Chinese ads resemble '50s era, "but in color"

BEIJING — An NBA basketball star dukes it out with a Chinese kung fu master and wins. American audiences probably would enjoy the flashy fight sequence in the commercial and leave it at that. Not in China.

Viewers offended by the Chinese defeat spread their outrage online. Authorities yanked the ad last month, saying it violated the country's dignity.

Ditto for Japanese carmaker Toyota, which aired a commercial last year of one of its sport-utility vehicles cruising by kowtowing Chinese stone lions.

Such are the pitfalls of doing business in the world's fastest-growing advertising market, in which sensitivity about cultural icons and Western domination is acute.

Multinational companies are eager to sell their products to more than 1 billion Chinese and say that in some ways consumers here are very easy to please, as long as you know what makes them tick.

Topping the don't-go-there list is anything that resembles rebellious or anti-establishment behavior, said Tom Doctoroff, the regional director of advertising giant J. Walter Thompson in Shanghai.

That means scenes popular in the West, such as soccer players causing traffic jams by kicking a ball around in the middle of the street, would be out of the question here.

What about that classic Pepsi commercial in which Michael J. Fox climbs out of his window and dodges traffic in the rain to get an attractive neighbor a can of soda? In a Chinese version of the commercial, the local pop star stops at the traffic light.

Determining proper behavior is not always easy. In one Pizza Hut commercial, a boy stands on a desk to tell his friends how good his pizza tastes. Censors killed the ad because standing on a table with a crowd watching was considered rebellious.

Also forget about showing tattoos, pierced ears or women kicking and punching the air in an aerobics class.

Individualism is frowned upon, and sheer indulgence takes a back seat to practical benefits.

"If a woman takes a bath in a beautiful, comfortable tub, that is not going to sell here," Doctoroff said. "Nothing is just about feeling good or tasting good. Everything has to have a payoff."

It won't work to show a woman enjoying a cookie in the comfort of her own home. But if the commercial had a group of people eating the cookies in public, it would create the feeling they are members of the upwardly mobile middle class and the commercial would be a hit.

That is why Pizza Hut is popular here and frozen pizza is not, Doctoroff said. Dining out has a showoff value that eating in does not, he said.

The same rule applies even when selling toilets. Instead of presenting a person alone in a bathroom, a Chinese commercial has a woman showing her friend how nice her toilet bowl is.

Elements in most commercials are happy, bright and clean.

"It's the 1950s, but in color," Doctoroff said.

That approach might bore a Western audience exposed to decades of changing advertising, but in China, everything is new and exciting. The simpler the message, the easier it is to digest.

Many marketers see this moment as China's golden age of advertising, as the 1930s and '40s were for the United States.

The numbers alone tell the story.

According to AC Nielsen, the growth rate of the Chinese advertising market is close to 40 percent a year, compared with 3 percent to 4 percent in the United States, said Quinn Taw, managing director at Mindshare in Beijing. Taw said although the real growth rate might be closer to 20 percent, it is still a phenomenal figure.

"The growth is historical," he said. "Over the next few years, it will overtake Germany and Britain to become No. 3." And then it's only a matter of time, he said, until China's advertising market overtakes Japan's to rank second behind the United States.

The growth is partly driven by young Chinese companies that are among the biggest spenders in the industry, but tend to pay little attention to creativity. One health-tonic company made its name by buying the most expensive slot on prime-time television and repeating the same slogan over and over again.

"In the U.S., an ad may take 24 months to go from storyboard to when it gets on the air. In China, this would happen in three or four weeks," Taw said. "You're looking at pinpoint communication. They are looking at big sledgehammer communication."

Observers say that's because most Chinese, neophytes in the world of marketing, are not experienced in creative advertising. That leaves plenty of room for practiced foreign advertising agencies to take the lead in wooing the wallets of Chinese consumers.

"This is the last great virgin brand-building market," Doctoroff said. "We can be successful just by doing the ABCs."