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

No, Asian values mean they will be fearful of losing their identity if they embrace Western ideals too much.
Could the oracle tell me if I’m ever going to be able to buy 32″ leg jeans without needing them taking up?

First of all, well done Bazza – your comment [about the trouser length obviously] made me laugh out loud.

And Lauren – just because Andy is away doesn’t mean you have to take his pedantic pedestal. Oh hang on, that’s Dodd’s role. Anyway to answer your question, it’s how Western business is now and I mean it in terms of it’s behavioural element.

Got it? Good – now answer the bloody question 🙂

OK Lauren – so now tell me why you think the rest of Asia will become more Asian. You’re on an Andy-style roll, go with it 🙂

i saw a beautiful artwork today which illustrated an old chinese story which kind of typifies the way i think the rest of asia (mostly china) will continue to operate:

the king heard of an oncoming enemy army and asked his chief warrior to make him 10,000 arrows in a week in order to defeat them. the warrior said that he would do it in three.
in the three days he made 3 small wooden boat models and on the 3rd night, as a deep fog set in against the moon, sent the boats along the river to the enemy beating the war drums to intimidate them. the enemy, thinking that they were under attack, fired 10,000 arrows at the little boats that were creeping through the mist. the king and the warrior rescued all the arrows and thanked the enemy for their weapons, firing them back and defeating them with their own hand.

Bazza cannot fool the oracle. He would clearly never buy trousers approaching anywhere near 32 inches in length. Well not for himself anyway.

Next question.

This is interesting because it kinda relates to the previous Planning School on the Web Assignment (Japanese packaging) to me.

When you had posted the challenge I went away and did a fair bit of reading about the subject in the hope that I would be able to submit a response but unfortunately we had a run of pitches on at work and I just couldn’t find the time – excuse I know 🙁

But in essence, and forgive me if this sounds scattered because I never got around to putting thoughts to PowerPoint, but my strategic approach to this was to acknowledge that Japan (and other parts of developing Asia) is fast becoming more Westernized – especially in relation to the ways they shop, branding, automobile production (and in turn oil dependence!) and general consumerism. Of course I don’t have much (read: ANY) first hand experience with this so there’s work involved in proving my point, but you can already see it with the number of big name brands using the Olympics in China to help BREAK into the market long term – i refer to Nike and Adidas specifically who are only now seeing the potential there. What this tells me is maybe Asia IS becoming more Westernised.

My idea for the Japan packaging dilemma was not to try and reverse the plastic packaging trend by promoting more usage of traditional Furoshiki (asking people to turn back their habits), but instead encourage the youth of Japan (who in all my readings seem to be moving to a more Western style of living anyways) to the creation of a MODERN plastic version of Furoshiki which they could take ownership of. When I mean ownership, I mean of their future.

I dunno if any of this even makes sense, it’s Friday morning and I’m tired and I’m looking for ways to procrastinate… But I guess my point is that yes I think Asian countries are becoming a LOT more Westernized and this is evident by the issues they face – issues relating to excess wastage, increased levels of brands entering the marketplace, rising industrialization and automobile production, more political dealings with Western trade partners (Australia and USA).