avoid presenting someone’s portrait (a photo focused on the face) in black and white mode. This makes your audience think of pictures on graves.

Multi-color and rainbow spectra

Chinese people seldom use a rainbow spectrum in things. The Gay Pride rainbow is unknown in China. Use of spectra in Chinese marketing materials is likely to make your Chinese audience think that you’re presenting the national flag of a minor country, or that you’ve used cheap, end-of-run colored materials in your production.

In ancient times, a rainbow across the sun would foretell that the emperor would soon die or be challenged.

Our advice: If you must use a rainbow or a color spectrum, go right ahead, but any hope for cultural resonance will probably be lost on your audience.

Qing

Its not grey. Its not blue. Its not green. Its qing. Typical hutong colour, shot in Beijing by Simon.

青 (qīng) — its pronounced “ching”, not “kwing” or “king” — is an interesting color that doesn’t appear in the standard set of colors commonly identified in western cultures.

Some people (Chinese included) say it’s a sort of blue, while others say it’s part of the green family. There is actually no right-or-wrong with these ideas. Technically qing is a color that sits anywhere in between blue and green. You can call it green, blue, green-ish blue or blue-ish green, and not be thought of as being odd.

Adding a little more interest to this unique Chinese-only color, qing may include some grey. So qing can also be described as greenish-grey blue, or bluish-green grey, or any other combination of these shades.

Qing is closely linked to historical buildings and clothing, like qing bricks, and qing pattern porcelain. Also, there is a type of female character in Peking Opera called a 青衣 (qīng yī, “qing colored costume”) because they usually wear costumes of this interesting color.

Our advice: Give qing consideration if you need to instill a feeling of history and traditional culture. Search for the term 青 in search engines, browse through pictures you get, find your idea on what kind of green-blue should your qing be.

Summary

China, as a modern country, has a lot of facets, and a full spectrum of colors. Stereotyping it with red is but a safe but boring practice. Free your creativity and experiment with different colors in a different cultural context. The pitfalls outlined in this article are easy to avoid. All will be fine as long as your campaign or design is backed by reliable market research and cultural analysis — please contact us to discuss your particular challenge.

Article by Kane Gao, Illuminant’s head of research, and Simon Cousins, Illuminant’s chief executive.

Tags: advice, china, color, colour
Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

All you need to know about the (Chinese) Lunar New Year

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

The Lunar New Year festival is soon upon us, with the year of the rabbit beginning on February 3rd, 2011. The Illuminant team thought it might be interesting to get a few notes down to help our clients, partners and visitors to understand this important cultural phenomenon better. And, for those who are developing their businesses or reputations in China, our three most important tips for foreign enterprises during the Lunar New Year appears at the end of this article.

Chinese New Year, Chun Jie, Spring Festival, Lunar New Year… oh my!

Chinese lunar new year lanterns shot by Simon in Beijing's Sanlitun

The Lunar New Year is actually known by several different terms in China. In different circles, the festival is named Chinese New Year, Chun Jie, Spring Festival and Lunar New Year. So what’s the deal?

Chinese middle school textbooks prefer the term “Spring Festival”, although those same textbooks also point out that this phrase was invented relatively recently in China. Since the introduction of these textbooks (naturally, after 1949 when Chairman Mao’s forces were victorious), hundreds of millions of kids have grown up with the term, and the Chinese New Year is widely known as Spring Festival. The direct translation from the Chinese “Chun Jie” to “Spring Festival” is now pretty well accepted by foreigners living, working and studying in China as well.

It’s also quite frequently called the “Chinese New Year”, as opposed to the “un-Chinese New Year” that happens regularly on the first day of every January. To many of China’s contemporary thought leaders, the term “Chinese New Year” is somewhat undesirable, mostly for lack of imagination. Putting a “Chinese” before a widely known noun to indicate its Chinese counterpart has been rather a cliché, like calling our 肉夹馍 “Chinese hamburger” and 土家烧饼 “Chinese pizza” (both inaccurate, and in the case of “Chinese New Year, similarly inaccurate as a “Chinese version” of the pretty much universal [solar] new year).

The term than these thought leaders tend to prefer is “Lunar New Year”, which is really quite accurate, directly pointing out what the festival is about. First it’s celebrated as a sort of New Year’s Day, and “Lunar”links the idea to the lunar calendar.

For the majority of China’s 5,000 years of recorded history, the great country has been agrarian (that is to say, agriculturally based, both in economics and in culture). The lunar calendar has always been the dominating force in daily life because people need it to figure out what time to sow a new year’s crops. China isn’t the only country that had been using this kind of calendar, so we think that calling the festival the “Lunar New Year” avoids the cultural misunderstandings that it is a Chinese-only thing (after all, Japan, Vietnam, Korea and other countries and expatriates also mark the festival). On this point, many Asian communities thanked President Obama for renaming it the “Asian New Year” in his first Lunar New Year address.

The Illuminant team is all about cultural diversity, so we’re sticking with Lunar New Year, but we’re not going to get upset if our friends and relatives have a different idea!

So whats the festival all about?

Chinese lunar new year decorations, shot by Simon at Beijing's toy market

That depends on which version of the story you being told. We Illuminant folks love a good story, so we’ll relate the more interesting version:

A very, very long time ago, there was a terrible monster by the name of 年 (Nián, which means “year”) which was greatly troubling ancient China. On the last day of each year the monster Nian would go from village to village, hunting down and often eating people. The monster Nian was almost invincible, thus the proud and stout Chinese people had no choice but to hide at home and shiver. Later, by chance somebody found out that the monster Nian wasn’t all-powerful after all. It was discovered that Nian fears very loud sounds, and that it absolutely hates the colour red.

By the end of that ancient year, the Chinese people had worked as one and stocked up lots of fireworks (to produce the loud sounds), and had put up countless red banners (the display the fearful colour). Every year henceforth (and especially so in contemporary times), great volumes of cacophony are produced for the entire Lunar New Year holiday week, with every horizontal surface bedecked in red. And you know what? The monster hasn’t rampaged or eaten a single person since that ancient discovery… so it must be true!

Okay, so what about the less superstitious story?

Glad you asked! A plainer version of the Lunar New Year story goes like this:

In the old times when the Chinese economy was entirely driven by agriculture, landlords would collect land rental from their tenants on the last day of each year. If someone was unfortunate to have had an ill harvest, or simply had a particularly cruel landlord, it would mean that his new year (and maybe years to come as well) would be thoroughly doomed.

This day had been regarded as a particularly significant obstacle by the vast bulk of ancient Chinese people. Surviving The Big Day was definitely something well worth celebrating! Also, like in many cultures, after a whole year among the crops and livestock, people sure could use some recreation. That’s why fireworks were set off and grand feasts laid out before getting down to a new round of struggle to beat the next year’s deadline.

May you get past the year and survive again!

Whichever version of the story you favour, the activity of celebrating the Lunar New Year in China is called “过年” (guò nián), meaning “to get past the year”, or “to survive the year”.

In Chinese life, the Lunar New Year bears an importance as great as, if not greater than, Christmas in Christian countries. The celebration happens on the last night of a lunar year, and then the celebration stretches across the following 6 or 7 days.

What do Chinese people like to do during the festival?

The ghosts have no chance with Chinese lunar new year temple fair hair! Shot by Simon in Beijing.

Life in today’s China is pretty codified. Customs are adhered to, and familial piety is an unavoidable fact of daily life. The main activities enjoyed to celebrate getting past the year (and beating off that old monster Nian!) are:

Travelling to one’s hometown, regardless of the massive crush of a billion people all travelling on the same day of the year (Lunar New Year is the largest migration of humanity on the planet).
Wearing one’s very best clothes.
Visit all the grandpas & grandmas, clean their houses and prepare grand feasts of the new year.
Set off lots and lots and lots of unfeasibly large and loud fireworks (pretty much from dawn to dawn for more than a week).
Enjoy many family get-togethers, and enjoy great food and alcohol. Chinese dumplings (or gyoza, or ravioli, etc) are a must-have.
Play mahjong (not all, but most families play) through the first night, accompanied by CCTV’s “Spring Festival Gala” on almost a billion television sets.
Revisit the grandpas & grandmas’ on the first day of the new year, and clean up all the mess (if not cleaned the previous night).
Visit all one’s relatives in town, delivering greetings and gifts of fruit, candy, food and alcohol. This program of visits, as well planned as a military incursion, will occupy at least several days of one’s holiday plans if his bloodline runs long and wide.
Meet old friends and classmates who are scattered across the country but coming back to the hometown for the celebration.
Go to temple fairs and enjoy the outdoor entertainment, novelties, sense of community and delicious snacks.

As a foreigner in China, what would I find most obvious during the Lunar New Year?

Your Chinese town gets very, VERY noisy with crackers exploding, when individual blasts can no longer be discerned, for hours on end.
Big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen will be like ghost towns, with very few people in the street at day time. It’s because the majority of China’s job opportunities are in these places, and people from all over the countries rush into them for a better future. During the Lunar New Year, they must go to their hometowns.
For this reason, for a month or so before the Lunar New Year, highway, railway and air traffic of China will be running at top capacity (read: exploding-with-people). It will be awfully hard to get a train/flight ticket, and even if you get one, the ride won’t be pleasant. It will be wise to avoid travelling around. Try to delay travel until the second or third day of the new year festival instead.
Friends will try to greet you on street. It’s also advisable to greet your friends if you happen to meet them. The universal greeting word is “过年好!” (guò nián hǎo, “happy getting past the old year!”). Another frequently used greeting is “恭喜发财” (gōng xǐ fā cái, which means “I hope you get big money!”, but don’t say this to government officials, police or military or public servants. For those official folks, tell them you hope they get promoted in the new year “步步高升” (bù bù gāo shēng, “rise to higher places step by steady step”).

And this is the year of the… rabbit? Right?

Right. Each lunar year of China has been assigned to an animal, 生肖 (shēng xiāo), sometimes called the “Chinese Zodiac”. This coming year, beginning on February 3rd, 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit.

There 12 totem animals in all, just like zodiac signs. In fixed sequence they are: the mouse, the ox, the tiger, the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the sheep, the monkey, the rooster, the dog, and the swine. The year 2010, a year of the tiger, draws its last breath on February 2nd of 2011 (Gregorian calendar), followed by a year of the rabbit. Then, after 12 years, the cycle begins again.

Each totem animal is said to bring distinctive characteristics to people born in that year. Rabbit people (those who were born in 1915, 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999 and 2011) are said by experts in Chinese geomancy to have good financial luck, be articulate and have an even temper.

So what are the three most important things a company should do in China for the Lunar New Year?

For a company, the Lunar New Year is a great time to impress your Chinese clients and partners. For almost a decade, Illuminant has been advising and helping clients to deepen guanxi relationships and improve commercial prospects in China by behaving well during the Lunar New Year. From all the dozens of special Lunar New Year campaigns we’ve designed and implemented, here are our three most important things any foreign company or enterprise should do:

Plan your greetings

It’s important to plan your schedule of greetings or gifts to clients (a must-have) and business partners and government stakeholders (a nice-to-have) about one month prior to the Lunar New Year night. Their team-members will start leaving for their hometowns maybe as early as half a month in prior (the more senior the personnel, the earlier they can take off). So get started with a list of all of your clients, and any prospective clients that you’ve been working hard to develop this last year. Remember to greet or gift the most senior people in the organization — and pay special attention to avoid embarrassment by gifting someone “lower” in the hierarchy better than her or his boss. Both parties will be embarrassed, and it could cause a loss of momentum in your relationship.

Deliver your greetings

You should send a greeting card, hand written, at minimum, or better still to send a small gift. Good gifts are quality brand foodstuffs or alcohol. Whatever they are, they *must* be in red color, or wrapped in red if they are not. Suggested greetings include “过年好” (as aforementioned), “恭贺新春” (gōng hè xīn chūn, “sincere congratulations on the new spring”), or more generic “新年快乐” (xīn nián kuài lè, your typical “Happy New Year”). Avoid 恭喜发财 here. Although it’s quite common between friends, relatives and colleagues, it’s more polite not to approach a business in such personal fashion. Some rabbit-themed gifts would be a very good idea.

If you don’t currently have a China-based office, have a trusted local partner (such as this fine PR agency) to buy your Lunar New Year cards and send them to you for signing, before you send back for your partner to organize delivery. EMS or “kuai di” delivery is much, much better than China Post (home of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the People’s Republic of China) and these delivery services cost only a handful of Yuan per delivery.

Consider hosting a party

Lunar New Year parties are a wonderful opportunity to quickly and solidly advance your guanxi with your customers, staff, partners and stakeholders, and to sharply increase the regard they have for you and your enterprise. A decent sized party for 25 to 35 guests in a nice hotel, with a buffet, toasts (many, many toasts), entertainment, lucky-draw and take-home gifts for everyone can be surprisingly affordable, and represents a brilliant return on investment. Illuminant is highly experienced in running every aspect of Lunar New Year parties — and by engaging Illuminant, you’ll be receiving multi-national western quality and accountability for only a small premium over often dodgy and disappointing suppliers that really don’t grasp your objectives or methods.

Article by Kane Gao, Illuminant’s head of research

Tags: china, chinese new year, chunjie, culture, holiday, lunar new year, spring festival
Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

Sharn Hi Juan Ing Knee: language training for World Expo

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Ain’t it exciting? The World Expo is finally here. You bet China, especially Shanghai, has been spending huge money and human or non-human resource preparing for this. For those who had been to the Beijing Olympics back in 08, maybe you still remember the warm feeling of being cared about by countless volunteers. Apparently Shanghai is planning to tune that up a notch by enabling *everybody* in the public service sector to court foreign tourists. The proof of this assumption is a picture passed along by a classmate of my cousin:

Shanghai World Expo English lesson poster

No, this isn’t urban legend. I know the “classmate of cousin” part sounds like it, but I really doubt if anyone could hammer such a picture out of Photoshop. The banner was apparently designed/distributed by “Command center for public services and commerce development, Luwan District”. Thus I assume that the intended audience of this banner is Shanghainese working in banks, transport hubs, shopping malls, newspaper stands, etc. The purpose seems to be teaching general Shanghainese in the service sector the most English in the shortest time possible. As a matter of fact English letters are beyond a lot of Chinese, not to mention those quirky phonetic symbols. But to prepare the whole city for World Expo, that isn’t a problem. They used Chinese characters to mark pronunciation. Some examples on the banner are:

English: Welcome to our store!
Pronunciation: 维尔抗姆突奥窝思道
Pinyin: Wei2 Er3 Kang4 Mu3 Tu1 Ao4 Wo1 Si1 Dao4
Comment: Totally gibberish in Chinese. And in my case it takes me 30 seconds to pull off the tongue twister.

English: I’m sorry, I can only speak a little English.
Pronunciation: 俺么骚瑞，俺坎翁累丝鼻科额累偷英格历史
Pinyin: An3 Me0 Sao1 Rui4, An3 Kan3 Weng1 Lei4 Si1 Bi2 Ke1 E2 Lei4 Tou1 Ying1 Ge2 Li4 Shi3
Comment: Oh man, you can only speak a little English, but I see you fire a hell of great Chinese tongue twister. My eyes and mind get mingled merely looking at that line!

English: Just a moment, please.
Pronunciation: 杰丝特哞闷特，普立斯
Pinyin: Jie2 Si1 Te4 Mou1 Men1 Te4, Pu3 Li4 Si1
Comment: This… should… work…? It’s just that I’m not sure if that rarely used 哞 could be picked up by the majority of people…?

In general I think this is a failure. High school students tend to use this trick for their English lessons, and that’s OK, since they are only marking single words. But forging such long lines of gibberish, I’m not sure which is easier, start from the rightful phonetic symbols, or try to master this twisted gibberish? In my case, with the same time and effort to burn that “Wei2 Er3 Kang4 Mu3 Tu1 Ao4 Wo1 Si1 Dao4” into my mind, I can pretty much master how to deliver “welcome to our store” in 5 different languages…

Another reason why this is a failure is that the tutorial given here is far from enough. Based on this English-in-(supposedly)-30-seconds tutorial, let’s imagine the following scenario:

Mr. Wang (let’s say, 50 years old), who runs a small newspaper stand by a main street, saw a bewildered foreign tourist standing nearby. In good faith, helpful mind, and augmented by the quick English lesson he just picked up not long ago, he approached the foreigner and initiated a conversation:

Wang: Kan3 Ai2 Hai3 Er3 Pu1 You2? (Can I help you?)
Foreigner: Sure, thanks so much, gentleman! I’m trying to figure out how to get to [fill in a preferred place name] from here. All my gratitude if you could show me the route!
Wang: …
Foreigner: ???
Wang: …
Foreigner: … ???
Wang: An3 Me0 Sao1 Rui4, An3 Kan3 Weng1 Lei4 Si1 Bi2 Ke1 E2 Lei4 Tou1 Ying1 Ge2 Li4 Shi3! Bai2 Bai2! (I’m sorry, I can only speak a little English! Bye bye!) [Retreats into his booth]
Foreigner: [High on triple dose of bewilderment]

Doesn’t make much sense, right? And I’m in serious doubt if any Mr. Wang could really get around the “I’m sorry blah blah blah” line. So come on, Shanghai, cancel the joke, do it properly, hire some professionals, or recruit college volunteers. You saw those volunteer booths in Beijing a couple of years ago, and they worked like a charm.

Or if this is how things go in reality, and you happen to be in Shanghai, and you are really confused by your Mr. Wang, here is a little Chinese-in-30-seconds, delivered in similar fashion, for your reference. Oh you’re welcome, don’t have to thank me. We share the planet, we help each other out.

Chinese: 这个多少钱?
Meaning: How much is this?
Pronunciation: Drill Girl Dough Shall Chant?
Notes: As a matter of course it’s not perfect match, but repeat it a handful of times and keep pointing to the item you want to buy, they will get it eventually.

Chinese: 请问几点啦?
Meaning: Excuse me, what’s the time please?
Pronunciation: Cheering When Gee Diane La
Notes: You’re asking about *time*, and there is a “when” in this line. Perfect logic. See? You’ve already remembered 1/5 of the whole sentence in a blink of eyes. It’s so much more efficient than Luwan District English.

Chinese: 可以借用一下卫生间吗?
Meaning: May I use the bathroom?
Pronunciation: Cur Ill Jay Young Ill Share Weight Shown Jan Ma?
Notes: Not an easy one, but now you should get the idea what your general Chinese may feel when he/she stumbles upon the Luwan banner.

Chinese: 太贵了，我不买
Meaning: That’s too expensive. I won’t buy it.
Pronunciation: Thai Gale Le. Wow Bull My.

Chinese: 你好
Meaning: Hello / Good morning / Good afternoon / Good evening
Pronunciation: Knee Hall.

Chinese: 对不起
Meaning: Sorry / Excuse me
Pronunciation: Dale Bull Cheese.
Note: All nouns, short, easy to remember.

Chinese: 谢谢
Meaning: Thanks.
Pronunciation: Shy Shy
Note: Not the ideal pronunciation match. Can’t do better, Dale Bull Cheese. Remember to keep a big, bright grin on your face to enhance the scene. Don’t literally go shy.

Chinese: 没关系
Meaning: No worries / It doesn’t matter / You’re welcome / So be it
Pronunciation: May Gum She

Chinese: 再见
Meaning: Bye bye.
Pronunciation: Zap Jan

Sincerely wish you enjoy your stay in Shanghai during the World Expo. Please find our wishes and greetings as:

上              海          欢              迎             你！
Shang4    Hai3      Huan1     Ying2     Ni3!
Sharn     Hi           Juan        Ing         Knee!

Article by Kane Gao, Illuminant’s Head of Research

Tags: chinese, english, language, shanghai, world expo 2010
Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

Foursquare clone spotted, and it’s more than that

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Interestingly, a couple of days after I stumbled upon the media report on Foursquare and came up with a paranoid conspiracy theory, I did find the first Chinese clone of Foursquare… No, I’m not promoting myself as sort of oracle or fortune teller. From the look of it, it’s been there for some time, not long, but definitely before April 8th. In fact it seems to be born on March 18th.

The clone, or technically half-clone or double-clone, depends on your perspective, is called 拉手 (la1 shou3, “holding hands”). It’s about 50% Groupon clone, 50% Foursquare clone. You can find the website here.

Sorry, you will have to register to do anything on the website. I’ve tried it a little bit though, and the hands-on report comes as this:

Interesting name. The name of the Foursquare-clone part is “拉手四方” (La1 “holding”, Shou3 “hands”, Si4 “four”, Fang1 “square”). Actually I was thinking 四方 was a good name if Foursquare makes a Chinese manifestation. Four is 四, square makes 方, and combined the two characters mean “everywhere in the world”. Now it seems the initiative is lost. If Lashou has registered the term, there will likely be an unpleasant fight over a simple name. Meanwhile, the “Check-in” function of Foursquare has been mapped into a bilingual term, with English aspect exactly “Check-in” and Chinese facet “踩点”. Coincidentally, this is also what I thought best translation for the function of THE Foursquare. Another initiative lost.

Limited but essential client support. Lashou’s Foursquare-ish client comes on S60, iPhone, and also on web if you don’t have the right phone. Both clients are downloadable on official site, with the iPhone version also available in Apple’s App Store. My HD2 is rendered rather useless in this case, thus all tests has been done on its web version.

The game rules are pretty much the same as Foursquare’s, with extra tweaks to support the other (Groupon-ish) half of Lashou:

At least the web interface has absolutely nothing to do with GPS. You can check-in to anywhere sitting in your office. And those check-in all count.
Each check-in grants 6 points. Check-in and leave a tip gives 8 points.
Users who have bought stuff with this website’s Groupon Clone service have extra treat. Adjusted points granted = 6 + (6*0.3*how many times you bought stuff on Lashou). You bought three items there, your average check-in will be worth 6+(6*0.3*3)=11.4 points
Active user who SPENT MORE MONEY on its Groupon aspects also has a 1% extra bonus to check-in points.
Users who installed the client on iPhone, and bound the account to a Sina Weibo (the leading Twitter clone), and have over 1,000 followers on Weibo, also gets 1% bonus to check-in points.
The website ranks users in accordance with check-in points every 24 hours (0:00 to 24:00). Top 3 point bandits get CNY 25 coupon at a rather popular hotpot franchise (呷卟呷卟, if you are interested). User points are cleared every midnight.
Yes, there are also badges to unlock, you bet. It’s not clear how many badges are available and how exactly to unlock them yet.

Some interesting findings during the experiment:

For the lack of GPS factor, you can check into wherever you like, or invent places out of thin air to check-in. I saw funny venue called “Abcd” with an address “asdf, Beijing”. And sure, there are duplicated venues.
There doesn’t seem to be any check-in limit counter. You can check-in every single venue available everyday.
The real-time check-in board pops up at least 1 new check-in message every 2 seconds. The board was still rolling rapidly after 3 hours into the observation.
Threw a peek at leader scores during the process: top star had 974.9 points. Big white hot “WHUT?!”. Dare you challenge this record on THE Foursquare, man?
After one morning’s observation, there were at least 10 new users popped up in the check-in board.

Conclusion

Pro:

One-two punch, nice. Rally Groupon-clone users into Foursquare-clone, and maybe vice a little versa.
Great choice of client platform. iPhone is getting popular, and S60 is the emperor. Let’s forget WinMo (sort of minority), Android (absolutely minority), BlackBerry (you ever heard of this thingie, bro?).
Solid stimulation. Hotpot coupon! Yay! And that’s from the service provider, it’s always available.
Encourage cheating. Heats up user competition for the current stage. Users were dedicating a whole morning checking into hundreds of places.
Chinese UI for everything. Of course.
It’s getting media heat! Dubbed as “the Foursquare of China” and kind of regarded as the next golden boy.

Con:

Encourage cheating. This is bound to be bad in the long run.
Badges seem to be limited, and lack of interesting ones like “Jobs”. Actually, I failed to find a complete badge list anywhere. Not knowing what’s around the corner isn’t good.
Limited phone support. In case, just in case, some day Android or WinPho7 devices gain popularity here…

That’s about the size of it. Good over bad, by quite far. I don’t think it’s time to worry about the genuine Foursquare though. Initiatives are lost, yes; the clone is doing good, yes; the war is far from over though. According to my previous timeline, they are still in phase 2. The first clone is only less than 2 months old, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten any venture capital. For quite some time Foursquare doesn’t have to worry about clone swarm. Given proper action and timing, everything could be changed.

But this Lashou should not be overlooked either. As previously mentioned, Chinese netizens are super faithful to the 1st thing they stick to. Like the Parking War and Friend for Sale game module on Facebook, they were cloned into Chinese websites, too. Unlike elsewhere, those two petty “games” went through “popular” stage into “frenzy” land. People were giving up sleep time trying to outdo their buddies over a virtual parking slot. This phenomenon (right after World of Warcraft) contributed to the “internet addiction” fuss haunting the whole society. That’s how far dedicated Chinese users can go. Things can be quite tricky if Lashou reaches that goal.

OK. So far, I’ve written a big chunk of subjective observation and assumption. Personally I’m rather interesting in what direction this not-really-competition would go. Lashou will be paid close attention. Interesting twists and turns will be covered.

Article by Kane Gao, Illuminant’s Head of Research

Tags: app, china, clone, fake, foursquare, location, shanzhai
Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

Business Wars: Attack of the Clones

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

This post is about internet, business, and China. Not how to do internet business here, but rather discussing how to ready yourself if you happen to own an internet business, and may someday want to try your luck in the Orient.

It’s going to be lengthy, and mostly I will spin the whole thing around the case of Foursquare, the rapidly emerging location-based social network, or I’d rather call it a social game. In case you feel bored in the reading process (I’m quite positive you will), I guess it’s better to put my conclusion before the actual body, to save you some time, or maybe create a little suspension. I believe that:

China is not a piece of virgin land with infinite opportunity. Actually it’s sort of a closed parallel universe. Everything has a counterpart here, or will soon have a couple of them if there isn’t one already. Residents seldom get out, but whoever ventures inside the border must fight its shadow self before anything. Shadow self here means those who clones foreign services atom-to-atom, in order to duplicate their international success.

Now let’s cut into the boring part.

On the morning of April 16th (Beijing time), 163 Tech, one of the major tech portal sites in China, posted a story about Foursquare. Link here.

It’s not even worth translating. The whole article is about Foursquare releasing a new version of client pack and gave a thorough instruction on what Foursquare is. To my knowledge, this is so far the first time Chinese web media covers Foursquare. 1:54pm the same day, QQ tech, another major tech portal here picked up a similar story from Forbes. This time it’s not on the front page though. But given the copy/paste spreading nature of Chinese portals, with some luck, there will be a chain-reaction soon. And unlike the western world, portals are what’s big here. SNS and micro-blogging fall into the secondary team.

Media coverage is good, however, not always so. Current stories about Foursquare on our portals emphasize that Foursquare is “fresh start, fun, growing at stunning speed”, and most importantly, “been shown a lot of love by venture investors”. According to 163 Tech story, it has already got 1 million US dollars from VC. Typical Chinese chemistry of business works like this: you get a glass of pure business, put in 1 pinch of venture investor love, 1 teaspoon of rapid growth, 0.5 gram of fresh start, and finally add 0.1 gram media coverage. Boom! You get an assembly of nice carbon-clones. Foursquare has already got everything. Give a little more here and there, a swarm of clone legion will shut it out of China for good, in case it may want to join the “let’s conquer China singlehandedly” team somewhere in the future.

The thing is, overgrown population leads to heat competition (for everything), which in turn leads to the high demand on response speed, ready-for-use business model and cash support for mere survival. Thus Chinese start-up businessmen are always keen on internet sector (fast to deploy and profit), on venture capital (to make start-up business boom a.s.a.p.), and successful templates from the western (saves a ton of feasibility research, also works as material for lobbying more and more careful venture investors).

The now-massive Instant Messaging giant QQ started off as an ICQ clone. World-dominating Alibaba (Taobao) was an eBay clone (good job though, it got much better than eBay in the long run), Dangdang was an Amazon duplicate, and the earliest 3 portals (Sohu, Sina, 163) were all “inspired” by Yahoo. That’s only the early days of Chinese internet sector. Facebook was cloned as Kaixin001.com, which was later further cloned by a couple of other companies into Xiaonei.com, 51.com, etc. Now Facebook the GFWed is said to be plotting a China entry, guess who’s daddy when it lands here? Twitter was cloned as Sina Weibo even before it got GFWed. Not to mention the micro-blogging frenzy rallied by 163, Tencent, and Sohu. Craigslist inspired a swarm of classified information sites a couple of years ago which unfortunately all died out. With everyone getting into the clone-VC-marketing-dominate model, newbie starters are more than ever paying attention to foreign examples of success. Chatroulette was discovered by majority of Chinese netizens about a month ago, and its stories spread rather wide. Now there is at least one Chatroulette clone working full force to duplicate its success and attract VC here in China already.

Now Foursquare has been proven to have remarkable growth, and VC-charm. I’m quite positive Foursquare clones will begin to show up in about 3 months (it’s technically harder to clone than Chatroulette). My suggestion is, if Foursquare would ever possibly consider gaining a share of Chinese market in the short or long future, it should get into action now, to defend its not-really-presence here. Chinese internet users have some unique natures: A) as a group, they tend to pick up new stuff much slower than westerners B) once they do, it will be harder than moving mountains to make them switch to any other equivalent, except if God wills so. It would be a good idea to start the defense battle right now, gain some distance before the Attack of the Clones could ever hit the big screen. I’m not talking about all those trouble incorporating here. It could be achieved easily: make a Chinese UI for Foursquare client.

English-only is a hell of a deal breaker here. Why so little Chinese (consider the population) use Twitter even before it’s GFWed? Why, despite the fatal lack of utilities on that platform, are Chinese Android users refusing to install Advanced Task Manager? More on Android’s case, why users here tend to avoid the stock app market at all? It’s all about language barrier. Chinese are mandated to learn English from junior high, and we can’t get a bachelor diploma without passing CET level 4 English test. Getting master degree requires even higher marks. The majority of Chinese are *forced* to swallow it, and they resent this language once they no longer need it, which in most people’s case means right after graduation. And you know people lose language skill faster than a free falling hippo when they don’t use it, or even hate it, right? With years spent on game/software localization and movie subtitle making, I’m rather confident to say that a general Chinese will automatically reject any software with more than 5 English words, or 1 full English sentence on its UI.

If that is done, they could do some extra work to sweeten the situation up: the phone client. Right now Foursquare has a client for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, webOS, and Windows Mobile (this buggy WinMoSquare thing doesn’t seem to be official release though). Of all the major smartphone platforms the only one missing is Symbian S60. I know Americans in general and geeks everywhere laughs at Nokia. Me, too, thinks S60 is a pathetic piece of cultural relic. However, not even 65,536 gigawatts of distain can warp the reality. Outside the United States, Nokia and its S60 legion rules, reigns, and kills, particularly in China. I’ve been doing a hobby project #PhoneWatch on twitter (@chassit). Put it simply, I identify every single smartphone or other smart-looking gadget bumps into my sight on my evening subway trip back home (Beijing, Sanlitun – Dawanglu, Line 10 then Line 1 through the busiest CBD area), and count them as groups. Not a long trip, but quite good timing IMO. Actually I’ve been doing this for kind of an occupational disease for a couple of years, only not keeping clear record. To my knowledge, Nokia S60 is always the winner. Now I’m 2 days into data-keeping, each day ending up with S60 topping the list, with a number as good as all other groups combined (groups are: S60, WinMo, Android, BlackBerry, Palm OS/webOS, iPhone, Moto Linux, shanzhai phones, Kindle, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS/DSi/DSL/DSi XL, tablets). As to why S60 beats iPhone by so far, I think I’ve got some reasonable theory, but that’s story for maybe another day. Anyway, not supporting S60 in China is quite far from a wise move.

What’s done is done. Under the current situation, which is not bad actually, if Foursquare will someday be interested in a China-entry, my suggest plan is (as in phases):

Phase 1 – right now: Grant the software a Chinese UI, also give a Chinese facelift to the website if possible. Stop here, wait for to-be cloner’s move. Do this as early as possible. Save energy, stay alert. Develop a S60 client pack if time allows.

Phase 2 – marked by the 1st sign of cloners: Post the install package (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android) on pirate app sharing hubs. BlackBerry users are the minority. iPhone users (those who actually use them as a smartphone) all rely on jailbreaking. Android users, as mentioned before, resent the stock market as a whole. Pirate app sites (mostly BBS) are the major resource of phone applications here. Foursquare doesn’t count on sales of app for revenue anyway, so no hard feelings.

Phase 3 – marked by any cloner getting the 1st batch of venture capital: Dig further into Chinese smartphone user communities. Influence them in QQ chat groups in addition to piracy share BBS. Offer prize to most active Chinese users. Incorporate in China if necessary, as required to start further cooperation with venue owners.

Phase 4 – marked by Tencent joining the war: Unlikely, but highly dangerous if it happens. All-out war is required. More viral marketing. Spread advertisements if things are not going well. Tencent is the most horrible enemy out there. Their QQ IM service has hundreds of millions of users, and they are surprisingly faithful. Spiraling from IM service, Tecent has attached online games, SNS, blogging, search engine, C2C sales platform, email, file sharing, news portal, and various “big things” at different times to the QQ client. Stimulate QQ IM users -> rally them to the new (closely bound) service -> instant boom -> kill competitor in mere months. This is the normal routine for it. Up to date, their clone products have claimed kings of hills, with only less than a handful of unbeaten opponents namely Google, Baidu, and Taobao. Foursquare could stand on an even ground with those three giants? I doubt so. QQ mobile client is a must-have for Chinese smartphone users, and Foursquare sound like a rather nice and easy-to-implement add-on to its current clients. They don’t even have to do any marketing, just send a system notification “have you updated your QQ to the latest version?” Without the human power and user base of Tencent, response speed is the only weapon if Foursquare ever gets in a toe-to-toe deathmatch with it.

Well, that’s it. If Foursquare marks China-entry as a mere possibility, they should start making small things happen right now. Here the key rule is: the 1st to capture the flag always have a better chance of succeeding. The same also applies to other rapidly emerging service providers. If you have a plan of getting a Chinese branch down your schedule, start planning *right now*. Do not treat China as just another country. It’s more like a parallel universe where things tend to be self-dependent and seldom go out. Always be prepared for your shadow self.

Article by Kane Gao, Illuminant’s Head of Research

Tags: business, china, clone, fake, shanzhai
Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

Brand Identity: sometimes you speak in sense but they listen in gibberish

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

An introductory note from the author: Firstly, ladies and gentlemen, it should be made clear that everything in this post is discussed within the scope of the Chinese marketplace, and that the opinions expressed herein are mine personally.

Brand is an interesting thing. Brand is many things, including the personification of a product or service. Brand is like the name or nickname of a person for the product or service.

Branding gives others something to remember and address this very person by, especially when he has done something great and expect others to be grateful. Thus the fundamental purpose of brand marketing is to make consumers remember it, consume it, and continue to consume it. This should be very easy in theory. Just expend your effort build something really fantastic, and go around shouting “hey guys, please be aware that this piece of work is proudly brought to you by [insert your brand here], and we will do even better in the future!” But in the China marketplace, things always have some tendency to go wrong, especially in a market where everyone speaks a language very much different from most other languages available.

One such occasion is when one company has too many brands. In a recent market research project for an Illuminant client, I was surprised to learn that most consumers we interacted with did not know that Gatorade is a Pepsi brand. This isn’t necessarily bad, but in China, attaching a small brand to a globally respected name could have even better effect.

Or on other occasions when there are so many brands involved, it’s rather hard to maintain one single brand from the hellish brand warfare. An example would be the computer industry in China. In early 1990s, when Great Wall was the dominant PC brand, everyone was referring to computers as “386” and “486” (as in 80X86). Manufacturers such as Great Wall and Compaq were so easily overshadowed by the processor maker. Things didn’t go better until, according to my observation, the coming of Lenovo (then named Legend: they changed their name years later when sued). Even “Intel” and “Pentium” went lost in the initial communication where the new processor brand was simply called “586” for habit’s sake. The problem was later solved by Intel’s carpet-bombing campaign of “Intel Inside” advertisements. And that’s good.

Things get even more confusing as time goes by and global collaboration becomes commonplace. Still taking our power-eating buddies for example, smart phones are the big thing right now. Currently there are brands for RAM, processors, OS providers, OSes themselves, phone manufacturers, cellular carriers. Putting them together, the a given handset’s brand profile could get really chaotic.

Take Android phones. The OS is called Android, and the maker goes by the name of Google. The ground-breaking phone manufacturer is HTC, and HTC’s phones are sold under a wide range of carrier brands such as T-Mobile (America), TIM (Italy), MTN (South Africa), and HTC itself. Product model names could also vary such as the first generation is called “T-Mobile G1” and “HTC Dream”, the second “T-Mobile MyTouch” and “HTC Magic”, while the latest two generations are simply “HTC Hero” and “HTC Tatoo”. The chaos redoubles when it officially gets into China under HTC’s sub-brand Dopod. Consumers can now buy a Dopod A6188 (in other sense “HTC Dream”) and Dopod A6288 (in other words “HTC Hero”). Arguably, the problems are: A) Too many brand names blind people. The brand-blind could be very serious when there are multiple mega-names among them. B) Language barrier. Chinese consumers are not so sensitive to English words or letters.

In many countries this shouldn’t be much of a problem since most people only care about their local version. But this is China, where local release, especially for phones, tends to be an expensive undertaking with newness equating to premium pricing, while consumers simultaneously have wide access to a black market. The brand war turns out to have an interesting effect. Here people always address all phones that works upon Android platform as “Google Phones”, and HTC’s great works are named in an unintended fashion as G1 (HTC Dream), G2 (HTC Magic), G3 (HTC Hero), G4 (HTC Tatoo). With HTC announcing or leaking new plans, I’m already expecting the wide usage of G5, G6, and probably G7. Gadget collectors are talking about the difference between “T-Mobile G1”, “TIM G1”, “MTN G1”, oh, and “HTC G1” only when they don’t know how this particular phone should be categorized. Poor HTC becomes the invisible man, and everyone is feverishly thanking Google for the hardware as well as software. This isn’t so great, by my standard, when HTC is selling phones under its own name and the Dopod alterna-brand.

The point here is, it’s necessary to have a brand identity, but it’s also important to make sure the brand is put into proper usage. You’ve got to pay attention to how people are talking about your stuff. Not only comments, but also how they recognize it. Advertising and other above-the-line marketing is one way to sort that out, however effective management of media exposure and other below-the-line techniques are of high importance. A failure media management program could result in something like this:

iPhone. This is the name that completely changed the smartphone business. Even before it’s much belated release in China, there were already around one million smuggled units running on the GSM networks of various carriers here. For traditional lack of creativity and marketing-oriented thinking, both China Mobile and China Unicom now are busy developing their home-grown (although technically on Android) smart phone OSes called “OPhone” and “UPhone” respectively in order to catch up with the trend begun by Apple. Intended unimaginative branding caused a brand avalanche. Since there are “iPhone”, “OPhone” and “UPhone” already, Chinese journalists begin to automatically re-brand every other player in the field on their own accord. In this fashion, Microsoft, who so proudly announced its “Windows Phone” campaign not so long ago, is now called “WPhones”. And Android is now commonly addressed as “GPhone”. Multiple tech portal websites (Chinese) have worked out thrilling big headlines going like “FIVE [X]Phones fight to be king of the hill in China!”

Although every bit true in OPhone’s and UPhone’s cases, this isn’t so good for Microsoft or Google (well, and HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, etc passively represented by these two giants) because such unofficial branding renders them instantly, in the minds of millions of consumers as little more than iPhone copycats. You will see this concern stands when you see so frequently Chinese netizens commenting like “to hell with WPhones and GPhones. Our iPhone is the first and best!” A fundamental rule to market competition is, if you want to do better than iPhone, you first declare very clearly “we are definitely not an iPhone, and we don’t want to be”. Things will look much better if vendors are more serious about their media work, and spend 5 more minutes talking to the journalists which can simultaneously influence public opinion and help clarify these muddy waters.

Another solution to achieving brand integrity in China includes defining a real Chinese brand name that makes some vague sense rather than being plain transliteration. Then, and the most important, ensure that brand name is correctly used. Contributing all your good reputation to a partner is bad, but making yourself look like a no-brainer is worse.

So, behold, BlackBerry and Palm. You guys are talking with China Telecom for China entry right the moment. Do not make yourself into “BPhone” (or “BBPhone”) and “PPhone” by doing nothing! This is China, where many things could go wrong at the least unlikely point. Know what you are dealing with. Keep yourself known in a preferable way. And make sure the message is delivered correctly through the whole process.

Article by Illuminant’s Head of Research, Kane Gao

Tags: brand, china, confusion, corporate identity, localization
Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

The Curious Case of Baidu’s Search Engine for China’s Senior Citizens

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Or, Baidu done it in the datacentre with the walking frame.

Yesterday the Chinese internet search giant announced its brand new product, 百度老年搜索 (literally “Baidu Senior Citizen Search”). An exciting day for increasing numbers of Chinese silver surfers!

According to Baidu, China has around 14 million silver surfers. They’ve been dubbed silver surfers, of course, due to hair which is often rendered silver-white by the flowing years, however they still like to keep up with current technology. A great many of China’s silver surfers have been enriched by new China’s economic miracle and the part their kids’ have played in it, so to marketers, they’re actually a pretty interesting consumer segment.

At the launch of “Baidu Senior Citizen Search” Li Yanhong, the company’s CEO said “Despite their age, our parents, just like us, need to absorb information from the web. As the search engine provider which owns 90% of Chinese market, we must offer more convenience to silver surfers. So [Baidu] decided to make a new search engine, specially designed for them. Aside from information, the new engine is utterly easy to use, enabling our fathers and mothers to surf the web without relying on a mouse. Meanwhile, considering there are 14 million silver surfers in China, it’s quite a remarkable market.”

[Illuminant's summarized translation - read the original Chinese here]

Okay. Great idea, Baidu. China now has a search engine to specicially serve retired netizens. Lets now leap into this modern-as-tomorrow future and see how the service works!

Hmm. The new search engine is a little bit hard to find. It seems to us that it can only be visited from a small text link on the front page of Baidu.com. A single click took me to a yellow-page with very, very, very huge fonts. The big font is a good idea (well, a no-brainer, actually. What else does the specialist search engine provide? Somewhat disappointingly, we couldn’t find anything innovative, or even new.

Firstly, a yellow web-page is nothing new to Baidu. Years ago the company acquired a catalogue (name: hao123) of the most frequently visited websites to help web starters who are not yet familiar with a real search engine (this, of course, was originally a Yahoo! innovation back in the 20th century). The new Baidu “search engine” for silver surfers looks pretty much the same as hao123, only with a ton of stuff for youngsters removed. The catalogue includes weather, tourism, hospitals, traditional arts, senior citizen communities, web portals, and so on. But… despite the convenience of a heirarchichal link aggregation, is this by any standard a “search engine”?

At the top, beside the Baidu logo, there is a textbox emphasizing the facility of a search engine. The textbox, like everything else, is also extra large, of course.

According to Mr. Li’s speech, one might be led to believe that there is a great deal of new code behind the page to generate optimized and carefully selected entries to silver surfers. So, we tried the new engine with something tricky: a Mandarin-Chinese slang term in current use amongst China’s young netizens. This slang term is definitely not something silver surfers would be interested in. We expected that the search results would feature an explanation of the term, and several news stories addressing the rise of netizen slang. OK, type the term, click the button, and see what we’ve got here.

If my computer works all right, what I’m look at now is a very long list of the term being put into normal daily usage. Say, if I’m born long before the information era of China and only got to use computer in my old age, this list will confuse the hell out of me. Out of curiosity, I tried the term in the regular Baidu search engine. And… what the… I’ve got a completely identical list here.

Our inexpert conclusion is: except for super large fonts, the “new” search engine is nothing but a magnified version of old stuff. We’re scratching our heads. Why would a good company bother spending money on creating buzz for an advanced new technology solution which could be easily replaced by buying my Mom a pair of glasses?

Interestingly, we’ve found that the new silver surfer’s “search engine” is (at the time of writing) totally advertisement-free. To be fair to Baidu, this is actually a pretty good thing: presumably China’s silver surfers possess minimal internet security understanding as well as high trust in new technology. Silver surfers would be easy targets of the Chinese web’s ubiquitous phishing-attacks, Trojan horses, and virus-bearing malware.

Perhaps fault lies with us, for expecting too much of a leading Chinese web business. After all, CEO Li did promise “a new search engine, specially designed for them”, and no court or judge would penalize Baidu for its “over-promise under-deliver” approach to this “new product” launch.

As a marketing agency working in China, we really shouldn’t be surprised at any part of yesterday’s buzz-creating activity, except at the lack of advertising on the “new search engine”.

Baidu, we’ll gladly be proven wrong.

Article by Illuminant’s Head of Research, Kane Gao

Tags: baidu, china, search, senior citizens, web
Posted in Illuminant's China | No Comments »

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Myth #1: Interpretation is harder than translation. Therefore our interpreter will do good translations (and vice versa).

Truth:

Myth #2: Translation apps are good makeshift solutions. Its okay to rely on them.

Truth:

Myth #3: Students from Chinese “foreign language universities” make good and cheap translators/interpreters.

Truth:

Myth #4: This is academic/professional document. Don’t bother with translators. Let’s find a Ph.D in that field to do it.

Truth:

Myth #5: We have an app to localize into Chinese — its not complex like a novel would be. Go grab anyone who can speak English and Chinese. What could possibly go wrong?

Truth:

Myth #6: We are new in China. Whom shall we trust with our language works? It’s definitely safe contracting that internationally renowned language agency, right?

Truth:

Summary

The danger of Chinese microblogs to your public profile

“Its a holiday, Jim… but not as we know it.”

The background, significance and opportunities of China’s holidays

In summary

Everything old is new again (or never became old in the first place)

Colors are deeply symbolic in China, and can make or break your commercial offering in the Chinese marketplace

Red:

Yellow:

Gold:

Purple:

Green:

White

Black

Multi-color and rainbow spectra

Qing

Summary

Chinese New Year, Chun Jie, Spring Festival, Lunar New Year… oh my!

So whats the festival all about?

Okay, so what about the less superstitious story?

May you get past the year and survive again!

What do Chinese people like to do during the festival?

As a foreigner in China, what would I find most obvious during the Lunar New Year?

And this is the year of the… rabbit? Right?

So what are the three most important things a company should do in China for the Lunar New Year?

Plan your greetings

Deliver your greetings

Consider hosting a party

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