Mary Bergstrom
I wrote my new book All Eyes East: Lessons from the Front Lines of Marketing to China’s Youth because there was a need. Even for those whose job it is to understand consumer changes in China, it is hard to keep track of the big picture. It is easy to get overwhelmed. China’s size and pace are unparalleled; it will boast a population of almost 500 million people under age 30 by 2015, it claims about 46 cities with more than two million inhabitants, and the number of Internet users jumped from 33.7 million to 513 million in a decade (the end of 2001 to the beginning of 2012). Unparalleled shifts like these make jaws drop, eyes glaze over, and cause marketers to salivate in anticipation. “If we could only get 1%…” they plot.
But the math is deceiving. A combination of increasingly sophisticated consumers and intensifying competition (both domestic and foreign) requires a serious, targeted approach. To have a chance at connecting, companies must understand who their consumers are, what is important to them, and how their brands can help audiences achieve both tangible – and intangible – goals.
In my work helping companies leverage trends and consumer insights, I have focused on telling stories, making connections, and setting my eyes toward the future. Working with a team of researchers primarily from mainland China, I have been privileged to see inside the most exciting and historic consumer miracle of our time. More broadly, I have had a rare vantage point from which to observe the beginnings of a new global hierarchy of influence. As Chinese have jumped from follower to leader, they have liberally rejected and reset expectations to serve their needs. These changes are influencing how business is done in China now and will impact future consumer and brand experiences outside the country’s borders.
Lost and Found in Translation
I have often heard executives jump to the conclusion that young people in China look (and therefore must act) like cousins or nephews abroad. This is a neat way to categorise similarities and erase differences, making way to rationalise a copy and paste approach to youth.
In reality, this is just a superficial observation that there is a trans-border vocabulary of cool. Trend-conscious youth in every corner of the world, including China, recognise and buy into international symbols. But few brands enjoy the universally understood status of Apple or Nike. Different cultures have their own unique attitudes and behaviors that influence how youth understand and use brands to their benefit. For brands to truly connect, they have to understand and adapt to cultural contexts.
Failing to acknowledge culture gaps partly explains why some brand messages are not easily translated and integrated in China. The gap is obvious when, for example, you see salespeople not conforming to the company’s globally prescribed look of the season. Further evidence can be seen when older consumers abscond with brands meant for trendsetting youth or when adults embrace brands and characters originally intended for primary school kids.
These are all less than subtle cues to take a step back and re-evaluate. If a brand wants to differentiate (which it absolutely must), it may need to recalibrate. To stand for something specific, brands need to reconstruct their stories and take a hard look at their true meaning and value to consumers.
Access and Expectation
To find a translation of their value that resonates, companies need to recognise what makes this audience unique. Cognitively speaking, Westerners are thought to be more analytical and adept at isolating subjects (a hypothesis that would also help explain their high levels of independence and individualism). Asians on the other hand are considered to be more holistic and adept at understanding complex relationships, a facility that would help account for high levels of social interdependence. An easy comparison of this difference would be to think of Westerners as having a powerful zoom while Asians’ panoramic lens is stronger.
While Asians tend to be more family-focused than Westerners, China’s one child policy exacerbates this trait. Without siblings, these only children are positioned at a crux of unprecedented opportunity and expectation, swaddled with more income and access than peers both vertically and horizontally – historically within China and abroad. Without siblings or elders with experience coming of age in an open economy, Chinese youth have been largely left on their own to discover and integrate new ideas about consumerism.
When the post-80s generation (born 1980-1989) came of age, they were the first to step through the gates of an economic miracle. Post-80s were given a broader spectrum of choice than their parents could have ever imagined possible. Positioned at a historic crux, youth were tasked with reporting new experiences back to their communities and helping to pioneer definitions of modern Chineseness. When private cars, real estate, and luxury brands became available in the mainland, youth were quick to claim them as their own status markers. Although they didn’t have experience with consuming status, parents were proud of their precocious Little Emperors. Their financial assistance helped young Chinese normalise the belief that immediate success is consummated with goods and labels. But not everyone can afford the price of success. This highly competitive, consumption-focused environment inevitably forces many to the bottom.
For youth, unparalleled access and expectation is a double-edged sword. Without siblings to share the responsibility, young Chinese are tightly directed even once they reach adulthood, heavy-handedly guided on what schools, careers, and mates are right for them. This pressure cooker is part of what drives youth to spend more time online than peers in other countries– to find a critical sense of release, expression, and camaraderie. Organising outside the regimented system, youth now are exploring different ideals for what constitutes achievement and paving new paths to success.
Consumer Prowess
In China, consumerism is not the dirty word it is in the West; it is a powerful symbol of modernity. As such, the one area where youth are encouraged to flex their personality and analytical skills is in their role as consumers. Supported by six family members and their own incomes, young people have been allocated the necessary funding to pioneer consumption. Scouting out new brands and passing on reviews, youth gain capital for their expertise and contribution to an important expedition. Unlike in politics, at school or at home, youth’s opinions as consumers hold weight; their experiences are crucial to redraw the consumption map.
Chinese understand brands as a standard part of building a reputation. In this equation, a well-known premium mark signals keeping up, not being left behind. To gain status, a young person must become a field reporter and curator, retrieving and making sense of lesser-known brands (relative to their own groups) to add to the chart.
Emerging Segmentation
In the last few years, companies have recognised and projected forward evolving consumer complexities in their marketing. Enormous shifts in how youth see themselves, their relationships, and their place in the world have forced brands to get specific in how they relate to their audience. As companies recognise and even contribute to the conversation, opportunities for mutual benefit emerge. How can marketing help the first generation of single men – and women – ease the burden of aspiring to an unconventional ideal? How can a company help a young person feel their power to positively affect social change? And how can a brand encourage and even embody the spirit of entrepreneurship and flexibility required to succeed in an ever-changing China?
Successfully marketing to youth requires a brand to know who it is, understand its consumers and clearly emphasize why it matters to them. Uncovering common ties with target audiences enables a brand to build a story based on shared passion points. To create a relationship that resonates, the key is to add real value to consumers’ current lives and the lives they hope to lead in the future. From this angle, channels (in stores and across media) are not the end goal, they are opportunities to prove value and own the brand’s story. The challenge is universally applicable but in China, the map must be strong enough to make an impression but also be drawn in pencil. Consumers, competitors, and relationships are a work in progress. A brand has to be confident in how it thinks of itself and its audience while at the same time being nimble enough to keep pace in a changing landscape.
These opportunities for reflection and re-evaluation are not limited to the borders of mainland China; companies around the globe are embarking on a similar journey of disruption and change. The smart ones are relaxing their grip on how they see themselves and the world to make way for a new chapter. Lessons of flexibility, translation, and empathy earned on the front lines of China’s dynamic youth market thus have potentially much broader application outside the here and now.
As the world continues to pull closer together, old ideas about right and wrong ways to do things are challenged. This is scary because it means uncertainty; it calls into question the usefulness of terms like “developed world” and “reverse innovation.” But ultimately, the challenge offers a deep reward. By examining hierarchies and assumed protocols, we are forced to allow a more flexible way of thinking about people, culture, and brands. In this next phase, localization will evolve from buzzword to simply meaning knowing your audience and telling your story in a way that matters to their world. In this new era, a product is more of a visual badge marking the success of a relationship exchange than an end goal of a one-way transaction. By leading with passion points common to target consumers, brands will reinforce their own values and prove their worth. This is a long-term shift in vision. To win, consumers, partners, and employees will need to speak for the same goal, even if they do so in different languages. Thinking about the world and our place in it as an ongoing and flexible exchange of value is something that will make us all better marketers, consumers, and even people.
Mary Bergstrom is author of All Eyes East: Lessons from the front line sof markting to China’s Youth and owner of The Bergstrom Group.
