Imagethief doesn’t make a habit of publishing book reviews
on his site because they distract from his trademark effervescent wit and
lightweight tomfoolery. But he’s going to make an exception.
In January I received an e-mail from the editor of a regional
business journal who had stumbled across this site and wanted to know if I was
interested in reviewing Tom Doctoroff’s book, Billions: Selling to the new
Chinese consumer, for him. I was, but
Doctoroff’s advertising agency, JWT, is part of WPP, the same media
conglomerate that owns the company I work for. WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrel
personally wrote the foreword for Doctoroff’s book. Unfortunately, the conflict
of interest meant that I was disqualified from writing the review.
Disappointing, but understandable. Oddly, shortly after that
episode, Simon, principal author of the superb Hong Kong blog Simon World, sent me a copy of
Doctoroff’s book along with a note saying he’d be interested in my thoughts
about it. Simon’s own, somewhat more concise review, is here. I didn’t read it
until after I’d written mine.
I’m not a believer in fate, and I am not generally partial
to business books, many of which I find tedious. But it seems I was fated to
read this book. Although the conflict of interest makes it difficult for a
magazine to publish a review by me, I can still publish one here on Imagethief,
for Simon and anyone else who is interested. You’ll have to take my word that
being a WPP employee did not influence my review. In the spirit of full
disclosure, however, I will tell you that a good friend and colleague whom I
respect greatly has spoken highly of Mr. Doctoroff. That did influence the
attitude with which I approached the book.
Billions: Selling to the new Chinese consumer
By Tom Doctoroff
223 pages. Published by Palgrave MacMillan
Why did a Toyota advertisement with two stone lions bowing
to a car crash and burn in China? Why did a Nike television ad in which a
heroine pushed distractions off-screen fail to resonate with Chinese women? How
did Colgate massage an expensive, western toothpaste brand down into dominance
of a price-sensitive product category? Why will a Chinese consumer pay a
premium for a foreign mobile phone but settle for a cheaper, domestic
television?
Answering these questions is the mission of Billions:
Marketing to the new Chinese consumer,
written by Tom Doctoroff. A veteran of more than ten years of marketing in
China and the Greater China CEO for advertising agency JWT, Mr. Doctoroff goes
beyond providing entertaining anecdotes by attempting to provide a framework
through which foreigners can understand the unique challenges of marketing in
China.
It is a conceit of professional communicators, including
marketers, that enough skill with copy or graphics can overcome almost any
obstacle. But successful communication ultimately depends upon the sender and the
recipient sharing a frame of reference that defines how messages are
processed. Most communicators have
the luxury of working within their own cultures, where an instinctive grasp of
what works and what doesn’t can be a foundation for success. But when one
starts communicating across cultural gulfs, following rules always taken for
granted can lead to indifference or, worse, disaster. The difficulties of
cross-cultural communication can manifest in forms as dramatic as America’s
struggle to rebuild its image in the Muslim world, or as prosaic as failed MNC
consumer marketing campaigns.
Given the complexities of Chinese society, it would be
challenging to provide a framework for marketing success in a series of dense
textbooks, let alone a single, slender, volume. Mr. Doctoroff uses Confucianism
as a touchstone for consolidating his arguments. This approach provides
structure and opens a window into how Chinese people think, elevating the book
into something more than a collection of case studies and lists of rules.
Confucian philosophy is fundamental to Chinese culture in the way that the
Judeo-Christian ethic is fundamental to Western culture. It reverberates
through social interaction, law, worldview, sense of self, and the
relationships between individuals and each other, companies and the state. Mr.
Doctoroff provides an introduction Confucianism and explains why it remains
relevant to marketing and communication 2500 years after its conception.
The weakness of focusing on Confucianism is that, while it
is the foundation of Chinese culture, it supports a complex and shifting
superstructure. The emphasis crowds out many other aspects of Chinese society
that affect MNC communications, or reduces them to footnotes presented in the
context of Confucianism. An example is nationalism, which came to bear in the
Toyota advertisement cited above. The submission of a Chinese symbol of
strength to a Japanese brand, even unwittingly, sparked resentment amongst
Chinese consumers. The Toyota case has become a textbook example of cultural
insensitivity in marketing, but nationalism acts in subtler ways as well, such
as affecting how especially large or market-dominating foreign firms in China
need to communicate in order to avoid charges of crowding out fledgling Chinese
businesses.
Confucianism certainly plays a role in nationalism, but so
do recent history and modern politics. In illustrating the Chinese tendency to
think in defensive terms, Mr. Doctoroff lists the truly staggering series of
traumas that the Chinese nation has weathered in just the past century. This is
a list that any foreign observer who wants to understand Chinese society or
politics would do well to study. Yet these events are presented in terms of
justifying the Confucian imperative of maintaining order, rather than examined
for their more proximate effects.
Focusing on Confucianism also gives the book a
backward-looking feel. Historical and cultural antecedents are powerful forces,
but where China is going is as important as where it has been. Mr. Doctoroff
rightly points out that a decade of openness is not enough to fundamentally
rewire a culture that has been shaped by centuries of philosophical inertia and
historical turmoil. But even Confucian cultures evolve. The book devotes some
pages to the differences between Mainland China and Taiwan and Hong Kong, both
of which show how societies with common roots in Confucianism and Chinese
culture can differ substantially from each other. While the mainland will never
be exactly like either Taiwan or Hong Kong, both countries provide glimpses of
how mainland attitudes might evolve with development. This is worth exploring,
as many of the MNCs that have entered China in the past fifteen years no doubt
plan to be here for decades to come.
Nevertheless, Billions
will be worthwhile for many readers. Reducing any culture, especially one as
varied as China’s, to an easily digested set of guidelines is risky, and leaves
the author open to charges of oversimplification, narrowness and even
stereotyping. Some of the examples in the book feel like dangerously sweeping
generalizations. Furthermore, advertising campaigns and public communication
can succeed or fail for a variety of reasons. But understanding has to start
from someplace, and Billions is a
primer. Taken as such, Mr. Doctoroff succeeds in placing Chinese consumer
attitudes into a broad cultural context while providing much practical advice
in a readable and concise book.
Although written by an ad man, Billions is, at heart, about communication, and thus relevant
to advertising, marketing, and public relations people. Old China marketing
hands and historians may not find much new, but recently arrived westerners
struggling to understand a complex and sometimes baffling market and its
surrounding culture will find it a useful and pleasantly optimistic complement
to their burgeoning collections of China business horror stories.
Note: This book was
discussed in the China blogosphere in January, when the press release
announcing it was distributed to China bloggers and journalists (although,
shockingly, not to Imagethief). The press release, built around “twelve facts
about the Confucian consumer”, took some criticism from, among others, the China
Herald, Danwei
(who’s authors are also in advertising) and Shanghaiist (which
republished the “twelve facts”). Doctoroff responded
to Fons in the comments on China Herald. I read all of these threads in
January, before I received the book. I have tried form my own opinions based
upon reading the entire book.