James Nash: China Marketing

Ch ch ch changes...

Sun, 26 Jun 2005 10:20:51 GMT

yep - this site has not been updated in a while..thats due to a whole bunch of stuff which is much better explored by going to the sexier, sleeker, sassier new site by clicking here

You can get downloads of training material - Presentations, slideshows, files, training manuals, content for leadership develop and more (Gosh!!) in english AND Chinese here

You can get more information on the Onevoice manifesto (Chinese) by clicking here

Please update your bookmarks!

Does Your Brand Stink? In a Good Way?

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:54:55 GMT

Martin Lindstrom writes about Crayola over at Fast Company Now about Crayola. Aware that the smell of a box of waxy Crayola crayons is a powerful brand statement that instantly connects adults to their own childhood, Crayola has patented the smell of the crayons as the enter the market in China. Crayola hope it will deter the infamous Chinese copycat manufacturers.

Good luck with that.

Technorati Tags: crayola, china+marketing, china+business, marketing

IBM China Vs. China IBM

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 06:13:43 GMT

They couldn't resist it. As Chinese firms repeatedly fail to create a brand of any consequence the purchase of the consistently loss making IBM computers has been further politicised as some kind of patriotic business touchstone. Naturally, this means that the chances of China IBM (previously IBM China: the China now comes first to reflect the "pride" of purchasing an American business that has lost more than USD$5bn) actually surviving the next few years, let alone growing anything except its debt has been shrunk to almost zero.

The chairman of IBM China, Daniel Chow, said that it was the aim of the company to become a completely local Chinese company, and to be viewed by Chinese and the Chinese authorities as a "national asset of the country". Chinese economic and trade policy is based on having at least one Chinese company which can compete on a global scale with other multinationals in each sector. Obviously buying something that is clearly kneck deep in shit is not an intelligent move - all kinds of people are going to have egg on thier faces with this, when will they learn not to intefere by politicising everything...there is this bizarre illusion that political support will help the business. While this is a samrt move in some areas, it is fraught with problems in an area that is highly commoditized like PC's - the business model is largely based on aggressive efficiency (Dell, Dell and Dell) - something that government support simply cannot provide...how far will they go in supporting the losses to "gain" and then save face? What a waste in a country where many schools dont have enough books for children in school.

A good reason why Lenovo, Haier etc have bombed out is repeated government intervention and encouragement to diversify and expand in a desperate attempt to be "successful". The governments hunger for international recognition in business has consistently failed and is fast becoming the kiss of death on any business venture - support is based on the businesses relationship with the goernment rather than its customers. Not tooclever in a deregulated tech markets.

Government support is great for a business that has been looked at in depth and with objectivity - yet again, any inteligence has been tossed out of the window in favor of irrational and unsubstatiated ranting about patriotism, "face" and other politically tinged blurb as if this is somehow helpful.

China retailers - Customer?? God?? Your mouth is moving but all I hear is Blah Blah Blah Blah

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 12:09:09 GMT

Absolutely sick of it. When will I learn not to expect a shred of decency from the people I chose to spend my money with?

This stuff is SOOOOOOO goddammed simple its scary.....

Retailers here love to talk for hours about the "customer" . "The customer is God" (God? thats a bit far, but this is what they do, in fact say) the customer blah blah blah. As with many things here, there is a Pacific ocean of talk and very little action - the customer thing is a great example. Years of propoganda from the government has created many managers who believe that if you are to manage or "lead" anything then words are the tool to do it with. Fine, but they forgot about the action bit that words are supposed to drive. This has led to an enormous number of businesses here that actually run thier business by talking complete crap to each other, thier employees and customers, everyone! Result? nobody trusts each other about anything anywhere. Fewer and fewer people want to buy anything from Chinese companies because they simply lie. In short, they act as if thier employees and customers are in fact, completely stupid. Very few "business" people get this at all and disply an almost total ignorance of human nature to an almost magical degree. This is quite scary.

Chinese retailers have an especially bad case of self delusion and are in great need of a HUGE collective God fearing foot up the rear end of the morons who blabber on endlessly about "serving the customer" until thier heads are going to violently explode with the amount of BS they spew forth.

For example, at every supermarket I know of (bar one that I know of - Ginwa department store: GREAT store it is too) there are security guards to ensure you do not enter a supermarket with a bag - obviously, they assume you are all thieves and will steal thier stuff.

At every exit, there is a security guard that stops every customer who has brought something, checks the recipt against the contents of the bag and then marks it. You are then free to go.

This happens at many many stores - not just supermarkets; bookstores and clothing shops have simaler policies - the assumption that the people that come into thier establishment are likely to steal given half a chance. The customer is God BUT the customer is also a thief given half a chance.

Obviously, the "security" guy serves no purpose whatsoever except to get in peoples way and make the PRESENCE OF THE MANAGEMENT felt on any customer who may be thinking of stealing anything. It has not occured to any of the almost unbelieveably stupid fools who drive this ridiculous behaviour that anyone stealing things from thier shop would not be so entirely dumb as to put thier stolen items into the shops carrier bags as they exit the building. The guards only ever check the company plastic bags. You can only get these bags at the checkout. Erm...hellooooo?

One company: NMart, even has a "helpful" sign informing customers that they must check all bags upon exit as part of thier customer care scheme - they want to make sure that you haven't forgotton anything. What a bunch of assholes. I have happily watched the business disintegrate over the last three months and they are closing down shortly. Hurrah!!!

Why dont you guys stop talking BS and start doing something like treating your customers with a bit of respect and developing systems that drive good service instead of devising new ways of patronising your customers. May your companies rapidly dissapear and the incompetent self serving, delusional morons running them dissapear with it. Amen to that.

Technorati Tags: China, china+marketing, china+business, madness

Free business revolution stuff

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 06:04:51 GMT

We are developing a bunch of material and making it available for download - here is a couple of seminars we do (in Chinese): Brand Inside and The new new leaders (no audio as yet, i'll pop that in later). Both are are refreshing take on how we need to change as organizations and create genuine organizations to prosper in the 21st century.

I am going to make lots of material available as we get it done through this blog as it is developed. It will be in Chinese and be put on our new website to promote the concept of "one voice" organizations in China and will include our leadership and systems training that will be available online through our LMS sometime in the next 6 weeks.

Just click to view:

Brand Inside

The new new leaders

Team V2.0

If you want to have the original ppts; email me the request and i'll get them to you

Technorati Tags: china, china+business, china+marketing, elearning

The Cluetrain Manifesto

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 05:44:59 GMT

Yeah yeah, some of you may think its a little bit late - but most who need to read (I mean UNDERSTAND!!) this are oblivious to its existence. I have argued for a long time now that business's should quit behaving like businesses and start behaving like a group of human beings. The sooner a business emerges from behind an expanded concept of "professionalism" delivering its cleaned up "mission statements", marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. the better: Same old tone, same old lies same old bullshit. Its about time business grew up and did something genuine...Click here for more...

Technorati Tags: china, china+business, china+marketing, cluetrain

China businessweek sucks

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 07:29:25 GMT

Businessweek online is available in Chinese!!! Wow!! It appears that the people running the Chinese operation have modified it
down to the standard of a D grade high school project - to accomadate what they think are thier dumb local customers (why else would it be so impossibly crap?). What gives! Check out the utter lack of attention to such details as:

Forgetting to put any content on your pages

Putting ALL your content on a homepage that takes 2 minutes to scroll down

The whole site shows a complete lack of understanding about what a website is and a contempt for the customer - how big is the gap between the English language version and the Chinese? BIG: Compare them. It is emblematic of the quality issue here and the disregard for the customer by many businesses that believe that government support will get them the customers they need - how short sighted of businessweek to prostiute their brand so mindlessly!!

This is done in "cooperation" with the "China commerce and trade press" I am guessing (wildly? I dont think so!) that the government
departmnet is resonsbile for systematically damaging businesweeks brand in Asia. What on earth are they thinking!!

Editor training? - to much trouble!

What about content design? Can't be arsed!

Knowledge transfer from one team to another - you know, communication! To busy having blahblahblah meetings!!!

Get a grip. Both of you.

China Mobile on intelligent marketing

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 08:26:52 GMT

According to China mobiles website:

"A new trail was blazed to develop an innovative business model by forging close partnership with equipment providers, content providers, system integrators and terminal providers in an effective industrial value chain and exploiting the mobile communications market in collective forces."

This is the result of this "innovative" exploitation based business model. This discussion (or something close to it) must have really happened:

Board member A: "Hey fellas, we need to make more money so we can secure the companies future in the face of increasing competition"

Board Member B: "Yeah, yeah.......let me think...I know we can make some fast cash through advertising!"

Board member A: "What do you mean?"

Board member B: "We can sell all of our customers mobile phone numbers to other companies, and they can spam them with text messages every day. We get cash from the spammers that secures our companies position as a market leader!"

Board member A: "You mean we should mindlessly intrude on our customers privacy selling them stuff they dont need whilst simultaneously destroying any trust they have in our brand?"

Board member B: "Yes"

Board member A: What a great idea - lets do it!"

Earth calling China mobile....???? How out of touch with reality are these people?

Technorati Tags: china, china+business, marketing, china+marketing

Podcasting: English / Chinese call to action!

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 05:58:37 GMT

Download your ipodder software here and install this little sucker.

I am going to establish podcasts on this site so you can listen to my wild ranting to companies in China about change, marketing and the news de jour. The podcasts will be in English AND Chinese. Good for you to practice your English language skills (for the Chinese readers of this blog) AND get some cool new ideas!! You lucky people!!

Technorati Tags: ipodder, China+business, podcast, china

F*** the rules! (click to download: .pdf 16k)

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 05:31:42 GMT

Download this! Chinese innovation (huh?) is snuffed out, drowned (murdered) at as young an age as possible (read school) and then kept locked away in the heads of the gifted for fear of being different – gotta follow the rules!! Or the company will descend into chaos! (INSTABILITY!!) Can’t have people think for themselves, (INSTABILITY and INSUBORDINATION!!). Gotta follow the rules, don’t stick out, don’t be different, don’t do anything new, wait until it is PROVEN (obviously, by someone else first - duh!), don’t change the status quo and rock the boat!

PROBLEM: Quality in China

PROBLEM: Chinese brands getting BATTERED

PROBLEM: Brain drain from big Chinese companies

REACTION > MORE CONTROL!!! GOTTA CONTROL EVERYTHING THEN QUALITY WILL GO UP / CUSTOMERS WILL BELIEVE US / YADDA YADDA!!

"I believe that The Rules are the leading cause of crap products, frustrated users, and unhappy relationships. I'm not talking about all rules and standards of course, just the largely-unstated-but-blindly-accepted ones that:

Never made sense.
No longer make sense.
Make sense, but only in a different context."

F*** the rules! on Knowledge management: "Trying to capture and express experts' knowledge in rules is like trying to reach the moon with a bicycle: that's damn fun, but if your goal is really to walk in Armstrong's steps, that's far to be the most efficient solution."

This little .pdf is great. In fact, I am going to translate this into Chinese and throw it around in some of our seminars. I'll let you know how it goes. Thank you Dave and Passionate!

Technorati Tags: elearning,, china,, marketing,, china+business

Got Milk? Playing with words and numbers.

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 04:21:58 GMT

"Avoid "suicidal" price wars among themselves.... "Such disorderly competition will benefit no one," he warned. In 2003, such competition left 27.5 percent of China's total 1,600 dairy firms in the red, with a total deficit of 510 million Yuan (US$61 million) . "Their loss for that year was 66 percent higher than in 2002, surpassing the average annual growth of 46 percent for the entire industry," said Wang, quoting incomplete figures released by his organization. He said the situation became even worse in 2004, when less than 25 percent of the domestic dairy producers made a profit." - Peoples Daily

I am somewhat familiar with the milk industry in China and see the same thing again an again. The consistent and shocking lack of companies that “get it” Vs a ever larger army of companies that have no idea how to build a sustainable business except through ever increasing capital expenditure and mindless advertising. No brand, No position, Nadda. Nothing. WAKE UP PEOPLE! It’s getting really boring!

There is one company I am aware of ("Maiquer") in western China that has put enormous effort into consolidating a position and customers are increasingly willing to pay a premium for their products. (I would link, but their website is down. Shock, horror!)

Company response to compettion? Ask Mummy Beijing for more project money to expand into other "growth" markets and extend their reach - Cheese, Yogurt ("its becasue we dont have enough cash, not becasue we are dumb") ...and guess what? All the "NEW" products still look the same! Solution: "We need to spend MORE on advertising identical to our competition. That's obviously what the customers want - they are buying it from the competition”.

Chinese consumer businesses are spending like crazy to rapidly dig their own graves. Rampant price wars in every sector. Standard response? "lower prices" - we tell people to put their prices UP and lead the market in some way, the silence when we say this is palpable.

large scale commoditization is screwing them all. The solution is staring them in the face, yet nothing happens. Deep in the psyche of many Chinese senior managers is the idea that the way to build a business is to have government relationships to ensure constant funding to build their assets and take market share through brute force = “What’s your strategy?” “Price!”

Government funding cuts off the necessary learning that is required for companies to really grow. There are no real consequences of making a mistake; no short term financial cost to screwing up. Almost all of the growth in China has been driven by an explosion in capital expenditure. This is unsustainable - all sustainable economic growth is through increases in knowledge and its dissemination leading to increases in innovation.

This provides HUUUGE opportunities for smart businesses (unfortunately for the Chinese – mostly foreign) to take advantage of this government funded madness and take great swathes of the growing consumer products landscape: Dell, Hoover, Panasonic, Nokia, Motorola - all at the Chinese companies expense. When are local businesses going to learn that building a company isn’t about playing with words and numbers but about creating great products and services, taking a position and leading the customer? Its going to happen when they stop being encouraged to do so by the powers that be. Until that happens we are going to do all we can to encourage smart companies to keep getting smarter.

Technorati Tags: china, china+business, marketing, china+marketing

Podcast: Malcolm Gladwell at Pop!Tech 2004

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 08:56:20 GMT

Archived audio (streaming or Mp3) at ITConversations.com of Malcolm Gladwells (The tipping Point") presentation entitled Human Nature from Pop!Tech 2004. There's a bunch of other interesting stuff in there as well.

Here’s the description: "Malcolm explores why we cant trust people's opinions – because we dont have the language to express our feelings. His examples include the story of New Coke and how Cokes market research misled them, and the development of Herman-Millers Aeron chair, the best-selling chair in the history of office chairs, which succeeded in spite of research that suggested it would fail."

I am currently reading the book, which is fantastic - essential MindBomb reading. Put "Blink" in the amazon search box on the right for more reviews.

Technorati Tags: blink, marketing, podcast

Hang on a minute!

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 07:46:01 GMT

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