How to truly understand China while designing effective brand communication strategy?
See beyond advertising, see its cultural root and art to find answers
5. ife in China is in a consistent progress,
the soul remains very Chinese
6. 自然 Humanize Nature
人而不仁如乐何
情感的责任、情感的秩序、情性的关系、情性的等级
人化
Stability and
sustainability governs
social order, rules,
and behaviors
7. 天人
Naturalize Human
人法地，地法天，天法道，道法自然
合一
Harmony underlies
people’s interactions
and relationship. Don’t
be extreme
8. 顿悟
Sentience
Through Persistence
众里寻他千百度， 暮然回首，那人却在灯火阑珊处
认知
Time solves anything and
everything. Be patient,
Don’t push.
万物有情
9. 想象的真实
Imaginative Reality
立象以尽意、妙在似与不似之间
Affaction and meanings
感知的真实 space
through leaving
for individuals to
internalize. Subtly has
理识、情感、想象、感知交融的心理特征
virtues
10. Beauty in humanity Beauty in sentience
Confucius Zen
美在人道 美在境界
Beauty in
Beauty in nature affectionaten
ess
Tao
Qv
美在自然 美在深情
11. A brand is an art with commercial objectives.
Let’s look into the Chinese Psyche
through a glance at our modern art
12. Western art is about representing nature and reality.
Chinese art is to understand nature
Western art is about representing nature and reality
Chinese art is to understand
nature
Chinese art from its very beginning served as a part
our understanding of nature.
Naturalizing human and humanizing nature are two
independent and interrelated aspects of Chinese art.
Every piece of art is a representation of the artist’
understanding of nature.
13. Chinese arts always complete with a spirit of unity in order to
comfort, numb, even cheat the harmed hearts.
At the very beginning we rejected negative elements such as evil,
tragedy, hardship, and myths, we therefore avoided those extremely
painful and tragedy side of human conflicts in the real world.
Although inside our hearts there were no lack of ocean-like depth,
depth of human nature that was only found from violent conflicts
inside human often was concealed and devoured by the strong desire
for harmony. Harmony over violent conflicts!
Our art springs from human and
nature in everyday life, yet rises
above it.
14. Our art comforts individuals in
group relationships.
Chinese held a practical idea on realistic life.
It refused to make abstract explanation of life and to create
passionate beliefs
Its objective was to directly establishing social moral standards,
facilitating people relationship, and serving social rules.
15. Our art is about emotionalizing time. Its continuity, pause,
exist, disappear „ all link to human emotion.
Only those arts that combine anticipation (future), experience
(current), and memory (past) are the arts with full lives.
We look at art along the time line:
everything expands, in paint,
calligraphy, poem, architecture „
and moves forward.
16. Chinese art is about imaginative reality upon which sit the true
understanding of the reality and beyond.
“妙在似与不似之间” - 齐白石
Being real doesn’t mean literally present reality. It rather
means the meaning can be understood because once it is understood,
the reality doesn’t need to be showed or talked.
It is the space between real and not so real that inspires others
to search for the meaning that will be more relevant to
individual.
We look for the “white space”
and what’s in the silence.
17. Our social norm sets the
boundary for free expression.
Chinese art is built on a basis that is current and
changing through rhythm, characters, scenery, story,
decoration, and theme„ they serve the reinforcement of
social norm.
They are free yet restricted, they are dynamically open yet
limited.
18. The art for a brand’s selling
products to
Chinese should also consider:
A brand plays two roles in Chinese
lives, private
(a source of information) and public (a
reflection
of brand can be a source of life
A social norm)
meaning in the
fast progressing society
A brand is assigned a role to bring
people
closer, either being couple, family,
interest-
circle, or community, even the country
19. “In 1996, a group of representatives of China
advertising industry went to The Cannes for the
first time. They brought with them 38 print
advertisements and 31 television advertisements and
proudly submitted them to the Cannes. Surprised by
the result that none of their advertisement was
awarded, they complained that the judges did not
understand Chinese culture and therefore they could
not understand Chinese ads.
The Chairman Mr. Roger replied, “then, how
come you guys understand and love those great ads
that are not related to your culture?”
