So I live in China – a land of rich history, culture and learning.
I love the place.
I love it’s complexity, madness and paradox.
I love it’s ambition, attitude and acceleration.
I love how they’ve embraced a strategy of ‘creative practicality’.
Creative practicality?
What I mean, is that they have an ability to understand problems and opportunities better than almost anyone else in the World … and can develop solutions that strip away all the extraneous detail and get straight to the point.
Now of course, one persons ‘creative practicality; is another persons ‘copyright infringement’ and in no way am I endorsing that – however it has to be said, Chinese companies ability to seize and grasp problems/opportunities and turn turn them into commercial solutions is a sight to behold.
Whereas other countries/companies seem to embrace a never ending line of brainstorm and branding meetings until they feel they have identified the ‘ultimate’ solution, many in China simply ‘get on with it’ and learn from their mistakes.
It’s contrived branding process versus cumulative branding process.
Want to make your apartment look classy?
Put in an ornate, spiral staircase that leads to nowhere.
However, as impressive as this is, one of the biggest problems facing Chinese brands is their reputation.
You see in their quest to maximise opportunity, there is a prevailing attitude – at least in modern business – that ‘good enough’ is good enough.
That might be OK for companies wishing to make a quick buck from an emerging trend – and to be honest, quite a lot of Western brands seem to embrace the same attitude – however in terms of Chinese brands who aspire to global domination, it means they may have to undergo a fundamental change in attitude.
Of course, not all of China’s 1.3 billion people think this way.
Neither do all their companies.
And the fact is, many organisations could easily shun Western markets because their home population is so big, they could become the the biggest brand in the World [in a particular category], without ever exporting a single product.
However for those who want to truly infiltrate the global market, it will require them to let go of the need to only deal with what they know [the cliche of ‘face’] and go back to some of the values that built their country – values that focused on doing things very well rather than the path of least resistance.
While this may seem a tough task, the reality is if anyone can do it, China can – because in a culture that is [seemingly] driven by wealth acquisition and progress, they will adapt to whatever ‘rules’ are required to maximise opportunities – be it quality control or branding process – though the real power will come when they start to define the rules rather than simply follow others.
Bit like how the Japanese car market took on the Western car market.
It’s an exciting time to be here, you should come and check it out for yourselves.