Advertising in the PRC: What Do Adverts Reveal About the Country?

You can tell the ideals of a nation through its adverts, or so the popular saying goes. In the Red China of yesteryear, government officials sought to carefully stage-manage this link through propaganda, using adverts to extol the cultural values they liked and denounce the ones they didn't. While interesting in its own right, propaganda only reflects the ideals of the officials in charge, not those of the people (however much it was stressed that they were one and the same). Adverts from 21st century China are far more telling. Though the government still holds on to its ultimate veto (more on this later), adverts are no longer the rigidly controlled propaganda pieces they used to be. Nowadays, it is more or less open season for Chinese advertisers, who use every trick in the book to try and charm, coax and cajole the public into favouring their clients' products. They are a fascinating insight into the national psyche. 

Motorola Ming8 GPS ad. Photo: designswan.com

Out with the old…

There are those who argue that modern-day advertising is every bit as bad as the propaganda the CCP put out; in the same way that the communist party wanted to create and maintain an ideal that wasn't an accurate representation of reality, so too do modern day advertisers. Both want you to buy into a fantasy that isn't real. So what does it matter that one is an ideology and the other is a product: is there even a difference?

It is true, advertising can be nefarious the world over. However, in the past the CCP set the agenda, whereas today the public do. At the height of propaganda, the CCP controlled everything: every single thing was fitted into the overarching ideology of the party. There was a binding theme and you would never have a message or an exhortation in one propaganda poster that would be contradicted by another. Western-style advertising can be accused of being insidious, but it is ultimately based on competition and figuring out what the consumer wants. McDonalds directly competes with KFC, Pizza Hut with Papa Johns, Apple with Microsoft, etc. The choice is up to the consumer, and this seems to increasingly be the case in China. Sure, some products may be censored by the government, but overall there is an increasingly ‘Western' competitiveness in the China's advertising business.

A Chinese case study

There was a recent star-studded feature-length advert aired over the Spring Festival for Pepsi, Lay potato crisps and Minute Maid orange juice. You've probably seen it. It opens with an old man inviting a stranger into his impossibly quaint (yet exquisitely furnished) rural village home to take shelter from the cold. The stranger rather creepily eavesdrops on the old man calling his far-flung children: one daughter is a high-flying executive, one is a student travelling the world and one is a popstar. All are far too busy to make it home for the holidays. Sad faces all round.

The stranger then takes it upon himself to visit these errant children (geography and the laws of physics be damned) and presents each of them one-by-one with a gift that evokes memories of their father. These gifts are Minute Maid for the executive, a bag of ready-salted crisps for the backpacker and a bottle of Pepsi for the popstar. Cue sentimental flashbacks, each child realising the error of their ways and swiftly rushing home to be with their father. The popstar even does an impromptu concert for everyone, seeing as the tour bus is now parked slap-bang in the middle of the village square. The mysterious stranger/angel/wizard slips off into the night with a knowing smile...

The meaning in the message

A whole slew of value-laden heartstrings are being surreptitiously tugged at here. Traditional Confucian notions of family and filial piety are obvious throughout, as are more modern notions of success (executive and pop star seem to be the careers in vogue at present), gift-giving and how to pay people back. Essentially, the advert is presenting the products as handy aids to an idealised notion of what Chinese family life is. It does so with a somewhat ham-fisted attempt at product placement, but does so nonetheless. The products are not shown to be magically fantastic or do anything that they cannot actually do, they are simply there.

Compare this with an advert for what I translated as Baby Clever Brain Juice I saw last year (toddler struggling at school, 2 + 2 = 5 and so on, Clever Brain Juice formula is added to the water, toddler is miraculously capable of calculus) and this looks almost noble. That said, it is not really the products that are being advertised here, but the lifestyle. The implication is that someone who has this particular lifestyle just so happens to be the kind of person who eats Lays while simultaneously chugging Pepsi and Minute Maid.

So far so obvious, but there are other less overt telltales… The pop star's back-up dancers are rather scantily clad, but the wizened old villagers clap along merrily all the same, the backpacker's friends are all of a suspiciously Caucasian appearance and  the big one: the man has three children. One Child policy exception? I may have mistaken the father for an uncle or family friend, but the inference was there to be made. Attitudes to modesty, foreigners and even government policy are far more relaxed in this advert than they would have been ten or fifteen years ago. Interesting…

Photo: adsofchina.wordpress.com

The Science

A lot of study goes into advert-making in China. Tom Doctoroff of JWT China talked in a recent interview about the difficulties in figuring out what makes Chinese consumers different. "They are not individualistic in a Jeffersonian sense as are Westerners," he says. "Luxury goods, for example, are a tool for career advancement in China. In the West, they are often appreciated for their own intrinsic quality. In shower gel, the leading Western brands have ‘sensual indulgence' as a core proposition. In the PRC, the key benefit is ‘an energising shower experience that helps me start the day with a kick.'"

There is also strong evidence that a conflict at the very heart of what it is to be "Chinese" has to be addressed in advertising. China's population is extremely ambitious, but also has thousands of years of rules, systems and procedures to derail people who don't go about advancement in the ‘proper' way. For example, tensions in Chinese and Western business deals often arise when the Chinese side, to save face, promises things they can't deliver. To the Chinese, being unable to do something asked of them in such a formal setting is a huge loss of face and to save it, they answer yes. The idea is the other side would see this not as a real answer but a face-saving technique and to anyone familiar with the guanxi system (namely any Chinese person…) this would be readily apparent. Even though the spoken answer would be ‘yes' it is actually a ‘no'.

This seems frankly ridiculous to most Westerners, in particular straight-shooting businessmen, and unsurprisingly causes no end of problems. However, the guanxi system is not going to go away, and Chinese advertisers need to therefore address the inherent conflict between advancement and cultural security that so addles their consumers. Brands that help consumers simultaneously stand out and fit in have the greatest appeal. Doctoroff explains, "Diamonds, for example, are popular because their sparkle is conspicuous but, at the same time, elegant and understated…Rejoice shampoo's proposition fuses confidence and softness." Chinese advertising essentially needs to be able to persuade people that they can have their cake and eat it.

Photo: impactlab.net

So what next?

Signs are mixed. Within China, there has recently been a ban ordered on advertisements during TV dramas as part of government reform of cultural activities. Adverts will not be allowed in the middle of programmes lasting for 45 minutes, ostensibly to "help TV dramas develop in a scientific and healthy manner." Personally, I hate advert breaks, but I don't particularly like China banning things either. Outside China, there is more change.  A huge scale advert over six giant screens in New York's Times Square was put on by China last year. The ad, depicting famous Chinese citizens alongside ordinary members of the public and designed as a sort of multi-purpose awareness, tourism and foreign policy exercise, ran 300 times a day for a grand total of 8,400 plays on arguably the world's most prestigious advertising spot.
So there is bad, and there is good. Essentially, as with most things in China, it could go both ways, but there are more than a few positive signs. They just happen to be in bright neon.
 

Related links
Reality Check: China Seeks To Curb "Mindless TV Entertainment"
What's Your Talent? Getting on TV in China
Beyond CCTV: 4 Ways to Watch TV in China… in English!