Better communication is the key to doing business with China
China may be complex, but connecting is the way forward in business.
As 2020 draws to a close, Singing Grass was privileged to take part in the Pros Winter series, a platform for showcasing cultural diversity in marketing communications, in partnership with Google. It was supported by Ketchum, Manifest and the CIPR, and curated by Elizabeth Banauka from BME PR Pros.
Over the past ten days, the series has featured 30 online events with over 70 speakers who explored new communications techniques, showcased great work and celebrated creativity. The series provided an inclusive, dynamic space for speakers to engage with 2020’s biggest topics from Black Lives Matters to Covid-19, from Sinophobia to the US Election.
Our MD Alicia Liu spoke about relations with China as part of a panel discussion on Sinophobia and its impact on brands and consumers, which also featured Avril Lee, chair of the CIPR diversity board; Yuan Ren, leading journalist and broadcaster; Lee Leong, art director of OMD EMEA and art consultant Lang.
Here are Alicia Liu’s insights from the discussion:
As the panel host Avril Lee pointed out, China is often misunderstood - it’s complex, critical, and cultural!
I enjoyed our panelist Yuan Ren’s piece in the Telegraph ‘We must be careful Sinoscepticism does not boil over into senseless China-bashing’. The impact of ‘Sinophobia’ has posed challenges for both Chinese brands entering the international market and for international brands seeking to engage with Chinese consumers.
As someone brought up in both the East and West, I’m more interested in what you could do to improve this situation. The author Elif Shafak described it well in her latest book, “as the world becomes increasingly polarised, it is important for us to turn to the art of storytelling for wisdom, connectivity, and much-needed empathy.”
For me, there is one recent consumer campaign in China that really stands out - and that’s a campaign by LEGO, once described as “the world’s most powerful brand.” LEGO launched their first China-themed toy set Monkie Kid, which is based on the centuries-old Chinese legends of the Monkey King, via a hybrid of live performance in Shanghai and live-streaming in June. Monkie Kid is inspired by Chinese legends, but has a global outlook and aims to inspire kids through immersive play.
Brands in future need to be authentic yet locally relevant.
International brands and content creators need to take into account the trends and needs of the Chinese market and co-develop large-scale and customised projects, suitable for the Chinese market and scalable internationally. There are two great examples of how best to do this: BBC Studios, for example, who partnered with Tencent in 2018 to co-produce the Planet Earth documentary series, as an extension of the traditional licensing model to content co-creation and co-production. More recently, Netflix has announced double spending on original content in Asia starting in 2021, adapting the international best-seller ‘The Three Body Problem’ by Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin as a Netflix original series.
As our current world is getting more complex and ambiguous, communication is becoming even more important.
A good communicator should have a genuine willingness to listen and think from someone else’s perspective, creating a personal connection. The UK has a new ambassador to China - Caroline Willson. To me, she has truly stood out as one of the year’s great international communicators. Since her arrival in China this October, she has set up a Chinese vlog on Kuaishou, one of the most popular live-streaming platforms in China, with over 46k followers.
Speaking fluent Mandarin, a language she learned in Beijing over 20 years ago, Caroline talked about the not-to-miss UK TV dramas she watched during her 14-days quarantine on returning to China this October. She also described her latest visit to the futurist tech city Shenzhen, where she encountered self-driving zero-carbon cars and visited the new concept store developed by Burberry and Tencent. Caroline undoubtedly recognises, and has shown, that the key to a successful relationship is communication and understanding.
2020 is a year where we have all lived with uncertainty, yet we know for certain that Chinese consumers are optimistic about the future. We might not be able to predict the future but to engage with China, we need to stay on the pulse of the latest trends of the consumer journey – because it is changing very, very fast.
If you missed our live discussion, you can catch up here on the Pros Winter on-demand channel.
