The 'Made in China' Ad: Reinventing an Icon or Reinforcing a Stereotype?
- Source: Global Times
- [08:35 December 09 2009]
- Comments
The "High-Tech Olympics," one of the three main slogans of the Beijing Games, tries to replace the image of China as the country for cheap quality goods with a blazing new image of China as a promoter and originator of high technology and innovation.
Given this backdrop, doesn't the rhetoric in the current "Made in China" ad seem a relapse into the old "end of the production line" image that the Chinese government is trying hard to remove?
On the positive side, we might congratulate ourselves that the government is indeed picking up its PR lesson.
Instead of "haranguing the world" with our "monopoly of virtues" – as the famous public diplomacy professor Nicholas Cull has put it – we now let money do the talking. Instead of "propagating" China, we now "explain" China to the outside world. But we are yet to learn to how to become masters of persuasion.
It is said that in an ad campaign, there is nothing worse than an incoherent message.
A golden rule that pollsters have long discovered is that so long as you repeat your message long enough and frequently enough, your listeners will start buying in. But the bottom-line? Make your punch line coherent.
In the final analysis, probably no advertisers with a genuine conviction in the power of ideas and innovation will be willing to suggest that what drives its own products is "an idea created by B," "a technology from C" and a "lifestyle from D." I can't picture the Americans doing the same, and certainly not the French. Both value their own innovation and culture too highly.
"Made in China with the world" is not bad. It may be a good first step. But it is certainly a long way from "created in China with the world."
It's time that we reorient our e. orts toward the latter image. And the next question soon follows. Are we as a nation ready to embrace that vision?
The author is a US-based communication researcher. emily. lliang@gmail.com
