The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

The Perversion Of China …

So China’s largest porn site … Pornographic Summer … has been shut down by the Government and the founder has been given a life sentence for errrrrm, corrupting the corruptible – however the thing I find astounding is that they had 600,000 members. SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND!

Now in a country of 1.4 billion, that might not seem that many – but when you realise 60% of the population are in rural areas with little or no communication channels easily available to them, approx 40% of the remainder are below the already ‘low’ poverty line and 10% of the remainder have no access to the internet, you’ll see that far from being a small percentage, it’s actually pretty high.

Whether we like it or not, porn is one of the World’s most enduring, powerful and profitable business categories – far more successful than many well known brands out there and yet interms of business respect, it is about as low as a snakes underbelly.

Many years ago, I was invited to speak about branding at the SEXPO conference [yes, my Mother was sooooo proud, ha!] and in the audience were some of the most intelligent [and rich] marketing people I’ve ever met. 

They truly understood their audience [interms of what they want, how to reach them and how to keep them loyal] as well as their brands and their category … and I have no doubt that if they were incharge of more ‘mainstream brands’, they would be equally successful with them. [One guy said the difference between his company and a multinational marketing department is that he has to make decisions, not endless debate]

Sure, it might be taboo, but it is [in most places] legal and popular … yet the Business World chooses to ignore the valuable lessons they could learn from them. [Though to be fair, certain companies do appreciate the influence porn has in their own categories … infact a well known consumer electronic company spoke to the porn industry prior to investing in DVD technology, because they knew if the format was embraced by the creators of these films, the format would be a success]

With so many Western businesses going into places like China and getting their fingers burnt … maybe it’s time some of them look at the lessons ‘porn’ can teach them – because they seem to consistently be able to achieve great levels of success despite operating in one of the most competitive categories on Earth.

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