Heard on the Conference

I was at a regional advertising and marketing conference last week and learned a few things about the newest developed in the world in the industry. And here are the few things I remembered from it:

1. Neural scan on the head in order to actually "see" consumer behavior with real, hard, visible, colorful scientific evidence, looks really cool and finally provided evidence of the importance of brand, e.g. when tasting a can of Coke unbranded, certain part of the brain lighted up and when tasting a can of Coke branded, different part of the brain lighted up! This is cool stuff, but how to make apply it in practical marketing remains to be seen.

2. "Fear and Guilt" are the big words to touch consumer phyche in economic recession. It is said that one brand of hand sanitizer increased its sales by more than 100% by playing to the "fear" factor with an advertising tagline "It takes 15 second to catch a deadly virus" as well as the "guilt" factor with another line "Do you dare to let your children leave home without it?" This is particularly amusing to me as I look around and decide that here and now in China, people have very little fear and absolutely no guilt.

3. A lot of talk on ROI and marketing effectiveness. Some ten years back, when I was working in advertising, it's all about "Big ideas". Now with the crunch of recession, the cutting of budget and the increasing scrutiny of the marketing spender, even the most flamboyant advertising people are now humbled and even invited their long-fighting foe on the table: the corporate procurement people who always try to cut the agency fee.

4. Do people really hate China now? This is my personal question which they didn't really discuss on the stage. I just got this impression reading the recent Wall Street Journal and Economist and it seems there is a growing negative sentiment on the part of the West, towards China. So I raised this question at the lunch table to a senior executive at a major advertising firm, a British one by the way. And he's been based in Beijing in the past four years. So the informal Q&A went as this:

Q: Is there indeed a growing negative sentiment against China now?

A: I think it's just in the media

Q: Then where did the media pick this up?

A: I think it's just the American… I'm a huge fan of China and I have lived here only four years… it's the Americans who never travel… and the Americans are blaming China for currency manipulation, if they would just save more and spend less…

Q: Yeah, actually I won't be surprised if the Western companies are sometimes unhappy about our government, but still you need to make your money here. We are unhappy all the time too! Still we need to make our living and try to make a better life out from here…