Don’t try to out-Chinese the Chinese in your Lunar New Year advertising. You’ll lose
By overusing stereotypes in Lunar New Year advertising, brands show they know less about their target audience, not more, explains Identity’s Thang Ngo.
Let’s play a drinking game. Scull a shot glass of [Chinese spirit] Moutai every time you see any of these Chinese icons used in Chinese New Year advertising this year: red, gold, 8, red packet, lanterns, and paper-cut rat.
We’re in for a merry time. Adidas is banging its gong (literally) with a spectacular TVC in China that crams every Chinese symbol into a one-minute spot: red ribbons, gold Adidas logo, dancing Chinese maidens, folding fans, wooden lattice doors and kung fu moves. So what’s wrong with using these icons? Nothing. And everything.
You assume brands want to simply celebrate CNY with indo Chinese in Australia. I think you’ll find for most it is a potential retail spike and if you understand the Australian Chinese behaviour at the time you’ll know that many consumers in this high discretionary spending demo are expecting their favourite brands to throw promotions at them…you only need to read the comments if you think it’s a feel good opportunity for a branding campaign. It is completely consistent with the renewal tradition. Why still dress the kids in red if that’s consider a stereo-type, why do the adults still look forward to the red-pocket cash (check the spending spike in the 1-2 weeks after).
So if your intention is to sell stuff at CNY you should be much more targeted than “people who celebrate CNY”. That might be just as presumptuous.
The point of the article was putting forward a case on brands needing to get out of the stereotypical cultural connotations -over usage of red, lanterns, red pockets etc.
The author makes a valid point here, most Asian cultures, don’t associate these with Lunar New Year; Koreans for example associate Lunar New Year with symbols like Sparrows, Kite Flying, dressing in traditional gowns in blue, white, pink most of the time. There are zero connotations to Lunar New Year with the colour red, lanterns, red pockets – this is all very Sino-centric thinking.
I’m Asian from a non-Chinese background, and I recall all the brands targeting Lunar New Year offers all being in red background, yellow/gold type etc, and such creative was in an non-Chinese ethnic newspaper I picked up in Sydney.
If it weren’t for the brand logos, you wouldn’t be able to tell each creative apart from one another.
I get that residents of Chinese heritage make up the bulk of Asian consumers in Australia, but putting the rest of the Asian demos under a single umbrella definition doesn’t cut it, and is often off putting.
You raise a couple of points. Clients with poor strategy and targeted strategy. If my target is Chinese consumers in Australia I shouldn’t dilute the effectiveness just in case another Asian culture comes across the ad and if I chose the correct environment I tend not to offend. Large format OOH in language can offend some of the masses while street level in high indexing multicultural tends to be more tolerable. Running Mandarin ads in Korean language movies at Village Cinemas tends to generate confused comment in social media.
It’s a feel good article that doesn’t deserve this much criticism but the stereo type of red pocket is not an outmoded tactic for marketing and neither is red but plenty of marketers use it poorly as is the case with Santa, Christmas trees and the Easter bunny.
We all agree, don’t just run CNY (LNY, SF) ads for the sake of it and think they will work in any way positive.
I adored that story. Thank you.
Nice piece, very true. And that Apple ad: cuts right to the heart of LNY with zero clichés…and had me in tears! Beautiful, thoughtful advertising.
Agree SB, that was fantastic, I had to choke back a cheeky tear at my desk.
This story is so good. Thank you for writing it.
This year’s best CNY ad was from Nike. Brilliant insight and execution and a world away from the generic ads that fill out TV screens each year.
The real problem is that most of the people trust more in their circle of confidence than in informed and professional media. Trump, as an example (says NYT) trust more in his close friends than in breifings given by the professionals in the field.